When I was sixteen years of age, I had several proposals of marriage, and my most ardent suitor was Count Herbert Bismarck, whom I knew through my great friends, the Princesses Wittgenstein. Laura, the eldest, was much older than I, and she was a lovely woman, who was greatly admired by the late King Edward VII. Herbert Bismarck proposed to me through "Lizzie" Wittgenstein, but as I did not take his proposal seriously, Lizzie interviewed mamma, who promptly went to ask advice from my grandmother, the Duchess of Bavaria. Grandmamma, however, declined to discuss my matrimonial affairs, and told my mother that she had better speak to King Ludwig on the subject.
The King, who liked me, strongly objected to the proposed match, and said with great decision that he would rather see me dead than married to a Protestant.
After that, mamma declined the honour of a Bismarck alliance, and I did not see my disappointed lover until next May when we went to Kissingen where my aunt the Queen of Naples was staying. Herbert, who had arrived to join his father at Kissingen, was apparently still very much in love with me. One day I received a passionate love letter from him in which he begged me to elope and defy King Ludwig, going on to say that he would wait for me outside the hotel on the following evening.
"He takes too much for granted," thought I, but I was curious enough to see whether he really meant what he had written, so, from my window on the third floor, I watched Herbert walking to and fro, until, convinced that it was hopeless to expect me, he disappeared in the darkness, and temporarily passed out of my life. It was not until years afterwards in Vienna that I saw him again -- when I was Countess Larisch.
Countess Marie Larisch, My Past
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House for Otto 2
1999
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