MONDAY, February 24th, 1879, began as a routine day for the 500 or so students at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth. They rose at 6.30am, went to the chapel for meditation and Mass, studied for an hour, ate breakfast at 8.30am and settled into a well established schedule of lectures, study, recreation and meal breaks. They could have no expectation that it would become one of the best-remembered days in the college’s history.
In Ashbourne, the members of the Ward Union Stag Hunting Club knew that the same Monday would be a special day. For the first time, they would be riding with Her Imperial Highness, Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, Sisi to her friends and the sporting empress to her admirers, a lady whose equestrian skills were known throughout Europe.
At 11am they assembled at Batterstown station to meet a special train from Dublin that carried 40 other members and guests and 40 horses. Then they rode, resplendent in their scarlet coats and buckskin breeches, to nearby Parsonstown House. There they were joined by Sisi, who had ridden over the few miles from Summerhill House, the home of Hercules Rowley, Lord Langford, which she had rented.
Soon a stag was “enlarged”, the hounds were released and the hunt began. The deer led his pursuers south towards Moyglare, and on past Maynooth towards the college.
Coincidentally, contractors building a new church in the grounds had opened a gap in the wall adjoining the main road and erected a temporary gate. When an elderly janitor saw the stag he opened the gate and let the animal run through. Other workmen then took it in charge and rescued it from the hounds. Moments later, the hunters arrived, led by the empress, wearing a black silk hat, a tight fitting, heavy woollen habit with a stand-up collar, and a narrow skirt, and riding a small bay called Domino. No doubt, she presented an exotic sight to the young men who saw her and if there had been any women present, they might have remarked on her dark chestnut hair and her extremely thin waist, the product of genes, regular exercise and a sparse diet, and perhaps they would have envied her for being so well preserved at the age of 43.
The acting president of the college, Dr William Walsh, a future archbishop of Dublin, and senior staff arrived quickly to greet the royal visitor and John Poyntz, Lord Spencer, a former and future lord lieutenant who was with her, made the introductions. The day was dry but cold and Elizabeth asked for a shawl, but as there was none in the all male college Walsh gave her his academic gown. He then invited the party to refreshments and asked the empress to be allowed to welcome her more formally at a later date. Although she had brought her own altar from Austria so that she could have Mass said at Summerhill, she suggested that she might come to Mass in Maynooth on the next Sunday and Walsh naturally agreed.
On each of the following five days she hunted again, with the Ward Fox Hounds, with the Royal Meath Fox Hounds Club and with the Kildare Fox Hunt Club, the “Killing Kildares”, and according to a contemporary observer she never put a hoof wrong! On Sunday, she arrived at the college in a brougham and four, with her entourage, and was given a chair and prie-dieu inside the altar rail of the Junior Chapel. After Mass, she toured the college, gave Walsh a gold ring and persuaded him to give the students two free days.
Her visit didn’t go unnoticed in the wider world even though she travelled under one of her minor titles, the Countess of Hohenembs. On her progress through Dublin, on her way home, she was cheered by the populace and an enterprising bottler in Rutland (Parnell) Square advertised “mineral waters as supplied to the Empress of Austria”.
Elizabeth visited Ireland a second time in February 1880. She stayed again at Summerhill, hunted with the local clubs and attended Mass in the college. On this occasion she brought a sculpture, executed in silver, of St George in contention with a dragon. Later, perhaps after receiving advice that the subject of the sculpture wasn’t appropriate for Ireland, she sent the college a highly decorated set of vestments made from cloth of gold.
That was her last visit. Queen Victoria, who met her in England, may have warned her that Ireland, which had recently experienced the Fenian rebellion and was suffering a famine in the west, wasn’t a safe place for royalty, or her husband Franz Joseph may not have wanted Victoria to be embarrassed by his wife’s popularity.
Elizabeth, a daughter of the Duke of Bavaria, had a troubled life. While her marriage at 16 to her cousin, the 23-year-old emperor, was happy initially, she had continuing difficulties with her mother-in-law who considered her a “Bavarian provincial” and the couple began to grow apart after the death of their first daughter. She found solace in travelling and apart from Britain and Ireland, she visited places as far apart as Corfu, Normandy and Madeira.
Her second child, Ludwig, the heir presumptive, committed suicide in 1889 after shooting his mistress and on September 10th, 1898, as she was walking on the quay at Lake Geneva, an Italian anarchist, Luigi Luchini who had planned to kill the Duke of Orleans but couldn’t find him, targeted Elizabeth instead and wounded her fatally with a sharp file.
A week later, more than 600 students assembled for a Requiem Mass for the empress in the new chapel in Maynooth, opened in 1891, which had been indirectly the cause of her visit to the college.
Summerhill House was burned down by the IRA in 1921.
The Wards, the Meaths and the Kildares ride on.