Desmond Huston Chapman (1884–1952)

This biography of the Bavarian King Ludwig II occupies a special place in the documentation on the enigmatic monarch. The author Desmond Chapman-Huston was the first writer with aims at publication to be given access to the closely-held royal archive that included Ludwig's extensive correspondence, memoranda, and diaries. This archive did not survive the Second World War intact, and so Chapman-Huston's book takes advantage of now-vanished sources, often quoting them at length. He did not, however, consummate this work in published form during his lifetime, and posthumous edits and finishes were performed by editor Osyth Leeston when the the book was first published in the 1950s as Bavarian Fantasy.

The prose of the book has its ups and downs, sometimes dull, sometimes melodramatic, occasionally quite funny, as when the pair of Ludwig and the composer Richard Wagner are referred to as "the big man with the little head and the little man with the big head" (63). To the extent that Chapman-Huston credits Ludwig with an accomplishment, it is in his sponsorship of Wagner. That support comes across as more meritorious than Ludwig's famous architectural undertakings, at any rate.

It's often hard to tell what Chapman-Huston thinks about Ludwig. He claims not to make any moral judgment, but he seems to protest that too much, while throughout the book there is a subtext that seems to refer to moral standards that are unintelligible to me. The author speaks with an air of psychological authority, but with very questionable expertise. He writes, for example, that Ludwig "was subject to dreams" for his whole life (29), as if a) dreaming were an affliction, and b) dreaming were uncommon in adults. He is also sometimes deliberately opaque, such as when alluding to "medical details about [Ludwig's brother Otto] ... so repellent that they have been banished from this volume" (194). Moreover, he fails to reach persuasive conclusions regarding some of the most central controversies concerning his subject.

First among these is Ludwig's sexual identity. I don't think any reader could come away from this book with an impression other than that of Ludwig as a homosexual, and one who was self-recriminating for his reasonably frequent carnal indulgence. At no point does Chapman-Huston say so in black and white, however. Perhaps circumlocution on this score was a part of the author's upbringing, or consideration for possibly wide standards of libel (particularly regarding Ludwig's likely sexual partners or their families). Still, it would have been refreshing to have some sort of plain statement on this score, even if it had to be tempered with further explanations. Chapman-Huston is more specific when discussing Wagner's sexuality than he is when addressing that of Ludwig.

Another question is whether Ludwig was ultimately insane. Throughout the book, which was actually retitled Ludwig II: The Mad King of Bavaria in its 1990 reprint, there is foreshadowing to the effect that Ludwig will follow other members of the Wittelsbach family (in particular his younger brother Otto) in a descent to madness. But Ludwig was eventually declared mad by a political agency, without the benefit of a firsthand evaluation by any medical or psychological authority. The mental specialist Dr. Franz Karl who did observe him, infiltrated under other pretenses, pronounced him quite sane (244). And the historical evidence mustered here shows him to have been composed and rational from the time of his "diagnosis" onwards. (A modern judgment: sane.) Chapman-Huston quotes a number of memoranda as evidence of the deteriorating mental condition of the king, but to my eye, these simply read as inefficiently-taken dictation, where the various framings of speech have been collapsed.

Finally, the explanation of Ludwig's death is not at all satisfactory. According to Chapman-Huston, Ludwig murdered the physician Gudden and then drowned himself in water less than knee-deep. It is certainly possible to drown in such shallow water. But I am dubious about the possibility of suicide in such a fashion, especially given that Ludwig was a capable swimmer. There were many political interests that would have been served by Ludwig's assassination, and the suicide explanation failed to persuade some closely-placed people at that time.

For its privileged access to sources and reproduction of primary texts, this biography is likely to endure in its usefulness to those inquiring into the life of Ludwig II. It falls short on many fronts, however, and I would not be surprised to find that it has been surpassed by other volumes for readability and historical conclusions.… (mehr)