It has also been reported that she slept with slices of raw veal upon her face and forbade her hairdresser to pull a single hair.
She had a lithe, graceful figure, luxurious chestnut hair and a flawless complexion. She was certainly endowed by nature and she also took great pains to preserve that beauty. She was successful, to a point. The outdoor exercise that undoubtedly contributed to her graceful figure also roughened and tanned her delicate complexion to the point that she would not sit for any more portraits after the age of 32. This is something that I have read of time and time again in regards to historical beauties~ that beauty did not last past the age of 30 or thereabouts. Ninon de L'Enclos is a notable exception to this observation.
Of course, when we discuss the inevitability of fading beauty, we are discussing the inevitability of fading youth...
Exercise~
"It is hardly credible that Francis Joseph distinctly allowed the Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary to spend many hours of the day in the Riding School, and to associate with jockeys and professional riders on an equal footing, and it is said that a cavalry officer once observed to the Emperor that he could not conceive how he could permit this wild riding and hunting.
"Ah, my young friend," replied the Emperor, "you do not yet understand women ; they do what they like, without asking our permission."
Those who have seen the Empress on horseback are unanimous that she presented a remarkably pretty picture. She nearly always wore a dark blue habit trimmed with fur that fitted her slender figure to perfection, a low hat and thick gloves. She did not care for a flower or ribbon, and the only thing that could be considered superfluous in her costume was a black fan, which she either held in her hand, or kept strapped to her saddle. But she frequently used it, and those who did not know her, thought it was to protect her beautiful complexion; but those who understood her more perfectly were well aware that it was a protection against painters and photographers, who were an annoyance to her, and continually on her track in order to take her likeness.
"I strongly object to being photographed," she used to say, "for every single time that I have permitted it, some misfortune has happened to me.
The Viennese considered her passion for horseexercise extravagant, and called her in derision "the circus-rider," but the Hungarians, who admired her on horseback, surnamed her "the Queen of the Amazons." She was well aware that her devotion to riding was displeasing to many, but she had been fond of it from a child, and as her long continued illness had forced her physician to debar her from it for some years, she resumed it with perfect indifference to hostile criticism.
She loved her horses and never failed to have carrots and sugar in her pocket for their enjoyment, while each morning found her in the stable to pat them, see that they were well groomed, or on occasion, to brush and rub a favourite steed with her own hands.
She had a room at Schonbruun, the walls of which were simply covered with pictures of horses. "Look," she said to her Greek reader, to whom she was showing this room, "I have lost all these friends; many of them have met their death for me, which no human being would ever do. Men would prefer to kill me!"
It gave her intense pleasure to rush through the Austrian woods, or over the Hungarian plains on horseback, but her motive was also to try and conquer the gloomy moods that were beginning to overcloud her mind. There were relations, both on her father's and on her mother's side, who had drifted steadily through life, nearer and nearer to the abyss of madness, and some of the members of her family were even then on that dismal border-land between the dusk of a fixed idea and the night of lunacy. As years went by, she noticed more and more frequently that her nervous system exhibited several of the symptoms of the hereditary complaint, and there is hardly a doubt that during the last twenty years of her life she was conscious of the germs of that mental malady peculiar to the members of the Bavarian Royal house.
She sought for physical exertion to dispel her gloomy forebodings and rode at a gallop for miles in the twilight of early dawn, or in the star-light night, mainly to escape from people and surroundings that wearied and worried her. Or she would spend half-days on horseback, and rush like a stormy wind past the peaceful labourers who stood and gazed at her. These rides numbed her fears, and quieted her over-wrought nerves. Wind or rain, warmth or cold had no meaning for her, and again and again she would remain in the saddle wet through, but no harm came of it. She seemed to be absolutely proof against physical discomfort or inconvenience during these excursions, and never drew rein till her horse was literally quivering with exhaustion."
source: "Elizabeth, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary" , By Clara Tschudi
That Glorious Hair~
"Neither poet nor painter could do justice to her loveliness; not that her features were strictly classical, but the expression of her countenance, the index to the purity and innocence of her soul, made her so beautiful that to see her was to love her. She was then about fifteen, as untainted by worldly contact as the pure lilies which she loved to gather in the parks of her ancestral home, Schloss Passenhofen, on the banks of Lake Traun. Like an artless child, with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes, she flitted back and forth, seemingly unconscious of the royal visitors, choosing her own partners, and entirely absorbed with the innocent pleasure of the moment.
Two years later, after she had been wooed and won, and her imperial suitor had returned to Munich for the espousals, I saw the ardent young lovers, for lovers they certainly were, at the court ball given in their honor. They were like happy children on a holiday, for "the world is full of beauty when the heart is full of love." The Emperor was then in his twenty-fourth year, and the Princess Elizabeth was seventeen, though she looked even younger. She had lost none of her peerless beauty, which needed not the aid of any ornament. Her dress was of white silk, perfectly plain, simply covered with tulle, which suited her sylph-like figure...
One change I noticed: her beautiful blonde hair was now rolled back from her chiselled forehead and confined in a graceful knot, from which a white rose-bud hung carelessly, just caught by a diamond brooch, or half coronet, the gift of her imperial fiance'. This style of wearing the hair became the rage in Munich and Vienna, but no one could imitate it; the princess was her own coiffeuse; the style in its simplicity was peculiar to herself, and becoming only to the angelic face which it surrounded as a halo of light...
...The rigid etiquette of the Austrian court, established by Joseph II., the unworthy son of the magnanimous Maria Theresa, was a crushing weight upon the heart of the young Empress, and only the love which she bore to Franz Joseph enabled her to endure the surveillance and incessant reprimands of her imperial and imperious mother-in-law. Accustcmed to the freedom of a bird in the air, or the graceful gazelle in the forest, the empty and heartless ceremonies of the court wellnigh broke her spirit. Compelled to sit for hours under the hands of the coiffeuse, who knew not her simple art, the young Empress often rushed forth, impetuously exclaiming: "I will dress my own hair; here they know nothing but idle vanity "; and suiting the action to the word, in one moment the graceful coiffure was completed; but not before she heard the oftrepeated words: "Does such conduct become the Empress of Austria? It belongs rather to a poor country girl."
source: "Personal Reminiscences of the Empress Elizabeth", by D. S. Beni, Catholic world, Volume 68, By Paulist Fathers
"The only trait of vanity which I ever noticed in Empress Elizabeth was the pride she took in her magnificent chestnut hair, which fell below her knees. She used to have it dressed for hours every day, whilst the "reader," Mile. F., read to her English, French or Hungarian novels. Her majesty was particularly anxious that the dressers who brushed her long tresses should avoid pulling out a single hair. This, of course, was an impossibility, and the unfortunate maid concealed carefully in the pocket of her apron any hair which became entangled in the brush. One day the empress, happening to glance into the looking-glass, caught sight of the maid concealing a small roll of hair in the above-described fashion. Jumping from her rocking chair, her majesty clutched her attendant by the wrist and angrily exclaimed, "I have caught you at last; you are ruining my hair." With a presence of mind which would have done honor to an expert diplomat, the maid replied unhesitatingly, "I implore your majesty to forgive me. It never happened before. I only wished to have a few of my sovereign's hairs to put into the locket which my little girl wears around her neck as a talisman." Whether the empress believed or not this clever invention, I do not know, but, shrugging her shapely shoulders, she resumed her seat, laughing merrily; and the next day she presented her maid with a locket enriched with diamonds, saying, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, "I think this is the kind of talisman your little daughter deserves for having such a clever mother.""—One of the Ladies of the Court, Harper's Magazine, June, 1893.
source: "Wit, Wisdom and Foibles of the Great", By Charles Anthony Shriner
"Once a month Elizabeth's heavy chestnut tresses were washed with raw egg and brandy and afterwards rinsed with some "disinfectant," as she termed it. When the actual washing was over the empress put on a long waterproof silk wrapper and walked up and down until the hair was dry. The woman who acted as her coiffeuse was hardly ever seen without gloves, which she even wore during the night; her nails were cut close; rings were forbidden her; the sleeves of her white gown were quite short; and it may be almost truthfully asserted that the hair of Aunt Cissy's head were all numbered. . . ." —Countess Marie Lariscu, "My Past," copyright, G. P. Putnam's Sons.
source: "Wit, Wisdom and Foibles of the Great", By Charles Anthony Shriner
Complexion~
"Elizabeth was not a believer in any special face treatment. Sometimes she only used a simple toilet cream; occasionally at night she wore a kind of mask "lined" inside with raw veal; and in the strawberry season she smeared her face and neck with the crushed fruit. The empress took warm baths of olive oil, which she believed helped to preserve the suppleness of her figure, but on one occasion the oil was nearly boiling and she narrowly escaped the horrible death associated with many Christian martyrs. She often slept with wet towels round her waist in order to keep its proportion slender, and drank a horrible decoction composed of the whites of five or six eggs mixed with salt for the same purpose. . . . Elizabeth slept on a plain iron bedstead, which she took with her wherever she went. She scorned pillows and lay quite flat, probably because she had been told by some one that it was beneficial to her beauty."—Countess Mahie Lariscu, "My Past," copyright, G. P. Putnam's Sons.
"From him, T. Paoli we learn that the empress bathed daily in distilled water, and took only one biscuit with her tea at breakfast, and refreshed herself later in the morning "with meat juice extracted daily from several pounds of fillet of beef by means of a special apparatus which she always carried with her," and dined off iced milk, raw eggs and a glass of Tokay. M. Paoli also speaks of her long walks, for these, of course, were occasions when the burden of his responsibility weighed heavily upon him. Elizabeth often walked as much as fifteen or twenty miles a day, with no one but her "Greek reader"—some student as a rule of the University of Athens—in attendance. His function was not only to read Greek, but also to carry the empress's spare skirt. She walked, clad in "a black serge gown of so simple a character that no well-to-do tradeswoman would care to be seen in it"; and she often changed her skirt in the midst of her perambulations, behind trees, or any other screen which the landscape afforded, while the reader dutifully looked the other way. Sometimes too she perambulated the streets of Paris with equal recklessness. Once, M. Paoli recalls, she went to see Notre Dame by moonlight and insisted upon being taken afterwards to eat onion soup at a cafe.—Francis Grirble, "The Life of the Emperor Francis Joseph."
"The empress not only smokes from fifty to sixty Turkish cigarettes a day, but during the course of the evening she also smokes several terribly strong cigars. This perhaps somewhat unfeminine pastime acts as a sedative to her majesty's nervous temperament and had become almost indispensable to her. In spite of all the doctors say to the contrary, this habit has not impaired the pearlywhiteness of her lovely teeth."—One of the Ladies of her Court, Harper's Magazine, June, 1893.
source: "Wit, Wisdom and Foibles of the Great", By Charles Anthony Shriner
No comments:
Post a Comment