The reputation of her extraordinary looks became more burdensome the more it grew. For, as many eyewitnesses reveal, Sisi had to stand her ground against the curious and critical glances of the people at every public appearance, not unlike an actress, to whom she was frequently compared. Her clothing, her jewelry, her hair: Everything furnished endless matter for discussion. Every flaw, even the slightest, in her looks or her dress was noted and commented on. Every second, Elisabeth had to live up to her reputation as the greatest beauty of the monarchy. But there is not the least indication that she enjoyed the splash she made, as others in her situation would have done. Quite the contrary: Her innate timidity and unsociability were not relieved by these public appearances; instead, they were reinforced to such a degree that she developed a virtual terror of strangers.
Anxious and tense, she made efforts to conceal such flaws in her beauty as her bad teeth. Archduchess Sophie had noted and criticized this defect even before the engagement in Bad Ischl. Nor could it be corrected by the most expensive dentists throughout her life. Elisabeth’s self-consciousness because of this blemish was so great that, from her first day in Vienna, she parted her lips as little as possible whenever she spoke. Her enunciation was therefore extremely indistinct, almost unintelligible, and she spoke so softly that, as many contemporaries complained, she was given more to whispering than to speaking. This habit made conversation in the salon extremely difficult; for hardly anyone could understand the Empress’s words.
Her lack of gregariousness at public functions was cause for many a piece of gossip in society. The Prussian Crown Princess Victoria, for example, in 1863 wrote her mother, Queen Victoria, “The Empress of Austria speaks very softly, since she is quite shy. Recently she said to a gentleman who was very hard of hearing: ‘Are you married?’ The gentleman answered: ‘Sometimes.’ The Empress said: ‘Do you have any children?’ and the unfortunate man bellowed: ‘From time to time.’”15
Finally, Sisi abandoned her pitiful attempts at conversation and contented herself with appearing with her lips resolutely closed. Her silence was judged to express lack of intelligence, bolstering her reputation of being “beautiful but dumb.” Sisi, for her part, in her extreme sensibility, felt this criticism acutely and turned even more from the real or imagined hostility of her surroundings into her self-chosen isolation. Even ten years after the fact, the wife of the Belgian envoy wrote about the time she had been presented to the Empress. “She is extremely pretty: wonderful figure and hair which, they say, reaches to her heels. Her conversation is not as brilliant as her shape.”16
The people believed that they had a right to stare in wonder at this marvel. The awareness of owning, as it were, a “fairy Empress” famous the world over swelled feelings of nationalist pride. The excessively shy Elisabeth withdrew from this possessive thinking. She cultivated her beauty exclusively for herself, to keep up her self-assurance. She was not vain in the sense that she needed, let alone enjoyed, the admiration of the masses. She viewed her body as a work of art too precious to be exhibited to all the world, all the curious lookers and gapers.
Her beauty gave her a sense of being one of the elect, of being different. Her aestheticism, directed at her physical appearance, made her the foremost admirer of her own beauty. Her narcissism was as evident as her shyness. She flatly refused to be “merely a spectacle for the Viennese theater audiences,” as Marie Festetics wrote. When the Countess assured the Empress “how happy the people are when they see Your Majesty,” Elisabeth, unmoved, replied, “Oh, yes, they’re curious—whenever there’s something to see, they come running, for the monkey dancing at the hurdy-gurdy just as much as for me. That is their love!”17
*
Sisi was obsessed with her hair, which over the years changed color from dark blond to chestnut brown and grew down to her heels. To manage this mass, to keep it healthy and to arrange it in artful styles, required immense skill on the part of the hairdresser. Sisi’s complicated crown of hair, with long braids twisted on top of her head, was repeatedly—and almost always vainly—imitated. Hardly any other woman had such healthy, strong hair, so much time and patience to care for it, and such an artist for a hairdresser as did Elisabeth. The expense was huge. Washing it every three weeks (with always newer precious essences, until eventually cognac and egg became the preferred mixture) took up a whole day, leaving the Empress unavailable for any other concerns. The daily regimen of hair care could not be accomplished in much less than three hours.
The hairdresser became an important person at court; Elisabeth’s mood depended in large part on her skills. For nothing could put the Empress out of sorts more easily than strands of hair falling out, having it poorly styled, or dealing with a hairdresser she did not like.
She found her favorite hairdresser, Fanny Angerer, at the Burgtheater. During a comedy she noticed the unusually handsome coiffure of the leading actress, Helene Gabillon. She asked for the name of the artist. It was the very young Fanny, “a girl of striking appearance” and “lively wit.” She was the daughter of a hairdresser recently employed at the Hofburgtheater.18 There were long discussions pro and con concerning her appointment at court. These disputes reached the outside world. Finally, in April 1863, in the “News of the Day” column, the Morgen-Post carried the following item.
The question, pending for a long time, whether a man or a woman hairdresser would assume service with Her Majesty the Empress has finally been settled. Fräulein Angerer relinquishes the Order of Coiffeurs to Court Actresses and the honorarium assigned to it and receives instead a compensation of 2,000 fl. a year to devote herself to the most exalted service as imperial hairdresser, whereby, time permitting, other artistic earnings are not excluded.19
The yearly salary of 2,000 guldens was very high, corresponding roughly to that of a university professor. The highest salary paid at the imperial theater to such stars as Joseph Lewinsky and Charlotte Wolter was an annual 3,000 guldens. Archduchess Sophie was incensed at the smug tone of the newspaper item and in her diary grumbled about “impertinent court news.”20
Henceforth, Fanny Angerer was the most famous hairdresser of the monarchy; her part in Sisi’s beauty was not to be underestimated. The ladies of high society virtually sued for Fanny’s favor, so that they, too, might, on special occasions, obtain her services. (These engagements brought Fanny the “other artistic earnings” the Morgen-Post had mockingly mentioned.)
But Fanny Angerer knew not only how to concoct the most tasteful and artfully braided hairstyles in Vienna, but also how to treat the notoriously difficult Empress with the utmost tact. She also employed tricks; for example, she cunningly secreted the combed-out hairs under her apron on a piece of adhesive tape—and could therefore often show the Empress a clean comb at the end of the day’s work. Soon Sisi let no one but Fanny Angerer touch her hair; she even refused to appear at an official function if Fanny was ill and unavailable.
Fanny kept the Empress in a kind of thrall. If she was annoyed for any reason, she pleaded illness and sent a different hairdresser to the Empress, or a chambermaid took over the task. Whenever this happened, the Empress was devastated. Elisabeth to Christomanos: “After several such days of hairdressing, I am quite worn down. She knows that and waits for a capitulation. I am a slave to my hair.”21
Elisabeth also took a strong personal interest in young Fanny, and when it came to her marriage, Elisabeth took a very active role. The hairdresser fell in love with a middle-class bank official but could not marry him because to do so would have gone against court rules. She would therefore have had to leave, something Sisi wanted to prevent at any cost. Only Elisabeth’s personal intervention with her husband the Emperor managed to get the exception granted; Fanny was allowed to marry and still retain her position. Her groom was also given employment at court.
This move made Hugo Feifalik’s fortune. He advanced to be the Empress’s private secretary and then to the position of her Reisemarschall—travel supervisor, as it were�
�and of course Fanny was taken along on all of Elisabeth’s many trips. Next he served as Regierungsrat—something like a senior executive officer—then he became treasurer of the Sternkreuzorden (Order of the Star Cross) and court councillor. Finally, he had a knighthood conferred on him. The Feifaliks had a strong though subtle influence on the Empress for thirty years. It can be recognized mainly in the jealousy Feifalik aroused among the ladies of the court, especially Countess Festetics.
As the decades passed, the Empress’s “supreme” trust made Frau Feifalik not only conceited and arrogant, as Marie Festetics repeatedly complained, but also enormously genteel and stately—in any case, far more stately than the Empress herself. More than once, Elisabeth took advantage of Feifalik’s faultless bearing to use her as a double. In this way, she could disappear, unrecognized, among the crowd, while Fanny Feifalik officially accepted the jubilation; of course, this ruse could be practiced only abroad, where Elisabeth was not so easily recognized. Thus, in 1885, Elisabeth had her hairdresser ride around the harbor of Smyrna in the boat of honor, accepting the homage of the worthies of the city, while she herself went ashore by barge and took a sight-seeing tour of the town.22 As late as 1894, there was another such deception, at the Marseilles railroad station. Many people crowded the platform to watch the departure of the Empress of Austria. Countess Irma Sztaray, a lady-in-waiting, reported
Under normal circumstances, Her Majesty felt extremely ill at ease, but this time she was entirely delighted, because the people’s curiosity was fully satisfied—before she ever appeared. … Frau F., the Empress’s hairdresser, walked up and down the platform with a most stately bearing, thus playing the Empress to the best of her ability…. Her Majesty found this interlude very amusing. “Let’s not interrupt my good F.,” she said, and quickly and unnoticed, boarded the train.23
Elisabeth considered her hair her crowning glory. She was proud of nothing so much as the cascade that enveloped her like a cloak when it was loosened. To the end of her life, Elisabeth made the daily hairdressing a “sacred ritual,” as Christomanos floridly put it. (During the 1890s it was his job to engage the Empress in Greek conversation and translation practice during the hours her hair was being dressed.) Christomanos:
Behind the Empress’s armchair stood the hairdresser [Fanny Feifalik] in a black dress with a long train, a white apron of spider webs tied in front; though a servant herself, of an imposing appearance, with traces of faded beauty on her face, and eyes filled with sinister intrigues…. With her white hands she burrowed in the waves of hair, raised them and ran her fingertips over them as she might over velvet and silk, twisted them around her arms like rivers she wanted to capture because they did not want to run but to fly.
There follows a long-winded description of the actual hairdressing.
Then in a silver bowl she brought her mistress’s dead hair for inspection, and the looks of the mistress and her servant crossed for a second—containing a slight reproach in that of the mistress, guilt and remorse speaking in that of the servant. Then the white lace robe was lifted from the falling shoulders, and the black Empress, like the statue of a goddess, rose from the sheltering garment. Then the mistress lowered her head—the servant sank into the ground, softly whispering: “I lay myself at Your Majesty’s feet,” and so the sacred ritual was completed.
“I am aware of my hair,” Elisabeth told Christomanos. “It is like a foreign body on my head.”
Christomanos: “Your Majesty wears her hair like a crown instead of the crown.”
To which Elisabeth replied, “Except that any other crown is more easily laid aside.”24
The weight of these masses was so great that sometimes it caused Elisabeth to have a headache. On such mornings, she remained in her apartments for hours, her hair held up high with ribbons. This method decreased the weight on her head, and allowed air to circulate.
*
The older Elisabeth grew, the more strenuous became her struggle to hold on to her looks. The methods and the time spent on care became ever more lavish. By constant diets, Elisabeth managed to remain willowy and slender; hours of daily exercise kept her supple and graceful. Her skin care was a highly complicated process. Since there was no cosmetic industry such as exists today, the ladies who took pride in their appearance had to depend on beauty products they mixed themselves according to more or less secret recipes. All this required enormous expenditures of time and money.
The constant occupation with these “outward appearances,” so essential to Elisabeth’s sense of self, degenerated into a virtual obsession with beauty. In later years, Elisabeth’s niece Marie Larisch characterized this maliciously as “an all-consuming passionate love”: “She worshiped her beauty like a heathen his idols and was on her knees to it. The sight of the perfection of her body gave her aesthetic pleasure; everything that marred this beauty was displeasing and repulsive to her…. She saw it as her life’s work to remain young, and all her thoughts turned on the best method for preserving her beauty.”25
Marie Larisch recorded the means with which the Empress attempted to keep up her beauty: nightly face masks with raw veal, during strawberry season a strawberry mask, warm olive-oil baths to maintain the smoothness of her skin. “But once the oil was almost boiling, and she barely escaped the dreadful death of many a Christian martyr. Often she slept with damp cloths over her hips to maintain her slenderness, and for the same reason, she drank a dreadful mixture of five or six egg whites with salt.”26
Sisi needed as much as three hours a day for dressing (occasionally several times in one day). The famous lacing alone frequently took an hour, until the desired wasp waist was slight enough. To do justice to her reputation of a proverbially narrow waist, Sisi made use of unusual methods, shocking for her time; beginning in the 1870s, for example, she gave up petticoats, wearing only thin “pantalettes” made of the finest doeskin. She had herself sewn into her dresses—each time she changed clothes.
The fact that these outrageously time-consuming preparations for public appearances became increasingly burdensome and arduous for her may explain in no small part why more and more she avoided being “harnessed” to function as the premier showpiece of the empire. Other empresses before her had not been under an obligation to uphold a reputation of fabulous looks. They could afford to appear in public simply attired, or with hair less carefully dressed without incurring criticism. Such behavior became all the more impossible for Elisabeth the more brightly shone her reputation for beauty.
The course of Sisi’s day during the 1870s and 1880s was unusual for an empress. In summer, she rose around five, in winter, around six o’clock, and she began her day with a cold bath and massage. This was followed by gymnastics and exercise and a meager breakfast, sometimes taken with her younger daughter, Valerie. Then, while her hair was being dressed, she used the time for reading and for writing letters and for studying Hungarian. Then came dressing (either in her fencing costume, if she intended to fence, or her riding habit, if she was going to the riding school to practice). All these activities amply filled the morning. At dinner, however, the Empress made up for lost time; her meal, often consisting of no more than a thin gravy, was consumed in a few minutes. After the meal, she went for a walk lasting several hours—more accurately, a forced march at great speed over huge distances—on which she was accompanied by a lady-in-waiting. Around five in the afternoon, after another change of clothing and hair combing, Marie Valerie came to play. Then, if there was no way to avoid it, Elisabeth appeared at the family dinner table around seven o’clock—and there, usually for the only time during the day, she saw her husband. But this meeting did not last long; for Elisabeth retired at the earliest opportunity, to indulge in her daily chat with her friend Ida Ferenczy, who also prepared the Empress for bed and loosened her hair.
Every official obligation, no matter how insignificant, was considered a disruption of the schedule. The Empress lived entirely for her beauty and health. There was no room in her d
ay for court and family duties (except for concern with Valerie).
When the first signs of aging appeared—wrinkles and weather-beaten skin caused by her diets and the time spent out of doors, and aching joints—Sisi was determined to hold on to her widely praised beauty by force. She tortured her slight body with hours of physical exercise—at the barre, at the rings, with dumbbells and weights of every description.
Wherever she lived, Elisabeth installed exercise rooms, which she used daily for long periods at a time. The first news of this innovation, in the 1860s, caused a sensation—and incredible astonishment. No one could readily conjure up an image of an empress of Austria as she lived and breathed, in an exercise outfit at the parallel bars or the barre. And so the newspapers printed grotesquely false reports, such as the following: “It must surely be of great interest to learn that the Great Hall in the Hofburg has been turned into an exercise ground. Every form of gymnastic equipment can be found in it: swings, parallel bars, barres, monkey bars, etc. Almost daily for 2 hours, His Majesty the Emperor and the exalted archdukes, along with gentlemen from the royal court including even the aged Baron Hess, all of them in gymnastic costume, disport themselves….”27 The fact that it was not the male members of the August House, but the Empress who spent several hours a day exercising seemed unthinkable even to the journalists of 1864.
B008AITH44 EBOK Page 20