Swooning over Sisi

When it came to Empress Elisabeth, men generally swooned over her while women were often unimpressed.   When she was first hunting in Cheshire, the writer (clearly a male) wrote that:

‘I feel it would be bad form were I to say much of the Empress herself.’

However, this did not stop the writer adding:

‘But for those who may not have the opportunity of seeing the most accomplished horsewoman in Europe, perhaps I may be permitted to write a little. That her figure is divine, lithe as a willow, and every movement as she steers her steed with consummate art is graceful in the extreme. I would have staked my life at the first sight that she was not more than twenty-two. Surely the hard hand of time never before rested so lightly on a mamma that rejoices in a son of twenty-one. She is above the average height, rather dark complexion, with brown hair shading into auburn, that the sun’s rays seem to love to linger on. She wears a silk hat and dark habit that grows to the person and shows every graceful curve of a perfect figure.’

From the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News on Saturday 19 February 1881, courtesy of the British Newspaper Archive online. 

Categorised in: People, Uncategorized