#countess maria festetics

[archduchessofnowhere]

What was the opinion of the people who knew Empress Sissi? Thanks.

Hello anon! I’ll start by apologizing to you because it took me so long to answer not because this was a difficult question, but because it's easy to answer and this will turn ridiculously long since we have plenty of testimony of people who knew her.

Her husband emperor Franz Josef was probably her biggest admirer, and while I personally think their relationship is over-romanticed, that he deeply loved her is undeniable. He saw no fault in her and always called her his “angel”; and while he never understood her he did support her in (almost) all her projects. There are plenty of quotes that show his devotion towards his wife (even though his actions not always reflected that), but to me the most defining is one of the things that he allegedly said after hearing of Elisabeth's death: “Nobody will ever know how much I loved her”.

Archduchess Gisela’s feelings towards her mother remain a mystery, but we do have this letter she wrote after Elisabeth’s death that shows her grief, and I think is safe to say that she loved her, even if they weren't close. Rudolf 's feelings were more complicated. He loved his mother, in fact he idolized her, and felt deeply grateful towards her for having saved him from his abusive tutor. But he also longed for a closer relationship with her, which they never had, and this was a source of sorrow for him.

The child who's feeling we know the best is Valerie, who kept a diary throughout her life in which she often wrote about her mother. She loved Elisabeth, but she also found her love hard to bear, specially since she felt it kept her apart from her father, whom she also adored:

What I most wanted to do was fall at his feet and kiss his paternal imperial hands, even as I felt — God forgive me — a momentary anger at Mama since her unbridled love and exaggerated, groundless concern place me in such an embarrassing and false position.

After Rudolf's death Elisabeth fell into a deep depression, and Valerie felt the burden of being her mother's main emotional support.

My mother often causes me such anxiety. She is capable of everything great, yet incompetent in small things. Now that agitation has given place to the monotony of everyday life, and Papa at least appears outwardly the same and works as he always did, life seems to her oppressive and cheerless.

Elisabeth even said to her youngest daughter that she was the only reason why she still was alive, which greatly stressed Valerie, specially since her wedding was approaching. However, while deeply hurt, Elisabeth wanted nothing more than Valerie's happiness so she fully supported her decision to marry for love, and tried to bother her and her family as little as possible after she got married.

For all that’s been said about Archduchess Sophie disliking her daughter-in-law from the get-go, she in fact had nothing but praises for Sisi when the engagement was announced:

The little girl [Elisabeth]’s posture is so graceful, so modest, so irreproachable, so elegant, almost humble, when she dances with the emperor… She seemed to me so attractive, so childishly modest and yet completely at ease with him.

(...) But you can well imagine that my eyes are also busy looking at Sisi, and they rest with delight on this happy couple who love each other so much and in such a charming way; it is a feast for the eyes to see the happiness and harmony that radiates from them.

She also remarked many times how happy she felt, to the point of tears. While it’s true that Elisabeth later on remembered her mother-in-law with resentment, there's evidence to argue that the sentiment wasn't mutual, and that Sophie did felt love for her daughter-in-law, even if they clashed because of their differences.

Her ladies-in-waiting in general had a good relationship with her, some even forming real friendships with the empress. But they also found her hard to deal with, like one of her first ladies, Princess Helene of Thurn und Taxis, Countess Kinsky (not to be confused with Elisabeth’s sister Helene, Hereditary Princess of Thurn und Taxis). Princess Taxis wrote to a former lady-in-waiting when they returned to Vienna after Elisabeth’s flight to Madeira and Corfu in 1860:

I can only congratulate you, upon not having had to go through these two years of martyrdom with us. Now we are settled in Schönbrunn, and the thought that we are ‘settled for good somewhere’ seems quite strange. It was hard for her [Elisabeth] to give up her recent traveling about, and I quite understand this. When one has no inward peace, one imagines that it makes life easier to move about, and she has now grown too much accustomed to this. (…) I believe, indeed, that she has moments of despair, but nobody can laugh like her, or has such childlike whims. She says herself that it is not unpleasant to her to see us occasionally, but it is odious to her to have us in waiting…

The lady-in-waiting that left us the most “content” about the empress is Countess Maria Festetics, who entered her service in 1872 and became Elisabeth’s close confidant until the end of her life. Maria kept a detailed diary during her years in service, which is one of the main sources about the empress’ later life. In this diary she also wrote her impression’s on Elisabeth:

One never grows tired when one goes out with her. At her side it is delightful, and so it is behind her. Looking alone is enough. She is the embodiment of the idea of loveliness. At one time I will think that she is like a lily, then again like a swan, then I see a fairy-oh, no, a sprite-and finally-no! an empress! From the top of her head to the soles of her feet a royal woman!! In everything excellent and noble. And then I remember all the gossip, and I think there may be much envy in it. She is so enchantingly beautiful and charming.

But while the countess adored Elisabeth, she could be critical towards her too:

In ‘Her’ there is everything, but as in a disordered museum - pure treasures, which go unused. Nor does she know what to do with them.

Stephanie of Belgium also wrote a bit about her mother-in-law in her memoirs. This was her reaction when, according to her, Elisabeth asked her to replace her at fulfilling her official court duties:

Empress Elizabeth detested etiquette. She loved solitude, far from the pomp and ceremony of the Imperial Court. It was her purpose, she said, to withdraw from all such things. The duties of her official position had become slavery, a martyrdom! She had not, as a young girl, been educated for the high mission to which she was subsequently called. In her view, freedom was every one’s inalienable right! Her conception of life was a fairyland, free of all trouble and constraint.

The Viennese court took a dislikeness of Stephanie almost immediately, and Elisabeth was no exception. So the crown princess had her reasons to not have a very positive remembrance of her. According to Stephanie this is what happened when she spoke to Elisabeth after receiving the news of Rudolf's death:

At length I ventured to tell the Empress what, weeks before, I had tried to say to the Emperor. I spoke of Rudolf’s manner of life, his habits and customs, his associates, how completely his health had been disordered. The Empress, however, stubbornly closed her mind against these communications, and it was an additional distress to me to feel that she was turning away from me. In her eyes I was the guilty party. Though outwardly I remained calm, inwardly I was in a state of collapse.

From her extended family we have the very unreliable memoirs of Countess Marie Larisch, Elisabeth’s niece. She gives many long descriptions on how beautifully spellbinding she found her, but I'll just share this one:

She fascinated me and dominated my imagination, and, with her infinite tact, she gave me confidence in myself. Elizabeth was never then the Empress, she was the Aunt Cissi who seemed so understanding, and so completely in sympathy with me, that I would willingly have died for her.

This passage wrote many years after Larisch's fall out with the imperial family is likely an exaggeration, and yet I do believe that the young Baroness probably felt flattered for having the favor of her aunt and found her fascinating.

I could keep on but I'll leave it here since this post is already too long. I hope you found my answer helpful!

[archduchessofnowhere]

Do you know why Elisabeth of Austria could be so... mean, to Gisela and Rudolf? Like calling Gisela and her children a thin "sow" and her "piglets", and publicly referring to Marie Valerie as the "only one". I get that she wasn't very maternal and not everyone is made to be a mother, but that's just cruel. Also is it true that she had an instict to harm children, didn't visit Rudolf when he was seriously ill, and had to be pushed by Gisela's teacher to stand up against his abuse by his teacher?

Hello anon! Indeed Elisabeth's relationship with her eldest children was... complicated, and it's probably the most criticized thing about her. Even her most sympathetic biographers agree that she wasn't as loving to them as she was to Valerie (and then you have Brigitte Hamann who straight up implied that Elisabeth didn't love Gisela - a huge reach in my opinion). Mostly it is attributed to the fact that it was archduchess Sophie, her mother-in-law, the one that was in charge of the kids' raising, and that this made her grow cold towards them. I'd love to read what's the take about this from more recent revisionist works about Sophie, but I haven't been able to yet, so I can only talk about the way Elisabeth saw it: years after, when Valerie was born, she really did thought that her mother-in-law had “stolen” her eldest children. She told to her lady-in-waiting, Countess Maria Festetics, that “Now I know what happiness a child brings — now that I have finally had the courage to love her and keep her with me.” (1986, Hamann). Meaning that, in the 1870s, she truly felt that she hadn't been able to love and care for Gisela and Rudolf properly when they were little.

Of course this turned Valerie into her mother's favorite, which earned her the nickname of the “only child”. However Elisabeth (as far as I'm aware at least) never called her that; the nickname came from the Viennese society who scoffed at the Empress's clear preference for the daughter she was raising as a Hungarian. She did however say to Valerie that “it is you alone that I love”, which is very ouch towards literally everyone else in her life. This preferential treatment also earned Valerie her brother's resentment, Gisela, for her part, doesn't seem to have been bothered by this. Valerie was never close to Rudolf and their relationship was strained, but she did love her sister and wrote that she wished that one day she could be a wife and mother as good as her.

That she had an “instinct to harm children” is pure nonsense, her problem with her children is that she ignored them, but she never actively harmed them (or any other child, for that matter). I’d never heard of Elisabeth being forced to intervene to save Rudolf, in fact that she stepped out and stopped her son’s abuse was something that she seemed to have been proud of: “when I learned the reason for his [Rudolf’s] illness, I had to find a remedy; gathered up all my courage when I saw that it was impossible to prevail against this protégé of my mother-in-law, and told everything to the Emperor, who could not decide to take a position against his mother’s will — I reached for the utmost and said that I could no longer stand by — something would have to happen! either Gondrecourt [Rudolf’s abusive tutor] goes, or I go.” (1986, Hamann) The Emperor agreed, and Gondrecourt was dismissed. Elisabeth personally chose Colonel Josef Latour as Rudolf’s new tutor, who was highly unpopular at court because he wasn’t an aristocrat and had very liberal political ideas. Many tried to reach Franz Josef to make him get rid of Latour, but Elisabeth protected him and he kept his job. Latour was to become one of Rudolf’s closest friends, and they remained so until his death.

Lastly, about Elisabeth basically calling Gisela's children ugly, I will say in her defense (which isn't really a defense lol) that this didn't come from a particular dislike towards her eldest daughter: she just didn't like babies, period. In 1867 she wrote to Rudolf about her newborn niece Mädi, daughter of her sister Mathilde, that “the baby in her swaddling bands is not as revolting as babies so treated usually are. But near at hand it does not smell very nice”, and to her mother Ludovika she wrote that she liked the child best “when I neither see nor hear it, for, as you know, I cannot appreciate little babies.” (1936, Corti). Also I can't find the source right now so don't quote me on this but I'm sure that I read that when her granddaughter Erzsi, Rudolf's daughter, was born, she said that she thought the girl wasn't as ugly as little babies usually are. So her saying Gisela's babies looked like piglets is just in line with her thinking that little babies are ugly in general. Which hey, at least she didn't say it to the children's mothers' faces (all these comments come from her correspondence to other relatives), so there's that.

The site you linked to me doesn't quote any source, so I'm not sure where they got that information from: it definitely isn't in any of Elisabeth's main biographies. I'm not that acquainted with Rudolf's biographies tho, so if I ever come across something about that I'll let you know.

Also, your question wasn't a bother. I hope that you found my answer helpful!