The destinations are only attractive in so far as the journey to them lies between. Elisabeth’s restlessness, which she did not just show in her sporting activities, but even when she was doing the most mundane things, was also the motivation behind her time-consuming and lengthy travels. She usually travelled under a pseudonym to avoid any public receptions and representational duties.
To make it more attractive for her to stay close to the Court, while still satisfying her yearning for privacy, Franz Joseph had the so-called Hermes Villa built in the middle of an expanse of shooting grounds, the Lainzer Tiergarten to the West of Vienna. The vast expanse of woodland and meadows used for hunting surrounding the Hermes Villa, named after the Greek God of the same name, has been preserved to this day. Elisabeth neither strayed here for very long, nor very often. The Magnificent bedroom in the Hermes Villa. The paintr gustav Klimt, at the time almost unknown, decorated the walls with scenes from Shakespear’s : A midsummer nights dream’
For her part, though, she was far more involved in the progress of the construction of her Villa ‘Achilleion’ on the Greek island of Corfu. Sisi named her villa on Corfu Achilleion after her favourite hero, Achilles. However she could never bear to remain in either of the two palaces for more than a couple of days at once. She regularly crossed the Mediterranean on one of her yachts, the Miramare on the Greif, or took a specially adapted train right across Europe to England, Ireland, godollo, Biarritz, Bad Kissingen, Holland, Curfu, the Cote d’Azur, Dresden, Algeria, Naples, Switzerland, Lisbon, Barcelona, Corsica, Greece or Milan..
For her travels within Europe Elisabeth took a specially adapted train.
During her first years in Vienna, Elisabeth bottled up a great deal of aggression towards the Viennese court, had her domineering mother-in-law in particular. Then, in the summer of 1960, rumours of Franz Joseph's first extra- marital love affairs sparked off a dramatic domestic crisis which came to a head with the Empress's panic-stricken flight to Possenhofen. Attempts at mediation and a brief return to Vienna solved nothing, and finally, in October 1860, there was an outright scandal: the 22-year-old Empress of Austria, mother of two babies, left Vienna and the imperial terrorties with a small retinue of courtiers and went to the island of Madeira, as far away as she could go. The official reason given was that she had tuberculosis and was mortally ill.
Princesses over the centuries had shouldered their duties to the dynasty more or less willingly, well aware that they were pawns on the chessboard of history, and suffered in silence. For an empress actually to leave her husband on account of his infidelity was simply inconceivable. Elisabeth, however, did not see Franz Joseph as the emperor, but as a husband who was insulting her.
Hints that her flight could damage not just the reputation of the dynasty but the monarchy itself, had no effect on her at all. She could not therefore hope for any sympathy from Vienna.
The "Mortally ill" young empress was accompanied by servants, courtiers, handpicked, without exception, by herself and devoted to her. For the first time in her life Sisi was entirely independent, moreover, the Emperor had supplied her with generous financial means. In Vienna she had always stayed in the background, behind her husband and her mother-in-law; now she was the sole centre of attention,. And she obviously relished it.
During the voluntary exile of almost two years, she moved on from Madeira to Venice and Corfu, she became a different woman. She shed her former humility and timidity, becoming self-confident, and even somewhat egocentric and demanding. Furthermore, she now had an excellent means of bringing pressure to bear on her husband. She could threaten to leave Franz Joseph again if he did not do as she wished. And her chief demands where indeed met: the gruelling military training which had overtaxed the young, highly-sensitive crown-prince and jeopardized his health, was substituted for a more liberal education. Academic subjects now took precedence over physical training, in direct opposition to the Emperor's orders of the previous year.
|
