Sisi’s Scales and an Emperor’s Lav in Rococo Heaven «

Sisi’s Scales and an Emperor’s Lav in Rococo Heaven

Tuesday 21st July 2015

I went to Schönbrunn in the summer of 1987 with Anthony Mottram. We came over from Budapest. It was just after he’d moved into the Bloc and was about to become what he afterwards became – one of the leading figures in the restoration of the Bloc to Western ways, ‘consultant’ of Prague. Before that we’d undergone another estrangement of five years for reasons no longer accessible to memory, to chime in with other fallings-out and reconciliations since first meeting in 1970. Schönbrunn was rather dreary in those days. Parquet, stoves and walls, no presence of Marie Theresia nor any other Royalty. Now – well, you won’t believe that a Palace could have its Imperial past so restored. For anyone who cares deeply for Royalty, as we all do, Schönbrunn is the golden essence of Royalty in ravishing reality. You can feel their lives in the rooms. The apartments of Emperor Franz Joseph and Sisi (not that she was there much) have been opened. We saw Sisi’s weighing scales – she led the way in thinness and weight-watching. She was the origin of the thin movement, as well as the first Royalty of stature to be regularly plagued by paparazzi. A photograph was on view of two dark lady-shapes, seen from behind, clearly late 19th century, in walking outfits and with umbrellas. This was Sisi and her attendant being pap-ed. Her dislike of the Court and love of free wandering in resort towns was what killed her. A maniac with a file stabbed poor Sisi. At first, such were her corsets, there appeared to be no wound. Only when she was unwound was she found to be in a fatal state and soon after died. She gave three hours each day to her coiffure when alive. Sisi wasn’t often in the massive matrimonial bed at Schönbrunn, in fact twins shoved together. Her husband had simple soldier tendencies and died on a little day bed in another room. His desk was a coarse oak affair such as might have been seen in any clerks’ office at the time. He insisted on being up at 6 to do ‘work’. Really the Imperial life was quite suburban with heavy swirly decor to match. Their dining room is terribly grand hotel. We passed on to the Maria Theresia part of the Palace. The place is so vast a new Emperor just shut down the previous one’s bit and colonised another. These apartments are Art. It’s an important rococo interior. Reggie Cresswell pointed out the disconcerting way the curlicues weave into one other de-stablilising the viewer, and giving a decor that isn’t quite there although it obviously is, in one respect, being made of plaster and gilt. This is a more advanced rococo than I saw at the Palace of Sans Souci at Potsdam last year. Harry Rollo had alerted us to the Lacquer Room and also the one where some Princesses had chopped up a lot of rare Chinese miniatures to make a collage for the walls. Strange how the 18th century monarchs created important interiors – one thinks of Sans Souci, Le Palais Buckingham (strictly early 19th), Schönbrunn – but the later 19th century ones didn’t – Sandringham, Balmoral, Osborne, the Franz Josef part of Schönbrunn… not that all Royalties aren’t great and the late 19th century ones especially dear somehow, with their tendency to produce publications, Box Brownies, leg-of-mutton sleeves, small dogs, love of the Alps, many German relations, and indescribable yearning. I see when I said earlier that you could feel the lives of the Royalties at Schönbrunn, it’s really only Sisi and the Emperor Franz Josef who spring out. Maria Theresia seems quite dumpy from paintings, not very rococo herself. Her legacy is palatial apartments, art greater than her.

We walked up to the Gloriette for luncheon, Reggie and Rufus having important conversation about London affairs on the way. Oh how to get a plaque erected to one in one’s lifetime! That was my concern, but Rufus was thinking of V.S. Pritchett, who has received no blue plaque. What is to be done? Later, in a grove at Schönbrunn, Reggie read aloud from The Flower Beneath the Foot the death of the Archduchess before a model of a toilet block she was planning. As well, a facility for dogs drifts in her dying mind and then Schönbrunn where she first heard The Blue Danube …