Weights and Measures

[steepholm]

I posted a few days ago about Nelson's hat size. Today, we have Byron's dieting programme. Thank goodness for the record-keeping tradesmen of St James! People who'd just bought a hat at Locks could nip round the corner to have themselves weighed on the scales of Berry Bros & Rudd, whose primary business was selling wine.

Louise Foxcroft's Calories and Corsets, from which this comes (I think), looks as if it may be an interesting book. I'm glad at any rate to have been introduced to the Size 0 Empress of Austria:

She exercised vigorously, resembling an outlandish bird as she hung from gymnastic rings in a black ostrich feather-trimmed gown. She also swallowed only emetics, laxatives, oranges, and thin broth or one glass of milk from her own personal cow.

Roll over Cleopatra, and tell Semiramis the news.

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Presumably Franz Josef's wife, Sissi? She was very much the Diana of her day with many of the same issues and the same post mortem adulation after her assassination, some of which continues to this day.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

The same.

[owlfish]

I am so glad you clarified this. Sissi is legend in Italy, while growing up, I had otherwise never heard of her. I never really read enough about her to be able to recognize her, say, in this context.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I didn't realise you grew up in Italy!

[owlfish]

Not really, but a smidgin. The year I was three. (The only year in which I was really fluent in Italian!) Lots of teenage summers. Most of my summers and winter holidays during university. Lots of vacations since then.

Really, I was unclear. In Italy, she is legend. In all other parts of my growing up elsewhere, I had not heard of her.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

She's well remembered in Austria too, with a very Diana like style of adulation. She met a similarly tragic death at a young age and had many of the same personal problems and was very much the same sort of media creation. However, unlike Diana, her husband adored her and was broken by her death, which may explain a great deal about the older Franz Josef.

[sheenaghpugh]

Jeez, what a dull woman! In both senses.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I suppose she tried hard to excel at the one thing she was able to excel at. Unfortunately, that thing was being kind of ridiculous.

[sheenaghpugh]

To be fair, I gather her husband had infected her with a social disease, which must have rankled.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

It must.

Personal Cow

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

So you see, this is why I smoke cigars, not because I am bored, or anything. Btw, may I beg borrow or steal this for theboringclub? I feel, it belongs there at this time of year!

Re: Personal Cow

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Of course you may - I should have thought of it myself.

Re: Personal Cow

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

Oh, please do! Though I thank you so much for your confidence as a true-bore but I feel I am currently already overposting my neighbores quite a bit due to acute boredoom mainly stemming from non-acid (no c-vitamin at all as far as I can see) rainfall and having to think of the End of The World and what to wear there all the time. As opposed to all the other who have important things to do, you understand. If you don´t feel like, I´ll come back to your offer after having checked that absolutely noone understands german humour (though in the short sketch-form) as is right and just so then we might need something used because we are, after all, against The New. (& so on...)