We go on through the silent aisles, the storeman talkative, amusing,
insensible to the drama we have met, oblivious of the longing in
those few words spoken by a woman, among the sheeted pathos of a home
in bondage.
Royal Satin
When the Queen was married she wore a dress which I find it rather
difficult to describe, because there is a special dressmakers'
language for this sort of thing.
It was low in the neck, the lowness draped with white lace. The tiny
inch-long sleeves were caught up at the shoulder with little bunches
of orange blossom. The corsage curved inwards to a tight waist
ending in a point, and the dress, cut away over a fine white
underskirt, fell in a graceful, generous sweep to the floor. Over
the front were draped trailing sprays of orange blossom. The
going-away dress is a bit easier to describe. It covered the Queen
from neck to feet. The collar was high, and braided like that of a
mess uniform or a commissionaire's tunic. The sleeves, tight at the
wrist and braided, rose at the shoulder, sharply and alarmingly, in a
queer shape, known, I believe, as "leg of mutton." It is very
stately and ornate, and, in the light of modern fashion, exceedingly
stiff and strange.
Men in the early 'thirties can just remember their mothers in a dress
like this, sitting calm and lovely in a victoria with a parasol in
their white-gloved hands, and a perky little hat like a vegetarian
restaurant poised on their puffed-up hair. So you can't help loving
the Queen's going-away dress....
* * *
Where can you see it? Do you know? It is on view with hundreds of
other royal satins in that beautiful and comparatively unknown museum
within a stone's throw of the Prince of Wales's house in St. James'
Palace--the London Museum. This is a woman's museum. I cannot
imagine a woman who would not be thrilled by it. In the first place,
it is the most beautifully housed museum in the world. Lancaster
House, which used to be the town house of the Dukes of Sutherland, is
one of the finest houses in London. It makes you feel good all over
simply to walk up the wide, dignified staircase that leads from the
great marble entrance hall. In the second place, the London Museum
contains rooms filled entirely with royal treasures: dolls dressed by
Queen Victoria, a tiny suit worn by King Edward, the cradle in which
the present Royal Family were rocked to sleep, the coronation robes,
intimate family relics that recall Queen Victoria, the Prince
Consort, and King Edward. There are also beautiful, slightly-faded
dresses which Queen Alexandra wore when she came over the sea many
years ago to be the Princess of Wales.
* * *
Every day a few women can be found in a state of ecstasy before these
cases. Sometimes the keeper, frock-coated and white-spatted and
gardeniaed, can be seen conducting a tall, stately woman through the
high magnificence of the halls a woman who looks with a smile at many
a relic of childhood; and people whisper "The Queen!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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