Middle Temple.
P.S.--Since the above was written, I find that Elizabeth's christening
gift from the Duchess of Norfolk was a cup of gold, fretted with
_pearls_; that noble lady being (says Miss Strickland) "completely
unconscious of the chemical antipathy between the acidity of wine and
the misplaced pearls." Elizabeth seems thus to have been rich in those
gems from her infancy upwards, and to have retained a passionate taste
for them long after their appropriateness as ornaments for her had
ceased.
[Footnote 2: With respect to the rich pearl earrings above
mentioned, it may not be uninteresting to remark, that Elizabeth
seems to have been particularly fond of pearls, and to have
possessed the same taste for them from youth to even a later
period than "her sixty-fifth year." The now faded wax-work
effigy preserved in Westminster Abbey (and which lay on her
coffin, arrayed in royal robes, at her funeral, and caused, as
Stowe states, "such a general sighing, groaning, and weeping, as
the like hath not being seen or known in the memory of man")
exhibits large round Roman _pearls_ in the stomacher; a carcanet
of large round _pearls_, &c. about her throat; her neck
ornamented with long strings of _pearls_; her high-heeled
shoe-bows having in the centre large _pearl_ medallions. Her
earrings are circular _pearl_ and ruby medallions, with large
pear-shaped _pearl_ pendants. This, of course, represents her as
she dressed towards the close of her life. In the Tollemache
collection at Ham House is a miniature of her, however, when
about twenty, which shows the same taste as existing at that
age. She is here depicted in a black dress, trimmed with a
double row of _pearls_. Her point-lace ruffles are looped with
_pearls_, &c. Her head-dress is decorated in front with a jewel
set with _pearls_, from which three pear-shaped _pearls_ depend.
And, finally, she has large _pearl_-tassel earrings. In the
Henham Hall portrait (engraved in vol. vii. of Miss Strickland's
_Lives of the Queens of England_), the ruff is confined by a
collar of _pearls_, rubies, &c., set in a gold filagree pattern,
with large pear shaped _pearls_ depending from each lozenge. The
sleeves are ornamented with rouleaus, wreathed with _pearls_ and
bullion. The lappets of her head-dress also are adorned at every
"crossing" with a large round _pearl_. Her gloves, moreover,
were always of white kid, richly embroidered with _pearls_, &c.
on the backs of the hands. A poet of that day asserts even that,
at the funeral procession, when the royal corpse was rowed from
Richmond, to lie in state at Whitehall,--
"Fish wept their eyes of _pearl_ quite out,
And swam blind after,"
doubtless intending, most loyally, to provide the departed
sovereign with a fresh and posthumous supply of her favorite
gems!]
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