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!"
To the Londoner this place holds more of interest than any other
museum, not excepting the unfortunately entombed Guildhall Museum.
The whole history of London, dug up out of London clay and peat, is
here for inspection. The finest collection of Roman pottery, found
among the roofs of London, is on view. There is a pot which dates
from perhaps A.D. 200, on which a Londoner of seventeen hundred years
ago has written: "Londini ad fanum Isidis" ("London, next door to the
Temple of Isis"). Think of it! In Tudor Street seventeen hundred
years ago men worshipped the Egyptian goddess Isis, the goddess with
the moon on her head, the sister-wife of Osiris, who travelled from
the Nile to the Tiber, where she joined the impartial Pantheon of
Rome! There is the skeleton of a Roman galley found in the bed of
the Thames: a great ship in which men came to build the first London.
There is the skeleton of one of the first Londoners, lying stretched
under glass as he was found, with a bronze pin under his chin and a
bronze dagger at his breast bone.
Down below in the basement is a Chamber of Horrors few people know.
Here are the great iron gates of Newgate Prison. Here in a
frightening gloom are two prison cells. A wax figure, who looks as
if the execution morning has dawned, writhes on his hard bed, his
hands chained to the walls. Here are the manacles that held Jack
Sheppard.
In another room are a series of lifelike models of old London which
every Londoner should see and admire. Old London Bridge, with its
rows of traitors' heads set on staves, is lifelike; old St. Paul's
during the Fire of London is wonderful. A mechanical contrivance
gives the illusion that smoke is rolling up from the blazing church
over the startled city, the windows of houses show blood-red lights,
and, as you stand looking at the model, your imagination is stirred
so that you can hear the cries and the shouting, see the confused
rushes as citizens tried to save their treasures when liquid lead was
falling in a hissing stream on the red-hot pavements round St. Paul's.
* * *
One wonders what Lancaster House will be like in fifty years' time if
it keeps pace with London! Already a hansom cab is parked in the
garden! Some day a motor-omnibus and perhaps a tramcar will arrive.
There are crowded days ahead!