Democratic Sentinel, Volume 21, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 December 1897 — How Elizabeth Was Dressed. [ARTICLE]

How Elizabeth Was Dressed.

Queen Elizabeth’s love of sumptuous apparel grew with her years, and the lending fashions of the courts of Eu/ope furnished her with designs for new dresses, which she would continually cast aside for others such as her fancy might suggest. On all occasions she droesed in the richest costumes, adorned with brilliants, precious stones, and jewelry of the rarest workmanship; even in her old age she continued to dress like a young girl, afraid of nothing so much as of being thought old. “Upon the subject of her personal beauty she would smilingly accept the most extravagant flattery,” says Carte, "however fulsome It appeared to everybody else.” When Paut Heutzner saw her she was In her sixty-seventh year; being a German, he observed her with an eye wholly unclouded by any sense of reverence for the divinity which hedges round a monarch. Indeed, he was so ungallant as to jot down in his notebook that Queen Elizabeth wore a wig, and that red! He goes on to remark that she had in her ears two pearls with very rich drops, and that her bosom was uncovered. She was dressed in white silk bordered with pearls of the size of beans, and over it a mantle of black silk, shot with silver threads; instead of a chain she had on an oblong collar of gold and jewels. He adds that “wherever she turned her face every one fell upon his knees”—an act of homage which on state occasions had been paid to her father, and Elizabeth never forgot, or allowed others to forget, that she was the daughter of Henry VIII. Carte, volume 111., page 701, says: “Elizabeth was pleasant in conversation, graceful and active in all exercises, whether on foot or on horseback; and danced extremely fine; even in the last year of her life she danced La Galllarde with the Duke of Nevers; she did it with sneh an attitude and grace that everybody was struck with admiration.”— Nineteenth Century.