She made the needle her companion still,
And in that exercise her time she spent,
As many living yet do know her skill.
Thus she was still, a captive or else crown’d,
A needlewoman royal and renowned.”
She grew in love with costly suits when she became independent of church and grave churchmen; and the officers of her wardrobe were continually recording in their journals that there were “lost from her Majesty’s back” gold enamelled acorns, buttons, aylets or eylets, with which her dresses were sprinkled; or rubies from her hat, or diamonds, pearls, and tassels of gold; but always from the royal back, whence they were cut by the over-loyal, as the Russian princess the other day stole the great jewel from the Moscow “Virgin,” out of piety and a taste for gems. She kissed the figure, and carried away the precious stone in her mouth. When the Scottish Queen, Mary of Lorraine, came to visit Edward VI., she deluged the court with new French fashions; “so that all the ladies went with their hair frowsed, curled, and double-curled, except the Princess Elizabeth, who altered nothing,” says Aylmer, “but kept her old maiden shamefacedness.” In latter days Elizabeth had other ways; and we read with astonishment of her never-to-be-forgotten eighty wigs, with her “weeds (costume) of every civilized country,” and her appearing in a fresh one every day. After all, it is questionable if she was a better “dresser” than the fair Gabrielle, of whom the chivalrous Unton writes to Elizabeth that she was “very silly, very unbecomingly dressed, and grossly painted.” But this was a courtier speaking of one woman to another, and his testimony is to be taken with reserve. Elizabeth was in another respect more like Marie Antoinette, for she had a dairy at Barn-Elmes, where she played the milkmaid, as the poor Queen of France used at Trianon.
If we may trust La Mothe Fénelon, Leicester was as much the Queen’s “maid” as her Master of the Horse. The French Ambassador says, that the public was displeased with the familiar offices he rendered at her toilet. He was in her bed-chamber ere she arose; and there, according to the reports of men who denounced his privileges merely because they were not their own, he would hand to her a garment which did not become the hands of a Master of the Horse, and would dare to “kiss her Majesty when he was not even invited thereto,” but when, as he very well knew, “he was right welcome.” For Elizabeth took all she could get, even “nightcaps,” which were among the presents sent to propitiate her by the Queen of Scots. She took with both hands; and gave, as she herself truly said, only with the little finger. She ever graciously received new-year’s gifts that enriched her wardrobe; and was especially wroth with the Bishop of London for preaching too strictly against vanity of attire. When she saw Harrington in a frieze jerkin, she declared that the cut liked her well, and she would have one like it for her own wear; but she spat on Sir Matthew Arundel’s fringed suit, with the remark,—“The fool’s wit is gone to rags. Heaven spare me from such gibing!” A queen of later days would not think of assuming the fashion of Lord Palmerston’s paletot, nor spoil the uniform of a bran-new deputy-lieutenant, as Elizabeth did Sir Matthew Arundel’s embroidery. I believe our Gracious Sovereign never went further in this direction than to laugh good-humouredly at the Duke of Wellington’s hair when he had had it newly cropped, as was his wont, into the appearance of short bristles on a scrubbing-brush.
If it be true that Leicester helped her at her toilet, he was the only happy individual who enjoyed the privilege. At least, in her mature years she had a horror of being seen en déshabille. Essex once came upon her unexpectedly in the hands of her tiring-maids, and hardly escaped with his ears. Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury’s son, also once beheld her in her night-gear, as she stood at a window to look out at a May morning. The Virgo, magis quam tempestiva, hurried away with such blushes as she could call up at forty-five. Twenty years before she would have shown less haste and more discretion; at forty-five, in her “night-stuff” at sunrise,—no Gyges would have thanked Candaules for letting his eye rest on so questionable a vision.
Even in her midday glories, she was no attractive sight as she grew in years. See her going to prayers, when her threescore years had thrice as many nobles to honour them, and she walking amid all, wrinkled, small-eyed, with teeth that made her smile hideous, and with not only false hair, but that hair red. Hurtzner, who saw her on one of these occasions, says:—“Her bosom was uncovered, as all the English ladies have it till they marry, and she had on a necklace of exceeding fine jewels.... 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; her train was very long, the end of it borne by a marchioness; the ladies of the court followed next to her, very handsome and well-shaped, and for the most part dressed in white.”
The older she grew, the more splendidly she bedizened herself,—as decaying matter puts on variety of colour. “She imagined,” says Bacon, “that the people, who are much influenced by externals, would be diverted, by the glitter of her jewels, from noticing the decay of her personal attractions.” The people were not such simpletons, and they saw plainly enough that she was dying, in spite of the majesty of her exquisitely braided periwig.