There is another effigy of Queen Elizabeth in the Abbey; and a very curious one it is. From the thirteenth century until the beginning of the eighteenth, it was the custom at royal funerals to carry a life-size, waxen image before the coffin, representing the dead in the clothes they wore. These effigies were left on the grave for about a month, and some of the Abbey officials gained their living by showing them to visitors. Most of the waxen figures have crumbled to dust. The writer believes that she was the last person to look at that of hapless Anne Boleyn. It had so fallen to pieces as to be a very hideous object, and it has since been locked up and shown to no one. But in an upper chamber over the Islip chapel, reached by a little dark stairway, eleven of these strange figures are still to be seen in wainscot cupboards with glass doors. Among them is Queen Elizabeth; not the original effigy—that was worn out in 1708, when a certain Tom Brown who wrote A Walk through London and Westminster, says that he saw the remains of it. This is a copy made in 1760; and we see the poor old queen, dressed in the long-waisted bodice and hooped skirt we know so well in pictures. It is a piteous sight, however; for the effigy, battered and sorely the worse for wear, is leaning up against the side of the glass cupboard in a most undignified attitude. One would rather think of her as she lies still and stately in the beautiful north aisle.
But we must linger no longer about Elizabeth's effigy or her tomb. We must pass on to the east end of the chapel, and there we shall find the monuments of her two little cousins.
On what used to be the altar step of the north aisle stands a baby's cradle—a cradle on real rockers. A gorgeous coverlet, all trimmed with rich guipure lace, falls from the corners of the cradle in splendid, rich folds. The arms of England, Scotland, and Ireland are carved on the back. And when you look under the head of the cradle you see that a baby lies sleeping in it. A darling tiny baby it is—its little wee face set in a close lace cap and lace ruff, under a kind of lace-trimmed hood that forms part of the pillow. You can almost fancy that if the cradle were set rocking the babe might open her eyes. But "baby and cradle, and all," are marble—marble, yellow with the dust and wear of nearly three hundred years.
"The Cradle Tomb" of Westminster, as it is called, has been far better described than by any words of mine. A card hangs close beside it, placed there by desire of Lady Augusta Stanley, on which is a poem "by an American lady." That lady is a well-known favorite of American readers; for she is none other than "Susan Coolidge." And the lovely verses—some of which I venture to transcribe—appeared in Scribner's Monthly for 1875:
A little rudely sculptured bed,
With shadowing folds of marble lace,
And quilt of marble, primly spread,
And folded round a baby face.
Smoothly the mimic coverlet,
With royal blazonries bedight,
Hangs, as by tender fingers set,
And straightened for the last good-night.
And traced upon the pillowing stone
A dent is seen, as if, to bless
That quiet sleep, some grieving one
Had leaned, and left a soft impress.
But dust upon the cradle lies,
And those who prized the baby so,
And decked her couch with heavy sighs,
Were turned to dust long years ago.
The inscription on her cradle tells us that this dear baby,