pearl diving - such a general sighing, groning, and weeping, as the like hath not beene seene or knowne in the memory of man

barocco

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,"

those curious but mangled figures of some of our princes, which were carried at their interments*

In a chamber or gallery over Islip's Chapel, not ordinarily accessible to the public, is an exhibition of, perhaps, equal interest to the monuments interspersed throughout the sacred edifice, or rivalling in interest the famous exhibition of a somewhat similar character in Baker Street—that of Madame Tussaud. The collection has received the name of the "Ragged Regiment," and also "the Play of the Dead Volks." For many centuries preceding the present a curious custom prevailed at State funerals—namely, having exposed to view in the funeral car, or carried in the procession, a waxen effigy of the individual whose remains were about to be consigned to the tomb. The head of the defunct monarch, statesman, or warrior was modelled in wax, an effigy was built up, and clad in the actual garments worn by the deceased in his lifetime, but embellished with false gems. When the coffin had been deposited in the vault, the waxen effigy was either placed over the tomb as a sort of temporary substitute for a stone monument, or in some other convenient spot. Several of these effigies are preserved in glass cases like zoological specimens in the narrow chamber above referred to.

"View of the CHantry Chapel in Westmisnter Abbey, over the Tomb of Henry V, where the Curious Figures, commonly called the Ragged Regiment, now lie (in 1786) neglected, and mouldering into dust"












The Ragged Regiment - Max Beerbohm visits the effigies

*Walpole / Anecdotes of Painting in England