Modern Wedding

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 111, 13 May 1933, Page 19

Modern Wedding

The modern wedding has almost become a play in three acts, or, rather, perhaps, a pantomime (states a writer to the "Manchester Guardian")- There is the engagement with genealogies, sporting records, and tastes and pastimes of the- individuals concerned. There is the wedding present and trousseau era, and finally there is the grand transformation scene, when only Harlequins and Columbines are excluded. The growth, indeed, of the, fancy dress clement in English weddings is extreme of reccmt years, and churches are converted into stages, on which the performers parade and impress a willing public. Wedding dresses are a matter of long tradition, and all the wedding actions have for the most part something symbolic behind them. Otherwise there would be nothing but eccentricity as a reason for wearing a white satin dress and carrying Madonna lilies in mid-winter in a public place. But the traditional element is fast yielding to the sensational, and brides vie with each other in finding something different for a ceremony in which only the traditional is really justified. It strikes the benighted foreigner as extraordinary that a wedding should be a ssgnal for children to be dressed as for a fancy dress ball; that a period should be consulted not because it is the traditional form for a wedding but because that particular wedding happens to seize upon it; that garlands or reins or traces should be carried by a procession of bridesmaids for no particular reason, and that the whole festivity should take place not in a ballroom or on a stage but in one of the traditional buildings of the country of which dignity has hitherto been the keynote. In Prance the bride's dress is so traditional that not much variation can be made upon it, while bridesmaids are dressed and not costumed, as is the custom here. It is the difference between a wedding and a mannequin parade. i . Kings and Cooks Cooks have always been Reid in high esteem, and a good cook in the kitchen is frequently more valued than a pearl of great price in the jewel easo (states an exchange). Kings themselves have bowed down before cooks, and, after a good dinner, have granted to them even apart of their kingdoms. William the Conqueror bestowed upon the inventor of a particularly delicious soup the Lordship of the Manor of Addington with its revenues and honours. Henry the Eighth gave to a certain Mrs. Cornwallis a noble house and tenement iv London —Sugar Loaf , Court —because she had made and presented to him some fine pudding; while the Emperor, Charles the Fifth, showed his homage to the inventor of pickled herrings by making a pilgrimage to his tomb. In the Middle Ages the head cook of a feudal castle- was a personage of great importance. He gave his orders from a chair, raised on a platform, which commanded a view of his subordinates. He held in his hand a large wooden, spoon, the insignia of his office, and with this he tasted the various' dishes destined for his lord's table, and with this* also, using it as a rod, he corrected the gluttony and idleness of those around him. Writing in an English periodical, Mr. E. V. Lucas comments on the faot that in the "Dictionary of National Biography" no mention was made of the honoured name of Mrs. Beeton, of cookery book fame, and expresses the hope that she may some day figure in that illustrious volume. Mrs. Beeton was before her marriage an Epsom girl named Isabella Mayson, her stepfather being Henry Dorling, whoso name was known to all racing men. Hgr husband was Samuel Orchardt Beeton, an editor and publisher, and so far from being an ancient busybody in a white cap, as too many of her readers may have visualised her, she was gay and pretty and charming and extremely fashionable, and she died, much beloved and mourned, at the early ago of 29. That her Christian name was Isabella may be a surprise to some readers, who probably have been thinking of her as a Martha.