QUEEN ELIZABETH'S VANITY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXII, Issue I, 7 January 1899, Page 30

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S VANITY.

Queen Elizabeth’s love of sumptuous apparel grew with her years, and the leading fashions of the courts of Europe 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 dressed in the richest custumes, adorned with brilliants, precious stones, and jewellery 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 Paul Hentzner saw her she was in her sixtyseventh 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.