Seven Will Out: A Renaissance Revel (13 page)

“The French gown next!” said Kat, crowing with satisfaction as I donned the garment she had recommended.

“I think you were right about the sapphire damask and Dolly’s coloring, Kat!” Jane’s pronouncement made Kat glow.

“And I never realized,” I added as I moved about the room in the gilt-embroidered garment, “what gilt embroidery looks like
on, and in a candlelit room. The way the light from the flickering candles plays off the gilt as I move about is just enchanting!”

“If you think that is something, just wait until we get you bejeweled!” said Blanche.

“Not until we’ve got the sleeves on, thank you,” said the practical-minded Jane, as dab a hand at puff-and-slash as she was at farthingales and corsets. She had wispy puffs of cream-colored fabric peeping through the slits of my sleeves in no time flat.

“What do you think, Dolly?” Jane asked, stepping back and admiring her handiwork. She was clearly pleased with the ensemble and the look.

There was no full-length mirror in the room, but I caught a long-distance look at myself in a picture-sized mirror across the room.

“The full effect is a bit puffier than I am used to,” I began.

“Well, you have gained a few pounds, Dolly,” Kat reminded me again.

“Puffy, I was about to say, but not stuffy; puffy in a full, sensuous, feminine sense. And the richness of the colors adds to the opulence of the effect. Overall,” I concluded, “a triumph for style.”

“You are ahead of yourself, Dolly, proclaiming the outfit a done deal,” said Blanche, aghast.

“Oh my,” I said, as Blanche headed over toward the pile of starched lace and linen that had been brought in earlier. “Things are about to get ruff for me, aren’t they?”

Chapter Thirty-Five

How to Deck Dolly’s Neck?

“Titian’s
La Bella
does not wear a ruff; must
I
, Jane?” I queried, turning to the woman I had come to look at as in overall charge of the outfit.

The group glower I received from Jane, Blanche, and Kat put me in mind of a similar experience when I had bucked the fashion advice of the four Maries of Mary, Queen of Scots. Clearly, the least of a dozen evils was the best I could hope for.

Blanche carefully laid each of twelve ruffs onto the bed so that I could inspect them. They were, to say the least, “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Lace, linen, tulle, spangles, muslin, and filigree were all represented, and they were crimped, pleated, curled, and starched to a never-you-mind.

“I think those that are closed at the front will not quite go with my outfit,” I said hopefully. Carrying my point here would be a strategic victory. It would eliminate six of the ruffs outright, including the widest ruff at easily eighteen inches in diameter, and the highest ruff at four one-inch layers of stacked, figure-eight pleated linen.

“I’m afraid Dolly is right,” said Jane, adding Renaissance taste and weight to my argument. “Let’s remove those and work with the six remaining, open-fronted ones.”

I tried on a three-inch tall number but found it was a little too big for my proportions. “I have such a small neck, you see,” I mentioned, still vaguely hoping to opt out of the ruff.

“Where have I heard that before?” Kat asked, scratching her head.

Blanche Parry was able to answer the question. “From Ann Boleyn, shortly before she died. You recall, Kat, the negotiations for the sharp Calais swordsman for her execution instead of the dull-hatchet man.”

“Yes, of course!” Kat said. “And the argument worked, didn’t it?”

As it had, we all bowed our heads in respectful silence for just a moment, remembering Ann’s tragic but classy demise.

“I suppose it was fortuitous, in a way, that Ann Boleyn did not live to see a time when ruffs would be so fashionable,” Blanche commented. “With her little neck, she could never have gotten away with wearing one of these stacked ones. And she wouldn’t have been caught dead in garments that were not the very last word in fashion.”

“She got her wish, then, didn’t she?” said Jane Dormer, getting one in for her mistress, Mary I, Ann Boleyn’s sworn enemy.

“Too bad scarves were not in fashion for necks when Ann Boleyn trod the boards,” I said. “An ace fashionista such as Ann would have had a field day with the multitude of ways there are to tie and drape them.”

“We had another guest here who made the same conjecture,” Kat recollected. “Mistress Isadora Duncan. She was a great proponent of the scarf, apparently. And what a talented terpsichorean! She entertained us so pleasantly while she was here, dancing about.”

“Why was Isadora brought here?” I asked. “To be advised on her rather convoluted love life by Henry VIII’s six wives?”

“No, she was brought here for career advisement. Henry VIII’s daughters have had many ladies brought here for this purpose. Elizabeth and Mary witnessed their mothers’ experiences
over the centuries as they counseled women in precipitous marital situations and decided they wanted to do something similar. Being independently anointed monarchs in their own right, they thought that career counseling would be right up their street! They applied to the Almighty for permission to bring guests here for that purpose, and it was graciously granted.”

“What kind of advice did Isadora need from them?”

“Isadora’s dancing career had gone to seed, and her life was in shambles. Elizabeth thought that if Isadora wrote an autobiography, she might be able to capitalize on past glory and ensure her future.”

The free-spirited Isadora Duncan was a denizen of Gertrude Stein’s Paris, an alcoholic, and an improvisational dancer extraordinaire. I’d have given a lot to see the meeting between her and the self-disciplined Elizabeth I.

“Well, Isadora did take Elizabeth’s advice about the autobiography,” I recollected; the book was written in the late 1920s.

“Yes, but she would not heed my advice about the scarves,” said Kat, shaking her head sadly. “I tried to convince her that a ruff-style collar would be much more flattering to her than those scarves that were waving around all over the place, getting tangled into things and in the way all the time. None of that inconvenience with a ruff!”

Inconvenience was putting it mildly. Isadora’s demise in a convertible auto accident has been attributed to her signature long scarf getting tangled in the turning tires of the moving car and choking her to death.

“If we might return to the subject of
my
neck for just a moment,” I requested, hoping for a shift of mood before things became too somber.

“Well, since one three-inch-tall number is eliminated by virtue of size, I am taking the other two ruffs of that height out of the running as well,” Jane said, all efficiency. “No use wasting time trying them on, Dolly.”

Because the overall effect of my outfit was one of wavy femininity, I was inclined to go for the softest and most free-form of the remaining ruffs. I reached for that particular pile of snowy lace and inspected it more carefully. It was actually, I discovered, a length of lace an inch or two wide; the kind that busty but demure ladies used to tuck into their low-cut bodices for modesty’s sake.

“Not interested in these other two ruffs, Dolly?” Blanche asked. They were not stacked high but of a single layer of fiercely starched linen fabric, edged with equally starched lace and stiffened to stand up a bit behind the head and then slope down toward the front. I had a Catholic school flashback; they looked like Peter Pan collars on crack.

“No, thank you, Blanche; doctor’s orders. Advised to stay away from starches, you know.”

“Wise advice, considering the weight you’ve put on around the middle, Dolly,” said Kat fondly—or at least what I hoped was fondly. I declined to comment and turned my attention to my chosen lace accessory, rejoicing in being able to forgo the rigid pleats or folds of the traditional ruff for a sweet and wispy neckline instead. Jane secured the lace to my garments for me and directed me to the mirror. I was sold as soon as I caught sight of it.

“
Bellisima
!” I said.

“Headpiece now, Dolly,” Jane directed.

In among the garments in the room were some coifs and snoods as well as a single little late-Tudor era doll hat, a compact fascinator complete with a vaguely peacocky-looking little plume.

“I’ll take the hat,” I said, perching it on my head at a jaunty angle. Jane faced me toward the mirror as she secured it.

“I look just like a 1940s film star in this hat! You know, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, or Katharine Hepburn.”

“Mistress Katharine Hepburn! She was here with us for a visit, wasn’t she, Kat?”

“Yes, she was,” Kat confirmed.

Recollecting my last stay here, I hazarded a guess. “Was she here for advisement about her affair with Spencer Tracy?”

“No, she was not here for that. She met with our mistresses. They brought her here to give her advice about her performing career. She was on the stage, you know.”

“And in motion pictures, as well, a medium you ladies would not be familiar with, perhaps. It was a means of capturing theatrical performances for posterity.”

“We’ve had quite a few guests here who were employed in that business,” Kat assured me. “As I recall, Mistress Hepburn told us she had made quite a splash in the motion pictures you mention, even though she’d not been in the field for long at that point.”

“Well, she won her first Academy Award for her third film well before she was thirty years old. ‘Splash’ is probably a good word for it.”

“She told our mistresses, though, that she longed to replicate her success on the legitimate stage. To do so, she was considering appearing in a production at very low remuneration. Our
mistresses advised against it, but Mistress Hepburn could not be talked out of her plan, or at least so she said.”

“Hepburn’s stubbornness comes as no surprise to me,” I said in her defense. “The woman was a byword for courage, independence, and following one’s own star.”

“My poppet recognized those traits in Mistress Hepburn, probably because they featured so prominently in her own personality,” Kat said.

“Yes, indeed, and that is why Elizabeth tried so hard to convince Mistress Hepburn not to sell herself too cheaply. It was sound advice,” Blanche said.

“It was, indeed!” I confirmed. “Shortly after winning that first Oscar, Hepburn attempted to win stage fame by appearing in a production called
The Lake
. It was a disaster.”

“I suppose ‘splash’ is probably a good word for that as well,” Jane commented, proving herself as ace a punster as she was a
modiste
.

“Hepburn was able to buy her way out of the production of
The Lake
, but the legend of her poor performance in it has lived on and on. It’s been famously described as ‘running the gamut of emotions from A to B.’”

“How sad for Mistress Hepburn! We figured it wouldn’t turn out well. Such a shame—she was awfully talented, you know. She was kind enough to give us a little cameo of her role in that play. Do you remember, Blanche?”

“I do, indeed! ‘The calla lilies are in bloom again.’ Isn’t that one of the lines that Mistress Hepburn gave us?”

“That would have to be correct,” I confirmed on hearing the great actress’s tagline.

“Of course, we had no idea what calla lilies were, but did not want to break her stride by asking her.”

“They are elegant, spathe-like flowers that would look very well on this hat,” I said, touching my
chapeau
. “But for now, the jewel-toned feather that someone so wisely added to it will do quite nicely. I think I can say, with confidence, that ‘I have a good face, speak well, and have excellent good clothes’; the latter, thanks to the three of you.”

“You do look a treat, Dolly,” said Jane.

“But not as much of a treat as she is about to look,” said Blanche as the queen’s keeper of the jewels prepared to come into her own. “Time,” Blanche practically trumpeted, “for some accessories!”

Chapter Thirty-Six

Ring-a-Ding-Ding

I slipped my feet into the claret-colored leather of the tooled cordovan slippers that Jane had provided for me and headed over to the jewel boxes and the beckoning Blanche.

My jewelry collection back in the real world consisted of a tangle of gold chains, lockets, and pearls as well as a few carefully chosen pieces that Wally had purchased for me as gifts on various occasions. His taste, like mine, ran to the simple and classic. Achieving simple here would not be easy, given the treasure trove Blanche had provided.

“I think a Victorian choker look would be lovely with this outfit,” I commented, pulling out several brooches that might achieve the desired effect. Blanche anticipated the mental image I had conjured up with surprising acumen.

“This brooch will meet your requirements, I am sure,” Blanche said, gesturing toward a plum-colored cameo.

“The Gatacre Jewel!” I said, recognizing a lovely bit of Renaissance cameo work in gold, pearls, and amethyst.

Together, Jane and Blanche anchored the brooch onto a filigreed ribbon and then fastened the ribbon around my neck. The effect was just what I had hoped; I complacently admired my refection in the mirror.

“What next, Dolly?” Jane asked leadingly. “A brooch for your gown? Earrings? Some long chains? A small purse? A fan? A belt?”

“All the above?” Blanche asked hopefully.

“Well, I rather thought I would stop right here. You know what they say—‘Less is more.’”

“Grammatically and rhetorically indefensible, Dolly,” Kat opined.

“Sartorially inexplicable!” said Jane Dormer, child of the lushly outfitted and jeweled Renaissance.

“Just call me ‘a fool in good clothes,’ ladies. I don’t mean to offend, but I don’t want to be the gal who ‘wears her cap out of fashion, richly suited, but unsuitable.’”

Blanche was riled up by this and not pulling any punches. “Bollocks, in my opinion! Whoever heard of a single piece of jewelry completing an ensemble? As the mistress of the jewels of Elizabeth I, I simply cannot let you out of here with just one piece of jewelry to your credit, Dolly. My mistress would have my head!”

Kat, Jane, and I winced at the oblique decapitation reference. “See how you’ve upset Blanche, Dolly?” Kat scolded.