1) For me, it helps to have something scheduled in the morning to get out, and today it was the special exhibition Edwardians: Age of Elegance at the King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace. I took the Tube to Green Park, which was very green and very park. And then through the trees, the palace itself. This felt like my first real encounter with tourists en masse during this trip. One Woman Younger Than I, walking slowly with a cane, was being persuaded by her family to move to a new place. “But we cain’t see anything from thaire!” she protested.
2) Visitors go through a metal detector at the King’s Gallery, and unfortunately I set it off. I’d forgotten my Wahby Pahkah glasses case in my jacket pocket. It seems to set off metal detectors everywhere.
3) The exhibition delivered as promised. Really an examination of the collections of Edward VII and Queen Alexandra and George V and Queen Mary, from the personal to the regal, all I can say is “Yes, please!” and “More jewels, please.”
3a) That said, my favorite piece was this four-panel screen designed to hold cabinet photos, which were arranged in it personally by Queen Alexandra and her daughters. I’ve attempted this before in much more informal ways, and I would absolutely have something like this in my home (if I had the space).
The wedding of George and Mary. See Queen Alexandra at the center of the composition, also in white?
3b) I will spare you my spreading Rhapsodic Wax over the whole exhibition and instead concentrate on another favorite piece, Queen Alexandra’s coronation dress. Now I’ll admit that I need to do a lot more reading about Alix, but aside from being a beautiful leader of fashion who suffered from deafness, her husband’s adultery, and her mother-in-law’s jealousy of her prerogatives, she was also a devoted attention whore. I forget where I read this, but on the day that court mourning changed from deep to half, she deliberately kept all the ladies ignorant of what she would wear that evening; they all chose black, and so she made her entrance radiant in mourning white — a superstar in a sea of black. She also wore white to her son George’s wedding, and I don’t care if you are the Queen, it’s still bad form to upstage the bride on her day.
Marvelously preserved, too.
3b.i) So while queens traditionally wore white to their coronations with crimson robes, Alexandra chose gold with a robe that one of her ladies described as “petunia” (which sounds like fuschia to me). While the gold in the dress has darkened with age, as you see, it’s still a mighty impressive gown.
The dress in action at the coronation. Notice also Consuelo, Duchess of Marlborough.
4) After almost two hours and a desultory pass through the shop, it was time to make my way toward the National Gallery. That meant crossing back in front of the palace, except it was blocked off and throngs of tourists were lining the streets. Looks like I was about to witness a parade or something! And whaddya know, a couple legions or squadrons or phalanxes or regiments — regiments! — were marching out of the palace with their bands playing. First, toward the side where I was standing, came a unit all in black, unfamiliar to me, playing a tune that wanted to sound like “We’re the Girls of the C.I.D.” from Noel Coward’s Cavalcade, but ended up definitely not being that. Then, the easily recognizable Coldstream Guards marching on the side away from me so I didn’t get a good look.
5) A Coldstream Guard was part of a most interesting event to witness a little later. I was walking up Cleveland Row (I had gotten a bit lost, which happens), which it turns out is quite close to Clarence House. I heard this pronounced clopping behind me, the sound of the guardsman’s boots. And then a very high-pitched woman’s voice calling “Oh Sir! Would you stop and let me take a picture with my daughter?!” I didn’t hear his response, but she at least acknowledged politely that he couldn’t stop. The Coldstream Guards are actual working soldiers, not walking tourist opportunities. If that’s what you want, find the Naked Cowboy in Times Square, and don’t forget to tip.
5a) Why is it that people want photos of themselves with people dressed out of the ordinary? Certainly it’s happened to me (but when in P’town, what happens in P’town stays in P’town), but one friend had a particularly unhappy experience getting trapped into a photo with total strangers that he did not want taken. People are people, people — not props!
The Ugly Duchess and I go way back. Now nice to find her at the National Gallery!
6) A little Sherlock Holmes-themed pub did for lunch — Daddy wanted a cheeseburger — and then I tackled the National Gallery. Dazzling, and I didn’t expect the number of times I would say “I have that postcard at home!” Glorious Renaissance and pre-Renaissance paintings gave way to old friends like Hogarth’s Marriage a la Mode, my beloved Misia Sert by Renoir, and Henri Rousseau’s tiger painting, called Surprised!
6a) Angels do not always wear white. It’s time to imagine a polychrome Heaven.
Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, by Gerrit van Honthorst.
6b) Mother said not to talk to strangers, but when overhearing two ladies talking about Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia and one said “Isn’t that the sister of Charles II?” I interjected, “Yes, and I’ve just been reading about her,” gesturing to my copy of her father’s biography Queen James. We ended up talking for about ten minutes, including about Boston and our museum’s acquisition this century of The Triumph of the Winter Queen, which shows Elizabeth with all her children (living and dead) and her husband (dead).
This photo does not do justice to the true colors of this glorious painting.
6c) The second conversation was about a new friend, High Tide by Jan Toorop, an artist I’d never heard of. The opalescent color palette enchanted both myself and a Lady of Approximately my Age.
6d) One final surprise: George Stubbs’s famous Whistlejacket, which came from Wentworth Woodhouse (read all about it in Black Diamonds); I certainly wasn’t expecting to find it here.
7) By this time my head and my feet had OD’d on art, and it was time to head back to my hotel. I chose to walk (!) in part because I thought I had left my notebook at the Italian place I went to dinner the night before. And that was a lot of walking, but a) I got my notebook back, thank goodness, and b) I slept like a champ.
