Was it the style of the age or a desire to suck up to royalty which inspired such hyperbolic prose?
The Princess was ‘a lovely stranger’, the King gave his son ‘a hearty shake of the hand … which brought tears to his eyes’.
The Archbishop of Canterbury read the whole of the marriage service with ‘great minuteness & solemnity’. The King gave the princess away with ‘the strongest marks of satisfaction’. The Princess said I Will with ‘great emphasis’ & repeated the oath with ‘great distinction & expression’. The Prince repeated the ceremony with ‘great clearness & recollection’.
Just before midnight the day’s proceedings were brought to a close with ‘a very magnificent supper of 22 covers’ in the Grand Saloon of Buckingham House.
The Royal Dress was ‘very superb indeed … the most costly that could be made’.
Silver tissue, rich cord & tassels, finest point lace, silver Venetian net, crimson velvet, ermine, no diamond hair ornaments but a superb Coronet of diamonds. Finished off with a very rich ornament of brilliants … fastened by a brilliant bow … long brilliant tassels … & a rich epaulette of brilliants.
That last is the clue to the fact that, rather than getting carried away with deathlessly brilliant prose, the writer was merely describing the materials of which all these ornaments were made, though it is not clear whether those were diamonds, or the ‘silken fabrics such as brilliants and pulerays, antherines and bombazines’ given in one of the definitions in the OED.
The country had to wait 68 years for another wedding of a Prince of Wales.
This time the great William Russell provided the eyewitness report (& later got a best-selling book out of it). He took a more world weary, but gallant, view of That Dress:
On these occasions, we believe, the dress of the Bride ranks in general estimation as only second in importance to the celebration of the ceremony itself, which is to be regretted, for a lady’s dress like a lady’s beauty, can only be described by its effect
He knew his duty & went on to describe the dress, but in a mere 100 or so of the 14,000 words of reportage in next day’s paper.
I dare say that there is an even more lavishly illustrated version of this history hidden behind the Times pay wall.
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