Page:Catherine of Bragança, infanta of Portugal, & queen-consort of England.djvu/249

1664] St. James's, they walked from Whitehall in this dazzling raiment. They carried the great green shading fans Catherine had brought with her from Portugal, when dust and sun did not force them to use riding masks. These fans were used in promenades at balls and plays, and even at church, where faces were delicately hidden by them at devotions. Catherine tried a little later to introduce short skirts showing the feet, but all the ladies of the Court did not possess as pretty feet as her own, and there was a general preference for the long, graceful, trailing draperies.

Catherine's simple tastes remained, in spite of the extravagance of the Whitehall Court. She had had none of that French influence which was plunging an emulous England into every folly and costly expense. Her bedchamber and her closet at Whitehall were furnished with extreme simplicity, and many historians have taken that fact to be proof of her inhuman treatment by her husband, since the apartments ot his mistresses often glittered with lavish decoration, and were immoderately furnished. It is likely that she chose such surroundings as suited herself, since she had lived in rooms at Hampton Court, filled with the luxuries and lavish appointments of the time. She could have easily secured the same at Whitehall, but she preferred pretty pious pictures and books of devotion in her little private oratory, and a stoup of holy water at the head of her bed. In her bedroom she had a curiously inlaid cabinet of ebony, mother-of-pearl, ivory, and silver—which does not look as if she lived like an atichorite. In this cabinet were placed a small altar and relics, ready for her private devotions. On a table near her bed was an illuminated clock, by which she could tell time at night. How many and many a weary hour must it have marked for her, while Charles tarried late at Lady Castlemaine's suppers, and she waited for his unfailing return to herself!

Charles's closet was not given over to devotion. It