The Poisoned Dress

A close-up of the Darnley Portrait, c. 1575.  The brown-and-gold pattern of the dress Elizabeth is wearing is a faded version of the original: scarlet-and-gold. Painted by an anonymous 'Continental' artist; National Portrait Gallery, London.

Have you seen the film Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett?  If so, you may recall that a lady-in-waiting (played by the incomparable Kelly MacDonald) tries on a dress sent as a present for the queen and pays with her life: the dress is laden with poison.  The idea of a poisoned dress is fascinating, but -prepare yourself - there was no poisoned dress.  (Neither was there a lady-in-waiting named Isabel Knollys, but that is another story for another time.)  Pure urban legend.  (Shades of the tin disease meant to have contributed to Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign; you can read about that here.)

The idea of a poisoned dress may have been a twist on an attempt (there were several) on the queen's life: a man was caught dusting poison on the pommel of her saddle  But changing that to a poisoned dress is particularly fitting (pun intended) given Elizabeth's passion for beautiful dresses.  After her death in 1603, her ladies-in-waiting discovered over two thousand dresses.  None were poisoned.  The poison was elsewhere; Elizabeth and her ladies-in-waiting were exposed to it every day.  

Few Englishwomen could have dressed as sumptuously as the queen.  Apart from the expense of Italian satins and velvets and cloth of gold as well the most talented dressmakers and embroiderers, there was the law to consider: Elizabeth continued where her father Henry VIII had left off.  No sartorial slouch, he.  Even so, Henry, dreading competition, had sumptuary laws passed in Parliament.  Elizabeth followed suit; even horses were subject to sumptuary laws.  In theory, those who flouted the laws would be punished.  In reality, sumptuary laws were difficult to enforce and as Elizabeth's reign drew to a close, were more or less ignored.  But while anything approaching the queen's wardrobe was out of reach for most women, many could afford cosmetics.  

Elizabeth relied on cosmetics after autumn 1562 when she contracted smallpox.  Not everyone survived and those who did were almost always scarred.  Elizabeth was doubly unlucky: a high fever triggered partial, permanent hair loss.  She was twenty-nine years old.  For the rest of her life, Elizabeth relied on cosmetics (and wigs) to present herself as the porcelain-skinned young woman she once was. 

It took two hours for her ladies to get her ready for the day.  First, her skin was primed by painting on a layer of egg whites whipped into a foam.  Egg whites tighten the skin, temporarily shrinking pores and reducing fine lines.  After this dried, a lethal mixture of powdered white lead and vinegar or lemon juice was painted on.  Ceruse could soften the appearance of scars, even impart a flawless (if not appropriately deathly white) complexion.  It went under various names: 'Venetian ceruse' or 'spirits of Saturn'.  It was nothing new: poet Pietro Aretino had been repelled by Isabella d'Este's 'smeared' face when Elizabeth was an infant.  But it was popular and would be for centuries: very fair skin was a status symbol.  Pale skin let the world know that you did not work out-of-doors.  (A suntan would not be fashionable until Coco Chanel made it fashionable in the 1920s.)  

Ceruse did the job - at first.  It covered scars, even prevented freckling, imparting the flawless white skin women wanted.  But white powdered lead was very drying, used by  'chirurgeons' (surgeons) to dry running sores.  As Elizabeth aged, she became increasingly concerned about maintaining a youthful appearance.  But ceruse dried her skin, deepening lines over time.  Another vicious circle concerned the damage ceruse caused: it was meant to damage the very skin it was meant to beautify, leading directly to a vicious circle of damage/concealment/ damage/concealment.  

Apart from eating away at the skin, ceruse could trigger hair loss.  Elizabeth began wearing wigs after losing hair to smallpox; her fidelity to ceruse may have caused even more.  But there was no stigma attached to wigs.  On the contrary, as portraits reveal, ladies chose to wear a red wig.  Elizabeth had started a long-lasting trend.  Wearing a wig was commonplace, certainly in London.  As Ben Jonson wrote in The Silent Woman:

'All her teeth were made in the Blackfriars; both her eyebrows in the Strand, and her hair in Silver-Street.' 

Jonson's rival Shakespeare chose to board in London (and invest in property at home in Warwickshire) and as it so happened, lived in nearby Monkwell Street with a wigmaker and his family.  Red wigs were so popular that they were worn by women with full heads of hair.  But Elizabeth outdid everyone, her wigs decorated with gleaming with gems, hardly a surprise, given her passion for jewels.  

In 1587, she owned 628 pieces of jewellery, 80 of those New Year's Day presents.  (Lady of the Bedchamber Blanche Parry drew up the inventory; you can read about her odd connection to the death of Christopher Marlowe here.)  Everyone eager to curry favour with the queen gave a present, jewellery if possible.  Even her doctor gave her a turquoise ring.  Turquoise, beloved by the Victorians, was rare in England at the time.  Shakespeare seems to have been aware of the ring: was it a coincidence that Jessica, longing for a monkey, stole the ring her late mother had given her father?  Shylock was aggrieved:

'It was my turquoise.  I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor.  I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.'  

Dr Roderigo Lopez almost certainly inspired Shakespeare as well as Marlowe; The Jew of Malta was staged immediately after Lopez was hanged, drawn and quartered in 1594, falsely accused of conspiring to poison the queen.  (Lopez was a Portuguese-born converso, a Jew compelled by circumstance to practise Christianity.)  Elizabeth callously continued to wear the ring her physician-in-chief had given her; if the Cecils, both father and son believed the accusation to be false, she must have believed Lopez had meant her no harm.  Yet she did nothing to help him.  Marlowe may have met Lopez: both were spies, part of the intelligence network set up by Sir Francis Walsingham.

While Elizabeth was noticeably fond of the ring Lopez gave her, another ring meant far more to her.  It may have been on her finger when she died, along with the sapphire ring lady-in-waiting Philadelphia Scrope tossed out a window at Greenwich Palace to her brother Robert Carey, waiting below.  He took it post-haste to Edinburgh, where James VI was waiting; he had given the sapphire to Elizabeth.  It was understood that James would not get it back until after Elizabeth died - and he was king; Elizabeth reputedly said: 'Who but a king could succeed a queen?' on her deathbed.)  Sadly, very little of her jewellery has survived.  But there is the exquisitely made Chequers Ring. 

The band is mother-of-pearl, set with rubies; a deep blue enamelled 'R' is almost completely hidden below a diamond-set 'E' (Elizabetha Regina, or Elizabeth the Queen.)  And below the initials is a secret compartment:

There are two portraits in enamel, one unquestionably of Elizabeth, the other most likely of her stepmother Catherine Parr.  (The widowed Parr married to Thomas Seymour; the enamel Seymour coat-of-arms on the reverse of the 'R' suggests it was a present from one of the family.)  While it could be Anne Boleyn, the 'Night Crow' (as she was known) famously had long black hair.  Parr, in common with the woman in the enamel portrait, had golden-red hair. 
A clue as to the giver may be the phoenix painted in enamel on the other side of the ring, hidden from prying eyes.  One idea is that Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford (a nephew of Elizabeth's stepmother Jane Seymour) gave it to Elizabeth to make amends for marrying Katherine Grey, sister of Lady Jane Grey, England's nine-day queen.  Intriguing but not likely: the ring was made circa 1575, by which time Katherine had been dead for the better part of a decade.  Did the widower harbour an ambition to marry the Queen of England?  If so, that was not meant to be; Seymour ended up marrying two women, both named Frances Howard.  (Not to be confused with the Frances Howard who had Sir Thomas Overbury poisoned.)  

The enamel portrait of Elizabeth is of her in middle age.  By this time, she had settled on a look, with bright red lips contrasting with her deathly white painted face. (Incidentally, Elizabeth was not the first woman of note to wear ceruse; poet Pietro Aretino recoiled from Isabella d'Este's 'smeared' face when Elizabeth was an infant.)  

The conquistadores of Mexico were astonished by the sight of vividly red textiles, the dye made from a local insect, dried, crushed and pulverised, its vividness derived from the red carminic acid produced by cochineal insects red to deter predators.  The dye was prized by the Aztecs and Mayas long before Montezuma received it in tribute from eleven cities he conquered.   It did not take long for European women to discover that carmine - the colouring agent derived from cochineal insects - worked superlatively well as lip rouge.  (The Spanish, no fools, held a virtual monopoly over it for the next three centuries; the English benefitted after Elizabeth's lover the Earl of Essex captured a huge shipment in 1597.

Elizabeth's lip rouge was a mixture of carmine, made of gum Arabic, egg whites and fig milk painted on lips primed with bear-grease pomade.  (Sadly, there were bears in England; bear-baiting drew crowds to Southwark, across the river from London.)  And she or one of her ladies invented the lip pencil, mixing lip rouge with alabaster dust or plaster of Paris, rolling it into shape and allowing it to dry.  Lip rouge was highly sought after; even poor women made do with an inexpensive alternative to cochineal.  Lip rouge was so highly prized it was even used in lieu of currency for a time. 

And then there was blush.  One was made from powdered madder root (used to dye textiles) and beeswax, applied to suggest a ruddy complexion.  Her eyebrows were plucked, as her mother Anne Boleyn's had been.  Elizabeth settled on this look, sticking to it for the rest of her life.  She must have been quite a sight in one of her beautiful dresses (alas, her necklines were slashed to the waist when this was no longer advisable), pearl drops (pearls symbolised chastity, a tacit reminder that she was the Virgin Queen) swaying from her red curls, a porcelain pale complexion heightened by vermilion lips.  (Despite an evident preoccupation with the image she projected, it is not likely that she wished to replace the Virgin Mary in the hearts and minds of her subjects.)  No detail was overlooked, most certainly not her hands.  Elizabeth was proud of her hands, prompting canny courtiers to present her with gloves; she owned as many as two thousand pairs.  She (and Catherine de'Medici) made scented gloves fashionable, the delicate leather impregnated with rose, jasmine and ambergris; one wonders if Elizabeth would have bothered if she had not been blessed with exceptionally beautiful hands.  At Oxford in 1566, she took part in a ceremony wearing a 'beautiful bejewelled and embroidered pair of gauntlets [that she]...pulled off and put on...more than one hundred times so that all might admire her graceful movements.'

But Elizabeth had Essex executed in 1601, despite the presence of his cousin Philadelphia Scrope, who fought vigorously in his defence.  After that, the queen declined, and rapidly, secluding herself.  She wept over Essex, surrounded by her rich clothing and exquisite jewels, transforming herself into a woman to be pitied rather than envied.  She died at Richmond Palace on a cold March day in 1603.  She was sixty-nine, a good age then.  England would not be ruled by a lone Queen for almost a century

© Katja Anderson 2020