There were galleries on
galleries upholstered in crimson cloth, and splendid tapestries, wherein
sat members of Parliament and foreign Princes and Embassadors. In the
organ loft were singers in white, and instrumental performers in scarlet
--all looking very fine and festive; and up very high was a band of
trumpeters, whose music, pealing over the heads of the people, produced,
at times, a wonderful effect.
Fashionable people had got up early for once. Many were at the Abbey
doors long before 5 o'clock, and when the Queen arrived at 11:30,
hundreds of delicate ladies in full evening-dress, had been waiting for
her for seven long hours. The foreign Princes and Embassadors were in
gorgeous costumes; and there was the Lord Mayor in all his glory,
blinding to behold. His most formidable rival was Prince Esterhazy, who
sparkled with costly jewels from his head down to his boots-looking as
though he had been snowed upon with pearls, and had also been caught out
in a rain of diamonds, and had come in dripping. All these grand
personages and the Peers and Peeresses were so placed as to have a
perfect view of the part of the minster in which the coronation took
place-called, in the programme, "the Theatre.
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