Читать книгу The Children's Book of London - G. E. Mitton - Страница 12

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In the last chapter I said something about the King's palace. One of the first things that foreigners ask when they come to London is, 'Where does the King live?' and when they see his London house they are quite disappointed, because Buckingham Palace is not at all beautiful. It stands at one end of a park called St. James's Park, and it is a huge house, with straight rows of plain windows. In front there is a bare yard, with high railings round it, and beside the gate there are sentries on guard. The palace is large, but very ugly, and anyone seeing only the outside might wonder why the King of England, who is so rich, lived in such a dull house while he was in London. But Buckingham Palace is very magnificent inside, and if you saw it on a day when the ladies go to Court to be presented to the King and Queen, you would no longer think it dull. In the time of Queen Victoria, the ladies who wished to be presented, which means to be introduced to the Queen, had to go there in the daytime, and as they were obliged to wear evening dress and to have waving white feathers in their hair, and sometimes had to wait hours and hours before their turn came to kiss the Queen's hand, it cannot have been much pleasure to them, and they must have felt often very cross, especially when it was cold. But since the reign of King Edward VII., the Drawing-rooms, as they are called, when ladies are presented to their Sovereign, are in the evening, and Queen Mary has had garden parties where young girls are 'presented' too, in afternoon dress. It is not very interesting reading about descriptions of furniture, so I will only say that the great staircase in the palace is of white marble, and in the throne-room there is crimson satin and much gilt, and the walls of the rooms are hung with magnificent pictures, and everything is just like the palace that one reads about in fairy tales, to which the Prince took home the Princess when he had won her.