Alexandria Gazette

The Trousseau of a Grandee's Bride.

Early in the Exhibition season, a Spanish lady asked me to accompany her to the famous Montaigne Russe, to see a bridal trousseau, about which the Madeline Colony was then talking. On arriving at that outfitting establishment the directress told me that we were to go to the Rue des Pyramides, where, her ware-rooms being too small for the display of all the charming things which had been ordered, she had hired a suite of apartments on the first floor. The fiancee for whom she had been working was the daughter of the Marquis de Torre-cilla, a first class grande of Spain, of ancient lineage, who was about to give the Senorita in marriage to the Duke of Medina Coeli, widowed husband of a niece of the Empress Eugenie.

I understood from the sparkling tradewoman charged to exhibit the trousseau that it was to be paid for by the fiance, who was one of the richest nobles in Spain, and whose largeness of heart and openness of hand were in proportion to his enormous wealth. In superfine linen and delicate batiste were the under garments of the bride-elect manufactured. My attention was called to three things, namely, the delicacy of the materials, the exquisite neatness of the stitching and embroidery, and the ostentatious plainness of the underclothing. It was on this occasion explained to me that nothing so marked the parvenue as elaborately trimmed garments of the class styled "intimate" in France. People who have suddenly risen in the world order for their daughters' trousseau body linen, which is a fantasia in lace edging and insertion. The aristocratic style is wholly different.

It might have served for the outfit of a Canoness of the olden time, or of a young and opulent Quakeress, before the Friends discarded the good maxim of George Fox, that out of the trimmings of the rich the poor could be comfortably clothed. Much taste and delicate needlework were expended, I remember, on the cipher of the fiancee and on the ducal coronet with which her future spouse was to endow her. They were on most of the inner garments shown me, and woven into the most extraordinarily fine stockings that I had ever seen, some of which were of Balbriggan make, and some of Belgian and of French. Where lace was not spared it was on petticoats, sweeper trains, which were then coming into fashion, and on dressing gowns in muslin, tussore silk and foulard.

The Valenciennes, which was employed on the ordinary garments, was so dear that I remember Mile. Croizette, who came in to look at the trousseau, uttered a little cry of astonishment. "Signor," she ejaculated, "it is truly worth a woman's while to make a conquest of those Spaniards. What endless flocks of sheep must he have to dash about money in this way! What has become of the trousseau of Mile. Alba which he gave her? As she died four or five months after her marriage she had not surely time to wear it out." The chatty little shopkeeper informed us that the Duke gave the entire wardrobe of his late wife, at her death, to her sister.

To give us an idea of its value she told us that the articles in cambric and fine linen amounted in the bill to upwards of $14,000, and that the Malines and Valenciennes laces on petticoats, pockethandkerchiefs, morning coiffures and robes de chambre formed a total of more than $20,000. There were corsets in black, in white, in blue, in pink and in yellow satin, which were furnished at from $500 to $1,400 each, and some to be worn as Swiss boddices, with embroidered foulard skirts, considerably dearer, inasmuch as the arabesques worked on them were in seed pearls. The Duke had several colored photographs of his bride elect sent to the outfitter, in order that her physiognomy should be studied by the designer, Grevy, after whose sketches those wonderful corsets and the dressing gowns were to be made.-Paris Cor. N. Y. Tribune.