DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42861#0156
122
tab! silk
was a species of watered silk, manufactured in a
quarter of Damascus, which, Mr. Guy le Strange tells
us, originally took its name from a Governor of Mecca
called Attabiyeh. The word in its different forms of
attabi and tabt passed into the English, French, and
Spanish languages. Taby silks are often mentioned
in English records of the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries. Queen Elizabeth appeared on state
occasions in a dress of silver and white taby, Pepys
wore a false taby waistcoat, and Fanny Burney
affected a gown of lilac taby. Probably few of us
are aware that the word tabby cat is derived from the
name of a man who was a companion of Mahommed,
and Governor of Mecca in the seventh century.1
But while poets and sonnet-writers were extolling
Francesco as the deliverer of Italy, Isabella herself
could not conceal her anxiety for her husband’s
safety, and she wrote to him in the camp before
Novara, where he was besieging the Duke of Orleans,
begging him to be less reckless of his life. “ It does
not please me that you should always run such
terrible risks, and I pray and entreat you to be very
careful and not to expose yourself to these dangers,
as I am sure you discharge your office best and most
efficiently by giving orders to others rather than by
fighting yourself.” In the same letter she enclosed
the following little note, supposed to be written by
her two-year-old daughter Leonora to the Marquis,
and signed with the words, Filia obsequentiss: adhuc
lactcins: “ To my dearest and victorious father.
Most illustrious and excellent Prince, in my cradle
where I am now lying, and when I am sucking in
the arms of my most illustrious and sweetest mother,
1 “ Baghdad during the Abassieh Caliphate,” p. 138.
tab! silk
was a species of watered silk, manufactured in a
quarter of Damascus, which, Mr. Guy le Strange tells
us, originally took its name from a Governor of Mecca
called Attabiyeh. The word in its different forms of
attabi and tabt passed into the English, French, and
Spanish languages. Taby silks are often mentioned
in English records of the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries. Queen Elizabeth appeared on state
occasions in a dress of silver and white taby, Pepys
wore a false taby waistcoat, and Fanny Burney
affected a gown of lilac taby. Probably few of us
are aware that the word tabby cat is derived from the
name of a man who was a companion of Mahommed,
and Governor of Mecca in the seventh century.1
But while poets and sonnet-writers were extolling
Francesco as the deliverer of Italy, Isabella herself
could not conceal her anxiety for her husband’s
safety, and she wrote to him in the camp before
Novara, where he was besieging the Duke of Orleans,
begging him to be less reckless of his life. “ It does
not please me that you should always run such
terrible risks, and I pray and entreat you to be very
careful and not to expose yourself to these dangers,
as I am sure you discharge your office best and most
efficiently by giving orders to others rather than by
fighting yourself.” In the same letter she enclosed
the following little note, supposed to be written by
her two-year-old daughter Leonora to the Marquis,
and signed with the words, Filia obsequentiss: adhuc
lactcins: “ To my dearest and victorious father.
Most illustrious and excellent Prince, in my cradle
where I am now lying, and when I am sucking in
the arms of my most illustrious and sweetest mother,
1 “ Baghdad during the Abassieh Caliphate,” p. 138.