Lives of the Queens of England of the House of Hanover, volume 1 (of 2)

While Sophia Dorothea continued to linger in her prison, her husband and son, with the mistresses of the former and the wife of the latter, were enjoying the advantages and anxieties which surround a throne. The wife of the Prince of Wales, Caroline, arrived at Margate on the 13th of October. She was accompanied by her two eldest daughters, Anne and Amelia. Mother and children rested during one day in the town where they had landed, slept one night at Rochester, and arrived at St. James’s on the 15th. The royal coronation took place in Westminster Abbey on the 20th of the same month. Amid the pomp of the occasion, no one appears to have thought of her who should have been Queen-consort. There was much splendour and some calamity, for as the procession was sweeping by, several people were killed by the fall of scaffolding in the Palace Yard. The new King entered the Abbey amid the cheers and screams of an excited multitude.

Three days after, the monarch, with the Prince and Princess of Wales, dined with the Lord Mayor and corporation in the Guildhall, London, and there George performed the first grateful service to his people, by placing a thousand guineas in the hands of the sheriffs, for the relief of the wretched debtors then immured in the neighbouring horrible prisons of Newgate and the Fleet.

Within a month, the general festivities were a little marred by the proclamation of the Pretender, dated from Lorraine, wherein he laid claim to the throne which George was declared to have usurped. At this period the Duke of Lorraine was a sovereign prince, maintaining an envoy at our court; but the latter was ordered to withdraw from the country immediately after the arrival of the ‘Lorraine proclamation’ by the French mail. Already George I. began to feel that on the throne he was destined to enjoy less quiet than his consort in her prison.

The counter-proclamations made in this country, chiefly on account of the Jacobite riots at Oxford and some other places, were made up of nonsense and malignity, and were well calculated to make a good cause wear the semblance of a bad one. They decreed, or announced, thanksgiving on the 20th of January, for the accession of the House of Hanover; and, to show what a portion of the people had to be thankful for, they ordered a rigorous execution of the laws against papists, non-jurors, and dissenters generally, who were assumed to be, as a matter of course, disaffected to the reigning house.

After some of the first troubles of his reign had been got over, the King visited Hanover, where he invested his brother, the Duke of York, and Prince Frederick with the Order of the Garter. He even partook of the pleasures of the chase in the woods around Ahlden; but except ordering a more stringent rule for the safe-keeping of his consort, he took no further notice of Sophia Dorothea. He returned to London on the 18th of January 1716–17, and on that day week, hearing that the episcopal clergy of Scotland continued to refuse to pray for him, he issued a decree, which compelled many to fly the country or otherwise abscond. The English clergy experienced even harsher treatment for less offence. I may mention, as an instance, the case of the Rev. Laurence Howell, who, for writing a pamphlet called ‘The State of Schism in the Church of England truly stated,’ was stripped of his gown by the executioner, fined 500l., imprisoned three years, and was sentenced to be twice publicly whipped by the hangman!

On the first absence of the King from England, the Prince of Wales was appointed regent, but he was never entrusted with that high office a second time. ‘It is probable,’ says Walpole, ‘that the son discovered too much fondness for acting the king, as that the father conceived a jealousy of his having done so. Sure it is, that on the King’s return, great divisions arose in the court, and the Whigs were divided—some devoting themselves to the wearer of the crown and others to the expectant.’ So that, in the second year of his reign, the King not only held his wife in prison, but his son and heir was banished from his presence.

Passing over the record of public events, the next interesting fact connected with the private life of the faithless husband of Sophia Dorothea was the marriage of his illegitimate daughter Charlotte with Lord Viscount Howe. The bride’s mother was Charlotte Sophia, daughter of the Countess von Platen; and Charlotte Sophia was decently married to Baron Kielmansegge, Master of the Horse to George I. In 1719, at the time of the above marriage, the baroness was a widow. George I. himself gave away the bride as the baroness’s niece. ‘The King,’ says Walpole, ‘was indisputably her father; and the first child born of this union was named George, after the King.’ The Princess Amelia, daughter of George II., ‘treated Lady Howe’s daughter, “Mistress Howe,” as a princess of the blood-royal, and presented her with a ring, containing a small portrait of George I., with a crown in diamonds.’ The best result of this marriage was, that the famous Admiral Howe was one of the sons born of it, and that was the only benefit which the country derived from the vicious conduct of George I. If the marriage of the child of one mistress tended to mortify the vanity of another, as is said to have been the case with Von der Schulenburg, King George found a way to pacify her. That lady was already Duchess of Munster, in Ireland, and the King, in April 1719, created her a baroness, countess, and duchess of Great Britain, by the name, style, and title of Baroness of Glastonbury, Countess of Feversham, and Duchess of Kendal; and this done, the King soon after embarked at Gravesend for Hanover.

The year 1720 saw King George more upon the Continent than at home, where indeed universal misery reigned, in consequence of the bursting of the great South Sea Bubble, which had promised such golden solidity—which ended in such disappointment and ruin, and for furthering which the Duchess of Kendal and her daughter received bribes of 10,000l. each. In April of the following year, William Augustus was born at Leicester House. The daughter of Sophia Dorothea was his godmother; her husband and the Duke of York were the godfathers. This son of George Augustus and Caroline of Anspach, Prince and Princess of Wales, was afterwards famous as the Duke of Cumberland.

On the 17th of January 1721, the royal family went into mourning, and this was the only domestic incident of the reign in which Sophia Dorothea was allowed to participate. With her, the mourning was not a mere formality; it was not assumed, but was a testimony offered, in sign of her sorrow, for the death of her mother, Eleanora, Duchess of Zell. The Duchess had seen little of her daughter for some time previous to her death, but she bequeathed to her as much of her private property as she had power to dispose of by will.

Sophia Dorothea had now a considerable amount of funds placed to her credit in the bank of Amsterdam. Of the incidents of her captivity nothing whatever is known, save that it was most rigidly maintained. She was forgotten by the world, because unseen, and they who kept her in prison were as silent about her as the keepers of the Man in the Iron Mask were about that mysterious object of their solicitude. Where little is known there is little to be told. The captive bore her restraint with a patience which even her daughter must have admired; but she was not without hopes of escaping from a thraldom from which it was clear she could never be released by the voluntary act of those who kept her in an undeserved custody. It is believed that her funds at Amsterdam were intended by her to be disposed of in the purchase of aid to secure her escape; but it is added that her agents betrayed her, embezzled her property, and by revealing for what purpose they were her agents, brought upon her a closer arrest than any under which she had hitherto suffered. Romance has made some additions to these items of intelligence—items, great portions of which rest only on conjecture. The undoubted fact that much of the property which she inherited was to pass to her children rendered the death of a mother a consummation to be desired by (it was said) so indifferent a son and daughter as the Prince of Wales and the Queen of Prussia. The interest held by her husband was of a similar description, and the fatal consequences that might follow were not unprovided for by the friends of the prisoner. ‘It is known,’ says Walpole, ‘that in Queen Anne’s time there was much noise about French prophets. A female of that vocation (for we know from Scripture that the gift of prophecy is not limited to one gender) warned George I. to take care of his wife, as he would not survive her a year. That oracle was probably dictated to the French Deborah by the Duke and Duchess of Zell, who might be apprehensive that the Duchess of Kendal might be tempted to remove entirely the obstacle to her conscientious union with their son-in-law. Most Germans are superstitious, even such as have few other impressions of religion. George gave such credit to the denunciation, that, on the eve of his last departure, he took leave of his son and the Princess of Wales with tears, telling them he should never see them more. It was certainly his own approaching end that melted him, not the thought of quitting for ever two persons that he hated.’

The poor princess, ‘Queen of Great Britain,’ as those who loved her were wont to call her, had been long in declining health, born of declining hopes; and yet she endured all things with patience, contenting herself in her last moments with reasserting her innocence, commending herself to God, naming her children, and pardoning her oppressors. On the 2nd of November 1726, after much hope, not only deferred but crushed out; after much disappointment of expectations, built on the promises of false friends; and after marked but gradual decrease of health, Sophia Dorothea became suddenly and dangerously ill. She lost all consciousness, and on the 13th of the month she lay dead on her bed in the castle of Ahlden.

The news soon reached Hanover, where the authorities, with a feeling of becomingness, ordered a general mourning as for the death of a queen in the land. As soon as this decent step was known in England, the King was vulgar in his wrath. He sent peremptory orders to Hanover to do away immediately with all signs of mourning, and the officials, if not the public, went into ordinary, or holiday, gear.

At the Court of Berlin, the daughter of Sophia Dorothea, the King, and consequently all the Prussian fashionable world, assumed the deepest mourning, as for a Queen of England so nearly allied to the Queen of Prussia. The King of Great Britain took this natural circumstance for an insult; but he was obliged to bear, albeit with blaspheming impatience, what he could not resent. The simple royal order for the funeral was that the Duchess of Ahlden should be buried in a grave dug for her on the banks of the Aller. The soil was dug into, over and over again, but the water rushed in and mocked the attempts of the workmen. Meanwhile, the body of Sophia Dorothea lay in a plain leaden coffin in the castle and no one knew what to do with it, for fear of offending the King. After several weeks had passed, a few strong men carried it down to a cellar, and, covering it over with a cart-load or two of sand, left it till further gracious orders should arrive from over the water.

At the end of six months there was a stir in the royal stud stables at Zell. Four of the King’s horses were taken thence and were ridden over to Ahlden. The chief of the men in charge there showed the royal order by which he was commissioned to take up the body from beneath the heap of sand and carry it back to Zell. And this was to be done without any ceremony whatever.

Accordingly, at midnight the coffin was dragged from under the sand, hoisted into a suitable vehicle, and it was unceremoniously jolted over the rough roads till it reached the chief church in the old ducal city of Zell. The necessary workpeople were ready. They carried the plain leaden coffin down to the vault below, and without any circumstance of prayer or outward respect, they cast it into a corner; and there it still lies, without even a name on the rough lead to indicate whose sad burthen of life is deposited within.

Her royal husband in England simply notified in the London Gazette that a Duchess of Ahlden had died at her residence on the date above named; but he did not add that he had thereby lost a wife, or his children lost a mother. No intimation was given of the relationship she held towards him or them. The quality of his affection was illustrated by his explosion of rage when he heard that his daughter, with the Court of Prussia, had gone into mourning for the death of her mother. The husband of Sophia Dorothea became of gayer humour than usual after her death. After receiving intelligence of that event, the royal widower went to see the Italian comedians in the Haymarket act ‘Il Mercante Prodigo,’ or ‘Harlequin Prodigal Merchant.’ He liked this sort of entertainment so well, that, a few nights later, he commanded the performance of ‘Pantalone, Barone di Sloffenburgo,’ at the King’s Theatre. On Christmas Eve, the newspapers recorded the fact that Prince Waldeck (who had come over with despatches in November) had taken leave of his Majesty and had returned to Hanover. Therewith seemed to have come the end of a long, and dark, and mournful history.

In the list of the persons of note and distinction in Great Britain and Ireland, and of the Foreign Princes who died in the year 1726—published in the Daily Post in January 1727, no record was made of the demise of Sophia Dorothea. On the other hand, there is an entry of a bereavement by which her husband, the King, had been afflicted, in the same mouth of November, namely, in the death of ‘Mr. Mahomet, valet de chambre to his Majesty.’

A story was current that Sophia Dorothea, on her death-bed, had summoned her husband, the King, to meet her at the great judgment seat of Heaven within a year. This summons was conveyed in a letter addressed by her to him, but it was not delivered to the King till after he had, in nervous restlessness, set out for Hanover.

On the night of the 2nd of June 1727, little Horace Walpole, then ten years old, was conducted by the King’s illegitimate daughter, Petronilla Melusina (Lady Walsingham) to the King himself, to kiss the royal hand as his Majesty passed on his way to sup (for the last time, as it proved) with Petronilla’s mother (the former von der Schulenburg, now Duchess of Kendal) the King’s old mistress. This presentation had been accorded to the prayer of the first minister’s wife, Horace Walpole’s mother.

On the following day, the 3rd of June, the King left England. On the night of that day week he died at Osnaburgh, aged sixty-seven years and thirteen days. The King had landed at Vaer, in Holland, on the 7th, and he travelled thence to Utrecht, by land, escorted by the Guards to the frontiers of Holland. On Friday, the 9th, he reached Dalden, at twelve at night, when he was apparently in excellent health. He partook of supper largely, and with appetite, eating, among other things, part of a melon, a fruit which has killed more than one emperor of Germany. At three the next morning he resumed his journey. According to the story to which allusion has just been made, the letter of Sophia Dorothea was then given to him. He read it, appeared shocked, and became ill. He was probably moved by something more than mere sentiment, for he had not travelled two hours when he was attacked by violent abdominal pains. He hurried on to Linden, where dinner awaited him; but, being able to eat nothing, he was immediately bled, and other remedies made use of. Anxious to reach Hanover, he ordered the journey to be continued with all speed. He fell into a lethargic doze in the carriage, and so continued, leaning on a gentleman in waiting who was with him in the carriage. To this attendant he feebly announced in French, ‘I am a dead man.’ He reached the episcopal palace at Osnaburgh at ten that night; was again bled in the arm and foot, but ineffectually; his lethargy increased, and he died about midnight.

The King’s mistress, the Duchess of Kendal, who had gone thither to meet him, tore her hair, beat her breast, and uttered loud cries of despair at this bereavement. She repaired to Brunswick and shut herself up, for three months, as the most afflicted of widows. Subsequently, she returned to her house near Isleworth. A raven was the last pet of this lady; and the familiarity of the two gave rise to the popular legend that George had promised to visit his old mistress, after death, if such circumstance were allowed, and that he was keeping his word in the shape of the much caressed bird in sables.

Even in her estrangement from her husband, Sophia Dorothea never uttered a word of complaint against him. She never failed to exhibit either mildness or dignity in her captivity: on the contrary, she manifested both; and Coxe says of her, in his ‘Memoirs of Walpole,’ that, ‘on receiving the sacrament once every week, she never omitted making the most solemn asseverations that she was not guilty of the crime laid to her charge.’ Her son (George II.) had a double fault in his father’s eyes, namely, his popularity, and, at one time, his love for his mother—whom he loved, we are told, as much as he hated his father. A pleasant household, a sorry hearth; mistresses resting their rouged cheeks on the monarch’s bosom, a wife in prison, and a son hating her oppressor, and loving, but not redressing, the oppressed. Had Sophia Dorothea survived her consort, her son, it is said, had determined to bring her over to England and proclaim her Queen-dowager. Lady Suffolk, the snubbed mistress of that son, expressed to Horace Walpole her surprise on going (in the morning after the intelligence of the death of George I. had reached England) to the new Queen, ‘at seeing, hung up in the Queen’s dressing-room, a whole-length of a lady in royal robes; and, in the bed-chamber, a half-length of the same person, neither of which Lady Suffolk had ever seen before. The prince had kept them concealed, not daring to produce them during the life of his father. The whole-length he probably sent to Hanover. The half-length I have frequently seen in the library of the Princess Amelia, who told me it was the property of her grandmother. She bequeathed it, with other pictures of her family, to her nephew, the Landgrave of Hesse.’

If George II. never in his later days named his mother, it was because the enemies of the dynasty pretended to trace in the features of the second George a likeness to Count Königsmark, his mother’s gallant cavalier! The Whigs had denied the legitimacy of the son of James II., and the Tories embraced with eagerness an opportunity to deny that of the heir of Brunswick.

The son of Sophia Dorothea was the pupil of his grandmother, Sophia of Hanover; and his boyhood did little credit to the system, or the acknowledged good sense of his instructress.

When the Earl of Macclesfield was at Hanover, in the year 1700, bearing with him that Act of Succession which secured a throne for the husband and son of Sophia Dorothea, that son, George Augustus, was not yet out of his ‘teens.’ He was of that age at which a prince is considered wise enough to rule kingdoms, but is yet incapable of governing himself. At that time he was said to ‘give the greatest hopes of himself that we, or any people on earth, could desire.’ He was not of proud stature, indeed—and Alexander was not six feet high; but Toland asserts, what is very hard to believe, that George possessed a winning countenance, and a manly aspect and deportment. In later years, he was rigid of feature, and walked as a man does who is stiff in the joints. He was, in the days of his youth, a graceful and easy speaker; that is, his phrases were well constructed, and he expressed them with facility. His complexion was fair, and his hair a light brown. Like his father, he spoke Latin fluently; and English much better than his father, but with a decided foreign accent, like William of Orange. As the utmost care was taken, according to Toland, to furnish him with such other accomplishments as are fit for a gentleman and a prince, it is a pity that he made so unprofitable a use of so desirable a provision. He was tolerably well-versed in history, but history to him was not philosophy teaching by example; for though, in his earlier years, panegyrists said of him, not only that his inclinations were virtuous, but that he was ‘wholly free from all vice,’ his life, subsequently, could not be so characterised, and the later practice marred the fair precedent. But let Toland limn the object of his love.

‘These acquired parts,’ he says, ‘with a generous disposition and a virtuous inclination, will deservedly render him the darling of our people, and probably grace the English throne with a most knowing prince.’ In the popular sense of the term, the last words cannot be denied; and yet he never knew how to obtain, or cared how to merit, his people’s love. ‘He learns English with inexpressible facility, and has not only learned of his grandmother to have a real esteem for Englishmen, but he likewise entertains a high notion of the wisdom, goodness, and power of the English government, concerning which I heard him, to my great satisfaction, ask several pertinent questions, and such as betokened no mean or common observation. I was surprised to find he understood so much of our affairs already; but his great vivacity will not let him be ignorant of anything. There is nothing more to be wished,’ says Toland, ‘but that he be proof against the temptations which accompany greatness, and defended from the poisonous infection of flatterers, who are the greatest bane of society, and commonly occasion the ruin of princes, if not in their lives, yet, at least, in their fame and reputation.’ It was under the temptations alluded to that George Augustus made shipwreck of his fame. His history, however, will be traced more fully hereafter. At present we will only consider the career and character of his sister.

The daughter of Sophia Dorothea, some years younger than her brother, was a promising girl when the Act of Succession opened a throne to her father, but not to her mother. She had in her youth sweetness of manners, fairness of features, and a soft and winning voice. Her fair brown hair, as in her mother’s case, heightened the grace and charms of a fair complexion; and her blue eyes were the admiration of the poets, and the inspiration even of those whom the gods had not made poetical. Her features, taken singly, were not without defect; but the expression which pervaded them was a good substitute for purely unintellectual beauty. The Electress Sophia was, if not her governess, the superintendent of her governesses; and the training, rigid and formal, failed in the development that was most to be desired. ‘In minding her discourse to others,’ says Toland, ‘and by what she was pleased to say to myself, she appears to have a more than ordinary share of good sense and wit. The whole town and court commend the easiness of her manners, and the evenness of her disposition; but, above all her other qualities, they highly extol her good humour, which is the most valuable endowment of either sex, and the foundation of most other virtues. Upon the whole, considering her personal merit and the dignity of her family, I heartily wish and hope to see her some day Queen of Sweden.’ This hearty wish was not to be realised. The younger Sophia Dorothea became the wife of a brute and the mother of a hero. The old paternal Seigneurie of ‘D’Olbreuse, dans le pays D’Aulnis,’ was raised to the dignity of a Countship in 1729. It became the property of Sophia Dorothea’s children, George II., King of England, and Sophia, Queen of Prussia. They, with some propriety—but probably under constraint of the law of France—made it over to the nearest French relative of Eleanora D’Olbreuse, Sophia Dorothea’s mother—Alexandre Prevost de Gayemont.

This would seem to be the end of a sad history. But the persecution of Sophia Dorothea did not terminate with her life.

A hundred and seven years after Sophia Dorothea had ended that unhappy life, her unhappy story was revived, and her memory was now made to suffer under calumny that had not been thought of in her life-time.

In the year 1833 a Swede, named Propst Wisselgren, contributed to No. 33 of the ‘Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes’ the copy of an alleged love-letter, the original of which existed, it was said, in Sophia Dorothea’s hand-writing, in the archives of the Count de la Gardie.

In the year 1836 Cramer, in his ‘Denkwürdigkeiten der Gräfin Maria Aurora von Königsmark,’ referred to this letter, and expressed his disbelief in its genuineness and authenticity.

Until 1847 the memory of Sophia Dorothea was left unassailed by any further attempt against it. In that year, however, further alleged autograph letters, not only of hers, but also others said to be written by Königsmark, appeared in the ‘Literarische Blätter für Unterhaltung.’ They were preceded by an introduction and explanations by the Swedish writer Palmblad, who had selected them, it was stated, from more than a hundred which were then in the possession of Count Stephen de la Gardie, of Löberod, in Schonen.

How did these alleged autograph letters find their way into Sweden?

They had previously been kept, we are gravely told, in a drawer in Oefiwedskloster, by the widowed Countess Amelia Ramel (a Löwenhaupt by birth), at whose death, in 1810, they came into the possession of her son, a Count de la Gardie. Löberod was acquired by a Count Jacob Gustus de la Gardie in 1817.

But how did the Lady Amelia Ramel become the holder of these extraordinary documents?

The answer is: As the descendant of General Karl von Löwenhaupt, who had married Amelia, one of the two sisters of Königsmark. This lady is stated to have made over this mass of letters to her children, with this observation: Here are the letters captured again (wiedererobert) at great peril, which cost a brother his life and a king’s mother her freedom.

Captured, seized, recovered at great peril! When? where? by whom? from whom?

No reply; not the smallest particle of evidence is given on these important points. If they were obtained under circumstances of great danger, it must have been from some one who considered them of great importance, but who must have allowed himself to be plundered of them with great indifference. No one ever heard of the robbery or capture, nor of the means by which it was effected.

In 1838 one letter saw the light. In 1847 several were published in Germany and Sweden. To all enquiry, no other answer has been made than that the letters had existed since 1810 in the keeping of the persons above named; that they had come down from Amelia Königsmark, who had wedded with a Löwenhaupt; that they were genuine letters, and that they conclusively proved the guilt of Sophia Dorothea and Count Königsmark.

Sophia Dorothea, it must be remembered, never had the guilt implied laid to her charge. The name of Königsmark was never once uttered at her trial—if it may so be called. She was punished for alleged disobedience to, and desertion of, her husband. She retained so much of the character of a wife that she was not allowed to marry again. She remained till her death the wife of a King of England, with whom she would hold no association. Her husband kept her for more than thirty years a state prisoner. How could this cruelty be better justified than by blasting her character and memory for ever—long after all parties were far beyond questioning? How could this dire penalty be inflicted, after death, more easily than by preparing a correspondence between the two personages, which might be kept in a cloister drawer till it could be produced to serve its infamous purpose?

The persons who held these papers in later years may have conscientiously believed in their genuineness. Of the contemporaries of Sophia Dorothea, the Countess von Platen and even Bernstorf are said to have been able to imitate the handwriting of Sophia Dorothea. We do not insinuate that they were willing to forge these letters. But some one probably did so. Königsmark’s letters may indeed be genuine; but it does not follow that they were addressed to the wife of him who was afterwards George I. Without name, date, or address, they might serve to calumniate any other lady of Sophia Dorothea’s time.

Of the letters themselves, Palmblad, who inspected the precious collection, states in his ‘Aurora Königsmark,’ or rather in an appendix to the first part of that historical romance, that they consist of several hundreds, of which two-thirds are by Königsmark, the other third by Sophia Dorothea, and that in print they would fill a stout volume.

Those of the princess are in an elegant, somewhat flowing hand, and, with rare exception, correct in expression. They are on fine, gilt-edged paper. Königsmark’s letters are, we are told, on coarse, thick paper, which hardly agreed with his fine gentlemanly style in everything. They are legibly written, but the spelling is that of an ignorant school-boy.

In some portions, cyphers, numbers, or disguised names were used, the interpretation of which was easily got at, as would be the case if the letters were forged and were intended to be easily understood a century after the events had happened to which they referred.

Very few of the letters—none of importance—have any address on them. They have strayed from their envelopes, says Palmblad; but envelopes were not then in use. Letters were folded and the address written on the blank outside folding. Some few, according to Palmblad, have external directions and are sealed with Königsmark’s private seal—a heart within the motto, ‘Cosi fosse il vostro dentre il mio’ (so may be yours within mine!). The post-mark is on some. One of them is directed, ‘Pour la personne connue.’ Palmblad suggests that it was originally enclosed within one ‘to the Confidant.’ Several are addressed to ‘Mademoiselle La Frole de Knesebeck.’ The latter name is occasionally spelt ‘Qnesbegk.’ A nearly complete (and very convenient) absence of dates defies all attempts to place this correspondence in anything like chronological order. Conjecturally, the experts suggest that the dates extend from 1688 to 1693, inclusive—six years.

When it is remembered that the princess and Königsmark were closely watched, in order, if possible, to make a case out against them, and that the two friends knew they were surrounded by spies, the idea of their sending letters through the post, and of such letters being preserved instead of destroyed, seems folly too absurd for serious belief.

‘The contents of these letters,’ Palmblad informs us, ‘consist, for the most part, of mutual assurances of love and everlasting fidelity; of complaints over separation and of the constraint put on them by the secret relations existing between them; of plans for privately meeting, or expressed hopes of a coming uninterrupted life together; of accounts of their occupations, pleasures, and their conversational intercourse with others; mixed up with jealous reproaches, and subsequent apologies for making them. When both pass an evening at court festivals, where the princess is unable to bestow a tender glance or a stolen word on her beloved, or has spoken or walked with another cavalier, then Königsmark addresses to her an epistle full of complaints at her coquetry, and her ‘airs connus.’ With the same mistrust does the princess notice every step of her (supposed) adorer. Nevertheless, no two persons so tenderly loved one another as Königsmark his Leonisse—the fond pseudonym of the princess.’

As far as the above description goes, any fairly practised hand might have invented the whole series of letters.

Even Professor Palmblad does not venture to guess when the correspondence began. His assertion that Königsmark was at Hanover, in the military service of that state, in 1685, is disproved by the painstaking author of ‘Die Herzogin von Ahlden,’ who finds Königsmark settled there not till 1688. Palmblad, with his earlier date, points laughingly to the birth of Sophia Dorothea’s daughter, in 1687; and asks if the Prussian royal family, into which that daughter married, has in its veins the blood of Guelph or of Königsmark. In like easy manner, regardless of chronology, the Jacobites in England used to speak of the son of George I. as ‘Young Königsmark!’

When Königsmark was absent campaigning, the princess, says Palmblad, sent him her portrait, and he returned a gift of his own portrait, painted expressly for her in Brussels. Whereupon, Palmblad says, ‘the princess forwarded to him her diary.’ This has not yet been found or forged, but Palmblad has no doubt as to the nature of its contents. The whole story is founded on letters which the least scrupulous of autograph dealers would hesitate to warrant.

What follows is to be read with the remembrance that the plotters against Sophia Dorothea never lost sight of her or of the count. They could not make a step without being observed by spies, employed by principals who wished to destroy both the princess and Königsmark. Through the very eye-holes of the tapestried figures in the palace human eyes peered, in search of evidence to work the ruin of those two friends. Not finding it, Königsmark was secretly murdered, and Sophia Dorothea shut up for the remainder of her life, on no other charge than that of deserting her husband’s society and refusing to return to it.

This is Palmblad’s story: ‘During Königsmark’s presence at court, he was generally admitted to the princess by her confidant, after midnight, and he sometimes remained four-and-twenty hours with her. He had previously declared himself indisposed and under medical regimen as an excuse for appearing to keep within doors. Aye,’ adds Palmblad, bolder grown, ‘the princess herself glided secretly at night into Königsmark’s quarters’ (which were at some distance from the palace). ‘She speaks in the most fervid expressions of her love, her ‘ardeur,’ and declares herself ready to sacrifice for him her reputation, and to accompany him to the remotest corner of the world! Königsmark hesitates; his fortune is not secure, his position uncertain, and he must first seek glory and riches in war: but her prayers detain him in Hanover.’

These two persons could have said this and more to one another in complete or comparative safety. To write such things down, and to preserve what was written, was madness, fatal to life and honour if discovered. But if these, and much worse, were not written down by some one, how could Sophia Dorothea be made infamous for ever in the eyes of posterity?

One can only judge of the bushel by the sample; and of the whole correspondence, which is now in the library of the University of Lund, by the fragmentary extracts which have been made public. If two persons, knowing they were watched, and their letters detained, could write such fiercely ardent assurances of mutual love, express such utter contempt for the consequences of discovery, and explain to one another how they were tracked and betrayed, they must have been hopelessly insane. An enemy would bend invention to such course as the one best calculated to destroy those against whom it was directed. But there is one point which seems conclusive against the genuineness of this correspondence. There are passages in the alleged letters of Königsmark to the princess which no man, however devoid of every manly quality, would write to a woman whom he loved—would write to any woman at all. These passages not even the most utterly and irretrievably abandoned of women would be able to read without sense of insult and outrage even to such soiled and shattered womanhood as hers. A man writing such things, supposing they were intelligible to the person addressed, would in that person’s eyes be loathsome and execrable for ever.

Of course it is a horrible thought that any one could be sufficiently wicked and cruel to forge letters with the idea of slaying reputations by the forgery. But this wickedness and this cruelty were not uncommon. Scores upon scores of letters have been forged in France alone in order to destroy the reputation of Sir Isaac Newton. As a mere matter of profitable business, the manufactory of forged letters, simply for the market, is in the greatest possible activity. A letter by any one, written at any time, eagerly demanded, is sure to be supplied after a while. Letters, with other purpose in view than mere profit—intended to turn up in long after years, in order to fasten a calumny on some victim—are also not uncommon. One instance may be cited in the case of the multitudinous forged letters of Shelley. The late Mr. Moxon published a volume of Shelley letters; and soon after he withdrew the volume, on discovery that every one of these letters was a forgery. Stray letters of Shelley, however, continued to come into the market. Letters to his wife of the most confidential nature, containing vile aspersions against his father, were bought as genuine by Sir Percy Shelley, the poet’s son. These, too, were discovered to be forgeries and were destroyed. One of these precious epistles, addressed to Byron, and bearing Shelley’s signature, contained an assertion against the fidelity of ‘Harriet.’ Whoever bought it paid six guineas for a calumny against a dead and defenceless woman, to which was appended the forged signature of her dead and defenceless husband. Till something more is known of the history of the alleged correspondence between Sophia Dorothea and Königsmark—of which correspondence nothing was known to the world till more than a century after her death—let us put against it her own assertions of her innocence. It is only a woman’s word; but it was asserted on solemn occasions, and it may surely be accepted against the letters which were not put forth till long after she, too, was dead and defenceless, who, when living, was not charged with the guilt which this mysterious correspondence would cast heavily upon her.

Sophia Dorothea, from the time her husband ascended the throne of Great Britain, was, in a sort of loving sorrow, called by the few left to love her—the Queen. She was indeed an uncrowned Queen of England. As little really of a queen as Caroline of Brunswick in after years. But her true place, nevertheless, is among them. Her blood—the blood of the French Protestant, Seigneur D’Olbreuse—has doubly asserted itself. Through the son of Sophia Dorothea and his descendants, it flows in the veins of that honoured lady, the Queen of Great Britain and Empress of India. Through the daughter of Sophia Dorothea, it is inherited by the Emperor of Germany; and the inheritance was enriched and strengthened when the Princess Royal of England became the wife of the Crown Prince of Prussia, the heir of the German Empire.