CHAPTER IV.
THE HOUSEHOLD OF GEORGE AND SOPHIA.
Reception of Sophia at the Court of Ernest Augustus—Similar position of Marie Antoinette and Sophia—Misfortune of the abigail Use—Compassionated by the Duchess of Zell—Intrigues and revenge of Madame von Platen—A new favourite, Mademoiselle Ermengarda von der Schulenburg—A marriage fête, and intended insult to the Princess Sophia—Gross vice of George Louis.
It is said that a certain becomingness of compliment was paid to the bride in an order given to Katharine von Busche to absent herself from the palace when the bride was brought home. The mistress, it is alleged, deferred her departure till it was too late, and from a window of Madame von Platen’s bedchamber the sisters witnessed the sight of George Louis dismounting from his horse, and hastening to help his wife to descend from the carriage.
Madame von Platen, as she gazed, may have thought that her sister’s influence was over. If she did, Madame von Busche felt convinced of the contrary. The latter took her departure, for a season. The other prepared herself to join in the splendid court festivities held in honour of the event by the command of Ernest Augustus. Sophia Dorothea, subdued by past suffering, was so gentle that even Madame von Platen would have found it difficult to have felt offended with her sister’s rival.
For a few months after Sophia Dorothea’s husband had taken her to Hanover, she experienced, perhaps, a less degree of unhappiness than was ever her lot subsequently. Her open and gentle nature won the regard even of Ernest Augustus. That is, he paid her as much regard as a man so coarsely minded as he was could feel for one of such true womanly dignity as his daughter-in-law.
His respect for her, however, may be best appreciated by the companionship to which he sometimes subjected her. He more frequently saw her in society with the immoral Madame von Platen than in the society of his own wife. Ernest looked gratefully upon her as the pledge of the future union of the two duchies under one duke. On this account, even if she had possessed less attractive qualities, he would have held Sophia Dorothea in great esteem. A certain measure of esteem Ernest experienced for all who had in any way furthered his scheme. His mistress, Madame von Platen, had always pretended to think favourably of the scheme, and admiringly of the wisdom of the schemer; in return for which, Ernest made his mistress’s husband a baron, and afterwards a count. Let us employ the higher dignity. In the beginning, George Louis seemed fairly in love with his wife; there appeared a promise of increased felicity when the first child of this marriage was born at Hanover, on the 30th of October 1683; his father conferred on him the names of George Augustus, he expressed pleasure at having an heir, and he even added some words of regard for the mother. The second child of this marriage was a daughter, born in 1687. She was that Sophia Dorothea who subsequently married the King of Prussia. In tending these two children the mother found all the happiness she ever experienced during her married life. Soon after the birth of the daughter, George Louis openly neglected and openly exhibited his hatred of his wife. He lost no opportunity of irritating and outraging her, and she could not even walk through the rooms of the palace which she called her home without encountering the abandoned female favourites of her husband, whose presence beneath such a roof was the most flagrant of outrages. Her very sense of helplessness was a great grief to her. All that her own mother could do when her daughter complained to her of the presence near her of her husband’s mistress, was to advise her to imitate, on this point, the indifference of her mother-in-law, and make the best of it!
The Countess von Platen kept greater state in Hanover than Sophia Dorothea herself. In her own palatial mansion two dozen servants helped her helplessness. Every morning she had ‘a circle,’ as if she were a royal lady holding a court. Her dinners were costly banquets; her ‘evenings’ were renowned for the brilliancy of her fêtes and the reckless fury of gambling. Sophia Dorothea, whose talent for listening and for putting apt and sympathetic questions when the conversation required it, gave considerable satisfaction to her clever, but somewhat pedantic mother-in-law, failed to at all satisfy the Countess von Platen. This lady had tried to bring the princess into something like sympathy with herself, but she found only antipathy. She detested Sophia Dorothea accordingly, and she obtained permission to invite her sister, Madame von Busche, to return to Hanover.
The prime mover of the hatred of George Louis for his consort was the Countess von Platen, and this fact was hardly known to George Louis himself. There was one thing in which that individual had a fixed belief: his own sagacity and, it may be added, his own imaginary independence of outward influences. He was profound in some things; but, as frequently happens with persons who fancy themselves deep in all, he was very shallow in many. It was often impossible to guess his purpose, but quite as often his thoughts were as clearly discernible as the pebbles in the bed of a transparent brook. The Countess von Platen saw through him thoroughly, and she employed her discernment for the furtherance of her own detestable objects.
Sophia Dorothea had, however, contrived to win the good opinion of her mother-in-law, and also the warm favour of Ernest Augustus. The latter took her with him on a journey he made to Switzerland and Italy. It was on this journey that her portrait was taken, at Venice, by Gascar, who, when in England, had painted, among others, that of Louise de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth. This portrait of Sophia Dorothea is still in existence in Germany. The beauty of the lady represented is so remarkable, it is said, as to justify the admiration she generally excited. This admiration sometimes went beyond decent bounds. One French adorer, the celebrated and eccentric Marquis de Lassay, was impudent enough, not only to address declarations of love to her, but subsequently, in his ‘Memoirs,’ to publish his letters. It has not yet occurred to the ever-busy autograph fabricators on the continent to forge the supposed replies of the princess.
After the return of Ernest Augustus and his daughter-in-law to Hanover, the praise of Sophia Dorothea was ever the theme which hung on the lips of the former, and such eulogy was as poison poured in the ears of Madame von Platen. She dreaded the loss of her own influence over the father of George Louis, and she fancied she might preserve it by destroying the happiness of the wife of his son. Her hatred of that poor lady had been increased by a circumstance with which she could not be connected, but which nearly concerned the Duchess of Zell.
Ernest Augustus used occasionally to visit Madame von Platen at her own residence, with more than enough of publicity. He was more inclined to conversation with her than with his prime-minister, her husband; and she had wit enough, if not worth, to give warrant for such preference. Now and then, however, the ducal sovereign would repair to pay his homage to the lady without previous notice being forwarded of his coming; and it was on one of these occasions that, on arriving at the mansion, or in the gardens of the mansion of his minister’s spouse, he found, not the lady of the house, who was absent, but her bright-eyed, ordinary-featured, and quick-witted handmaid, who bore a name which might have been given to such an official in Elizabethan plays by Ford or Fletcher. Her name was ‘Use.’
Ernest Augustus found the wit of Use much to his taste; and the delighted abigail was perfectly self-possessed, and more brilliant than common in the converse which she sustained for the pleasure of the sovereign, and her own expected profit. She had just, it is supposed, come to the point of some exquisitely epigrammatic tale, for the prince was laughing with his full heart, and her hand in his, and the ’tiring maiden was as radiant as successful wit and endeavour could make her, when Madame von Platen interrupted the sparkling colloquy by her more fiery presence. She affected to be overcome with indignation at the boldness of a menial who dared to make merry with a sovereign duke; and when poor Use had been rudely dismissed from the two presences—the one august and the other angry—the Countess von Platen probably remonstrated with Ernest Augustus, respectfully or otherwise, upon his deplorable want of dignity and good taste.
Revenge certainly followed, whether remonstrance may or may not have been offered. Ernest Augustus went to sojourn for a time at one of his rural palaces, and he had no sooner left his capital than the countess committed the terrified Use to close imprisonment in the common gaol. The history of little German courts assures us that this exercise and abuse of power were not at all uncommon with the ‘favourites’ of German princes. Their word was ‘all potential as the duke’s,’ and doubtless the Countess von Platen’s authority was as good warrant for a Hanoverian gaoler to hold Use in custody as if he had shut up that maid, who offended by her wit, under the sign manual of Ernest Augustus himself.
Use was kept captive, and very shabbily treated, until the Countess von Platen had resolved as to the further course which should be ultimately adopted towards her. She could bring no charge against her, save a pretended accusation of lightness of conduct and immorality scandalous to Hanoverian decorum. Under this charge she had her old handmaid drummed out of the town; and if the elder Sophia heard the tap of the drums which accompanied the alleged culprit to the gates, we can only suppose that she would have expelled the countess to the same music. But, in the first place, the wives of princes were by no means so powerful as their favourites; and secondly, the friend of the philosophical Leibnitz was too much occupied with the sage to trouble herself with the affairs which gave concern to the Countess von Platen.
Use found herself outside the city walls, friendless, penniless, with a damaged character, and nothing to cover it but the light costume which she had worn in the process of her march of expulsion to the roll of ‘dry drums.’ When she had found a refuge, her first course was to apply to Ernest Augustus for redress. The prince, however, was at once oblivious, ungrateful, and powerless; and, confining himself to sending to the poor petitioner a paltry eleemosynary half-dozen of gold pieces, he forbade her return to Hanover, counselled her to settle elsewhere, and congratulated her that she had not received even rougher treatment.
Use next made full statement of her case to the Duchess of Zell; and that lady, deeming the case one of peculiar hardship, and the penalty inflicted on a giddy girl too unmeasured for the pardonable offence of amusing an old prince who encouraged her to the task, after much consideration, due weighing of the statement, and befitting inquiry, took the offender into her own service, and gave to the exiled Hanoverian a refuge, asylum, and employment in Zell.
These are but small politics, but they illustrate the nature of things as they then existed at little German courts. They had, moreover, no small influence on the happiness of Sophia Dorothea. The Countess von Platen was enraged that the mother of that princess should have dared to give a home to one whom she had condemned to be homeless; and she in consequence is suspected of having been fired with the more satanic zeal to make desolate the home of the young wife. She adopted the most efficient means to arrive at such an end. Her wicked zeal was stimulated by the undisguised contempt with which Sophia Dorothea treated her on all public occasions. She urged her sister, Madame von Busche, to recover her power over George Louis. Madame von Busche embraced with alacrity the mission with which she was charged, again to throw such meshes of fascination as she was possessed of around the heart of the not over-susceptible prince. But George Louis stolidly refused to be charmed, and Madame von Busche gave up the attempt in a sort of offended despair. Her sister, like a true genius, fertile in expedients, and prepared for every emergency, bethought herself of a simple circumstance, whereby she hoped to attain her ends. She remembered that George Louis, though short himself of stature, had a predilection for tall women. At the next fête at which he was present at the mansion of Madame von Platen, he was enchanted by a majestic young lady, with a name almost as long as her person—it was Ermengarda Melusina von der Schulenburg.
She was more shrewd than witty, this ‘tall mawkin,’ as the Electress Sophia once called the lofty Ermengarda; and, as George Louis was neither witty himself, nor much cared for wit in others, she was the better enabled to establish herself in the most worthless of hearts. This was the work of the countess, who saw in the tender blue eyes, the really fine features, the imposing figure, and the nineteen years of Ermengarda, means to an end. When the countess hinted at the distinction that was within reach of her, the tall beauty is said to have blushed and hesitated, and then to have yielded herself with alacrity to the glittering circumstance. She and the prince first met on his return from a campaign in Hungary. He was at once subjected to her magic influences. She was an inimitable flatterer, and in this way she fooled her victim to ‘the very top of his bent.’ She exquisitely cajoled him, and with exquisite carelessness did he surrender himself to be cajoled. Gradually, by watching his inclinations, anticipating his wishes, admiring even his coarseness, and lauding it as candour, she so won upon the lazily excited feelings of George Louis that he began to think her presence indispensable to his well-being. If he hunted, she was in the field, the nearest to his saddle-bow. If he went out to walk alone, he invariably fell in with Ermengarda. At the court theatre, when he was present, the next conspicuous object was the towering von der Schulenburg, ‘in all her diamonds,’ beneath the glare of which, and the blazing impudence of their wearer, the modest Sophia Dorothea was almost extinguished. Ermengarda was speedily established at Hanover, as hof-dame, or lady-in-waiting.
Madame von Platen had announced a festival, to be celebrated at her mansion, which was to surpass in splendour anything that had ever been witnessed by the existing generation. The occasion was the second marriage of her sister, Madame von Busche, who had worried the poor ex-tutor of George Louis into the grave, with General Weyhe, a gallant soldier, equal, it would seem, to any feat of daring. Whenever the Countess von Platen designed to appear with more than ordinary brilliancy in her own person, she was accustomed to indulge in the extravagant luxury of a milk bath; and it was added by the satirical or the scandalous, that the milk which had just lent softness to her skin was charitably distributed among the poor of the district wherein she occasionally affected to play the character of Dorcas.
The fête and the giver of it were not only to be of a splendour that had never been equalled, but George Louis had promised to grace it with his presence, and had even pledged himself to ‘walk a measure’ with the irresistible Ermengarda Melusina von der Schulenburg. Madame von Platen thought that her cup of joy and pride and revenge would be complete and full to the brim if she could succeed in bringing Sophia Dorothea to the misery of witnessing a spectacle, the only true significance of which was, that the faithless George Louis publicly acknowledged the gigantic Ermengarda for his ‘favourite.’
More activity was employed to encompass the desired end than if the aim in view had been one of good purpose. It so far succeeded that Sophia Dorothea intimated her intention of being present at the festival given by the Countess von Platen; and when the latter lady received the desired and welcome intelligence she was conscious of an enjoyment that seemed to her an antepast of Paradise.
The eventful night at length arrived. The bride had exchanged rings with the bridegroom, congratulations had been duly paid, the floor was ready for the dancers, and nothing lacked but the presence of Sophia Dorothea. There walked the proudly eminent von der Schulenburg, looking blandly down upon George Louis, who held her by the hand; and there stood the impatient von Platen, eager that the wife of that light-o’-love cavalier should arrive and be crushed by the spectacle. Still she came not; and finally her lady of honour, Fräulein von Knesebeck, arrived, not as her attendant but her representative, with excuses for the non-appearance of her mistress, whom unfeigned indisposition detained at her own hearth.
The course of the festival was no longer delayed; in it the bride and bridegroom were forgotten, and George and Ermengarda were the hero and heroine of the hour. After that hour no one doubted as to the bad eminence achieved by that lady—unworthy daughter of an ancient and honourable race. So narrowly and sharply observant was the lynx-eyed von Knesebeck of all that passed between her mistress’s husband and that husband’s mistress, that when she returned to her duties of dame d’atours, she unfolded a narrative that inflicted a stab in every phrase and tore the heart of the despairing listener.