When this book was first published in April, 1900, I had no idea that it contained any of the elements of popularity. The subject which it treats had been of interest with me for years, and my researches were made from love of the work. In my quest I followed as closely as possible the footsteps of Sophie Dorothea during her life. I visited Celle where she was born, Hanover where she lived during her unhappy marriage, and Ahlden where for more than thirty years she was imprisoned. To Hanover I went again and again, and in connection with this book I also visited Berlin and Dresden. But it was not until six years ago, in 1897, that I lighted by chance (while turning over old volumes in a second-hand bookshop at Leipzig) upon the fact that an unpublished correspondence between Sophie Dorothea and Königsmarck existed. For a long time I could not find where these letters were deposited, and went in vain search to Upsala, but at last I learned that they were reposing in the library of the little university of Lund in Sweden. To Lund accordingly I went, and with the permission of the university authorities carefully examined the manuscripts. The result of my investigations is described at length in the chapter on “The History and Authenticity of the Letters”. It was the finding of these letters which determined me to write this book; it is built up around them.
Even when the book was written I published it with misgiving, thinking it would have little interest for any except the few who love the untrodden paths and byeways of history. But, contrary to expectation, the book attracted a good deal of attention both in England and America. In France and Germany too it called forth comment, and in a short time several editions were exhausted, until at last it ran out of print.
By that time I had learned something from my critics, more especially from those in Germany, and I determined not to issue another edition, until I had the opportunity of testing what I had written in the light of further historical research. I was then working at another book, Caroline the Illustrious, Queen Consort of George II., which also treats of the Hanoverian period, at a little later date, and until that book was finished, I had not the leisure to follow up fresh clues in connection with this one. Hence the publication of this revised edition has been delayed, for the book has been out of print some little time.
Another consideration has also weighed with me, namely the fact, of which I was ignorant when the first edition was published, that a further instalment of the correspondence between Sophie Dorothea and Königsmarck is preserved in the Secret State Archives at Berlin. The letters herein are all from Lund, and found their way into Sweden through Amalie, Countess Lewenhaupt, Königsmarck’s sister, who married a Swedish nobleman and eventually settled in Sweden. But there are others.
It was known that, after the catastrophe of July 1, 1694, the Hanoverian Government seized many of the letters that had passed between the lovers, and these were used against the Princess with crushing effect, to bring about her divorce on Hanover’s own terms. As Leibniz says, “They would never have believed at Celle that she was so guilty had not her letters been produced”.[1] The fate of these letters has long been a mystery. It was known that Duke George William wished them to be sent to Celle to be destroyed, but the Elector Ernest Augustus refused and kept them at Hanover. It was afterwards rumoured that George II., on his first visit to Hanover after his accession to the English throne, burned them with his own hands, to conceal all traces of his mother’s disgrace, but the rumour was unfounded. It now appears that all, or nearly all, of them are in existence, and some are those preserved in the Secret State Archives of Berlin.
The exact way in which these letters reached Berlin is unknown, but they have been there a long time. According to the Calendar of the Secret State Archives they were found among the private papers of Frederick the Great at Sans Souci, after his death. The luckless prisoner of Ahlden was his grandmother, her daughter, the second Queen of Prussia, was his mother. It is known that the Queen of Prussia was much interested in the fate of her unhappy mother, she corresponded with her secretly, and at one time sought to obtain her release. It is probable, therefore, that these letters (a part of the incriminating correspondence seized by the Hanoverian Government) were sent to Berlin by order of George I. to convince his daughter, the Queen of Prussia, of her mother’s errors and so disarm her sympathy. After the Queen’s death the letters were not returned to Hanover; they passed into the hands of Frederick the Great, and thence into the safe keeping of the Berlin State Archives.
The correspondence between Sophie Dorothea and Königsmarck is very voluminous. The greater part of it (six hundred and seventy-nine sheets, one hundred and ninety-nine from the Princess and four hundred and eighty from Königsmarck) is preserved in the university library of Lund. The letters at Berlin number sixty-five sheets, fifteen from the Princess and fifty from Königsmarck. It is certain that the letters at Berlin and those at Lund spring from the same source, the exact similarity of the writing, the use of the same cypher and the same nicknames, the identity of sentiment and style, and the fact that some of the Berlin letters seem to be answers to some of those at Lund and vice versa, prove this beyond doubt. Clearly they stand or fall together. Applying to the Berlin letters the same tests as applied to those at Lund, they yield absolutely the same results.
The Berlin letters afford little historical interest outside the politics of the petty courts of Hanover and Celle. Like those at Lund they are alternately full of jealous reproaches and passionate avowals of love. They shed no fresh light on the events immediately preceding the catastrophe of July 1, 1694, for they appear to be written prior to the visit Königsmarck made to Dresden before he returned to Hanover for the last time. Letters must have passed between the lovers in the months preceding the tragedy, and these are still needed to make the correspondence complete. But they are not at Berlin, they are not at Lund, they are not at Hanover. The question remains, Where are they?
Last summer, when in Germany, I learned that more love-letters of Sophie Dorothea and Königsmarck still existed, over and above those at Lund and Berlin. I learned this important fact from a trustworthy source which I am not permitted at present to make public. These remaining letters were preserved at Hanover until 1866, not in the Royal Archives, but among the Guelph domestic papers at Herrenhausen. When the late King of Hanover, George V., was wrongfully despoiled of his kingdom by Prussia, and forced to live in exile, he rightly took his family papers with him into Austria. Among those papers was some of the correspondence between his ancestress Sophie Dorothea and Königsmarck. These letters are now in the possession of his son, the Duke of Cumberland, de jure King of Hanover, at Gmünden. What their contents are I am unable to say, but it is probable that they contain the missing links wanted to make the chain of the correspondence complete. It is my desire some day to translate the whole correspondence at Lund, at Berlin, and at Gmünden, and arrange it in chronological order with the aid of first-hand documentary evidence drawn from other sources. (But this, of course, depends upon the necessary permission being granted.) For this reason, and because they shed no fresh light on the tragedy, I have not given herein any of the Berlin letters. On the contrary, I have omitted from this edition a few of those letters published in the first, which were merely a repetition of others; their great similarity of style and sentiment tended to weary rather than to edify.[2]
I should like to repeat that this book is largely based upon papers found in the Hanoverian archives and elsewhere, duly specified in footnotes. The despatches of Sir William Dutton Colt, of Cresset and of Poley, English envoys at Hanover during the period under consideration, and of Stepney, sometime English envoy at Dresden, now preserved in the State Paper Office, London, have also been drawn upon freely. To this list of hitherto unpublished documents there remain to be added many letters from the correspondence at Lund, translated from the French of the original documents. These have never before been published in English and (except for a few unimportant extracts in a Swedish book long since out of print) have never been published in any language. I may claim to be the first to edit and arrange this correspondence in something like chronological order, and to compare it with historical documents of undoubted authenticity with a view to proving its genuineness.
Every effort was made in the first edition to render this biography as complete as possible. I have now in the light of subsequent knowledge revised the text. I find little to add and little to take away. My additions are chiefly in matters of detail, and will be found in notes scattered throughout the volume. These notes for the most part either go to prove further the genuineness of the letters, or to quote fuller authorities for the text—to specify more clearly what is founded on first-hand historical evidence, and what is derived from less trustworthy sources.
In this I should like to acknowledge the help I have derived from my critics, more especially from the writer of the review of my book in the Edinburgh Review,[3] and the essay by Dr. Robert Geerds, the eminent German critic and historian in the Allgemeine Zeitung.[4]
The writer in the Edinburgh Review, an expert who has himself examined the contested letters at Lund, and the admittedly genuine ones at Hanover, and compared them, says in contravention of a doubt cast on their genuineness:—
“Allowing for the interval of time and for the difference of circumstances under which the [Princess’s] love-letters to Königsmarck and her formal letters to the Electress were respectively written, we have no hesitation in saying that it is impossible, after placing the handwritings side by side, to assert that there is no resemblance between them. We have also had an opportunity of comparing a photograph of Königsmarck’s abbreviated signature with photographs of genuine signatures of his preserved at Lund and at Hanover respectively, and no doubt whatever is left in our mind as to the genuineness of the (abbreviated) signature in the impugned correspondence.”
And again:—
“After much careful consideration we feel bound to express our belief that the probability of these letters having been written by Sophie Dorothea and Königsmarck is a very strong one indeed”....
Dr. Robert Geerds, who has examined and compared the letters at Lund with those at Berlin as well as Hanover, says:—
“The writing of some of the Lund letters ... corresponds so noticeably with the Hanoverian writing that it is impossible to doubt they were written by Sophie Dorothea”.
And again, after reference to my discoveries of the undesigned coincidences between incidents mentioned in the letters and in Colt’s despatches:—
“No unprejudiced person can any longer doubt that in this correspondence, which has been called into question, we have the true and genuine love-letters of the unfortunate pair whose tragic fate has met with such universal sympathy”.[5]
I should like to thank Dr. Carl Petersen, Assistant Librarian at Lund University, for his courtesy and assistance; Count Carl Lewenhaupt (sometime Swedish and Norwegian Minister in London) for procuring me the portrait of Aurora Königsmarck, now in the possession of the elder branch of the Lewenhaupt family; Count C. G. von Rosen for permission to reproduce the portrait of Philip Christopher Königsmarck; Count Kielmansegg for allowing me to see Lady Darlington’s patent of peerage at Gülzow; and Count Erich Kielmansegg for calling my attention to a slight error in the history of the Lund letters, corrected in this edition.
As an edition of this book has been published in America without my knowledge or consent, and as it is, moreover, full of grammatical and other errors, for which I am not responsible, I take this opportunity of saying that this is the only authorised edition for sale in America.
In conclusion, I should like to repeat what I wrote in the preface to my first edition: “The story of the romantic life of this uncrowned Queen has been shrouded in mystery, and she has been even more misrepresented than Mary Queen of Scots. Her imprisonment in the lonely castle of Ahlden was longer and more rigorous than Mary’s captivity in England, and the assassination of Königsmarck was as dramatic as the murder of Rizzio.”
March, 1903.