It is not certain that the late Imminency of Duel had much to do with
such explosions. The Hanover Imminency, which we likened to a tropical
waterspout, or sudden thunderous blotting-out of the sky to the
astonished Gazetteers, seems rather to have passed away as waterspouts
do,--leaving the earth and air, if anything, a little REFRESHED by
such crisis. Leaving, that is to say, the two Majesties a little less
disposed for open quarrel, or rash utterance of their ill humor in time
coming. But, in the mean while, all mutual interests are in a painful
state of suspended animation: in Berlin there is a privately rebellious
Spouse and Household, there is a Tobacco-Parliament withal;--and the
royal mind, sensitive, imaginative as a poet's, as a woman's, and liable
to transports as of a Norse Baresark, is of uncertain movement. Such a
load of intricacies and exaggerated anxieties hanging on it, the
royal mind goes like the most confused smoke-jack, sure only to HAVE
revolutions; and we know how, afar from Soissons, and at home in
Tobacco-Parliament, the machine is influenced! Enough, the explosive
procedures continue, and are on the increasing hand.
Majesty's hunting at Wusterhausen was hardly done, when that alarming
Treaty of Seville came to light (9th November, 1729), France and England
ranked by the side of Spain, disposing of Princes and Apanages at their
will, and a Kaiser left sitting solitary,--which awakens the domestic
whirlwinds at Berlin, among other results. "CANAILLE ANGLAISE, English
Doggery!" and similar fine epithets, addressed to Wilhelmina and the
Crown-Prince, fly about; not to speak of occasional crockery and
other missiles. Friedrich Wilhelm has forbidden these two his presence
altogether, except at dinner: Out of my sight, ye Canaille Anglaise;
darken not the sunlight for me at all!
This is in the Wusterhausen time,--Hanover Imminency only two months
gone. And Mamma sends for us to have private dialogues in her Apartment
there, with spies out in every direction to make signal of Majesty's
return from his hunt,--who, however, surprises as on one occasion, so
that we have to squat for hours, and almost get suffocated. [Wilhelmina,
i. 172.] Whereupon the Crown-Prince, who will be eighteen in a couple
of months, and feels the indignity of such things, begs of Mamma to be
excused in future. He has much to suffer from his Father again, writes
Dubourgay in the end of November: "it is difficult to conceive the vile
stratagems that are made use of to provoke the Father against the
Son." [Dubourgay, 28th November, 1729.] Or again, take this, as perhaps
marking an epoch in the business, a fortnight farther on:--
DECEMBER 10th 1729. "His Prussian Majesty cannot bear the sight of
either the Prince or Princess Royal: The other day, he asked the Prince:
'Kalkstein makes you English; does not he?' Kalkstein, your old Tutor,
Borck, Knyphausen, Finkenstein, they are all of that vile clique!" To
which the Prince answered, 'I respect the English because I know the
people there love me;' upon which the King seized him by the collar,
struck him fiercely with his cane," in fact rained showers of blows upon
him; "and it was only by superior strength," thinks Dubourgay, "that the
poor Prince escaped worse. There is a general apprehension of something
tragical taking place before long."
Truly the situation is so violent, it cannot last. And in effect a wild
thought, not quite new, ripens to a resolution in the Crown-Prince under
such pressures: In reference to which, as we grope and guess, here is
a Billet to Mamma, which Wilhelmina has preserved. Wilhelmina omits all
trace of date, as usual; but Dubourgay, in the above Excerpt, probably
supplies that defect:--
FRIEDRICH TO HIS MOTHER (Potsdam, December, 1729).
"I am in the uttermost despair. What I had always apprehended has at
last come on me. The King has entirely forgotten that I am his Son. This
morning I came into his room as usual; at the first sight of me," or
at the first passage of Kalkstein-dialogue with me, "he sprang forward,
seized me by the collar, and struck me a shower of cruel blows with his
rattan. I tried in vain to screen myself, he was in so terrible a rage,
almost out of himself; it was only weariness," not my superior strength,
"that made him give up."
"I am driven to extremity. I have too much honor to endure such
treatment; and I am resolved to put an end to it in one way or another."
[Wilhelmina, i. 175.]
Is not this itself sufficiently tragical? Not the first stroke he had
got, we can surmise; but the first torrent of strokes, and open beating
like a slave;--which to a proud young man and Prince, at such age, is
indeed INtolerable. Wilhelmina knows too well what he meaus by "ending
it in one way or another;" but strives to reassure Mamma as to its
meaning "flight," or the like desperate resolution. "Mere violence of
the moment," argues Wilhelmina; terribly aware that it is deeper-rooted
than that.
Flight is not a new idea to the Crown-Prince; in a negative form we have
seen it present in the minds of by-standers: "a Crown-Prince determined
NOT to fly," whispered they. [Dubourgay (9th August, 1729), supra, p.
129.] Some weeks ago, Wilhelmina writes: "The King's bad treatments
began again on his reappearance" at Potsdam after the Hunting; "he never
saw my Brother without threatening him with his cane. My Brother told me
day after day, He would endure everything from the King, only not blows;
and that if it ever came to such extremity, he would be prepared to
deliver himself by running off." And here, it would seem, the extremity
has actually come.
Wilhelmina, pitying her poor Brother, but condemning him on many points,
continues: [i. 173, 174.] "Lieutenant Keith," that wild companion of
his, "had been gone some time, stationed in Wesel with his regiment."
Which fact let us also keep in mind. "Keith's departure had been a great
joy to me; in the hope my Brother would now lead a more regular life:
but it proved quite otherwise. A second favorite, and a much more
dangerous, succeeded Keith. This was a young man of the name of Katte,
Captain-Lieutenant in the regiment GENS-D'ARMES. He was highly connected
in the Army; his Mother had been a daughter of Feldmarschall Graf von
Wartensleben,"--a highest dignitary of the last generation. Katte's
Father, now a General of distinction, rose also to be Feldmarschall;
Cousins too, sons of a Kammer-President von Katte at Magdeburg, rose to
Army rank in time coming; but not this poor Katte,--whom let the reader
note!
"General Katte his Father," continues Wilhelmina, "had sent him to the
Universities, and afterwards to travel, desiring he should be a Lawyer.
But as there was no favor to expect out of the Army, the young man found
himself at last placed there, contrary to his expectation. He continued
to apply himself to studies; he had wit, book-culture, acquaintance with
the world; the good company which he continued to frequent had given
him polite manners, to a degree then rare in Berlin. His physiognomy
was rather disagreeable than otherwise. A pair of thick black eyebrows
almost covered the eyes of him; his look had in it something ominous,
presage of the fate he met with: a tawny skin, torn by small-pox,
increased his ugliness. He affected the freethinker, and carried
libertinism to excess; a great deal of ambition and headlong rashness
accompanied this vice." A dangerous adviser here in the Berlin element,
with lightnings going!"Such a favorite was not the man to bring back my
Brother from his follies. This I learned at our [Mamma's and my] return
to Berlin," from the Wusterhausen and the Potsdam tribulations;--and
think of it, not without terror, now that the extremity seems coming or
come.