THE POWER OF COUNTESS PLATEN.
(1684-1688.)
Trust not the treason of those smiling looks
Until ye have their guileful brains well tried,
For they are like unto the golden hooks
That from the foolish fish their baits do hide.
ED. SPENSER.
Shortly after the marriage of his daughter to the Elector of
Brandenburg, the Duke of Hanover gave himself a holiday from the cares
of state and made another journey to his beloved Italy, where he stayed
this time nearly two years. He travelled with much magnificence and a
large suite, including the indispensable Madame Platen—and her husband
by way of keeping up appearances. Ernest Augustus made his headquarters
at Venice, where he maintained considerable state, which he was now well
able to do with the aid of Sophie Dorothea’s dowry. Madame Platen was
the great lady of this miniature court, and no doubt Ernest Augustus
often regaled her with tales of the merry days which he and George
William had spent in the city of the Doges. Brilliant festivities, some
of which cost seven or eight thousand thalers, and a princely
liberality, endeared him to the hearts of the nobility and people, and
consoled the Venetians for the large subsidies they paid for the two
thousand four hundred Hanoverian soldiers Ernest Augustus sold them by
agreement in 1684. The Duke of Hanover was shrewd even in his pleasures,
and was always ready to do a good stroke of business when the
opportunity came his way. He had not much to sell except his soldiers,
but they were good fighting men, and fetched a high price in the
market,—he sold them like cattle in herds, and squandered the
blood-money on his Platens and extravagant living.
Meantime Ernest Augustus’s lawful spouse, the Duchess Sophia, was left
behind at Herrenhausen to carry on the government of the duchy, and,
what was more difficult, to keep in order the unruly cubs, her sons, who
were now growing up to man’s estate, and whose only point of resemblance
was the hatred they bore to one another in general and their father in
particular. They drank, gambled, and swore in the approved fashion of
the time, squandered their substance in riotous living, and quarrelled
and fought until the court of Hanover became like a bear-garden. The
Duchess Sophia must have had great trouble with her unruly brood, and it
is impossible to withhold pity from her, for she was fond of them.
Prince Augustus (“Gustchen”), her second son, was the first to fall into
disgrace. We find her writing: “Poor Gus is thrust out, and his father
will give him no more keep. I laugh in the day and cry all night about
it, for I am a fool with my children.” Maternal love was the soft side
of the great Duchess’s character. For the rest, she was no doubt glad to
be rid of Ernest Augustus and Madame Platen for a while. The latter had
made herself so aggressive of late, and raised so many breezes in her
quarrels with Sophie Dorothea, that she must have ruffled even the
Duchess’s serene philosophy. Sophia, too, was greatly interested in
affairs in England at this time. Her first cousin, Charles II., was
recently dead, and his brother, James II., had ascended his uneasy
throne. Sophia heard of Monmouth’s ill-starred rebellion, of King
James’s unwise rule and the rising tide against Popery, of William of
Orange’s intrigues, and these things absorbed her to the exclusion of
lesser annoyances. She paid little or no attention to her
daughter-in-law, Sophie Dorothea, who, also forsaken by her husband,
remained alone at Hanover; for George Louis had now marched to Hungary
to make war on the Turks, with the soldiers ordered from Hanover and
Celle to assist the Emperor. When the campaign came to a close, George
Louis went to join his father at Venice without returning to Hanover.
Ernest Augustus then bethought himself of Sophie Dorothea, who was
having a dull life at Hanover shut up with her stern mother-in-law.
Ernest Augustus had a tender spot in his heart for his niece, and
perhaps he had a twinge of conscience about spending all her money on
Madame Platen without giving her any of the fun; perhaps, too, he
thought it was time that she and her husband should come together again.
They had not met for nearly a year, and had parted in anger. So he sent
General Ilten, who was in his suite, back to Hanover with instructions
to escort the Princess to Venice. Sophie Dorothea was delighted with the
prospect of the change; she packed up her prettiest dresses and jewels,
and taking with her Madame Ilten, the Mistress of the Robes, and
Eléonore Knesebeck, her lady-in-waiting, she set forth at once. She
arrived in Venice just before the carnival.
Sophie Dorothea was now in her nineteenth year, and every year seemed to
add to her beauty. She had warm French blood in her veins, and her
spirits rose to overflowing at this opportunity of seeing the world; it
was her first experience of foreign life, and she threw herself into the
pleasures of the carnival with a zest that delighted her uncle and
slightly shocked the prim Mistress of the Robes. Yet Sophie Dorothea’s
gaiety was innocent enough; it was merely the expression of a young
girl’s delight, and a rebound after having been shut up so long with her
grim mother-in-law.
Ernest Augustus, whose taste for pleasure was somewhat dulled by time,
was so pleased at the keenness with which his daughter-in-law enjoyed
everything, and the praises he heard on all sides of her wit and beauty,
that he decided to give her a further treat and take her to Rome for the
Easter festivities. Madame Ilten was unable to accompany the Princess,
as her duties as Mistress of the Robes compelled her to return to the
Duchess Sophia at Hanover, but Eléonore Knesebeck went in attendance.
Prince George Louis did not travel to Rome with his wife, some trifling
difficulty about a point of etiquette arose, he seized it as an excuse,
and went to Naples instead.
While she was at Rome Sophie Dorothea met the Marquis de Lassaye, and
about their short acquaintance much has been written which has no
foundation in fact. Lassaye was a personage. He had served with
distinction in the Imperial army against the Turks, and, when the
campaign was over, journeyed to Italy like Prince George Louis; he may
have travelled with him. He was a French nobleman, wealthy, and
brilliant, and exceedingly given to amours and adventures. Brunet, in
his edition of the _Correspondence of the Duchess of Orleans_, writes of
him: “The life of the Marquis de Lassaye was filled with adventures
romantic enough to form the substance of a most improbable novel”; and
the _Biographie Universelle_ says he was “well known by reason of his
birth, his wit, his marriages, his law suits, but still more by an
uninterrupted series of love affairs, which occupied the greater portion
of an extremely lengthy career”. This gay Lothario died in 1738, at the
age of eighty-seven, without having experienced any misfortunes, or, as
he happily expressed it, “without having unpacked his goods”.
The fame of the Marquis de Lassaye was at its zenith when he threw
himself across the path of Sophie Dorothea in Rome, and, if we may
believe his word, for we have no other evidence, he promptly seized the
opportunity to make love to her. Some fifty years later, before he ended
his days in his castle of Lassaye, he made a collection of everything he
had written, or was supposed to have written,[25] and had it privately
printed by his own press in his castle. In this compilation he inserted
thirteen love-letters, which he asserts that he wrote to Sophie Dorothea
when she was in Italy; but none of them are dated, and all are the vague
rubbish which in those days formed the stock-in-trade of gallantry. They
are couched in extravagant expressions of devotion, but are singularly
unconvincing. If we may believe his letters, there was a flirtation
between the Princess and the Marquis, Eléonore Knesebeck acting as a
go-between; the affair was discovered, broken off, and the Princess was
admonished, and Lassaye forced to quit Rome. The letters are not worth
repeating in full, but the last one he alleges that he wrote to the
Princess will serve as a specimen of the rest:—
“I do not desire that you should run the risk of ruining yourself by
keeping up relations with me: it is better for me to die and for you to
live less unhappily. Stop, then, writing to a man who always brings
misfortunes in his train, and whose fates are unpropitious. I have
almost lost the habit of sleeping, and am scarcely able to support
myself. Why have I been born with such a sensitive heart? Why was I
destined to be always unhappy? Suffering seems to be my only lot in the
world. Life is a burden to me, and in dying I should be able to secure
your peace and happiness. Farewell, dear Princess; I can no longer bear
the grief that overwhelms me.”
-----
Footnote 25:
This collection is called _Mémoires de Monsieur de Lassaye_. It bears
also the better title of _Recueils de différentes choses_, for the
parts of which it is composed are very varied and disconnected—love
affairs, philosophy, ethics, satire, reflections on various matters,
and letters, all jumbled up together. Lassaye had only a few copies of
this collection printed for himself and a select circle of friends, so
copies are extremely rare and cannot be bought. Herr Edward Bodemann
managed to stumble across one in a second-hand bookshop in Paris, and
to him I am indebted for the perusal of the correspondence in the
original French.
-----
That Lassaye ever sent these letters to the Princess, or even wrote
them, is extremely improbable. The letters did not see the light until
fifty years later, when the woman whom he slandered was dead, and unable
to refute his accusations, and it is unlikely he made copies when he
wrote them, and kept them all that time. To what end? It would have been
more to the point if he could have published the letters he alleges he
received from Sophie Dorothea, but his audacity stopped short at the
point of forgery. He was an exceedingly vain and garrulous person, fond
of boasting of his conquests with the fair sex, and, if we may believe
him, half the princesses of Europe had capitulated to his fascinations.
The high rank, beauty, and romantic history of Sophie Dorothea made him
desirous of adding her to his list, and he deliberately exaggerated a
passing acquaintance to suit his purpose. The truth seems to be this.
Sophie Dorothea was flattered by the homage of the brilliant Frenchman.
She may perhaps have coquetted with him a little after the fashion of
the time—that is to say, she may have listened to his pretty speeches
and laughed at his sallies. But when she saw he was likely to put a
false construction upon her amiability, and take advantage of her good
nature, she nipped the acquaintance in the bud and dismissed him
abruptly. Lassaye, with all the pettiness of a small mind, cherished
against the Princess a grudge for the blow she had inflicted upon his
vanity, and revenged himself by composing bogus letters.
After a few months in Italy, Sophie Dorothea returned to Hanover, and
settled down again to her routine life. On March 16, 1687, she gave
birth to a daughter, who was christened Sophie Dorothea, after her
mother, and who, in years to come, married her cousin, the King of
Prussia, and became mother of Frederick the Great.
[Illustration:
THE ALTE PALAIS, HANOVER.
_From a photograph by the Author._
]
It would seem that the birth of a daughter instead of a son was in some
sense a disappointment to the ducal family of Hanover, though why poor
Sophie Dorothea should be blamed it is not easy to see. The event did
not tend to increase her prestige, as the birth of George Augustus had
done; and her husband, who was now home again, became more indifferent
and colder than ever. In these two children, for she bore no more,
Sophie Dorothea found all the happiness she experienced in her unhappy
married life. Some of this unhappiness, it must be admitted, she
deliberately provoked. Though she did not love her husband, she was
furiously jealous of his amours with other women, and resented the
presence of his favourites in proximity to herself. The little
Hanoverian court was a hot-bed of intrigue, a nest of envy, hatred,
malice, and all uncharitableness, and the more we look into it the more
we can understand the philosophic policy of the Duchess Sophia, who
ignored and kept aloof from it all. No doubt she chose the better part,
though it seems a somewhat unnatural one, for interference would have
been useless, and by abstaining she preserved her dignity. Sophie
Dorothea was different. At the outset she made an enemy of Madame
Platen, and met gibe with gibe and intrigue with intrigue. Of course she
had the worst of the duel; it was like a fight between a hawk and a
dove. She was no match for the older woman, who thwarted her at every
turn, and grew daily in authority and arrogance. About this time Ernest
Augustus advanced Platen to the title of Count, and his wife blossomed
into a Countess. Her power was now so great that even the stoutest of
her foes feared to provoke her, and lesser obstacles were swept out of
her path.
As an illustration may be quoted the case of the abigail Ilse. Court
ladies in those days had often in their household an attendant who
filled the middle distance between the servants and the mistress. Ilse
occupied this ambiguous position with the Countess Platen, and a very
hard time she must have had. She was young and fairly good-looking, and
probably not too strict in her views of right and wrong. Duke Ernest
Augustus was in the habit of consulting his Prime Minister’s wife far
more frequently than his Prime Minister, and whiled away many an hour in
her congenial society at Monplaisir. As a rule he sent her notice of his
intention of coming to see her, but one fine afternoon, as he drove back
from Herrenhausen, he thought he would pay the Countess a surprise
visit. He entered Monplaisir by the garden door unannounced. The
Countess was absent, but under the trees was the abigail Ilse, whom
Ernest Augustus had never seen. The Duke could not resist the temptation
of a few words with a young and pretty woman, and insisted that the
abigail should not withdraw. Ilse remained, and was laughing and talking
with the Duke, when suddenly the Countess Platen came upon them like a
whirlwind. The Countess curbed her rage for the moment, and confined
herself to an expression of astonishment that Ilse should have had the
impertinence to thrust her company upon the august presence of His
Highness. She bade the abigail begone, and then, no doubt, gave Ernest
Augustus a sound rating on his lack of dignity and good taste.
Whatever may have taken place between these exalted personages, one
thing is certain; Ilse was dismissed from Countess Platen’s service
with every mark of ignominy. Nor did her punishment end here. The
following week Ernest Augustus went to Osnabrück, and the moment his
back was turned the Countess Platen clapped the unfortunate abigail
into the common jail, or rather that part of it which was a “spinning
house”. The fact that a woman without any trial should be dragged off
to prison on a trumped-up charge shows how powerful Countess Platen
was in Hanover; her word seems to have been as good as the Duke’s sign
manual. Ilse was kept in prison some time, and then “dry drummed” (a
sort of seventeenth-century rough music) out of Hanover as a woman of
loose character, dangerous to public morals. The girl found herself
without the walls, friendless and penniless. In this plight she
appealed to Ernest Augustus, but that volatile Prince had already
forgotten her, or was afraid to arouse the ire of Countess Platen. He
sent her a small present of money, and cynically counselled her to
give Hanover a wide berth in future. Ilse then made her way to Celle,
and laid her sad case before the Duchess Eléonore, no doubt
expatiating upon Countess Platen’s enormities and her intrigues
against Sophie Dorothea. The Duchess of Celle, after sifting the facts
of the case, took Ilse into her employment, and found her an asylum in
the castle. Countess Platen resented the Duchess’s action as a
personal insult to herself, and she was the more enraged against her
and Sophie Dorothea. So the quarrel grew.
At the court of Hanover, as we have seen, there were plots and
counterplots; in addition to the women’s squabbles, father was arrayed
against son and son against father, and brother against brother. Among
the unruly sons of Ernest Augustus, Sophie Dorothea had her friends, and
the young princes for the most part hated Countess Platen quite as much
as she did. Of them all, Maximilian was the most ungovernable, and had
an unlimited capacity for getting into scrapes. Though well preserved,
Countess Platen was by this time past her first youth, and she had
recourse to divers means to heighten her charms, milk baths, artificial
roses, and cosmetics. The rouge-pot, like dram-drinking, grows with
habit, and the lady’s cheeks became so ruddy that they were the byword
of the court. There was a quaint conceit that the water peas were boiled
in was an infallible test of rouge, and the monkeyish Max, having a
grudge against the Countess, procured a bottle of this decoction from
the kitchen, and on the occasion of a court ceremonial, when she
appeared in full war paint, he squirted some in her face, with the
result that she had to retire amid the suppressed titters of the
assembly. The Countess, boiling with rage, complained to Ernest
Augustus, and the offender was severely reprimanded and locked up in his
room for many days. The punishment was not a heavy one, but it served to
engender bad blood between the father and son, and after he was
liberated we find Maximilian intriguing with his two brothers, Augustus
and Charles, against his eldest brother, George Louis, and his father.
Ernest Augustus’s great desire was to add to the lustre of the House of
Brunswick-Lüneburg. To this end he sought to unite the duchies of Celle
and Hanover, and he established primogeniture. He made his eldest son
heir to all lands and territory, and only allotted to his other sons
moderate sums of money whereby to support their dignity. This policy was
the opposite to that pursued by his ancestors and by most of the German
princes of his time, who in their wills were in the habit of dividing
their territory among all their sons. It is no wonder, therefore, that
the younger princes of Brunswick-Lüneburg disliked the innovation,
protested noisily against it, and intrigued for its overthrow. The
Duchess Sophia also disliked it. The disaffection was this time nipped
in the bud by the vigilance of Countess Platen, who tried to implicate
Sophie Dorothea in the plot, but nothing could be proved against her. It
is possible that she had a hand in it, for the terms of her marriage
settlement, which practically cut her off from inheriting territory, and
left her at the mercy of her husband, were so unfavourable that she
might be pardoned if she tried to alter them to her advantage.
These things did not tend to improve Sophie Dorothea’s position at
Hanover. Her best friend, Ernest Augustus, suspected her of intriguing
against him, and George Louis disliked her the more because he thought
she wished to upset the marriage settlement; except Eléonore Knesebeck,
she had not a friend to whom she could turn. It is hard to imagine a
more difficult position, but her cup of suffering was not yet full.
Mention has been made of the unsuccessful efforts of Countess Platen to
enamour George Louis again with her sister, Madame Bussche, who had now
returned to Hanover a widow. It was the policy of Countess Platen to
widen the breach between George Louis and Sophie Dorothea by every
possible means, and, knowing the young Princess’s jealous disposition,
she felt that the most efficacious way to prevent a reconciliation would
be to engage the Prince in another intrigue. Madame Bussche having
ceased to charm, she must find some one else. The lady whom she chose as
a decoy was Ermengarda Melusina Schulenburg,[26] the daughter of an
illustrious and noble house, who might have been capable of better
things. But Ermengarda Melusina, not being over-endowed with this
world’s goods, was anxious to settle herself honourably if she could,
dishonourably if no other chance offered, according to the custom of the
time. Schulenburg had recently arrived at Hanover, and had stayed at
Monplaisir. Countess Platen took her up, presented her at court, and
established her there as a lady-in-waiting. Ermengarda Melusina seemed
of a docile and confiding disposition, and Countess Platen thought she
would find in her a willing tool; but though she made no pretensions to
wit, and was slow of speech, she was shrewd, more shrewd than her
chaperone gave her credit. In appearance she was the opposite to Sophie
Dorothea; her features were of the heavy German type, and she was of
gigantic height (the Duchess Sophia called her “the tall Malkin”); but,
_en revanche_, she was only nineteen, had good features, large blue
eyes, fair hair, and a fine figure. The Countess introduced her to
George Louis on his return from Hungary. As he was short himself, he
admired tall women, and was much struck by Ermengarda Melusina’s large
and placid charms, and began to pay her marked attention. He was seen
with her everywhere, riding with her in the hunting-field, seated next
to her at the play, and leading her out at the dance. His wife was
openly neglected for this new rival.
-----
Footnote 26:
Many years later Duchess of Kendal.
-----
To do Emengarda Melusina justice, she was not spiteful nor aggressive,
nor desirous in any way to injure Sophie Dorothea. At first she hung
back from the glittering prospect before her, but being very poor, and,
as subsequent history proves, very avaricious, she did not hold out
long, and then surrendered at discretion.
About this time the Countess Platen consoled Madame Bussche for the loss
of her power over the Prince of Hanover by marrying her in second
wedlock to General Weyhe, who must indeed have been a bold man, for
Bussche had only been dead a few months, and it was well known that his
death had been accelerated by his wife’s extravagance, bad temper, and
misconduct. Probably Weyhe was induced to marry the widow on the
strength of promises of promotion.
Countess Platen resolved to make her sister’s nuptials the occasion of
proclaiming, more or less informally, George Louis’s infatuation for
Schulenburg, and with a refinement of cruelty she tried to induce Sophie
Dorothea to be present. Though Sophie Dorothea always treated Countess
Platen with coldness, that lady maintained the semblance of respect for
the rank, if not the person, of the Princess, and she waited upon her to
invite her to the wedding festivities, and in the course of the
interview dropped many hints and veiled taunts wrapped up in the cloak
of flattery. Sophie Dorothea had the good sense to keep her temper. She
declined the invitation on the plea of ill-health, but said that she
would send Eléonore Knesebeck to represent her. The wedding was
celebrated with much splendour at General Weyhe’s country residence a
few miles from Hanover. After the ceremony there was a banquet, and
dancing followed in the evening. The Prince of Hanover honoured the
occasion with his presence, and so did his brothers, who, though they
hated Countess Platen, were ready to go anywhere to enjoy themselves;
but neither the Duchess Sophia nor the Princess was present. Eléonore
Knesebeck was there to represent the latter. The great personages at the
feast, far eclipsing the bride and bridegroom, were Ermengarda Melusina,
decked in jewels, and her lover, George Louis, who paid her so much
attention that every one noticed it, and, when he led her forth to the
dance, Weyhe and his wife had to take a second place at their own
festivities. When Knesebeck returned to the palace she found Sophie
Dorothea waiting up for her in great agitation; nor was she content
until she had had a recital of the whole affair, and learned that she
was openly flouted in the capital of the duchy.
From this time George Louis’s amour with Ermengarda Melusina assumed a
recognised phase. She was sumptuously lodged, and he visited her daily,
and spent most of his time with her. In this he was only imitating his
father, and, when all was said and done, Schulenburg was much less
offensive than Platen. Unlike her mother-in-law, Sophie Dorothea writhed
and raged under her husband’s infidelity, but she could obtain no
redress. The Duchess Sophia, true to her policy, declined to interfere,
and to appeal to Ernest Augustus was useless; in her despair she turned
to Celle, and made complaint to her parents. From her mother, who was
helpless, she got both love and sympathy; from her father she received
neither. A change had come over the spirit of George William’s dream,
for Bernstorff had plied him with many tales to the detriment of his
wife and daughter. So he bade Sophie Dorothea to keep her place, imitate
the example of her estimable mother-in-law, and ignore such trifles, and
he further exhorted her to be more amenable to her husband, and not to
give way to temper. Thus repulsed in the quarter where she looked for
help, the unhappy Princess knew not where to turn; she was friendless
and alone, unguided and unaided, ready to seize at any means of avenging
her wounded pride. At this juncture her evil genius came upon the scene
in the person of Philip Christopher, Count Königsmarck.