KÖNIGSMARK AT COURT.
Various accomplishments of Count Philip Christopher Königsmark--The
early companion of Sophia Dorothea--Her friendship for him--An
interesting interview--Intrigues of Madame von Platen--Foiled in
her machinations--A dramatic incident--The unlucky glove--Scandal
against the honour of the princess--A mistress enraged on
discovery of her using rouge--Indiscretion of the princess--Her
visit to Zell--The Elector’s criminal intimacy with Madame von
der Schulenburg--William the Norman’s brutality to his wife--The
elder Aymon--Brutality of the Austrian Empress to ‘Madame
Royale’--Return of Sophia, and reception by her husband.
The estimation in which Count Philip Christopher von Königsmark was
held at the Court of Hanover was soon manifested, by his elevation to
the post of Colonel of the Guards. He was the handsomest colonel in
the small electoral army, and passed for the richest. His household,
when thoroughly established, in 1690, consisted of nine-and-twenty
servants; and about half a hundred horses and mules were stalled in
his stables. His way of life was warrant for the opinion entertained
of his wealth, but more flimsy warrant could hardly have existed, for
the depth of a purse is not to be discovered by the manner of life of
him who owns it. He continued withal to enchant every one with whom he
came in contact. The spendthrifts reverenced him, for he was royally
extravagant; the few people of taste spoke of him encouragingly, for
at an era when little taste was shown, he exhibited much both in his
dress and his equipages. These were splendid without being gaudy. The
scholars even could speak with and of him without a sneer expressed or
reserved, for Philip Christopher was intellectually endowed, had read
more than most of the mere cavaliers of his day, and had a good memory,
with an understanding whose digestive powers a philosopher might have
envied. He spelt, however, and he wrote little better than his grooms.
He was not less welcome to the soldier than the scholar, for he had had
experience in ‘the tented field,’ and had earned in the ‘imminently
deadly breach’ much reputation, without having been himself, in the
slightest degree, ‘illustriously maimed.’ Königsmark was as daring in
speech as in arms. It is said of him that when George Louis in crowded
court once asked him why he had quitted the Saxon service, Königsmark
replied, ‘It moved me to anger to see a prince poison the life and
happiness of his lovable young wife, by his connection with an impudent
and worthless mistress!’ The whole audience gaped with astonishment,
and the speech was reported in many a ball-room. But ball-rooms also
re-echoed with the ringing eulogiums of his gracefulness, and his witty
sayings are reported as having been in general circulation; but they
have not been strong enough to travel by the rough paths of time down
to these later days. He is praised, too, as having been satirical,
without any samples of his satire having been offered for our opinion.
He was daringly irreligious, for which free-thinkers applauded him as
a man of liberal sentiments, believing little, and fearing less. He
was pre-eminently gay, which, in modern and honest English, means that
he was terribly licentious; and such was the temper of the times, that
probably he was as popular for this characteristic as for all the other
qualities by which he was distinguished, put together.
There was nothing remarkable in the fact that he speedily attracted
the notice of Sophia Dorothea. She may, without fault, have remembered
with pleasure the companion of her romping youth; and have ‘wished him
well and no harm done,’ as Pierre says. He was not a mere stranger;
and the two met, just as the husband of Sophia Dorothea had publicly
insulted her by ostentatiously parading his attachment and his bad
taste for women, no more to be compared with her in worth and virtue
than Lais with Lucretia. Up to this time, the only confidantes of her
secret sorrows were her mother and her faithful von Knesebeck. She had
repulsed the affected sympathy of the Countess von Platen; and had
concealed her feelings, when her jealousy was stirred by allusions
to the countess’s sister and to Ermengarda von der Schulenburg. The
Countess von Platen, mature of age, cast admiring eyes on Königsmark.
It is asserted, that the count had scarcely been made Colonel of the
Guards when the Countess von Platen fixed upon him as one of the
instruments by which she would ruin Sophia Dorothea, and relieve George
Louis of a wife whose virtues were a continual reproach to him.
The princess had been taking some exercise in the gardens of the
palace, returning from which she met her little son, George Augustus,
whom she took from his attendant, and with him in her arms began to
ascend the stairs which led to her apartments. Her good will was
greater than her strength, and Count Königsmark happened to see
her at the moment when she was exhibiting symptoms of weakness and
irresolution, embarrassed by her burthen, and not knowing how to
proceed with it. The count at once, with ready gallantry, not merely
proffered, but gave his aid. He took the young prince from his mother,
ascended the stairs, holding the future King of England in his arms,
and at the door of the apartment of Sophia Dorothea again consigned him
to maternal keeping. They tarried for a few brief moments at the door,
exchanging a few conventional terms of thanks and civility, when they
were seen by the ubiquitous von Platen, and out of this simple fact she
is supposed to have gradually worked the subsequent terrible calamity
which may be said to have slain both victims, for Sophia Dorothea was
only for years slowly accomplishing death, which fell upon the cavalier
so surely and so swiftly.
This incident was reported to Ernest Augustus (Mon Sieur, as the
countess used to call him) with much exaggeration of detail, and
liberal suggestion not warranted by the facts. The conduct of the
princess was mildly censured as indiscretion, that of the count as
disloyal impertinence; and, thereto, a mountain of comment seems to
have been added, and a misty world of hints, which annoyed the duke
without convincing him.
Foiled in her first attempt to ruin Sophia Dorothea, von Platen
addressed herself to the task of cementing strict friendship with the
count; and he, a gallant cavalier, was nothing loth, nought suspecting.
Of the terms of this friendly alliance little is known. They were only
to be judged of by the conduct of the parties whom that alliance bound.
A perfect understanding appeared to have been established between them;
and the Countess von Platen was often heard to rally the count upon
the love-passages in his life, and even upon his alleged admiration of
Sophia Dorothea. What was said jokingly, or was intended to seem as if
said jokingly, was soon accepted by casual hearers as a sober, and a
sad as sober, truth. The countess referred often to his visits paid to
Sophia Dorothea as ‘rendezvous’; but at these, Fräulein von Knesebeck
was (as she subsequently affirmed) present from first to last; and two
other ladies-in-waiting, pages, women, and George Louis’ own servant,
Soliman (a Turk), had free and frequent ingress and egress.
This first step having been made, no time was lost in pursuing the
object for which it had been accomplished. At one of those splendid
masquerades, in which Ernest Augustus especially delighted, Königsmark
distinguished himself above all the other guests by the variety, as
well as richness, of his costume, and by the sparkling talent with
which he supported each assumed character. He excited a universal
admiration, and--so it was said by the Countess von Platen--in none
more than in Sophia Dorothea. This may have been true, and the poor
princess may possibly have found some oblivion for her domestic trials
in allowing herself to be amused with the exercise of the count’s
dramatic talent. She honestly complimented him on his ability, and on
the advantages which the fête derived from his presence, his talent,
and his good-nature. Out of this compliment the countess forged another
link of the chain whereby she intended to bind the princess to a ruin
from which she should not escape. At this time the countess is said
to have hated the handsome Königsmark as much as she had previously
admired him. He had met her liberal advances with disregard, or had
disregarded her after reciprocating them. In either case, the offence
was deadly.
The next incident told is more dramatic of character, perhaps, than
any of the others. The countess had engaged the count in conversation
in a pavilion of the gardens in the Electoral Palace, when, making
the approach of two gentlemen an excuse for retiring, they withdrew
together. The gentlemen alluded to were George Louis and the Count von
Platen; and these entering the pavilion which had just been vacated,
the former picked up a glove which had been dropped by the countess.
The prince recognised it by the embroidery, and perhaps by a crest,
or some mark impressed upon it, as being a glove belonging to his
consort. He was musingly examining it, when a servant entered the
place, professedly in search of a glove which the princess had lost. On
some explanation ensuing, it was subsequently discovered that Madame
von Weyhe, the sister of the Countess von Platen, had succeeded in
persuading Prince Maximilian to procure for her this glove, on pretext
that she wished to copy the pattern of the embroidery upon it, and
that the prince had thoughtlessly done so, leaving the glove of Madame
von Weyhe in its place. But this, which might have accounted for its
appearance in the pavilion, was not known to George Louis, who would
probably in such case have ceased to think more of the matter, but that
he was obligingly informed that Count Königsmark had been before him in
the pavilion where the glove was found; been there, indeed, with the
excellent Countess von Platen, who acknowledged the fact, adding, that
no glove was on the ground when she was there, and that the one found
could not have been hers, inasmuch as she never wore Netherland gloves
--as the one in question was--but gloves altogether of different make
and quality. Königsmark had been there, and the glove of the Princess
Sophia Dorothea had been found there, and this German specimen of _Mrs.
Candour_ knew nothing beyond.
Thenceforth, George Louis was not merely rude and faithless to his
wife, but cruel in the extreme--the degrading blow, so it was alleged,
following the harsh word. The Elector of Hanover was more just than his
rash and worthless son: he disbelieved the insinuations made against
his daughter-in-law. The Electress was less reasonable, less merciful,
less just, to her son’s wife. She treated her with a coolness which
interpreted a belief in the slander uttered against her; and when
Sophia Dorothea expressed a wish to visit her mother, the electoral
permission was given with an alacrity which testified to the pleasure
with which the Electress of Hanover would witness the departure of
Sophia Dorothea from her court.
Sophia Dorothea, as soon as she descended at the gates of her father’s
residence, found a mother there, indeed, ready to receive her with
the arms of a mother’s love, and to feel that the love was showered
upon a daughter worthy of it. Not of like quality were the old duke’s
feelings. Communications had been made to him from Hanover, to the
effect that his daughter was obstinate, disobedient, disrespectful to
the Elector and Electress, neglectful of her children, and faithless
in heart, if not in fact, to their father. The Duke of Zell had been,
as he thought, slow to believe the charges brought against his child’s
good name, and had applied to the Elector for some further explanation.
But poor Ernest Augustus was just then perplexed by another domestic
quarrel. His son, the ever troublesome Prince Maximilian, having long
entertained a suspicion that the Countess von Platen’s denial of the
light offence laid to her charge, of wearing _rouge_, was also a
playful denial, mischievously proved the fact one day, by not very
gallantly ‘flicking’ from his finger a little water in which peas had
been boiled, and which was then a popularly mischievous test to try the
presence of _rouge_, as, if the latter were there, the pea-water left
an indelible _fleck_ or stain upon it. At this indignity, the Countess
von Platen was the more enraged as her denial had been disproved.
She rushed to the feet of the Elector, and told her complaint with
an energy as if the whole state were in peril. The Elector listened,
threatened Prince Maximilian with arrest, and wished his family were as
easy to govern as his electoral dominions. He had scarcely relieved
himself of this particular source of trouble, by binding Prince
Maximilian to his good behaviour, when he was applied to by the Duke of
Zell on the subject of his daughter. He angrily referred the duke to
three of his ministers, who, he said, were acquainted with the facts.
Now these ministers were the men who had expressly distorted them.
These worthy persons, if report may be trusted, performed their wicked
office with as wicked an alacrity. However the result was reached, its
existence cannot be denied, and its consequences were fatal to Sophia
Dorothea. The Electress Sophia is said to have at last so thoroughly
hated her daughter-in-law, as to have entered partly into these
misrepresentations, which acquired for her the temporary wrath of her
father. But of this enmity of her mother-in-law the younger Sophia
does not appear to have suspected anything. Sophia Dorothea, at all
events, bore her father’s temporary aversion with a wondering patience,
satisfied that ‘time and the hour’ would at length do her justice.
The duke’s prejudice, however, was rather stubborn of character,
and he was guilty of many absurdities to show, as he thought, that
his obstinacy of ill-merited feeling against his own child was not
ill-founded. He refused to listen to her own statement of her wrongs,
in order to show how he guarded himself against being unduly biassed.
The mother of the princess remained her firmest friend and truest
champion. If misrepresentations had shaken her confidence for a moment,
it was _only_ for a moment. She knew the disposition of Sophia Dorothea
too well to lend credit to false representations which depicted her
as a wife, compared with whom Petruchio’s Katherine would have been
the gentlest of Griseldas. As little did she believe--and to the
expression of her disbelief she gave much indignant force of phrase--as
little did she believe in the suggestions of the ministers of the
Elector that the familiar terms which, as they alleged, existed between
the Electoral Princess and Count Königsmark were such as did wrong to
her husband George Louis. Those judges of morality had jumped to the
conclusion that youth and good looks were incompatible with propriety
of conduct.
The worst that could have been alleged against Sophia Dorothea
at this period was, that some letters had passed between her and
Count Königsmark, and that the latter had once or twice had private
audience of the Electoral Princess. Whatever may be thought of such
things here in England, and in the present age, they have never been
accounted of in Germany but as common-place circumstances, involving
neither blame nor injury. A correspondence between two persons of the
respective ranks of the Electoral Princess and the count was not an
uncommon occurrence; save that it was not often that two such persons
had either the taste or capacity to maintain such intercourse. As to
an occasional interview, such a favour, granted by ladies of rank to
clever conversational men, was as common an event as any throughout
the empire; and as harmless as the interviews of Leonora and that very
selfish personage, the poet Tasso. The simple fact appears to have
been that, out of a very small imprudence--if imprudence it may be
called--the enemies of Sophia Dorothea contrived to rear a structure
which should threaten her with ruin. Her exemplary husband, who
affected to hold himself wronged by the alleged course adopted by his
consort, had abandoned her, in the worst sense of that word. He had
never, in absence, made her hours glad by letters, whose every word
is dew to a soul athirst for assurances of even simple esteem. In his
own household his conversation was seldom or never addressed to his
wife; and, when it was, never to enlighten, raise, or cheer her. She
_may_ have conversed and corresponded with Königsmark, but no society
_then_ construed such conversation and correspondence as crimes; and
even had they approached in this case to a limit which would have
merited censure, the last man who should have stooped to pick up a
stone to cast at the reputation of his consort was that George Louis,
whose affected indignation was expressed from a couch with Mademoiselle
von der Schulenburg at his side, and their very old-fashioned (as to
look, but not less illegitimate as to fact) baby, playing, in much
unconsciousness of her future distinction, between them.
It was because Sophia Dorothea had not been altogether tamely silent
touching her own wrongs, that she had found enemies trumpet-tongued
publishing a forged record of her transgressions. When Count von Moltke
had become implicated in the little domestic rebellion of Prince
Maximilian, some intimation was conveyed to him that, if he would
contrive, in his defence, to mingle the name of Sophia Dorothea in the
details of the trumpery conspiracy, so as to attach suspicion to such
name, his own acquittal would be secured. The count was a gallant man,
refused to injure an unoffending lady, and was beheaded; as though he
had conspired to overthrow a state, instead of having tried to help a
discontented heir in the disputed settlement of some family accounts.
The contempt of Sophia Dorothea, on discovering to what lengths the
intimacy of George Louis and Ermengarda von der Schulenburg had gone,
found bitter and eloquent expression. Where an angry contest was to be
maintained, George Louis could be eloquent too; and in these domestic
quarrels, not only is he said to have been as coarse as any of his own
grooms, but, at least on one occasion, to have proceeded to blows. His
hand was on her throat, and the wife and mother of a King of England
would have been strangled by her exasperated lord, had it not been for
the intervention of the courtiers, who rushed in, and, presumedly,
prevented murder. To such a story wide currency was given; and, if not
exact to the letter, neither can it be said to be without foundation.
The circumstances which led Sophia Dorothea to formally complain of
the treatment she experienced at her husband’s hands were these. One
evening, after being one of a group in the open air, witnessing an
eclipse of the moon, and listening to Leibnitz’s explanations, Sophia
Dorothea (attended by Fräulein Knesebeck and Madame Sassdorf) returned
towards the castle. The ladies missed their way in the dark, but they
found themselves at last at the door of a newly-erected building, which
Sophia Dorothea entered, despite Frau Sassdorf’s entreaties to the
contrary. She equally disregarded the same lady’s urgent entreaties not
to enter a room at the end of the ante-chamber where the ladies were
standing together. Sophia Dorothea opened the door of the room, and
there beheld Mademoiselle von der Schulenburg on a couch; one hand in
that of George Louis, who with the other was rocking a sleeping baby
(the future Countess of Chesterfield) in a cradle.
After the scene of unseemly violence which followed, and after Sophia
Dorothea’s recovery from a consequent illness, she made her indignant
complaint to her husband’s parents. ‘Old Sophia’ censured her son, and
found fault with Sophia Dorothea’s rashness. Ernest Augustus intimated
that all princes had their little weaknesses, and that it was her duty
to condone her husband’s.
This treatment drove Sophia Dorothea to Zell; but the wrath of her
husband and the intrigues of von Platen made of that residence anything
but a refuge. The duke refused to give permission to his daughter to
remain longer in his palace than was consistent with the limit of an
ordinary visit. She petitioned most urgently, and her mother seconded
her prayer with energy as warm, that for the present she might make of
Zell a temporary home. Her angry father would not listen to the request
of either petitioner; on the contrary, he intimated to his daughter,
that if she did not return to Hanover by a stated period, she would
be permanently separated from her children. On the expression of this
threat, she ceased to press for leave to remain longer absent from
Hanover; and when the day named for her departure arrived, she set out
once more for the scene of her old miseries, anticipation of misery yet
greater in her heart, and with nothing to strengthen her but a mother’s
love, and to guide her but a mother’s counsel. Neither was able to save
her from the ruin under which she was so soon overwhelmed.
Her return had been duly announced to the Court of Hanover, and so much
show of outward respect was vouchsafed her as consisted in a portion of
the Electoral family repairing to the country residence of Herrnhausen
to meet her on her way, and accompany her to the capital. Of this
attention, however, she was unaware, or was scornfully unappreciative,
and she passed Herrnhausen at as much speed as could then be shown by
Electoral post-horses. It is said that her first intention was to have
stopped at the country mansion, where the Electoral party was waiting
to do her honour; that she was aware of the latter fact, but that she
hurried on her way for the reason that she saw the Countess von Platen
seated at one of the windows looking on to the road, and that, rather
than encounter _her_, she offended nearly a whole family, who were more
nice touching matters of etiquette than they were touching matters of
morality. The members of this family, in waiting to receive a young
lady, against whom they considered that they were not without grounds
of complaint, were lost in a sense of horror which was farcical, and of
indignation at violated proprieties which must have been as comical to
look at as it no doubt was intense. The farcical nature of the scene is
to be found in the fact, that these good people, by piling their agony
beyond measure, made it ridiculous. There was no warrant for their
horror, no cause for their indignation; and when they all returned to
Hanover, following on the track of a young princess, whose contempt
of ceremony tended to give them strange suspicions as to whether she
possessed any remnant of virtue at all, these very serene princes and
princesses were as supremely ridiculous as any of the smaller people
worshipping ceremony in that never-to-be-forgotten city of Kotzebue’s
painting, called Krähwinkel.
When Sophia Dorothea passed by Herrnhausen, regardless of the company
who awaited her there, she left the persons of a complicated drama
standing in utter amazement on one of the prettiest of theatres.
Herrnhausen was a name given to trim gardens, as well as to the edifice
surrounded by them. At the period of which we are treating the grounds
were a scene of delight; the fountains tasteful, the basins large,
and the water abundant. The maze, or wilderness, was the wonder of
Germany, and the orangery the pride of Europe. There was also, what
may still be seen in some of the pleasure-grounds of German princes,
a perfectly rustic theatre, complete in itself, with but little help
from any hand but that of nature. The seats were cut out of the turf,
the verdure resembled green velvet, and the chances of rheumatism must
have been many. There was no roof but the sky, and the dressing-rooms
of the actors were lofty bowers constructed near the stage; the whole
was adorned with a profusion of gilded statues, and kept continually
damp by an incessant play of spray-scattering water-works. The
_grand tableau_ of rage in this locality, as Sophia Dorothea passed
unheedingly by, must have been a spectacle worth the contemplating.
Perhaps she had passed the more scornfully as George Louis was there,
who, of all men, must at this time have been to her the most hateful.