Hitherto the world-tides, and ebbs and flows of external Politics, had,
by accident, rather forwarded, than hindered the Double-Marriage. In
the rear of such a Treaty of Hanover, triumphantly righting the European
Balances by help of Friedrich Wilhelm, one might have hoped this little
domestic Treaty would, at last, get itself signed. Queen Sophie did
hasten off to Hanover, directly after her husband had left it under
those favorable aspects: but Papa again proved unmanageable; the Treaty
could not be achieved.
Alas, and why not? Parents and Children, on both sides, being really
desirous of it, what reason is there but it should in due time come to
perfection, and, without annihilating Time and Space, make four lovers
happy? No reason. Rubs doubtless had arisen since that Visit of George
I., discordant procedures, chiefly about Friedrich Wilhelm's recruiting
operations in the Hanover territory, as shall be noted by and by: but
these the ever-wakeful enthusiasm of Queen Sophie, who had set her whole
heart with a female fixity on this Double-Marriage Project, had smoothed
down again: and now, Papa and Husband being so blessedly united in their
World Politics, why not sign the Marriage-Treaty? Honored Majesty-Papa,
why not!--"Tush, child, you do not understand. In these tremendous
circumstances, the celestial Sign of the BALANCE just about canting, and
the Obliquity of the Ecliptic like to alter, how can one think of little
marriages? Wait till the Obliquity of the Ecliptic come steadily to its
old pitch!"--
Truth is, George was in general of a slow, solemn, Spanish turn of
manners; "intolerably proud, too, since he got that English dignity,"
says Wilhelmina: he seemed always tacitly to look down on Friedrich
Wilhelm, as if the Prussian Majesty were a kind of inferior clownish
King in comparison. It is certain he showed no eagerness to get the
Treaty perfected. Again and again, when specially applied to by Queen
Sophie, on Friedrich Wilhelm's order, he intimated only: "It was a fixed
thing, but not to be hurried,--English Parliaments were concerned in it,
the parties were still young," and so on;--after which brief answer
he would take you to the window, and ask, "If you did not think the
Herrenhausen Gardens and their Leibnitz waterworks, and clipped-beech
walls were rather fine?" [Pollnitz, _ Memoiren,_ ii. 226, 228, &c.]
In fact, the English Parliaments, from whom money was so often demanded
for our fat Improper Darlingtons, lean Improper Kendals and other royal
occasions, would naturally have to make a marriage-revenue for this fine
Grandson of ours;--Grandson Fred, who is now a young lout of, eighteen;
leading an extremely dissolute life, they say, at Hanover; and by no
means the most beautiful of mortals, either he or the foolish little
Father of him, to our old sad heart. They can wait, they can wait! said
George always.
But undoubtedly he did intend that both Marriages should take effect:
only he was slow; and the more you hurried him, perhaps the slower. He
would have perfected the Treaty "next year," say the Authorities; meant
to do so, if well let alone: but Townshend whispered withal, "Better
not urge him." Surly George was always a man of his word; no treachery
intended by him, towards Friedrich Wilhelm or any man. It is very clear,
moreover, that Friedrich Wilhelm, in this Autumn 1725, was, and was like
to be, of high importance to King George; a man not to be angered by
dishonorable treatment, had such otherwise been likely on George's part.
Nevertheless George did not sign the Treaty "next year" either,--such
things having intervened;--nor the next year after that, for reasons
tragically good on the latter occasion!
These delays about the Double-Marriage Treaty are not a pleasing
feature of it to Friedrich Wilhelm; who is very capable of being hurt by
slights; who, at any rate, dislikes to have loose thrums flying about,
or that the business of to-day should be shoved over upon to-morrow. And
so Queen Sophie has her own sore difficulties; driven thus between
the Barbarians (that is, her Husband), and the deep Sea (that is, her
Father), to and fro. Nevertheless, since all parties to the matter
wished it, Sophie and the younger parties getting even enthusiastic
about it; and since the matter itself was good, agreeable so far
to Prussia and England, to Protestant Germany and to Heaven and
Earth,--might not Sophie confidently hope to vanquish these and other
difficulties; and so bring all things to a happy close?
Had it not been for the Imperial Shadow-huntings, and this rickety
condition of the celestial Balance! Alas, the outer elements interfered
with Queen Sophie in a singular manner. Huge foreign world-movements,
springing from Vienna and a spectre-haunted Kaiser, and spreading like
an avalanche over all the Earth, snatched up this little Double-Marriage
question; tore it along with them, reeling over precipices, one knew not
whitherward, at such a rate as was seldom seen before. Scarcely in
the Minerva Press is there record of such surprising, infinite and
inextricable obstructions to a wedding or a double-wedding. Time and
space, which cannot be annihilated to make two lovers happy, were here
turned topsy-turvy, as it were, to make four lovers,--four, or at the
very least three, for Wilhelmina will not admit she was ever the least
in love, not she, poor soul, either with loose Fred or his English
outlooks,--four young creatures, and one or more elderly persons,
superlatively wretched; and even, literally enough, to do all but kill
some of them.
What is noteworthy too, it proved wholly inane, this huge world-ocean of
Intrigues and Imperial Necromancy; ran dry at last into absolute nothing
even for the Kaiser, and might as well not have been. And Mother and
Father, on the Prussian side, were driven to despair and pretty nearly
to delirium by it; and our poor young Fritz got tormented, scourged, and
throttled in body and in soul by it, till he grew to loathe the light of
the sun, and in fact looked soon to have quitted said light at one stage
of the business.
We are now approaching Act Second of the Double-Marriage, where Imperial
Ordnance-Master Graf von Seckendorf, a Black-Artist of supreme quality,
despatched from Vienna on secret errand, "crosses the Palace Esplanade
at Berlin on a summer evening of the year 1726;" and evokes all the
demons on our little Crown-Prince and those dear to him. We must first
say something of an important step, shortly antecedent thereto, which
occurred in the Crown-Prince's educational course.