The Treaty of Wusterhausen was not yet known to Queen Sophie, to her
Father George, or to any external creature: but that open flinching, and
gradual withdrawal, from the Treaty of Hanover was too well known; and
boded no good to her pet project. Female sighs, male obduracies, and
other domestic phenomena, are to be imagined in consequence. "A grand
Britannic Majesty indeed; very lofty Father to us, Madam, ever since he
came to be King of England: Stalking along there, with his nose in the
air; not deigning the least notice of us, except as of a thing that
may be got to fight for him! And he does not sign the Double-Marriage
Treaty, Madam; only talks of signing it,--as if we were a starved
coach-horse, to be quickened along by a wisp of hay put upon the
coach-pole close ahead of us always!"--"JARNI-BLEU!" snuffles Seckendorf
with a virtuous zeal, or looks it; and things are not pleasant at the
royal dinner-table.
Excellenz Seckendorf, we find at this time, "often has his Majesty
to dinner:" and such dinners; fitting one's tastes in all points,--no
expense regarded (which indeed is the Kaiser's, if we knew it)! And in
return, Excellenz is frequently at dinner with his Majesty; where the
conversation; if it turn on England, which often happens, is more
and more an offence to Queen Sophie. Seckendorf studies to be polite,
reserved before the Queen's Majesty at her own table; yet sometimes he
lisps out, in his vile snuffling tone, half-insinuations, remarks on our
Royal Kindred, which are irritating in the extreme. Queen Sophie, the
politest of women, did once, says Pollnitz, on some excessive pressure
of that lisping snuffling unendurability, lose her royal patience
and flame out. With human frankness, and uncommonly kindled eyes,
she signified to Seckendorf, That none who was not himself a kind of
scoundrel could entertain such thoughts of Kings and gentlemen! Which
hard saying kindled the stiff-backed rheumatic soul of Seckendorf
(Excellenz had withal a temper in him, far down in the deeps); who
answered: "Your Majesty, that is what no one else thinks of me. That
is a name I have never permitted any one to give me with impunity." And
verily, he kept his threat in that latter point, says Pollnitz. [ii.
244.]
At this stage, it is becoming, in the nature of things, unlikely that
the projected Double-Marriage, or any union with England, can ever
realize itself for Queen Sophie and her House. The Kaiser has decreed
that it never shall. Here is the King already irritated, grown
indisposed to it; here is the Kaiser's Seckendorf, with preternatural
Apparatus, come to maintain him in that humor. To Queen Sophie herself,
who saw only the outside of Seckendorf and his Apparatus, the matter
doubtless seemed big with difficulties; but to us, who see the interior,
the difficulties are plainly hopeless. Unless the Kaiser's mind change,
unless many fixed things change, the Double-Marriage is impossible.
One thing only is a sorrow; and this proved an immeasurable one: That
they did not, that Queen Sophie did not, in such case, frankly give
it up: Double-Marriage is not a law of Nature; it is only a project
at Hanover that has gone off again. There will be a life for our
Crown-Prince, and Princess, without a marriage with England!-It is
greatly wise to recognize the impossible, the unreasonably difficult,
when it presents itself: but who of men is there, much more who of women
that can always do it?
Queen Sophie Dorothee will have this Double-Marriage, and it shall be
possible. Pour Lady, she was very obstinate; and her Husband was very
arbitrary. A rough bear of a Husband, yet by no means an unloving one; a
Husband who might have been managed. She evidently made a great mistake
in deciding not to obey this man; as she had once vowed. By perfect
prompt obedience she might have had a very tolerable life with the
rugged Orson fallen to her lot; who was a very honest-hearted creature.
She might have done a pretty stroke of female work, withal, in taming
her Orson; might have led him by the muzzle far enough in a private
way,--by obedience.
But by disobedience, by rebellion open or secret? Friedrich Wilhelm was
a Husband; Friedrich Wilhelm was a King; and the most imperative man
then breathing. Disobedience to Friedrich Wilhelm was a thing which, in
the Prussian State, still more in the Berlin Schloss and vital heart of
said State, the laws of Heaven and of Earth had not permitted, for any
man's or any woman's sake, to be. The wide overarching sky looks down on
no more inflexible Sovereign Man than him in the red-collared blue coat
and white leggings, with the bamboo in his hand. A peaceable, capacious,
not ill-given Sovereign Man, if you will let him have his way. But
to bar his way; to tweak the nose of his sovereign royalty, and
ignominiously force him into another way: that is an enterprise no
man or devil, or body of men or devils, need attempt. Seckendorf and
Grumkow, in Tobacco-Parliament, understand it better. That attempt is
impossible, once for all. The first step in such attempt will require to
be assassination of Friedrich Wilhelm; for you may depend on it, royal
Sophie, so long as he is alive, the feat cannot be done. O royal Sophie,
O pretty Feekin, what a business you are making of it!
The year 1726 was throughout a troublous one to Queen Sophie.
Seckendorf's advent; King George's manifestoing; alarm of imminent
universal War, nay sputters of it actually beginning (Gibraltar invested
by the Spaniards, ready for besieging, it is said): nor was this all.
Sophie's poor Mother, worn to a tragic Megaera, locked so long in the
Castle of Ahlden, has taken up wild plans of outbreak, of escape by
means of secretaries, moneys in the Bank of Amsterdam, and I know not
what; with all which Sophie, corresponding in double and triple mystery,
has her own terrors and sorrows, trying to keep it down. And now, in the
depth of the year, the poor old Mother suddenly dies. [13th November,
1726: _Memoirs of Sophia Dorothea, Consort of George I._ (i.
386),--where also some of her concluding Letters ("edited" as if by the
Nightmares) can be read, but next to no sense made of them.] Burnt out
in this manner, she collapses into ashes and long rest; closing so her
nameless tragedy of thirty years' continuance:--what a Bluebeard-chamber
in the mind of Sophie! Nay there rise quarrels about the Heritage of the
Deceased, which will prove another sorrow.
END OF BOOK V