Women of the Teutonic Nations Part 16

Delving into the records of the court of Hanover, during the reign of Ernest Augustus and Sophie, is like working in a sewer; the worker is sickened by filth. A part of the time the electress escaped from the court's noxious atmosphere into the purer, higher, colder regions of philosophy. There was no courtier's flattery in the praise Leibnitz gave to Princess Sophie's intellectual ability.

But Sophie of Hanover by no means dwelt continuously on Alma's heights.

Much of the time she was down among the sewer filth, contemptuous of it always, but using it, for lack of more durable material, as a temporary foundation for the steps which she meant should lead her and hers up to the English throne. If Sophie of Hanover had been a different kind of person, a gentle, timid, pious woman, or a gay, pleasure-loving, l.u.s.t-responding woman, the two characteristic types of her age, Edward VII. would not be ruling in Great Britain to-day. Neither, for that matter, would the present German emperor, descended from the electress's daughter, the gifted Sophie Charlotte, be seated upon the throne of the Hohenzollerns.

The att.i.tude of the Electress of Hanover to her unhappy daughter-in-law Sophie Dorothea was unfortunate for both women. Poor little Sophie Dorothea! In pa.s.sing judgment upon her, the historians all seem to forget her extreme youth at the time of her marriage. Of this petted, spoiled, beautiful child of sixteen, even Thackeray says: "She was a bad wife;" and he sneers at her even while he is relating facts that should go far to justify her in any missteps she may have made in trying to escape from a boorish husband whom she found odiously cruel and selfish.

The girl lived in h.e.l.l; and she sought, through pa.s.sionate, disinterested love, to gain what to her seemed heaven.

Sophie Dorothea was half French. Her mother, Eleanor d'Olbreuze, one of the very few pure women connected with the court of Hanover in the eighteenth century, was a Frenchwoman of good family. Eleanor d'Olbreuze was legally married to Duke George William of Celle, elder brother of Ernest Augustus of Hanover, although the Electress Sophie did all in her power to prevent the marriage of her former fiance with the beautiful Frenchwoman. Sophie Dorothea was a brunette of the most perfect type, with vivid color and a charming rosebud mouth. Her neck, bust, and arms were beautiful. By nature she was happy, lively, witty, and affectionate.

On the morning of her sixteenth birthday, Sophie Dorothea awoke in her pretty yellow and white chamber with the pleasant consciousness of a happy day before her. Her betrothal to a neighboring young n.o.ble of the house of Wolfenb.u.t.tel was to be celebrated. The girl was not wildly in love with the youth accepted by her parents. But she was satisfied. She had known him all her life, and she liked him well enough, in neighborly, frank, girlish fas.h.i.+on.

It was somewhat late, for Sophie Dorothea was rather an indolent little princess. As she lay there dreaming, with her beautiful dark eyes wide open, her mother, pale and agitated, entered the chamber. The d.u.c.h.ess of Celle hurriedly informed her daughter that there had been a complete change of plans. Early that morning, after travelling all night in her haste, the Electress Sophie had arrived at the castle. It was the wish of the reigning house, the electress said, that Sophie Dorothea should marry her cousin, George Louis of Hanover, son of the Elector Ernest Augustus and his wife, Sophie. The proposed marriage with the Prince of Wolfenb.u.t.tel had therefore been hurriedly abandoned.

Now Sophie Dorothea knew her cousin George well. She hated and despised him. Fastidious to a degree, she called her cousin a lout, and declared amid a storm of tears and sobs that she would never marry him. Duke George William was called in to persuade or command his daughter. He came, bringing with him as a gift from the d.u.c.h.ess of Hanover a picture of George Louis set in diamonds. Sophie Dorothea did not receive this love token prettily. She threw it against the opposite wall with such force that the miniature was hopelessly smashed, and the precious stones were scattered on the floor.

But Sophie of Hanover gained her point, as she did always. The marriage was consummated, and the immense fortune of Sophie Dorothea was tightly secured to the reigning electoral house of Hanover. Sophie of Hanover never made a pecuniary mistake. In the present instance the wily electress figured so closely that little Sophie Dorothea was practically left without a penny.

The pretty, lively young bride found the court life of Hanover, with its interminable rules of etiquette, stupid and tiresome. Of her bridegroom even his mother said:

"Sophie Dorothea will find her match in him. A more obstinate, pigheaded boy than my son George never lived. If he has any brains at all they are surrounded by such a thick crust that n.o.body has ever been able to discover what is in them." He did not want to marry this girl, but was tempted by her ten thousand pounds a year.

Two children, a boy and a girl, were born to George Louis and Sophie Dorothea. The electress superintended the babies and interfered at every turn to thwart her daughter-in-law's wishes concerning them. The prince was harsh, cold, and sullen toward his young wife. The elector was always kind, but Sophie Dorothea found his conversation wearisome and his gallantry distasteful.

The beautiful little princess was very homesick. n.o.body cared. She was unutterably lonely. n.o.body cared. She was very dull. n.o.body tried to entertain her. Then Koenigsmark came. Koenigsmark, the das.h.i.+ng, Koenigsmark, the handsome, with whom she had played in childhood when he was a page in her father's palace. Koenigsmark cared. Koenigsmark loved her. In some respects, Koenigsmark may have been the villain some historians have painted him, but he was genuinely in love with his old playmate, now the neglected, unhappy wife of Prince George Louis of Hanover.

Into this, her first real love experience, Sophie Dorothea threw herself, body and soul. She writes to Koenigsmark:

"I belong so truly to you that death alone can part us. No one ever loved so strongly as I love you. Why am I so far from you? What joy to be with you, to prove by my caresses how I love and wors.h.i.+p you! If my blood were needed to ransom you from danger I would give it gladly. I cannot exist without seeing you. I lead a lingering life. I think of our joy when we were together and then of my weariness to-day. Ah, my darling, why am I not with you in battle? I would gladly die by your side. Once more, good-bye. I belong to you a thousand times more than to myself." The woman who wrote these pa.s.sionate words was a mother. In name, at least, though less well treated than her husband's mistresses, she was a wife. But she was also a starving woman, hungering and thirsting for expressed affection.

Koenigsmark and Sophie Dorothea planned an elopement. Discovery followed. Koenigsmark was secretly murdered by agents of old Countess Platen, one of the Elector Augustus's mistresses. Sophie Dorothea was consigned to the dreary castle of Ahlden a prisoner for life, and there she lived almost half a century. There, while her husband sat on the English throne, she ate her heart out, slowly. Her son grew up and became, after her death, George II. of England. Her daughter married the Crown Prince of Prussia and became the mother of Frederick the Great and of Wilhelmine, Princess of Baireuth.

Sophie Dorothea was constantly making plans to escape. But all such plans proved futile, for she was surrounded by spies. Her one true friend through life, her mother, died. Soon after, an official in whom she had placed implicit confidence betrayed her almost accomplished plan to escape and live quietly in a distant country. This last blow shattered her mind. She wrote one last, madly cursing letter to King George challenging him to meet her before a twelvemonth and a day at the judgment bar of G.o.d. A few days later she died of brain fever. A soothsayer had once told King George that he would not outlive his divorced wife a year. Therefore, the superst.i.tious king did his utmost to keep the captive in good health. Physicians were ordered to visit her frequently, and she was permitted daily exercise, both riding and walking, in the open air.

Soon after Sophie Dorothea's death, King George's health began to fail.

He started for his beloved Hanover. Just outside Osnabriick a folded paper was thrown into the royal carriage. It was Sophie Dorothea's last maledictory letter. After reading it the king fell down in a fit from the effects of which he died.

As every human emotion of love in princely marriage was crushed out by reasons of state policy, so religion was subjected entirely to expediency. When the Electress of Hanover was asked concerning her daughter, Sophie Charlotte: "Of what religion is the princess?" she replied: "The princess is of no religion, as yet. We are waiting to see what faith the man whom she marries may prefer her to profess." When it was decided that the Prince of Brandenburg should marry her it was found by the politicians that the princess "of no religion at all" suited him exactly. Sophie Charlotte remained true to her early training, or rather to her lack of training. She was a vigorous freethinker to the end of her days. She was much more worthy the name of philosopher than her mother. "She insists, always," wrote Leibnitz, her lifelong friend and admirer, "in knowing the Why of the Why." At Berlin, Sophie Charlotte held a genuinely intellectual court. She gathered around her the foremost scholars of the day. Where scholars.h.i.+p was concerned, the first Queen of Prussia ignored race, creed, and even social station. She cordially welcomed to the circle of her friends.h.i.+p any man or woman with brains. The queen had inherited the grace and tact of her grandmother, Elizabeth Stuart. She was immensely popular. Sophie Charlotte possessed an ever ready sense of humor. She dearly loved to set an infidel and a court chaplain arguing against each other. She delighted in doing things incongruous to the occasion. At her husband's magnificent coronation, during the most solemn and impressive moment, she calmly took a pinch of snuff, thereby drawing down on her careless head the displeasure of her royal consort. Up to the hour of her death, Sophie Charlotte jested.

When dying she is said to have declined religious consolation on the very true ground that she knew exactly what the parson would say, and it was, therefore, not worth while to trouble him. "My funeral will give the king a grand opportunity to enjoy a magnificent display," she whispered. It did. Splendor-loving Frederick buried his wife with the utmost pomp.

Sophie Charlotte left a son, afterward Frederick William I. of Prussia, who married unfortunate Sophie Dorothea's daughter, also named, for her mother; Sophie Dorothea. The world knows well through Carlyle and, also, though one-sidedly, through the memoirs of Wilhelmine, sister of Frederick the Great, the story of this union.

This second Sophie Dorothea was not a happy woman. The fate of her imprisoned mother weighed heavily upon her. Secretly, she corresponded with her mother, and did her best to set her free. Again, as in the case of the Electress of Hanover, England furnished the life ambition of a German princess. Sophie Dorothea ardently wished to effect a double marriage between her two children, Frederick and Wilhelmine, and the son and daughter of George II., then crown prince of England. Disappointment at the failure of this project, embittered and shortened her life.

The tall grenadiers, the royal cane and the parsimony of Frederick William and their effect upon his thoroughly subjugated family are well-known. The intense brotherly and sisterly love that existed between Frederick and Wilhelmine was cemented, verily, by a bond of affliction.

Hunger and blows were often the portion of these sensitive royal children. Wilhelmine writes of their "summer vacation":

"We had a most sad life then. We were awakened at seven every morning by the King's regiment, which exercised in front of the windows of our rooms on the ground floor. The firing went on incessantly, piff, puff, and lasted the whole morning. At ten we went to see our mother and accompanied her into the room next the King's, where we sat and sighed all the forenoon. Then came dinner time. The dinner consisted of six small, badly cooked dishes, which had to suffice for twenty-four persons, so that some had to be satisfied with the mere smell. At table nothing else was talked of but economy and soldiers. The Queen and ourselves, too unworthy to open our mouths, listened in humble silence to the oracles which were p.r.o.nounced. After dinner the King slept in his armchair for two hours, and we had to keep as still as mice until he awoke. Then we read with the Queen. When, at last, the King went to his tobacco parliament we were free for a little while."

That Frederick and his sister grew up, under this repressive system, into nothing worse than a pair of neurasthenics seems almost a miracle.

During the eighteenth century there were two distinct types of history-making men in Germany the Frenchified-German, fond of pageants and rich raiment, and the rugged, harsh, yet true-hearted, fighting men of the Dessauer stamp.

The Prince of Anhalt-Dessau was the field-marshal of Frederick William I. To Dessau the science of warfare owes an enormous debt. When a young man, this impetuous prince fell in love with the daughter of an apothecary named Fos. In spite of all obstacles of birth and wealth, he determined to marry the girl of his choice; and because he was, says Carlyle, "perhaps the biggest ma.s.s of inarticulate human vitality", certainly, one of the biggest then going about in the world, marry her he did. In spite of Dessauer's being, to quote Carlyle again, "a very whirlwind of a man," the marriage was most happy.

During the first half of the eighteenth century French practically superseded German as the language of polite society. The virile German language largely owes its rehabilitation to a woman, Luise Gottsched, wife of Johann Christopher Gottsched, the famous scholar. As usual, fame has been unjust: the husband has received all the credit, while the wife did all, or nearly all, of the work. Luise Gottsched was one of the brightest women of the eighteenth century. She wrote, exceedingly well.

But after her husband began his Dictionary of the German Language and his Model Grammar, Luise was obliged to do what a clever woman whose husband writes a dictionary is always obliged to do, drop all her own literary work to a.s.sist him. Morning, noon, and night, year in and year out, Luise Gottsched toiled at this verbal drudgery; and when she was sick, worn out at the age of forty-seven, her husband whined, publicly, because she did not always "answer pleasantly" when he called her from her invalid's couch to copy his interminable ma.n.u.scripts. She died at the age of fifty-nine. One happy time, though, Luise Gottsched had before she died. She saw Maria Theresa at Vienna. If the following extracts seem somewhat servile, it must be remembered that the letter was written in an age in which royalty wors.h.i.+p was a part of life. In fact, Luise Gottsched's delighted description is mainly valuable as a true reflection of the popular feeling about royalty in the eighteenth century. The glimpse it gives of that n.o.ble woman, Maria Theresa (1740-1780), is also interesting. The good empress's simple, friendly reception of the husband and wife, her divination of what this visit to Vienna meant in their narrow lives, her kindly desire that they should see all there was to see of interest these things are charmingly illuminative. They make one understand the enthusiastic shout of her Hungarian subjects: "We will die for our King, Maria Theresa." This is what Luise Gottsched wrote:

"To Fraulein Thomasius, of Troschenreuth and Widersberg, at Nurnberg.

"VIENNA, September 28, 1749.

"MY ANGEL:

"First, embrace me. I believe all good things should be shared with one's friends. Hence must I tell you that never, in all my life, have I had such cause to be joyfully proud as on this day. You will guess at once, I know, that I have seen the Empress. Yes, I have seen her, the greatest among women. She who, in herself, is higher than her throne. I have not only seen her, but I have spoken with her. Not merely seen her, but talked with her three quarters of an hour in her family circle.

Forgive me if this letter is chaotic and my handwriting uneven. Both faults spring from the overwhelming joy I feel in the two delights of this day the privilege of meeting the Empress and the pleasure of telling your Highness of the honor.

"This morning at ten we went to the palace. We took our places where Baron Esterhazy, who procured us admission, told us to stand. He supposed, as we did, that we, with the hundreds of others who were waiting, might be permitted to see her Majesty as she pa.s.sed through the apartment on her way to the Royal chapel. After half an hour we had the happiness of seeing the three Princesses go by. They asked the Court-mistress who we were. Then, on being told our names, they turned and extended their hands for us to kiss. The eldest Princess is about ten years old. As I kissed her hand, she paid me a compliment. She said she had often heard me highly spoken of. I was pleased, of course, and very grateful for her remarkable condescension. Forgive me if this sounds proud. Worse is to follow. I cannot tell of the incredible favor of these exalted personages without seeming to be vain. But you well know that I am not vain.

"About eleven o'clock, a man-servant, dressed in gorgeous livery, came and told us to follow him. He led us through a great many frescoed corridors and splendid rooms into a small apartment which was made even smaller by a Spanish screen placed across it. We were told to wait there. In a few moments, the Mistress of Ceremonies came. She was very gracious to us. In a little while, her Majesty entered followed by the three Princesses. My husband and myself each sank upon the left knee and kissed the n.o.blest, the most beautiful hand that has ever wielded a sceptre. The Empress gently bade us rise. Her face and her gracious manner banished all the timidity and embarra.s.sment we naturally felt in the presence of so exalted and beautiful a figure as hers. Our fear was changed to love and confidence. Her Majesty told my husband that she was afraid to speak German before the Master of that language. 'Our Austrian dialect is very bad, they say' she added.

"To which my man answered that, fourteen years before, when he listened to her address at the opening of the Landtag, he had been struck by the beauty and purity of her German. She spoke, on that occasion, he said, like a G.o.ddess.

"Then the Empress laughed merrily, saying, ''Tis lucky I was not aware of your presence or I should have been so frightened that I should have stopped short in my speech.' She asked me how it happened that I became so learned a woman. I replied, 'I wished to become worthy of the honor that has this day befallen me in meeting your Majesty. This will forever be a red-letter day in my life.'

"Her Majesty said, 'You are too modest. I well know that the most learned woman in Germany stands before me.' My answer to that was, 'According to my opinion, the most learned woman, not of Germany only, but of all Europe, stands before me as Empress.'

"Her Majesty shook her head. 'Ah, no,' she said, 'my familiar acquaintance with that woman forces me to say you are mistaken.'"

Maria Theresa's husband joined the group and chatted most affably. Some of the younger children were called in and properly reverenced. Then the empress asked the visitors if they would like to see her remaining babies, upstairs. Of course, the Gottscheds were enchanted at the thought. Following the mistress of ceremonies, they went upstairs "to the three little angels there," whom they found in the not exactly celestial act of "eating their breakfast under the care of the Countess Sarrau."

After kissing "the little, highborn hands," the happy visitors were conducted through the private rooms of the palace, "an honor," Frau Gottsched writes, ecstatically, "not vouchsafed to one stranger out of a thousand." Not the least pleasant part of the whole visit naturally was the return to the waiting room, now full, where all "congratulated them upon the unusual honor shown them."

Luise begs her friend, a bit insincerely perhaps, to "burn this letter and tell no one of its contents lest people may accuse us, hereafter, of being proud."

In the eighteenth century the peasants of Germany were fairly well off.

Some of the most cruel political disabilities of the peasant cla.s.s had been removed. Agriculture, in consequence, had made great strides. In the towns the condition of the workingwomen was about the same as in the seventeenth century. To escape man's l.u.s.t was still the main problem of any virtuous working girl who was unfortunate enough to possess a pretty face.

The chief diversion of rich and poor, alike, was the theatre. Acting was the first profession, except teaching, opened to German women. Dramatic art in Germany, when about to expire from sheer vulgarity, was saved by a woman. She died a martyr to the cause of purity in art.

Frederica Caroline Weissenborn was born in Reichenbach. Her father, a physician, was a man of Calvinistic sternness. Caroline had a lover, Johann Neuber, an actor. Her father, learning of his daughter's infatuation, determined to "whip it out of her." In those days all fathers whipped their grown-up daughters, and their wives too, if they felt like it. But Caroline did not propose to be whipped. She jumped from a two-story window and, with no bones broken, landed in a hedge.

Young Neuber, the actor, seems to have been strolling near the hedge that day, for he appeared promptly upon the scene and took Caroline to a neighboring town, where they were speedily married. Fate led the couple to Leipzig. Both Neuber and his wife played there. They became friends with the Gottscheds. Gottsched was deeply interested in the restoration of the German drama. Caroline Neuber was the one woman in the world to carry out, to improve and broaden, the pedant's plans. Upon Luise Gottsched, of course, fell the immense labor of translation and arrangement. The three worked enthusiastically. Neuber kept the accounts and did the marketing.

But the heart and soul of the new movement to improve the German stage was Caroline Neuber, keen-sighted, energetic, sympathetic. Caroline Neuber organized a theatrical troupe upon moral lines. .h.i.therto unknown in the history of the stage. All unmarried actresses of the troupe lived with her. She watched their conduct closely and insisted upon decorum.

The unmarried actors of the company were obliged to dine at her table.

No tavern temptations were to be put in their way. Madame Neuber began by presenting only cla.s.sic tragedies, but public demand forced her to alternate tragedy with farce. From Hamburg she wrote: "Our tragedies and comedies are fairly well attended. The trouble we have taken to improve taste has not been thrown away. I find here various converted hearts.

Persons whom I have least expected to do so have become lovers of poetry, and there are many who appreciate our orderly, artistic plays."

Of Caroline Neuber, Lessing says: "One must be very prejudiced not to allow to this famous actress a thorough knowledge of her art. She had masculine penetration, and in one point only did she betray her s.e.x. She delighted in stage trifles. All plays of her arrangement are full of disguises and pageants, wondrous and glittering. But, after all, Neuber may have known the hearts of the Leipzig burghers, and put these settings in to please them, as flies are caught with treacle."