CHAPTER VII.
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.”
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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.
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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.
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Footnote 26:
Many years later Duchess of Kendal.
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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.