The obsequious Duke of Zell was bewildered by the visions of greatness presented to his mind by his clever sister-in-law. With ready lack of honesty he consented to break off the match between Sophia Dorothea and her lover, and to bestow her hand upon the careless prince for whom it was now demanded by his mother. The latter returned to Hanover perfectly satisfied with the work of that night and morning.
The same satisfaction was not experienced by the Duchess Eleanora. When she came to learn the facts, she burst forth in expressions of grief and indignation. The marriage which had now been definitely broken, had been with her an affair of a mother’s heart. It had not been less an affair of a young girl’s heart with Sophia Dorothea. Duke Anton Ulrich of Wolfenbüttel came in person to Zell, to ask the fulfilment of the promise of her hand to his son. On learning that the alleged promise had been broken, he left Zell with the utmost indignation; and romance, at least, says of Königsmark, that he too, had left it with a feeling of sorrow that Sophia Dorothea was to be sacrificed to such an unworthy person as George Louis. It was a pitiable case! There were three persons who were to be rendered irretrievably wretched, in order, not that any one might be rendered happy, but that a man without a heart might be made a little more rich in the possession of dirt. The acres of Zell were to bring misery on their heiress, and every acre was to purchase its season of sorrow.
No entreaty could move the duke.[1] In his dignity he forgot the father: and the prayers and tears of his child failed to touch the parent, who really loved her well, but whose affection was dissolved beneath the fiery heat of his ambition. He was singularly ambitious; for the possible effect of a marriage with George Louis was merely to add his own independent duchy of Luneburg to the dominions of Hanover. His daughter, moreover, detested her cousin, and his wife detested her sister-in-law; above all, the newly accepted bridegroom, if he did not detest, had no shadow, nor affected to have any shadow of respect, regard, or affection for the poor young victim who was to be flung to him with indecent and unnatural disregard of all her feelings as daughter and maiden. Sophia Dorothea’s especial distaste for George Louis was grounded not only in her knowledge of his character, but also of his want of respect for her mother, of whom he always spoke in contemptuous terms. Sophia Dorothea’s inclinations, her father said, he would never constrain; but when this seemed to give her some hope of release, her father observed that a good daughter’s inclinations were always identical with those of her parents. She had a heart to listen to, she thought. She had a father whom she was bound to obey, he said—and said it with terrible iteration. Her aversion is reported to have been so determined that, when the portrait of her future lord was presented to her, she flung it against the wall with such violence that the glass was smashed, and the dismounted diamonds were scattered over the room.
The matter, however, was urged onward by Sophia of Hanover; and in formal testimony of the freedom of inclination with which Sophia Dorothea acted, she was brought to address a formal letter to the mother of her proposed husband, expressive of her obedience to the will of her father, and promissory of the same obedience to the requirements of her future mother-in-law. It is a mere formal document, proving nothing but that it was penned for the assumed writer by a cold-hearted inventor, and that the heart of the copier, subdued by sickness, was far away from her words. This document is in the British Museum. During the time that intervened before George Louis arrived at Zell to take his bride to Hanover, Sophia Dorothea seemed to have passed years instead of weeks. It was only when her mother looked sadly at her that she contrived painfully to smile. She even professed a sort of joyful obedience; but when the bridegroom dismounted at her father’s gate, Sophia Dorothea fainted in her mother’s arms.
After a world of misery and mock wooing, crowded into a few months, the hateful and ill-omened marriage took place at Zell on the 21st of November, 1682. The bride was sixteen, the bridegroom twenty-two. Of the splendour which attended the ceremony court historiographers wrote in loyal ecstasy and large folios, describing every character and dress, every incident and dish, every tableau and trait, with a minuteness almost inconceivable, and a weariness saddening even to think of. They thought of everything but the heart of the principal personage in the ceremony—that of the bride. They could describe the superb lace which veiled it, and prate of its value and workmanship; but of the worth and woe of the heart which beat beneath it, these courtly historians knew no more than they did of honesty. Their flattery was of the grossest, but they had no comprehension of ‘the situation.’ To them all mortals were but as ballet-dancers and pantomimists; and if they were but bravely dressed and picturesquely grouped, the describers thereof thought of nothing beyond. The bride preserved her mournful dignity on that dark and fierce November day. Tradition says that there was a storm without as well as sorrow within; and that the moaning of the wind and strange noises in the old castle seemed as if the elements and the very home of the bride’s youth sympathised with her present and her future destiny.
CHAPTER IV.
THE HOUSEHOLD OF GEORGE AND SOPHIA.
Reception of Sophia at the Court of Ernest Augustus—Similar position of Marie Antoinette and Sophia—Misfortune of the abigail Use—Compassionated by the Duchess of Zell—Intrigues and revenge of Madame von Platen—A new favourite, Mademoiselle Ermengarda von der Schulenburg—A marriage fête, and intended insult to the Princess Sophia—Gross vice of George Louis.
It is said that a certain becomingness of compliment was paid to the bride in an order given to Katharine von Busche to absent herself from the palace when the bride was brought home. The mistress, it is alleged, deferred her departure till it was too late, and from a window of Madame von Platen’s bedchamber the sisters witnessed the sight of George Louis dismounting from his horse, and hastening to help his wife to descend from the carriage.
Madame von Platen, as she gazed, may have thought that her sister’s influence was over. If she did, Madame von Busche felt convinced of the contrary. The latter took her departure, for a season. The other prepared herself to join in the splendid court festivities held in honour of the event by the command of Ernest Augustus. Sophia Dorothea, subdued by past suffering, was so gentle that even Madame von Platen would have found it difficult to have felt offended with her sister’s rival.
For a few months after Sophia Dorothea’s husband had taken her to Hanover, she experienced, perhaps, a less degree of unhappiness than was ever her lot subsequently. Her open and gentle nature won the regard even of Ernest Augustus. That is, he paid her as much regard as a man so coarsely minded as he was could feel for one of such true womanly dignity as his daughter-in-law.