His respect for her, however, may be best appreciated by the companionship to which he sometimes subjected her. He more frequently saw her in society with the immoral Madame von Platen than in the society of his own wife. Ernest looked gratefully upon her as the pledge of the future union of the two duchies under one duke. On this account, even if she had possessed less attractive qualities, he would have held Sophia Dorothea in great esteem. A certain measure of esteem Ernest experienced for all who had in any way furthered his scheme. His mistress, Madame von Platen, had always pretended to think favourably of the scheme, and admiringly of the wisdom of the schemer; in return for which, Ernest made his mistress’s husband a baron, and afterwards a count. Let us employ the higher dignity. In the beginning, George Louis seemed fairly in love with his wife; there appeared a promise of increased felicity when the first child of this marriage was born at Hanover, on the 30th of October 1683; his father conferred on him the names of George Augustus, he expressed pleasure at having an heir, and he even added some words of regard for the mother. The second child of this marriage was a daughter, born in 1687. She was that Sophia Dorothea who subsequently married the King of Prussia. In tending these two children the mother found all the happiness she ever experienced during her married life. Soon after the birth of the daughter, George Louis openly neglected and openly exhibited his hatred of his wife. He lost no opportunity of irritating and outraging her, and she could not even walk through the rooms of the palace which she called her home without encountering the abandoned female favourites of her husband, whose presence beneath such a roof was the most flagrant of outrages. Her very sense of helplessness was a great grief to her. All that her own mother could do when her daughter complained to her of the presence near her of her husband’s mistress, was to advise her to imitate, on this point, the indifference of her mother-in-law, and make the best of it!
The Countess von Platen kept greater state in Hanover than Sophia Dorothea herself. In her own palatial mansion two dozen servants helped her helplessness. Every morning she had ‘a circle,’ as if she were a royal lady holding a court. Her dinners were costly banquets; her ‘evenings’ were renowned for the brilliancy of her fêtes and the reckless fury of gambling. Sophia Dorothea, whose talent for listening and for putting apt and sympathetic questions when the conversation required it, gave considerable satisfaction to her clever, but somewhat pedantic mother-in-law, failed to at all satisfy the Countess von Platen. This lady had tried to bring the princess into something like sympathy with herself, but she found only antipathy. She detested Sophia Dorothea accordingly, and she obtained permission to invite her sister, Madame von Busche, to return to Hanover.
The prime mover of the hatred of George Louis for his consort was the Countess von Platen, and this fact was hardly known to George Louis himself. There was one thing in which that individual had a fixed belief: his own sagacity and, it may be added, his own imaginary independence of outward influences. He was profound in some things; but, as frequently happens with persons who fancy themselves deep in all, he was very shallow in many. It was often impossible to guess his purpose, but quite as often his thoughts were as clearly discernible as the pebbles in the bed of a transparent brook. The Countess von Platen saw through him thoroughly, and she employed her discernment for the furtherance of her own detestable objects.
Sophia Dorothea had, however, contrived to win the good opinion of her mother-in-law, and also the warm favour of Ernest Augustus. The latter took her with him on a journey he made to Switzerland and Italy. It was on this journey that her portrait was taken, at Venice, by Gascar, who, when in England, had painted, among others, that of Louise de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth. This portrait of Sophia Dorothea is still in existence in Germany. The beauty of the lady represented is so remarkable, it is said, as to justify the admiration she generally excited. This admiration sometimes went beyond decent bounds. One French adorer, the celebrated and eccentric Marquis de Lassay, was impudent enough, not only to address declarations of love to her, but subsequently, in his ‘Memoirs,’ to publish his letters. It has not yet occurred to the ever-busy autograph fabricators on the continent to forge the supposed replies of the princess.
After the return of Ernest Augustus and his daughter-in-law to Hanover, the praise of Sophia Dorothea was ever the theme which hung on the lips of the former, and such eulogy was as poison poured in the ears of Madame von Platen. She dreaded the loss of her own influence over the father of George Louis, and she fancied she might preserve it by destroying the happiness of the wife of his son. Her hatred of that poor lady had been increased by a circumstance with which she could not be connected, but which nearly concerned the Duchess of Zell.
Ernest Augustus used occasionally to visit Madame von Platen at her own residence, with more than enough of publicity. He was more inclined to conversation with her than with his prime-minister, her husband; and she had wit enough, if not worth, to give warrant for such preference. Now and then, however, the ducal sovereign would repair to pay his homage to the lady without previous notice being forwarded of his coming; and it was on one of these occasions that, on arriving at the mansion, or in the gardens of the mansion of his minister’s spouse, he found, not the lady of the house, who was absent, but her bright-eyed, ordinary-featured, and quick-witted handmaid, who bore a name which might have been given to such an official in Elizabethan plays by Ford or Fletcher. Her name was ‘Use.’
Ernest Augustus found the wit of Use much to his taste; and the delighted abigail was perfectly self-possessed, and more brilliant than common in the converse which she sustained for the pleasure of the sovereign, and her own expected profit. She had just, it is supposed, come to the point of some exquisitely epigrammatic tale, for the prince was laughing with his full heart, and her hand in his, and the ’tiring maiden was as radiant as successful wit and endeavour could make her, when Madame von Platen interrupted the sparkling colloquy by her more fiery presence. She affected to be overcome with indignation at the boldness of a menial who dared to make merry with a sovereign duke; and when poor Use had been rudely dismissed from the two presences—the one august and the other angry—the Countess von Platen probably remonstrated with Ernest Augustus, respectfully or otherwise, upon his deplorable want of dignity and good taste.
Revenge certainly followed, whether remonstrance may or may not have been offered. Ernest Augustus went to sojourn for a time at one of his rural palaces, and he had no sooner left his capital than the countess committed the terrified Use to close imprisonment in the common gaol. The history of little German courts assures us that this exercise and abuse of power were not at all uncommon with the ‘favourites’ of German princes. Their word was ‘all potential as the duke’s,’ and doubtless the Countess von Platen’s authority was as good warrant for a Hanoverian gaoler to hold Use in custody as if he had shut up that maid, who offended by her wit, under the sign manual of Ernest Augustus himself.
Use was kept captive, and very shabbily treated, until the Countess von Platen had resolved as to the further course which should be ultimately adopted towards her. She could bring no charge against her, save a pretended accusation of lightness of conduct and immorality scandalous to Hanoverian decorum. Under this charge she had her old handmaid drummed out of the town; and if the elder Sophia heard the tap of the drums which accompanied the alleged culprit to the gates, we can only suppose that she would have expelled the countess to the same music. But, in the first place, the wives of princes were by no means so powerful as their favourites; and secondly, the friend of the philosophical Leibnitz was too much occupied with the sage to trouble herself with the affairs which gave concern to the Countess von Platen.
Use found herself outside the city walls, friendless, penniless, with a damaged character, and nothing to cover it but the light costume which she had worn in the process of her march of expulsion to the roll of ‘dry drums.’ When she had found a refuge, her first course was to apply to Ernest Augustus for redress. The prince, however, was at once oblivious, ungrateful, and powerless; and, confining himself to sending to the poor petitioner a paltry eleemosynary half-dozen of gold pieces, he forbade her return to Hanover, counselled her to settle elsewhere, and congratulated her that she had not received even rougher treatment.