At the Court of Berlin, the daughter of Sophia Dorothea, the King, and consequently all the Prussian fashionable world, assumed the deepest mourning, as for a Queen of England so nearly allied to the Queen of Prussia. The King of Great Britain took this natural circumstance for an insult; but he was obliged to bear, albeit with blaspheming impatience, what he could not resent. The simple royal order for the funeral was that the Duchess of Ahlden should be buried in a grave dug for her on the banks of the Aller. The soil was dug into, over and over again, but the water rushed in and mocked the attempts of the workmen. Meanwhile, the body of Sophia Dorothea lay in a plain leaden coffin in the castle and no one knew what to do with it, for fear of offending the King. After several weeks had passed, a few strong men carried it down to a cellar, and, covering it over with a cart-load or two of sand, left it till further gracious orders should arrive from over the water.
At the end of six months there was a stir in the royal stud stables at Zell. Four of the King’s horses were taken thence and were ridden over to Ahlden. The chief of the men in charge there showed the royal order by which he was commissioned to take up the body from beneath the heap of sand and carry it back to Zell. And this was to be done without any ceremony whatever.
Accordingly, at midnight the coffin was dragged from under the sand, hoisted into a suitable vehicle, and it was unceremoniously jolted over the rough roads till it reached the chief church in the old ducal city of Zell. The necessary workpeople were ready. They carried the plain leaden coffin down to the vault below, and without any circumstance of prayer or outward respect, they cast it into a corner; and there it still lies, without even a name on the rough lead to indicate whose sad burthen of life is deposited within.
Her royal husband in England simply notified in the London Gazette that a Duchess of Ahlden had died at her residence on the date above named; but he did not add that he had thereby lost a wife, or his children lost a mother. No intimation was given of the relationship she held towards him or them. The quality of his affection was illustrated by his explosion of rage when he heard that his daughter, with the Court of Prussia, had gone into mourning for the death of her mother. The husband of Sophia Dorothea became of gayer humour than usual after her death. After receiving intelligence of that event, the royal widower went to see the Italian comedians in the Haymarket act ‘Il Mercante Prodigo,’ or ‘Harlequin Prodigal Merchant.’ He liked this sort of entertainment so well, that, a few nights later, he commanded the performance of ‘Pantalone, Barone di Sloffenburgo,’ at the King’s Theatre. On Christmas Eve, the newspapers recorded the fact that Prince Waldeck (who had come over with despatches in November) had taken leave of his Majesty and had returned to Hanover. Therewith seemed to have come the end of a long, and dark, and mournful history.
In the list of the persons of note and distinction in Great Britain and Ireland, and of the Foreign Princes who died in the year 1726—published in the Daily Post in January 1727, no record was made of the demise of Sophia Dorothea. On the other hand, there is an entry of a bereavement by which her husband, the King, had been afflicted, in the same mouth of November, namely, in the death of ‘Mr. Mahomet, valet de chambre to his Majesty.’
A story was current that Sophia Dorothea, on her death-bed, had summoned her husband, the King, to meet her at the great judgment seat of Heaven within a year. This summons was conveyed in a letter addressed by her to him, but it was not delivered to the King till after he had, in nervous restlessness, set out for Hanover.
On the night of the 2nd of June 1727, little Horace Walpole, then ten years old, was conducted by the King’s illegitimate daughter, Petronilla Melusina (Lady Walsingham) to the King himself, to kiss the royal hand as his Majesty passed on his way to sup (for the last time, as it proved) with Petronilla’s mother (the former von der Schulenburg, now Duchess of Kendal) the King’s old mistress. This presentation had been accorded to the prayer of the first minister’s wife, Horace Walpole’s mother.
On the following day, the 3rd of June, the King left England. On the night of that day week he died at Osnaburgh, aged sixty-seven years and thirteen days. The King had landed at Vaer, in Holland, on the 7th, and he travelled thence to Utrecht, by land, escorted by the Guards to the frontiers of Holland. On Friday, the 9th, he reached Dalden, at twelve at night, when he was apparently in excellent health. He partook of supper largely, and with appetite, eating, among other things, part of a melon, a fruit which has killed more than one emperor of Germany. At three the next morning he resumed his journey. According to the story to which allusion has just been made, the letter of Sophia Dorothea was then given to him. He read it, appeared shocked, and became ill. He was probably moved by something more than mere sentiment, for he had not travelled two hours when he was attacked by violent abdominal pains. He hurried on to Linden, where dinner awaited him; but, being able to eat nothing, he was immediately bled, and other remedies made use of. Anxious to reach Hanover, he ordered the journey to be continued with all speed. He fell into a lethargic doze in the carriage, and so continued, leaning on a gentleman in waiting who was with him in the carriage. To this attendant he feebly announced in French, ‘I am a dead man.’ He reached the episcopal palace at Osnaburgh at ten that night; was again bled in the arm and foot, but ineffectually; his lethargy increased, and he died about midnight.
The King’s mistress, the Duchess of Kendal, who had gone thither to meet him, tore her hair, beat her breast, and uttered loud cries of despair at this bereavement. She repaired to Brunswick and shut herself up, for three months, as the most afflicted of widows. Subsequently, she returned to her house near Isleworth. A raven was the last pet of this lady; and the familiarity of the two gave rise to the popular legend that George had promised to visit his old mistress, after death, if such circumstance were allowed, and that he was keeping his word in the shape of the much caressed bird in sables.
Even in her estrangement from her husband, Sophia Dorothea never uttered a word of complaint against him. She never failed to exhibit either mildness or dignity in her captivity: on the contrary, she manifested both; and Coxe says of her, in his ‘Memoirs of Walpole,’ that, ‘on receiving the sacrament once every week, she never omitted making the most solemn asseverations that she was not guilty of the crime laid to her charge.’ Her son (George II.) had a double fault in his father’s eyes, namely, his popularity, and, at one time, his love for his mother—whom he loved, we are told, as much as he hated his father. A pleasant household, a sorry hearth; mistresses resting their rouged cheeks on the monarch’s bosom, a wife in prison, and a son hating her oppressor, and loving, but not redressing, the oppressed. Had Sophia Dorothea survived her consort, her son, it is said, had determined to bring her over to England and proclaim her Queen-dowager. Lady Suffolk, the snubbed mistress of that son, expressed to Horace Walpole her surprise on going (in the morning after the intelligence of the death of George I. had reached England) to the new Queen, ‘at seeing, hung up in the Queen’s dressing-room, a whole-length of a lady in royal robes; and, in the bed-chamber, a half-length of the same person, neither of which Lady Suffolk had ever seen before. The prince had kept them concealed, not daring to produce them during the life of his father. The whole-length he probably sent to Hanover. The half-length I have frequently seen in the library of the Princess Amelia, who told me it was the property of her grandmother. She bequeathed it, with other pictures of her family, to her nephew, the Landgrave of Hesse.’