At the age of twelve, soon after her confirmation, Johanna was sent as maid of waiting to the court of the Countess of Solms Roedelheim. The countess was partially insane. "She imagined I was a little dog and often beat me," Johanna writes. "Whenever we rode over the flooded meadows, she would push me out of the carriage, bidding me swim." Prayer was the lonely, unhappy child's only solace. The countess grew so violent that, at last, Johanna was transferred to the court of the Duchess of Holstein. She accompanied the stepdaughter of the duchess on her bridal journey to Austria, and, in spite of her ever nagging conscience, had an agreeable time.
"The drums and trumpets sounded beautiful on the water," says she; "only I could not help being worried to think I was going to a popish country. Whenever we stopped at an inn I sought a solitary place, fell on my knees and prayed God to prevent my good fortune from working injury to my salvation."
The Duchess of Holstein loved Johanna like a daughter. Johanna laments her own fancied worldliness in girlhood: "I practised myself in all kinds of accomplishments, so that I excelled in these vanities. They were dear and pleasing to me. I had also a real liking for splendid dress because it became me well. People considered me Godly because I liked to read and pray and went to church and could always give a good account of the sermon. I even knew what had been preached upon the same text the preceding year. I was looked upon as a Godly maiden, but I was not really a true follower of Christ."
Nevertheless, Johanna was not worldly enough to suit the bridegroom a gay young lieutenant-colonel to whom her friends had affianced her. He broke the engagement because he complained, "though pretty and well-born, she is altogether too pious."
Johanna was glad to be free. She writes: "I always felt that among the nobility there were many evil habits that were quite contrary to Christ's teaching lust, drinking, and many idle words for which an account must be given to God."
Upon a journey by a slow boat to the baths at Emser, a great thing happened in Johanna's life. Among the passengers, she noticed a studious looking man with a pleasant voice and refined manners. She writes:
"By God's special providence, he seated himself by me, and we fell into a spiritual discourse which lasted some hours, so that the four miles from Frankfort to Mainz seemed to me only a quarter of an hour's journey. We talked without ceasing, and it seemed just as if he read my heart. Then I gave vent to all concerning which I had hitherto lived in doubt. Indeed, I found in this new friend what I had despaired of ever finding in any man in the world. Long had I looked around me to discover whether there really were in the world any true doers of God's word, and it had been a great stumbling block to me that I had found none. But when I perceived in this stranger such great penetration that he could see into the very recesses of my heart, also such humility, gentleness, holy love and earnestness to point the way of truth, I felt that I desired, above all things, to give myself wholly up to God." The man whom Johanna met on the boat was Jacob Spener. Johanna's conversion was complete. She withdrew from court gayeties, dressed simply, lived plainly. At first she was remonstrated with, then ridiculed unmercifully, and, finally, let alone.
Johanna's marriage with Johann Peterssen was most happy. Together they worked for God and for what they believed to be his cause Quietism. Persecution, poverty, sorrows were theirs. But these crosses, though hard to bear, they believed to be God's revelation of Himself. An apocalyptic vision, too, they declared, had been vouchsafed them. Sustained by the unseen bread of faith, they lived to a great age, true to one another, to their fellowmen, and to God.
Very different is our next picture, taken from the court of Hanover. From the moment of her arrival, Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia and Princess of the Palatinate, had felt herself at home in Germany. But her youngest daughter, though born in Germany, was never at home there. Sophie, Electress of Hanover, was thoroughly English. Mistress of five languages, she loved only English, and, from choice, would have spoken that alone. She knew more English history than the English ambassadors accredited to her husband's court. To gain, through her remote claim, the English throne either for herself or her descendants, Sophie of Hanover all her life saved, and gathered, and schemed, and relentlessly crushed human obstacles. At the age of eighty, her old eyes gleaming, she said: "I could sink into the grave perfectly happy if I knew that the words 'Queen of Great Britain and Ireland' would be inscribed upon my tombstone." She died within sight of the promised land, only a few weeks before Anne Stuart.
An intellectual woman, an energetic woman, a virtuous woman, using the word "virtue" in its narrower sense of chastity, a wonderfully able woman, was Sophie of Hanover. An amiable woman, a lovable woman, a generous woman, except occasionally for policy's sake, she most certainly was not. But the hardness of her life should in some measure extenuate the hardness of her heart.