Jan. 21.—Was persuaded by Mr. Garlike to go to an Italian opera in order to see the Queen. It was the first of the eight given by the King to the public at the time of the Carnival. The house is fine, and properly lighted. The royal box is in front, very wide, and reaches from the ceiling to the pit. It is also more lighted than the other boxes, which, added to its size and situation, enables every individual in the house to have a perfect view of the royal family. To this box are admitted no women except those of royal blood and their Grandes Maîtresses. But beside the King and Princes, it is open to many officers of the Court, all strangers, and the foreign Ministers. The King is a well-looking man, the Queen extremely beautiful. She is tall, finely-formed, her neck and shoulders particularly well-shaped, her hair light, and her features small and agreeable. She is about five-and-twenty. The prominent traits of her character, as I am told, are the most entire complaisance to every wish of the King, and the most excessive passion for dress and for dancing, particularly the waltz. She did not converse, but read the opera book all the evening. She was dressed in a purple satin round gown, drawn in the front like an old-fashioned chemise, with a flat back and long sleeves; nothing on her head but two or three bandeaus, and her hair lightly powdered.
Monsieur de Burrau, Minister from I forget what Court, accompanied me. I was engaged to go with his wife, but her illness prevented it. Two other ladies made acquaintance with me. The one was Madame de Grotthaus, a prettyish, talkative, silly woman, who addressed me in good English, and whose obligingness was as prompt as the confidence she chose to place in me; for in about five minutes she offered me, with many compliments, letters of recommendation to Vienna, and told me her particular fondness for the English arose in part from her having had ‘an inclination’ for a young man of that nation: ‘J’étais toute-prête à l’épouser; il était fort aimable, très lié avec le Prince de Galles, très riche; il a une belle terre près de Londres, son nom commence par un G—; mais enfin j’ai épousé un autre, ce militaire que vous voyez là, bon homme, tout-à-fait, qui fait tout ce que je veux.’ The opera is but indifferent; the scenery alone is to be admired. The singing and dancing are not above mediocrity. I did not, however, hear Marchetti, the first female singer, who is indisposed. The music did not do honour to the King’s taste, who is the person that chooses it. It was the Semiramide of Himmel, a German, and had been hissed at Naples. To me, who had heard that of Bianchi, it was particularly tiresome. The frequenters of the opera are doomed to hear it four times; for there are but two spectacles represented during the Carnival. There is no Italian opera except during these eight nights, so music, I suspect, cannot be very highly cultivated at Berlin.
Jan. 22.—Just as I was going to dinner, Madame de Haugwitz, the wife of the chief Minister, who introduced herself to me last night by an encomium on my dress, sent her tailor for the pattern of my gown, begging that this person, whom, in a note he showed me, she calls mon ami, would engage me to put it on, that he might see what a good effect it had. I think this intolerably free and easy, considering I am a perfect stranger.
Ten P.M.—I have just had a visit of two hours from Prince Augustus. He is taller and larger than Prince Adolphus, and much resembles the Prince of Wales. His hair is too scientifically and studiously dressed to be very becoming, but on the whole his exterior is to be admired. He appears to have a fund of conversation, and great fluency. His vanity is so undisguised that it wears the form of frankness, and therefore gives no disgust. I mentioned to him that I had heard of his excellence in singing, and he agreed that he possessed it without the least hesitation, adding, ‘I had the most wonderful voice that ever was heard—three octaves—and I do understand music. I practised eight hours a day in Italy. One may boast of a voice, as it is a gift of nature.’ Yet his vanity is so blended with civility and a desire to please, that I defy any person with a good heart to dislike it.
Mad. de Ritz, mistress to the late King, amassed a fortune of about eighty thousand louis. She was a woman of very mean birth; but induced the King, about a year before his death, to ennoble her,[14] and then appeared at Court, which gave great offence. The King had not been dead a quarter of an hour, when she was arrested, hurried to a fortress, there to be confined for life, and all her fortune, except an allowance of four thousand crowns a-year, confiscated and given to the poor. All this without a trial! I listened, and blessed dear England.
The Lutheran religion, which is that professed here, allows a man to marry two or more sisters in succession; and of this permission people often avail themselves, as well as of obtaining a divorce, if either party complain of incompatibility of temper, a most convenient and sweeping cause of separation. At this moment a pair, in the very first circle, are on the point of obtaining a divorce, to enable the lady to marry a young officer, and the gentleman his wife’s younger sister. A woman may retain an unimpeached character after an unlimited number of these separations. Yet the King and Queen give the best example possible.
The King of Prussia is supposed to be remarkably economical. When he came to the throne in 1797, there was not a guinea in the treasury, and it is now supposed that in five years it will be as full as at the death of the great Frederick. In a few years more, according to a calculation made, it will absorb all the current coin of the country.
Prince Augustus offered me a letter to the Duke of Weimar. He stayed so long that Mr. Arbuthnot, his gentleman in waiting, came to tell him the supper he was engaged to was just over.
Feb. 18, Dresden.—The fatigues of my journey, added to a violent cold, have left a wide chasm in my diary. Left Berlin for this the 23rd of last month. In driving to Potsdam I had the opportunity for the first time of observing that a fine, clear winter’s day in these northern climates possesses more charms than we usually imagine. Sheets of snow, strongly reflecting the rays of the sun, often remain undissolved on the plains, when completely melted under the groves of fir, whose deep green softens its excessive brilliancy. Under these circumstances the snow frequently assumes the form of a lake, surrounded by wood; and gives more beauty than it takes away. The hardships and dangers of this journey were various. I one night ran a great risk of being lost in the snow, the postilions having missed the track in an extensive forest of fir trees. I was forced to keep Fitz from falling asleep from the effects of intense cold, which I knew to be certain death, by giving him repeated glasses of brandy out of the carriage windows. A distant light at last directed us to a cottage, where we obtained a guide. I slept in the most wretched hovels, once was without a bed, and two days without any food but eggs and coffee. At one of the post-houses the master thought it his duty to keep me company while my servants supped. He was a young man, above six feet high, covered with furs, l’air fier, et même un peu farouche, with something terrific in his whole appearance. He seated himself opposite to me, smoked his pipe, laid his great paws on my work, and began a conversation. I tried to hide a vague sort of fear under the appearance of insouciance and civility, but at last took courage to say I was sleepy, and would wish him good night. The servant girls at these wretched inns seem half savage. Undoubtedly cultivation, arts, and sciences, lead to luxury and its attendant evils; but without them man is even below the beasts that perish.