"Der Prints von Mihrau ist vohr einigen thagen hier gewessen und haben wier einige Wasser schwermer in der See ihm zu Ehren gesmissen, seine frau ist mit eber thoten Printzesin nieder geKomen.—Der General schulenburg ist heute hier gekommen und wirdt morgen"—That is to say:—
"The Prince of Mirow was here a few days ago; and we let off, in honor of him, a few water-rockets over the Lake: his Wife has been brought to bed of a dead Princess. General Schulenburg [with a small s] came hither to-day; and to-morrow will"...
"REINSBERG, 28th MARCH, 1737.... Prince von Mirow was here yesterday; and tried shooting at the popinjay with us; he cannot see rightly, and shoots always with help of an opera-glass."
"RUPPIN, 20th OCTOBER, 1737. The Prince of Mirow was with us last Friday; and babbled much in his high way; among other things, white-lied to us, that the Kaiserinn gave him a certain porcelain snuff-box he was handling; but on being questioned more tightly, he confessed to me he had bought it in Vienna." [Briefe an Vater, p. 71 (CARET in OEuvres ); pp. 85-114.—See Ib. 6th November, 1737, for faint trace of a visit; and 25th September, 1739, for another still fainter, the last there is.]
And so let him somnambulate yonder, till the two Queens, like winged Psyches, one after the other, manage to emerge from him.
Friedrich's Letters to his Father are described by some Prussian Editors as "very attractive, SEHR ANZIEHENDE BRIEFE;" which, to a Foreign reader, seems a strange account of them. Letters very hard to understand completely; and rather insignificant when understood. They turn on Gifts sent to and sent from, "swans," "hams," with the unspeakable thanks for them; on recruits of so many inches; on the visitors that have been; they assure us that "there is no sickness in the regiment," or tell expressly how much:—wholly small facts; nothing of speculation, and of ceremonial pipe-clay a great deal. We know already under what nightmare conditions Friedrich wrote to his Father! The attitude of the Crown-Prince, sincerely reverent and filial, though obliged to appear ineffably so, and on the whole struggling under such mountains of encumbrance, yet loyally maintaining his equilibrium, does at last acquire, in these Letters, silently a kind of beauty to the best class of readers. But that is nearly their sole merit. By far the most human of them, that on the first visit to Mirow, the reader has now seen; and may thank us much that we show him no more of them. [Friedrich des Grossen Briefe an seinen Vater (Berlin, 1838)]. Reduced in size, by suitable omissions; and properly spelt; but with little other elucidation for a stranger: in OEuvres, xxvii. part 3d, pp, 1-123 (Berlin, 1856).
Chapter IV. — NEWS OF THE DAY.
While these Mirow visits are about their best, and much else at Reinsberg is in comfortable progress, Friedrich's first year there just ending, there come accounts from England of quarrels broken out between the Britannic Majesty and his Prince of Wales. Discrepancies risen now to a height; and getting into the very Newspapers;—the Rising Sun too little under the control of the Setting, in that unquiet Country!
Prince Fred of England did not get to the Rhine Campaign, as we saw: he got some increase of Revenue, a Household of his own; and finally a Wife, as he had requested: a Sachsen-Gotha Princess; who, peerless Wilhelmma being unattainable, was welcome to Prince Fred. She is in the family-way, this summer 1737, a very young lady still; result thought to be due—When? Result being potential Heir to the British Nation, there ought to have been good calculation of the time when! But apparently nobody had well turned his attention that way. Or if Fred and Spouse had, as is presumable, Fred had given no notice to the Paternal Majesty,—"Let Paternal Majesty, always so cross to me, look out for himself in that matter." Certain it is, Fred and Spouse, in the beginning of August, 1737, are out at Hampton Court; potential Heir due before long, and no preparation made for it. August 11th in the evening, out at solitary Hampton Court; the poor young Mother's pains came on; no Chancellor there, no Archbishop to see the birth,—in fact, hardly the least medical help, and of political altogether none. Fred, in his flurry, or by forethought,—instead of dashing off expresses, at a gallop as of Epsom, to summon the necessary persons and appliances, yoked wheeled vehicles and rolled off to the old unprovided Palace of St. James's, London, with his poor Wife in person! Unwarned, unprovided; where nevertheless she was safely delivered that same night,—safely, as if by miracle. The crisis might have taken her on the very highway: never was such an imprudence. Owing, I will believe, to Fred's sudden flurry in the unprovided moment,—unprovided, by reason of prior desuetudes and discouragements to speech, on Papa's side. A shade of malice there might also be. Papa doubts not, it was malice aforethought all of it. "Had the potential Heir of the British Nation gone to wreck, or been born on the highway, from my quarrels with this bad Fred, what a scrape had I been in!" thinks Papa, and is in a towering permanence of wrath ever since; the very Newspapers and coffee-houses and populaces now all getting vocal with it.