Love affairs of the Courts of Europe

by Thornton Hall

When Wilhelmine Encke first opened her eyes on the world one day in the year 1754, he would have been a bold prophet who would have predicted that she would one day be the uncrowned Queen of the Court of Russia, plus Reine que la Reine, and that her children would have in their veins the proudest blood in Europe. Such a prophecy might well have been laughed to scorn, for little Wilhelmine had as obscure a cradle as almost any infant in all Prussia. Her father was an army bugler, who wore private's uniform in Frederick the Great's army; and her early years were to be spent playing with other soldiers' children in the sordid environment of Berlin barracks.

When her father turned his back on the army, while Wilhelmine was still nursing her dolls, it was to play the humble rôle of landlord of a small tavern, from which he was lured by the bait of a place as French-horn player in Frederick's private band; and the goal of his modest ambition was reached when he was appointed trumpeter to the King.

This was Herr Encke's position when the curtain rises on our story at Potsdam, and shows us Wilhelmine, an unattractive maid of ten, the Cinderella of her family, for whom there seemed no better prospect than a soldier-husband, if indeed she were lucky enough to capture him. She was, in fact, the "ugly duckling" of a good-looking family, removed by a whole world from her beautiful eldest sister Charlotte, who counted among her many admirers no less exalted a wooer than Prince Frederick William, the King's nephew and heir to his throne.

There was, indeed, no more beautiful or haughty damsel in all Potsdam than this trumpeter's daughter who had caught the amorous fancy of the Prince, then, as to his last day, the slave of every pretty face that crossed his path. But Charlotte Encke was much too imperious a young lady to hold her Royal lover long in fetters. He quickly wearied of her caprices, her petulances, and her exhibitions of temper; and the climax came one day when in a fit of anger she struck her little sister, in his presence, and he took up the cudgels for Wilhelmine.

This was the last straw for the disillusioned and disgusted Prince, who sent Charlotte off to Paris, where as the Countess Matushke she played the fine lady at her lover's cost, while the Prince took her Cinderella sister under his protection. He took her education into his own hands, provided her with masters to teach her a wide range of accomplishments, from languages to dancing and deportment, while he himself gave her lessons in history and geography. Nor did he lack the reward of his benevolent offices; for Wilhelmine, under his ministrations, not only developed rare gifts and graces of mind, like many another Cinderella before her; she blossomed into a rose of girlhood, more beautiful even than her imperious sister, and with a sweetness of character and a winsomeness which Charlotte could never have attained.

On her part, gratitude to her benefactor rapidly grew into love for the handsome and courtly Prince; on his, sympathy for the ill-used Cinderella, into a passion for the lovely maiden hovering on the verge of a still more beautiful womanhood. It was a mutual passion, strong and deep, which now linked the widely contrasted lives of the King-to-be and the trumpeter's daughter—a passion which, with each, was to last as long as life itself.

Wilhelmine was now formally installed in the place of the deposed Charlotte as favourite of the heir to the throne; and idyllic years followed, during which she gave pledges of her love to the man who was her husband in all but name. That her purse was often empty was a matter to smile at; that she had to act as "breadwinner" to her family, and was at times reduced to such straits that she was obliged to pawn some of her small stock of jewellery in order to provide her lover with a supper, was a bagatelle. She was the happiest young woman in Prussia.

Even what seemed to be a crowning disaster, fortune turned into a boon for her. When news of this unlicensed love-making came to the King's ears, he was furious. It was intolerable that the destined ruler of a great and powerful nation should be governed and duped by a woman of the people. He gave his nephew a sound rating—alike for his extravagance and his amour; and packed off Wilhelmine to join her sister in Paris.

But, for once, Frederick found that he had made a mistake. The Prince, robbed of the woman he loved, took the bit in his teeth, and plunged so deeply into extravagant dallying with ballet-dancers and stars of the opera that the King was glad to choose the lesser evil, and to summon Wilhelmine back to her Prince's arms. One stipulation only he made, that she should make her home away from the capital and the dangerous allurements which his nephew found there.

Now at last we find Cinderella happily installed, with the King's august approval, in a beautiful home which has since blossomed into the splendours of Charlottenburg. Here she gave birth to a son, whom Frederick dubbed Count de la Marke in his nurse's arms, but who was fated never to leave his cradle. This child of love, the idol of his parents, sleeps in a splendid mausoleum in the great Protestant Church of Berlin.