Frederica Queen of Hanover.
Letters from the Duchess.
H.R.H. the Duchess of Cumberland continued to write to me from the waters at Ems, next from the waters at Schwalbach, and afterwards from Berlin, where she returned on the 22nd of September in the year 1821. She wrote to me from Ems:
"The Coronation in England will happen without me; I am grieved that the King[133] should have fixed on the saddest day of my life to have himself crowned: the day on which I lost that adored sister[134]. The death of Bonaparte[135] has also made me think of the sufferings which he made him endure."
"Berlin, 22 September.
"I have already revisited those long, solitary walks. How much obliged I shall be to you if you send me, as you promised, the verses which you have written for Charlottenburg! I also again took the road leading to the house in the wood where you were kind enough to help me in relieving the poor woman of Spandau; how good you are to remember that name! Everything reminds me of happy times. It is not new to regret happiness.
"As I was about to send off this letter, I hear that the King has been detained at sea by the storms and probably driven on to the Irish coast; he had not arrived in London on the 14th; but you will know of his return before we do.
"The poor Princess William to-day received the sad news of the death of her mother, the Dowager Landgravine of Hesse-Homburg. You see how I am telling you of all that concerns our family; Heaven grant that you may have better news to give me!" were having
Does it not seem as if the sister of the beautiful Queen of Prussia is speaking to me of "our family" even as though she the kindness to talk to me of my grandmother, my aunt and my humble relations at Plancouët? Did the Royal Family of France ever honour me with a smile similar to that of this foreign Royal Family, which nevertheless hardly knew me and which owed me nothing? I suppress a number of other affectionate letters: there is about them something suffering and restrained, resigned and noble, intimate and exalted; they serve as a counterpoise to what I have said that was perhaps too severe of the Sovereign Houses. A thousand years earlier, and the Princess Frederica, being a daughter of Charlemagne, would have carried off Eginhard[136] at night on her shoulders, lest he should leave traces in the snow.
*
I have just re-read this book in 1840: I cannot help being struck with this continual romance of my life. What a series of missed destinies! Had I returned to England with little George, the possible heir to that crown, I should have seen the new dream fade away which could have made me change my country, in the same way as, if I had not been married, I should have remained, on the first occasion, in the land of Shakespeare and Milton. The young Duke of Cumberland, who has lost his sight, did not marry his cousin the Queen of England. The Duchess of Cumberland has become Queen of Hanover: where is she? Is she happy? Where am I? Thank God, in a few days I shall no longer have to turn my eyes over my past life, nor to put these questions to myself. But it is impossible for me not to pray Heaven to shed its favours over the last years of the Princess Frederica[137].