Il ne craint point les bâtards,
Ni de Bacchus ni de Mars.
“After the procession had made several turns round the hall, Trimalchio was placed on his couch, and began to eat and drink, cordially inviting his guests to follow his example. His chief carver was called Monsieur Coupé, so that by calling out ‘Coupé’ he could name him, and at the same time command him to carve, like the carver Carpus in Petronius, to whom his master called Carpe, which means much the same as coupez. In imitation, too, a pea-hen was brought in sitting on her nest full of eggs, which Trimalchio first declared were half-hatched, but on examination proved to contain delicious ortolans. Little children carried in pies, and birds flew out from them, and were caught again by the fowlers. An ass was led in bearing a load of olives. Several other extraordinary dishes enlivened the banquet and surprised the spectators; everything was copied strictly from the Roman original. There was even a charger, with viands representing the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and Trimalchio gave utterance to some very amusing astrology. Fortunata had to be called several times before she would sit down to table—everything depended on her. Trimalchio being in an erudite mood, had the catalogue of his burlesque library brought to him, and, as the names of the books were read out, he quoted the finest passages, and criticised them. The only wine was Falerno, and Trimalchio, who naturally preferred Hungarian to any other, controlled himself out of respect to his guests. It is true, as regards his personal necessities, he put no constraint upon himself.... Finally, after moralising on happiness and the vanity of things in general, he sent for his will and read it aloud; in it he left orders how he was to be buried, and what monument was to be erected to his memory. He also announced what legacies he would leave, some of them very funny, and he freed his slaves, who during the reading of the will were grimacing and howling in lamentable fashion. During the banquet he granted full liberty to Bacchus, pretending to be proud of having even the gods in his power. Some of the slaves donned caps, the sign of liberty. When their master drank these same slaves imitated the noise of the cannon, or rather of Jove’s thunder....
“But in the midst of these festivities the Goddess of Discord cast down her apple. A quarrel forthwith arose between Trimalchio and Fortunata, whereupon he threw a goblet at her head, and there ensued a battle royal. At last peace was restored, and everything ended harmoniously. The procession, with the singers, dancers, horns, drums and other instruments of music, closed the banquet as it had been opened. And to say nothing of Fortunata, Trimalchio certainly surpassed himself.”
The fact that such a revel as this could take place under princely patronage shows the grossness of the age in general and Hanover in particular. But a good deal of the coarseness at the Hanoverian Court was due to the fact that it was, at this time, reigned over by mistresses who had not the saving grace of refinement. The Electress Sophia was old, and her taste for court entertainments had dulled, and even if it had not, the Elector was too jealous to permit her to take the lead. His daughter, Sophie Dorothea, was too young to have any influence. The advent of the Electoral Princess supplied the elements that were lacking, beauty and grace, and a sense of personal dignity and virtue.
GEORGE II. AND QUEEN CAROLINE AT THE TIME OF THEIR MARRIAGE.
Caroline was in every way fitted to queen it over a much larger court than Hanover. Like her adopted mother, the Queen of Prussia, Caroline’s intellect was lofty, and she scorned as “paltry” many of the things in which the princesses of her time were most interested. The minutiæ of court etiquette, scandal, dress, needlework and display did not appeal to her; some of these things were all very well as means to an end, but with Caroline emphatically they were not the end. Her natural inclination was all towards serious things; politics and the love of power were with her a passion. She had little opportunity of indulging her taste in this respect at Hanover, for the Elector gave no woman a chance of meddling in politics at his court, and her husband, the Electoral Prince, professed to be of the same mind. So Caroline had for years to conceal the qualities which later made her a stateswoman, and the consummate skill with which she did so proved her to be an actress and diplomatist of no mean order. She had more liberty to follow her literary and philosophical bent, for both the Elector and his son hated books, were indifferent to religion, and treated philosophers and their theories with open contempt; these questions were all very well for women and bookmen, but they could not be expected to occupy their lofty minds with such trifles. Caroline, therefore, and the Electress Sophia, who was even more learned than her daughter-in-law, were able to indulge their tastes in this respect with comparative freedom, and they enjoyed many hours discussing philosophy with Leibniz or arguing on religious questions with learned divines. They kept themselves well abreast of the intellectual thought of the time, and even tried in some small way to hold reunions at Herrenhausen, after the model of those at Charlottenburg, but in this Caroline had to exercise a good deal of discretion, for her husband, like the Elector, though grossly illiterate, was jealous lest his wife’s learning should seem to be superior to his own. Much of Caroline’s reading had to be done in secret, and the discussions in which she delighted were carried on in the privacy of the Electress Sophia’s apartments.
Within the first few years of her marriage Caroline found that she had need of all her philosophy, natural or acquired, whether derived from Leibniz or inherent in herself, to accommodate herself to the whims and humours of her fantastic little husband. She quickly discovered the faults and foibles of his character, she was soon made aware of his meanness, his shallowness and his petty vanity, of his absurd love of boasting, his fitful and choleric temper, and his incontinence. George Augustus had inherited the bad qualities of both his parents, and the good qualities of neither, for he had not his father’s straightforwardness, nor his mother’s generous impulses. He was a contemptible character, but his wife never manifested any contempt for him; her conduct indeed was a model of all that a wife’s should be—from the man’s point of view. The little prince would rail at her, contradict her, snub her, dash his wig on the ground, strut up and down the room, red and angry, shouting at the top of his voice, but, unlike her mother-in-law, Sophie Dorothea, Caroline never answered her husband; she was always submissive, always dutiful, always the patient Griselda. The result justified her wisdom. George Augustus became genuinely attached to his wife, and she preserved his affection and kept her influence over him. Shortly after her marriage she was attacked by small-pox; it did not seriously impair her beauty, but for many days her life was in danger. Her husband was beside himself with anxiety; he never left her chamber day or night, and caught the disease from her, thus risking his life for hers. Caroline never forgot this proof of his devotion. She was shrewd enough to see from the beginning, what so many wives in equal or less exalted positions fail to see, that her interests and her husband’s interests were identical, and that as he prospered she would prosper with him, and, on the other hand, everything which hurt him or his prospects would react on her too. She realised that she could only reach worldly greatness through him, and ambition coloured all her life. The rôle of the injured wife would do her no good, either in her husband’s eyes or in those of the world, so she never played the part, though in all truth he early gave her cause enough. Her life was witness of the love she bore him, a love that was quite unaccountable. From the first moment of her married life to the last, she was absolutely devoted to him; his friends were her friends and his enemies her enemies.
Caroline was soon called upon to take sides in the quarrel between the Electoral Prince and the Elector, which as the years went by became intensified in bitterness. As to the origin of this unnatural feud it is impossible to speak with certainty; some have found it in the elder George’s cruel treatment of his wife, Sophie Dorothea, which the son was said to have strongly resented. This may be partly true, for though the young Prince was only a boy when his mother was first imprisoned, he was old enough to have loved her, and he had sufficient understanding to sympathise with her wrongs, as her daughter did. Besides, he often visited his maternal grandparents at Celle, and though the old Duke was neutral, the Duchess warmly espoused her daughter’s cause, and hated George Louis and his mother, Sophia, who were her worst enemies. She may have instilled some of these sentiments into her grandson, for his treatment of his grandmother, the Electress Sophia, left much to be desired, though she was devoted to him, and always ready to plot with him against his father. All these currents of emotion, and cross-currents of jealousy and hatred were in full flood at the Hanoverian Court when Caroline arrived there, and she must have found it exceedingly difficult to steer a straight course among them. She at once decided to throw in her lot with her husband, and to make his cause hers. She soon, therefore, came to be viewed with disfavour by her father-in-law.