by Emily Hahn
“Resolv’d then, to make a Convert of the Count at all Hazards, and believing Advances on her Side to be the only Way; being, likewise, of a Libertine-Turn, and thinking the Ceremonial in Love-Affairs to be most of all impertinent, she had so disposed herself on a magnificent Settee, as, at first Entrance of the Count, might prepare him for what was to follow; as might totally efface every other Image from his Heart, and fill it with hers only.
“It seems to be a Frailty entail’d upon Man, that Heaven at Distance does not attract us so forcibly, as a Fool’s Paradise in Sight. K—k found himself a Son of Adam in this dangerous Interview. To see himself at once overwhelmed with the Caresses of a handsome, powerful Woman, melted down all his Constancy at once, and made him fit to receive what Impression she pleased.
“But let us here draw the Curtain.…”
Nothing of that sort ever remained secret at court, and Sophie Dorothea heard of it almost immediately. She had as yet no proprietary interest in the count; her emotions were chiefly those of a woman who feels she is being politically betrayed. The countess was her enemy, and now it seemed that Königsmark as well had gone over to the other side. She reproached him, not violently, but enough to fill him with remorse. Henceforth, he vowed, the countess would spread her nets in vain, and he stuck to his promise. His neglect insulted and annoyed the countess, and turned her more than ever against Sophie Dorothea.
The treaty with Leopold was still being bruited and still unsigned. Ernest Augustus was holding out for the Emperor’s promise to raise him in rank to the dignity of elector; though the Emperor protested that he had already created his quota of electorates, the Duke of Hanover would not accept refusal. He was aided and abetted by his ever-ambitious wife Sophia, who also wanted assurance that she and George Louis were definitely in line of succession to the English throne. Leopold’s hesitation to meet the two dukes’ terms worked in well with the sentiments of Eléonore of Celle, who, as a Frenchwoman, urged her husband to side with Louis XIV. But Ernest Augustus waited, confident that his armies and the geographical position of Hanover would carry the day for him, and he was right. He was created elector, and at the same time William of Orange, or rather William III of England, as he now was, gave his word that Protestant Hanover should inherit the throne in time, for Popish James had fled and no Papist must rule England again. In the winter of 1690, therefore, and from then on for years there was war on the Continent. Königsmark found plenty to do in his capacity as officer in the Hanoverian Guards.
Had there been no war, and no intermittent absences of the count from court, and no anguished farewells and rapturous greetings and terrible suspense, his affair with the princess might never have begun at all. It really was a mad thing for them to have done. Security and secrecy were impossible; both knew it. But passion had its way, though there was a long struggle first against temptation. The princess and the count did not succumb until some time around the middle of 1691, three years after Philipp came to Hanover, and even then they quaked and took elaborate precautions, and hoped against all sane hope that they would get away with it.
We know all this in spite of the earnest endeavors of statesmen dead these three centuries to conceal it from our eyes. Long after the disgrace to the royal house of Hanover had been discovered and avenged, trusted clerks of George II were put to work erasing Philipp’s name from the army records or anywhere else it could be found. For decades Sophie Dorothea was kept under wraps, a living corpse, while Philipp’s body rotted under a lavatory floor. Every scrap of the lovers’ letters which could be found was destroyed. But Ernest Augustus and his successors reckoned without Aurora.
This merry, reckless girl, during Philipp’s liaison with Sophie Dorothea, was dividing her time between her sister’s house at Celle, where her Swedish brother-in-law Count Lewenhaupt held a post with the Army, and her brother’s two residences in Hanover and Hamburg. She was in Philipp’s confidence, and doubtless heard from his own lips the details of the story which she later, in a furious, revengeful spirit, put into her novel. It was natural that she should act as go-between whenever she could, working together with the Princess’s companion Eléonore Knesebeck. The lovers spent a good deal of time on letters to each other, partly because it was fashionable for lovers to do so, partly as a relief to overcharged feelings when they could not meet.
To correspond at all was as dangerous as physical intimacy itself. When Sophie Dorothea consented to exchange letters, a few weeks before her final surrender, she must have known that her mind was made up. Philipp’s first few missives, written from military camp, are pleading and ardent, but humble. Then there is a proud burst of protestation: “Do not doubt my love; God be my witness, I have never loved as I love you.… You may not believe it, but on the word of a man of honour, I am often so overcome that I am near swooning away; and yesterday evening, when I was out walking, and thinking of the many days that I must pass before seeing you, I became so agitated that it brought on a palpitation of the heart, and I was obliged to return home. I know not what would have happened had not my servant brought me a cordial, and even then it was a long time before I recovered.… I am ready to cast at your feet my life, my honour, my future, my fortune. I have foresworn all other women for you; if you doubt this, name any one you would like me to abandon, and I will never speak to her again.”
When he was away he complained; when he was in Hanover he was in even more difficult a mood, accusing his mistress of being too timid to take risks, or of being cold to him when they met in public, or of being fond of her husband after all.
“With what grief I hear that you have been in other arms than mine! I cannot express what I feel, but it must be so, I suppose; at least, you suffer it with regret, and take care to tell me.… I adore and love you to distraction, yet I must not see you! Are there any torments like this in hell?”
“To convince you the better how I love you, how I worship you, I sign this with my blood.”
“I slept like a king, and I hope you did the same. What joy! what rapture! what enchantment have I not tasted in your sweet arms! Ye gods! what a night I spent! The memory of it blots out all my troubles, and for the moment I count myself the happiest man on earth.”
Sophie Dorothea’s letters were equally ardent, but one understands the count’s complaint of her timidity, for she was really terrified of the Countess Platen and suspected her of supernatural powers to discover the intrigue. Her letters are full of references to the countess; she blamed her for every setback, whether or not the theory was reasonable. She collected, avidly, every word that was said in gossip about herself and reported it to Philipp, searching it for dangerous hidden meanings, and wondering if the speaker were friend or foe. Wandering back and forth between Celle and Hanover, or Hanover and Herrenhausen, she was naturally preoccupied with getting the letters through safely. Everything depended upon the efficacy of the arrangements made by Aurora and Knesebeck. Everything depended upon the packets not going astray, where they might be read by some spy. The lovers used a code, but even so there was always danger.
The amazing thing about the affair is that Sophie Dorothea did persist in carrying on, timid-hearted as she was. Though many people, inevitably, were aware that something of the sort was going on, no crisis arose for many months. George Louis’s indifference was responsible for this delayed judgment. He loved his wife so little that even his possessive jealousy was sluggish.
“It is agonising to think of your being perpetually exposed to danger,” wrote Sophie Dorothea to Philipp. “Am I destined to sorrow all my life? Shall I never be able to taste quietly the joys of loving and being loved? I long for news of you on the morrow. I shall spend a sleepless night.
“My father and mother have just interrupted me. I was writing this letter and it was all I could do to hide it; it would have astonished them if they had seen it.…”
Sometimes they quarreled, accusing each other jealously. Philipp scarcely dared attend any social function, especially w
hen he was at Hanover and if Countess Platen might be present; it always made Sophie Dorothea angry. But his tyranny over the princess was worse than that. She had to write for his permission even to make the little trips which were her only amusement, to Celle or Herrenhausen. When on one occasion she had no time to write for his gracious consent before dashing off to Frankfort, he poured out his angry heart to her companion, Fräulein Knesebeck.
“It is not fair. Did she not say she hoped I would not go often to Brussels? That was sufficient. I only set foot there for four hours for a game of tennis; I did not even go to Ghent. The wealthy marriage they proposed for me I rejected from the first. I also refused to undertake the journey of which you know, though it was the only thing to save my property. Count Oxen-stern assured me that if I had gone the King [of Sweden] would have made me an offer of a regiment with the title of general, and Marshal Hasbert also said that if I had attached myself to the service of the King I should at present be a general. Consider, dear friend, what I have sacrificed and what she is doing, and then say who is in the wrong.”
Nerves exacerbated, they waited for their meetings sometimes for months at a time when he was away on campaign, sometimes only for several days when both were at court. But those periods of proximity were perhaps worse than the definite separations. They had to see each other every evening under the most exasperating circumstances; she must smile on other people, he must watch, or undergo the risk of being talked to by Countess Platen. The stolen love meetings could not have taken place at all if George Louis had not altogether stopped paying visits to his wife. Knesebeck would wait in her mistress’s apartments until the attendants had gone to sleep, and then would unlock an outer door, confident that the count could find his way in the black darkness to the princess’s room. The danger was chiefly in the chance that he would be seen slipping in or out of the door, and chased for a robber. Once this did happen as he came out; two menservants gave pursuit, but he got away.
There were countless quarrels by letter—a running argument about Sophie Dorothea’s brother-in-law Prince Max kept them busy for weeks, and at one time she grew so bitterly jealous when he had gone to Countess Platen’s for dinner that she threatened to take another lover. Then Philipp tried to stir her up by describing an evening he had spent with a lady he could not resist, she looked so like Sophie Dorothea. The storm might have broken then with terrible results, but the princess had been forewarned by someone else, and gleefully let him know she understood his joke and knew he had spent the evening concerned making card castles for her little daughter.
Difficulties and dangers not only kept passion bright; they increased it. A change came over the affair. If Sophie Dorothea had begun it merely to assuage her hurt vanity and revenge herself against her husband, if Philipp had laid siege because it would be a feather in his cap to have seduced a princess, the lovers forgot these trivialities now. Their whole lives were bent on finding some means by which they could be together openly and forever. They must elope, and for people of their rank this was not easy. They must find their way to some country not inimical to them, where the authorities would be willing to give them sanctuary and risk the displeasure of the Elector of Hanover, the Duke of Celle and all their clan.
This could not be done without money, and as things were, neither of the lovers had any. Sophie Dorothea’s entire fortune was in the hands of her husband. She never had a penny of her own that was not doled out by him. Even in those days such a marriage settlement was unusual; a woman of the princess’s rank usually had guardians wily enough to see that she possessed some claim to her own dowry, but George William had allowed himself to be diddled when the contract was drawn up. Philipp had exhausted the patience of his own King by lingering near Hanover, refusing to come home to look after his estates, and now his Swedish possessions were held by the Crown, pending some kind of settlement. His pay as a colonel was more an honorary gesture than an important source of income. All his other resources, any moneys he had with him in Germany, he lost at card play, like many another young blood. His debts of honor were enormous.
Nevertheless, he would have gone ahead with the elopement at any time if only the princess would consent. It was she who held back, probably from mixed motives of prudence, fear, and reluctance to leave her children (though she does not seem ever to have given them very much thought). For a long time she hoped she might persuade her parents to settle money on her in her own right. Eléonore was quite willing, but it was George William who had the money, and he was distracted by the expenses of the war and would not be coaxed. Sophie Dorothea didn’t give up hope as long as he did not flatly refuse. Months were wasted while she hung around Celle, pleading with him.
Eléonore, sympathetic mother that she was, must have known about Sophie Dorothea’s love affair, because so many other people knew, or suspected. But not even Eléonore had any idea that an elopement was being discussed. She would have been terrified of such treason, and not unreasonably so.
The popular version of the debacle is that Philipp brought it on by being a cad. I am impressed by the difference of attitude shown by various historians toward the behavior which I am about to describe. Aurora takes his caddishness very much for granted; it was reckless of him, she admits, to go about boasting of ladies’ favors, but it was only natural. He ought to have held his liquor better, perhaps. The more idealistic Victorians, already horrified by the affair, imply that it was only to be expected; the fellow’s whole behavior was extraordinary. And yet in his way, one must admit, he showed himself sincere. My own attitude, which is naturally of this generation, rather inclines to sympathy with Aurora’s. People are what they are, and they do not seem to change very much in these respects through the generations. Certainly Königsmark should not have lost his head in his cups and boasted about his conquests, but he was a romantic and that is the way romantics behave. The gesture in a vacuum does not satisfy. There must be witnesses.
It is a short, ugly story. Königsmark was dining with fellow officers and local nobles in Dresden, and everyone got drunk. It was an occasion for drunkenness if ever there was one, for the Elector Frederick Augustus, Philipp’s old friend, had just inherited Dresden. Königsmark had hopes that the elector would now be able to pay him a large sum which, for once, was owing to the count instead of the other way around. They were good friends and Philipp had full confidence that Augustus would pay if he possibly could; in the meantime, everyone made merry. As the evening wore on, the talk turned inevitably to The Ladies, and to scandal in general, and then somebody asked Philipp to give them the true story of the liaisons of the court of Hanover.
Königsmark willingly obliged. The floodgates were open. He was just drunk enough: in modern parlance, he really let down his hair. Nobody, save of course Sophie Dorothea, was spared—fat old Ernest Augustus and his domineering Platen, George Louis, ungainly Ermengarda Melusina with her parsimonious habits, and then the Countess Platen again. Philipp was especially amusing about the countess. He described her seduction of himself, her later attempts to continue the affair, his rebuff, and, as a bonne bouche, a suggestion she had recently made, that he marry her daughter. Of course, said the count virtuously, he couldn’t have done that sort of thing—I mean to say, after having had the mother!
It must have been a brilliant performance; his audience was convulsed. But one of them at least was not too drunk to remember every word. Next day a long letter was sent off to the Countess Platen; perhaps other letters went to other addresses as well, for nothing travels so fast as slander.
The countess could hardly show the entire scurrilous story to her duke, but something had to be done, and quickly. She was livid with rage. There were other ways to get even. She hurried to the Schulenberg and told her what Philipp had said about her. Ermengarda Melusina was satisfactorily horrified and angry. She in turn went weeping to the electoral prince.
Then followed a scene which would do very well in modern French comedy, though an English audien
ce might not like it. George Louis bumbled off to his wife and railed at her for what Königsmark had done. So this, this was the sort of fellow she loved! This villain was the man who was permitted to dishonor his couch! This scoundrel who dared to mock his Schulenberg!
It may be a platitude, but one must say, all the same, that real-life princes and princesses are not very much like the ones in fairy tales.
Incautiously, Sophie Dorothea answered back, defending Königsmark, and George Louis lost all restraint. For once his phlegm deserted him. He flew at his wife and beat her up, and attempted to strangle her. She screamed, attendants rushed to the rescue, everyone was scandalized, and the sobbing princess was carried back to Mother, by fast coach.
In Celle, history repeated itself, monotonously and discouragingly. The returning daughter was unwelcome. Eléonore, of course, was all loving sympathy, but George William held out in his stern, stupid way for discipline. Wives must not be encouraged to rush away from their husbands after every little quarrel. Sophie Dorothea embarrassed the duchy, running back like this; she must return to Hanover without delay.
The poor princess had only one recourse, to fall ill. She could not move from Celle, she insisted; she was feverish from shock, and bruised from her husband’s brutal assault. She took to her bed, and there she remained until she could be quite sure that at least two of the hated electoral family were away—Sophia and George Louis. Ernest Augustus was still at the Schloss, but she was not afraid of him. Then, and not until then, did she go back to Hanover. At the same time Königsmark abandoned discretion and rushed back himself, from Dresden.
The lovers’ indignation now transcended all fear. Sophie Dorothea was at last just what Philipp had wanted her to be all those years, reckless in her love and defiant of the world. They had been writing to each other daily, ever since George Louis’s big scene, and had come to a momentous decision. Earlier there had been a hazy plan of going to France, where they knew Louis XIV would make them welcome if they renounced the Protestant religion and embraced his, but now they rejected that idea. The thought of committing treason did not deter them, but France was too far and they had not enough money to bribe their way into enemy territory. Sophie Dorothea had nearer friends, the ducal family of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel into which she had once been destined to marry. If they were to go to Wolfenbüttel they would be safe, for Duke Antony Ulrich hated the Lüneberg faction and had always been fond of Eléonore and her daughter. After Wolfenbüttel, Philipp said, he would go back to Sweden and make his peace with the King, and regain his estates, and take his love home where she belonged.
