King's Mistress, Queen's Servant: The Life and Times of Henrietta Howard

by Tracy Borman

  If Hanover was – at least in Lady Mary’s eyes – an unimpressive provincial town, it did have one important asset, and that was its proximity to the Electoral court, which for most of the year resided at the palace of Herrenhausen, some two miles away. Herrenhausen was built in 1665 by John Frederick, Duke of Hanover, and substantially remodelled by the last Elector, Ernest Augustus, in the late seventeenth century. The palace was wide and low, consisting of just two storeys. The main building sprawled across three sides of a great courtyard, with terraces on the right and left over the ground floor, and a magnificent double stone staircase forming its centrepiece. It was flanked by several smaller houses occupied by officials of the court, and a vast range of stables that could accommodate up to six hundred horses. It also boasted a splendid orangery, decorated with frescoes that depicted scenes from the Trojan War, which housed a vast array of exotic fruits.

  The most celebrated feature of Herrenhausen, however, was its magnificent gardens. These were modelled on Versailles and were designed to inspire awe. The palace was approached by an imposing double avenue of limes, which gave way to 120 acres of terraces, fountains and statues of mythological beings, fenced about with high, maze-like hedges of clipped hornbeam. Enclosing the whole was an enormous moat, 86 feet wide, on which ornamental gondolas would float during the summer months. Even the most critical of visitors could not fail to be impressed. Lady Mary admitted that the grounds were ‘very fine’ and was surprised by ‘the vast number of orange trees, much larger than I have ever seen in England, though this climate is certainly colder’.2

  The palace and gardens of Herrenhausen were built to enhance the status of the Electorate, as well as to give pleasure to the occupants and visitors. Under the rule of the late Elector and his lively spouse, Sophia, the court soon gained a reputation for being the gayest in Germany, and its splendour was out of proportion with the importance of their modest dominions. This was to change with the death of Ernest Augustus and the accession of his son, George Louis, to the Electorate in 1698.

  Of medium height and build, with the typical Germanic features of fine hair and light blue eyes, George bore no trace of his Stuart ancestry. While his father had been every bit the genial and charming prince, George was by contrast a dour man, unrefined in taste, uncouth in speech, and excessively fond of order and routine. Naturally shy and uncommunicative, he was suspicious and aloof in his dealings with others. But he was honest and straightforward and loathed the intrigue and double-dealing that was so often a feature of court life. He also had great personal courage and had distinguished himself on a number of military campaigns. While acknowledging these virtues, contemporary observers were less than kind in their assessment of George’s character. The Earl of Chesterfield described him as ‘an honest, dull, German gentleman’, while Lady Mary Wortley Montagu called him ‘an honest blockhead . . . more properly dull than lazy’.3

  George Louis was as penurious as his father had been extravagant, and cut back on all unnecessary expenditure. The resulting impact on court life was bemoaned by contemporaries. The waspish Duchess of Orléans wrote: ‘It is not to be wondered at that the gaiety that used to be at Hanover has departed; the elector is so cold that he turns everything into ice – his father and uncle were not like him.’4 The Duchess was, admittedly, biased, for she had long harboured a dislike for most of the Hanoverian family. If the court was not quite so dull as she claimed, however, it was still less refined than it had been in the days of the old Elector.

  The great German philosopher Leibniz, who was a favourite at court, described one of the revelries held there in imitation of a sumptuous Roman banquet. The Elector and all the ladies and gentlemen of the court were dressed in Roman costume, and there were singers, dancers, drummers, huntsmen blowing horns, slaves, and all manner of raucous entertainments. Unfortunately, things got rather out of hand when a quarrel arose between one of the noble couples present. Fuelled by rage (and no doubt an excess of wine), the lord threw a goblet at his lady’s head, and there ensued a monumental battle, much to the amusement of the onlookers, who assumed it was part of the entertainment. This incident was typical of the Hanoverian court, both in Germany and later in England, where great state occasions so often descended into farce.

  The coarseness of the Hanoverian court in the early eighteenth century extended to the Elector’s personal life. Since the age of sixteen, when he had made his sister’s governess pregnant, George Louis had held the view that women were essential for the normal entertainment of a full-blooded man, and scorned the idea that sentiment should enter into it. Marriage, meanwhile, was simply a biological and political necessity. Love certainly seemed to have had little to do with his choice of a wife. At the age of twenty-two, he had married his first cousin, Sophia Dorothea, heiress of the Duke of Celle, who was then just sixteen years old.

  It was not a happy union. Sophia Dorothea’s immature and flighty nature clashed with George Louis’s sternness, and his frequent absences on military campaigns doomed their marriage to failure within a few short years. Both found solace in various lovers, but one of Sophia Dorothea’s choices was to prove her downfall. The charismatic and glamorous Count von Königsmarck could not have been more different from her dull and boorish husband, and Sophia Dorothea was captivated. The two became lovers, but the affair did not remain a secret for long, and when Königsmarck suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, it was rumoured that George Louis had had him murdered. George promptly divorced his wife and imprisoned her at Ahlden Castle, while he assumed custody of their two children.

  Henceforth George Louis preferred the company of mistresses, and there was no talk of his taking another wife. He favoured one mistress above all others: Melusine von der Schulenburg, who in 1690 was appointed lady-in-waiting to his mother, Electress Sophia. Within a year she had become his lover, and in 1692 she gave birth to their first daughter. Madame Schulenburg lived with George Louis to all intents and purposes as his wife, and when he succeeded to the Electorate in 1698, her position became even more influential.

  Contemporaries were bemused by the Elector’s choice of mistress, for she was hardly the most attractive lady to grace the Hanoverian court. Her tall and emaciated frame earned her the nickname of ‘the Maypole’, and a bout of smallpox in her youth had left her pockmarked and virtually bald. Her attempts to remedy these defects with thick make-up and an unsightly red wig only made things worse, and her overall appearance was compounded by an appalling dress sense. Perhaps the lady’s real attraction for George Louis, though, lay in the similarity of their characters. In a letter written to a friend back in England, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu snidely observed that Madame Schulenburg was ‘so much of his own temper, that I do not wonder at the engagement between them. She was duller than himself, and consequently did not find out that he was so.’5 She was also very faithful to him – a quality that he valued highly in lovers and ministers alike.

  The same fidelity did not extend to George Louis himself, for he took a number of other mistresses. The most prominent (in more ways than one) was Madame Kielmansegg, whose mother, the Countess Platen, had been the long-standing mistress of George’s father. Madame Kielmansegg was as different to Schulenburg as it was possible to be – except for the fact that she was equally unattractive. A lively and vivacious woman, she was flamboyant in everything she did. In contrast to Schulenburg‘s avaricious nature, she was exceedingly extravagant in her personal tastes, and rumour had it that her morals were as loose as her purse strings. George Louis’ son, who hated her, once declared that she had slept with every man in Hanover – an allegation she countered by producing a certificate of moral character signed by her husband. This might have proved a more convincing defence had she not deserted him for another man some years earlier.

  Kielmansegg’s appearance presented a sharp contrast to that of her rival mistress. Her enormous bulk earned her the nickname of ‘the Elephant’, and her permanently flushed complexion and ostentatious black
wig did her no favours. One of the best, and most amusing, contemporary descriptions of her was provided by Horace Walpole, who had met her when he was a child and had been terrified by her overbearing girth. He described her as being ‘as corpulent and ample as the Duchess [Schulenburg] was long & emaciated. Two fierce black eyes, large & rolling beneath two lofty arched eyebrows, two acres of cheeks spread with crimson, an ocean of neck that overflow’d & was not distinguished from the lower part of her body, and no part restrained by stays – no wonder that a child dreaded such an Ogress.’6

  The Elector’s unusual taste in women did little to enhance his reputation. The Earl of Chesterfield described Schulenburg and Kielmansegg as ‘two considerable samples of his bad taste and good stomach’, and claimed that they ‘made all those ladies who aspired to his favour, and who were near the statutable size, strain and swell themselves, like frogs in the fable, to rival the bulk and dignity of the ox’.7

  The prominence of George Louis’ mistresses was one of the most notable features of the Hanoverian court in the early eighteenth century. Another was the role of his mother, the Electress Sophia, whose forceful personality wielded a great deal of influence over the court’s social and political life. Fiercely intelligent, she read and corresponded widely and was fluent in five languages. She possessed a naturally cheerful and lively disposition, and enjoyed excellent health – due in no small part to her passion for outdoor exercise. Even in old age, she would spend two or three hours every day pacing up and down the gardens of Herrenhausen, tiring out many a young courtier who kept her company.

  Electress Sophia was immensely proud of her British ancestry. Although she had never set foot in England, she took a keen interest in her future subjects and was said to be more English than German in her tastes and habits. Unlike the rest of the Hanoverian family, she spoke the language perfectly and kept herself well acquainted with events there. She even instructed her immediate circle to call her ‘Princess of Wales’, though in reality she had no claim to that title.

  Relations between Electress Sophia and her son were notoriously hostile. Sophia found George Louis’ lack of refinement irksome, and lamented the decline of court life that she had witnessed since he had inherited the Electorate. She found some solace, however, in her grandson, the Electoral Prince George Augustus, and his wife Caroline, whose bright and engaging presence offered a much-needed boost to life at Herrenhausen.

  The only son of George Louis by Sophia Dorothea, George Augustus was born at Herrenhausen on 10 November 1683. Although he would have detested the comparison, he bore a strong resemblance to his father, being short and stout, with a quick, springy step that was described by less generous observers as ‘strutting’. Together with his bulbous eyes and a complexion that was often given to flushing, this gave him an appearance that bordered on the comical. To George Augustus, his father was a cold and distant figure who took little interest in his upbringing, preferring to leave this to Sophia Dorothea, who doted on him. George Augustus adored her in return, and was therefore devastated when, at the age of eleven, he was snatched from her arms and placed under his father’s guardianship following his parents’ divorce.

  Sophia Dorothea was desperate to see her children, but the letters she wrote to her estranged husband begging him to grant her wish went unanswered. George Augustus was occasionally allowed to visit his maternal grandparents, who fuelled his antagonism towards his father. He never gave up hope of seeing his beloved mother again, and it was said that he once escaped the confines of Herrenhausen and got as far as Ahlden, where he swam across the moat and almost succeeded in gaining entry to the castle before he was apprehended.

  George Augustus grew to loathe the father who had so cruelly separated him from his mother. His feelings were reciprocated in full. Indeed, there was something of a tradition of hatred between fathers and sons in the Hanoverian line. Rather than showing any sympathy towards George Augustus for the sudden loss of his mother, the Elector mocked and bullied him for weakness, and was fond of making half-veiled threats to disinherit him. This in turn fostered a strong sense of insecurity in the young prince.

  Bullying aside, George Louis took little interest in the upbringing of his son, and it was his mother, Electress Sophia, who took over. As she had no great love for her own son, it may be supposed that her grandson’s hatred for him grew even stronger under her tutelage. The Electress made no secret of the fact that George Augustus was her favourite grandchild, and she indulged rather than checked his wayward behaviour. As a result, he grew up spoilt and with a lofty sense of his own importance.

  Ironically, while George Augustus loathed his father intensely, he developed a personality that was remarkably similar in many respects. He was boorish, unrefined, obstinate and avaricious. Having received the traditional training of a German prince, he also shared his father’s passion for military affairs. He never developed any real talent in this respect, but like his father he was brave in the line of fire. He was to distinguish himself in 1708 at the Battle of Oudenarde, where he had his horse shot from under him. The greatest military leader of the age, the Duke of Marlborough, praised his conduct, and the poet Congreve wrote a ballad in honour of ‘young Hanover brave’.

  For all his courage on the battlefield, the Electoral Prince was prone to petulant outbursts and his temper could flare up at the slightest provocation. One contemporary said of him that he ‘looked on all the men and women he saw as creatures he might kick or kiss for his diversion’.8 Another wrote that he ‘had rather an unfeeling than a bad heart; but I never observed any settled malevolence in him, though his sudden passions, which were frequent, made him say things which, in cooler moments, he would not have executed’.9

  The strong sense of insecurity that his father had engendered in him at an early age plagued George Augustus throughout his life. He found refuge in an obsession with facts and figures, and developed a slavish, almost manic attention to detail which found expression in his fascination for genealogy. He knew the complicated family trees of all the princes of Europe and could recite them with absolute accuracy. His knowledge of military regiments, orders and uniforms was equally precise and could never be faulted. Subjects such as these formed the basis of his conversation, and his companions at court were treated to many long hours of it. He did not so much win arguments as bore his opponents into submission. One courtier lamented his ‘insisting upon people’s conversation who were to entertain him being always new, and his own being always the same thing over and over again’.10

  George Augustus’s obsession with detail also materialised in a love of order and routine. His days moved with clockwork regularity, and his eye was exceptionally quick to spot anything that was at odds with the established order, especially when it concerned the ceremonials at court. He hated the unexpected, and even the most minor disruption would make him fly into a rage. Meals were regular and to the moment, as was every other aspect of his daily routine. ‘Little things, as he often told me himself, affected him more than great ones,’ the Earl of Chesterfield observed. The Prince’s eldest daughter, Anne, later concurred with this. ‘When great points go as he would not have them, he frets and is bad to himself,’ she told a friend at court, ‘but when he is in his worst humours, and the devil to everybody that comes near him, it is always because one of his pages has powdered his periwig ill, or a housemaid set a chair where it does not use to stand, or something of that kind.’11

  Such an acute obsession with order, coupled with an extraordinary ability to retain the most detailed facts and figures, may simply have been traits inherited from his Guelph ancestors. While he had much in common with his father, however, George Augustus’s personality was more extreme in many respects, and it is possible that there was a medical reason for this. In fact, he displayed some of the main traits of Asperger’s syndrome.12

  George’s love of routine extended to his sexual relations, which he conducted in as well regulated a manner as he would an inspection of
infantry. There was certainly no absence of passion, though, and he shared the same animal appetites as his father. He was highly energetic, eager for satisfaction, and not over-delicate as to how it was gratified. Having been raised predominantly by women, he felt safe in their company and preferred it to that of men. But he rarely developed any great affection for them and, like his father, believed that their primary function was to meet his physical needs.

  However, the Electoral Prince was not as coarse and unfeeling as this portrait suggests. His confidence may have been difficult to gain, but once won, his loyalty was sincere and enduring. Furthermore, as well as military training, he had also acquired more refined princely accomplishments. His education included the classics, and he was given a good grounding in modern languages. He could speak French and Italian, and his knowledge of English was sound, even if he retained a marked German accent. But this was where his academic achievements ended. Like his father, he was contemptuous of intellectuals and men of letters, famously declaring: ‘I hate boets and bainters both.’ He often told courtiers that when he was a young boy he had despised reading and learning as other children did, not merely upon account of the confinement they entailed, but because he viewed them as ‘something mean and below him’.13 It is extraordinary, then, that he should have chosen for his bride one of the most accomplished and intellectual princesses in Europe.

  Wilhelmina Caroline, Princess of Brandenburg-Ansbach, was born in the palace of Ansbach, a small town in south Germany, on 1 March 1683. She was the elder of the two children of Johann Friedrich, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, and his second wife, Eleanore Erdmuthe Louisa. Like that of George Augustus, Caroline’s childhood was dominated by women. Her father died when she was just three years old, and she was raised by her mother until she, too, died ten years later. Caroline was subsequently taken into the care of her guardians, the Elector of Brandenburg and his wife, Sophia Charlotte, who became Queen of Prussia in 1701. It was she who exerted the greatest influence over her young charge. Electress Sophia Charlotte presided over a liberal, cultivated court, where intellectual discussion was actively encouraged, and Caroline was introduced to some of the greatest intellectuals and artists of the day, including Voltaire and Handel. Her favourite was the celebrated German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, with whom she developed a close friendship. They spent long hours together discussing philosophical, historical and religious questions. With regard to the latter, Caroline was a staunch Protestant and even turned down the prospect of what would have been a prestigious marriage to Archduke Charles, the future Holy Roman Emperor, on the basis that it would have meant converting to Catholicism.