News came to Berlin Schloss, doubtless at full gallop, which would only take a quarter of an hour. This is Wilhelmina's experience of it. Afternoon of Monday, 3d of April, 1730, in the Schloss of Berlin,towards sunset, some ornamental seam in one's hand:
"I was sitting quiet in my Apartment, busy with work, and some one reading to me, when the Queen's Ladies rushed in, with a torrent of domestics in the rear; who all bawled out, putting one knee to the ground, 'They were come to salute the Princess of Wales.' I fairly believed these poor people had lost their wits; they would not cease overwhelming me with noise and tumult, their joy was so great they knew not what they did. When the farce had lasted some time, they at last told me"what our readers know. What the demure Wilhelmina professes she cared next to nothing about. "I was so little moved by it, that I answered, going on with my work, 'Is that all?' Which greatly surprised them. A while afterwards my Sisters and several Ladies came also to congratulate me. I was much loved; and I felt more delighted at the proofs each gave me of that than at what occasioned them. In the evening I went to the Queen's: you may readily conceive her joy. On my first entrance, she called me 'her dear Princess of Wales;' and addressed Madam de Sonsfeld as 'Milady.' This latter took the liberty of hinting to her, that it would be better to keep quiet; that the King having yet given no notice of this business, might be provoked at such demonstration, and that the least trifle could still ruin all her hopes. The Countess Finkenstein joining her remonstrances to Sonsfeld's, the Queen, though with regret, promised to moderate herself." [Wilhelmina, i. 215.]
This is the effulgent flaming-point of the long-agitated English Match, which we have so often caught in a bitterly smoking condition. "The King indeed spoke nothing of it to us, on his return to Berlin in a day or two," says Wilhelmina; "which we thought strange." But everybody considered it certain, nothing but the details left to settle. "Hotham had daily conferences with the King." "Every post brought letters from the Prince of Wales:" of which Wilhelmina saw several,this for one specimen, general purport of the whole: "I conjure you, my dear Hotham, get these negotiations finished! I am madly in love (AMOUREUX COMME UN FOU), and my impatience is unequalled." [Ib. i. 218.] Wilhelmina thought these sentiments "very, romantic" on the part of Prince Fred, "who had never seen me, knew me only by repute:"and answered his romances and him with tiffs of laughter, in a prettily fleecing manner.
Effulgent flame-point;which was of very brief duration indeed, and which sank soon into bitterer smoke than ever, down almost to the choking state. There are now six weeks of Diplomatic History at the Court of Berlin, which end far otherwise than they began. Weeks well-nigh indecipherable; so distracted are they, by black-art and abstruse activities above ground and below, and so distractedly recorded for us: of which, if it be humanly possible, we must try to convey some faint notion to mankind.
Chapter II. LANGUAGE OF BIRDS: EXCELLENCY HOTHAM PROVES UNAVAILING
Already next morning, after that grand Dinner at Charlottenburg, Friedrich Wilhelm, awakening with his due headache, thought, and was heard saying, He had gone too far! Those gloomy looks of Hotham and Dubourgay, on the occasion; they are a sad memento that our joyance was premature. The English mean the Double-Marriage; and Friedrich Wilhelm is not ready, and never fairly was, for more than the Single. "Wilhelmina Princess of Wales, yes with all my heart; but Friedrich to an English PrincessHm, na;"and in a day more: ["Instruction to his Ministers, 5th April," cited by Ranke, i. 285 n.] plainly "No." And there it finally rests; or if rocked about, always settles there again.
And why, No?Truly, as regarded Crown-Prince Friedrich's marriage, the question had its real difficulties: and then, still more, it had its imaginary; and the subterranean activities were busy! The witnesses, contemporaneous and other, assign three reasons, or considerations and quasi-reasons, which the Tobacco-Parliament and Friedrich Wilhelm's lively fancy could insist upon it till they became irrefragable:
FIRST, his rooted discontent with the Crown-Prince, some even say his jealousy of the Crown-Prince's talents, render it unpleasant to think of promoting him in any way. SECOND, natural German loyalty, enlivened by the hope of Julich and Berg, attaching Friedrich Wilhelm to the Kaiser's side of things, repels him with a kind of horror from the Anti-Kaiser or French-English side. "Marry my Daughter, if you like; I shall be glad to salute her as Princess of Wales; but no union in your Treaty-of-Seville operations: in politics go you your own road, if that is it, while I go mine; no tying of us, by Double or other Marriages, to go one road." THIRD, the magnificence of those English. "Regardless of expense," insinuates the Tobacco-Parliament; "they will send their grand Princess hither, with no end of money; brought up in grandeur to look down on the like of us. She can dazzle, she can purchase: in the end, may there not be a Crown-Prince Party, capable of extinguishing your Majesty here in your own Court, and making Prussia a bit of England; all eyes being turned to such sumptuous Princess and her Crown-Prince,Heir-Apparent, or 'Rising Sun' as we may call him!"
These really are three weighty almost dreadful considerations to a poetic-tempered King and Smoking Parliament. Out of which there is no refuge except indeed this plain fourth one: "No hurry about Fritz's marriage; [Friedrich Wilhelm to Reichenbach (13th May), infra.] he is but eighteen gone; evidently too young for housekeeping. Thirty is a good time for marrying. 'There is, thank God, no lack of royal lineage; I have two other Princes,'"and another just at hand, if I knew it.
To all which there is to be added that ever-recurring invincible gravitation towards the Kaiser, and also towards Julich and Berg, by means of him,well acted on by the Tobacco-Parliament for the space of those six weeks. During which, accordingly, almost from the first day after that Hotham Dinner of April 3d, the answer of the royal mind, with superficial fluctuations, always is: "Wilhelmina at once, if you choose; likely enough we might agree about Crown-Prince Friedrich too, if once all were settled; but of the Double-Marriage, at this present time, HORE NIT, [Ranke, i. 285 n.] I will have nothing to say." And as the English answer steadily, "Both or none!"meaning indeed to draw Prussia away from the Kaiser's leading-strings, and out of his present enchanted condition under the two Black-Artists he has about him, the Negotiation sinks again into a mere smoking, and extinct or plainly extinguishing state.
The Grumkow-NOSTI Cipher Correspondence might be reckoned as another efficient cause; though, in fact, it was only a big concomitant symptom, much depended on by both parties, and much disappointing both. In the way of persuading or perverting Friedrich Wilhelm's judgment about England, this deep-laid piece of machinery does not seem to have done much, if anything; and Hotham, who with the English Court had calculated on it (on their detection of it) as the grand means of blowing Grumkow out of the field, produced a far opposite result on trying, as we shall see! That was a bit of heavy ordnance which disappointed everybody. Seized by the enemy before it could do any mischief; enemy turned it round on the inventor; fired it off on the inventor, andit exploded through the touch-hole; singeing some people's whiskers: nothing more!