No More Learning

lst-12th Aug. 1780.
CHAPTER VI.
JOURNEY HOMEWARDS FROM THE REICH; CATASTROPHE ON
JOURNEY HOMEWARDS.
The travelling Majesty of Prussia was diligently up
and down, investigating ancient Augsburg; saw, I doubt
not, the Fuggerei, or ancient Hospice of the Fuggers --
who were once Weavers in those parts, and are now
Princes, and were known to entertain Charles V. with
fires of cinnamon, nay with transient flames of Bank-
bills on one old occasion. Saw all the Fuggeries, I
doubt not; the ancient Luther-and-Melanchthon relics,
Diet-Halls and notabilities of this renowned Free
Town; -- perhaps remembered Margraf George, and
loud-voiced Kurfiirst Joachim with the Bottle-nose (our
direct Ancestor, though mistaken in opinion on some
points! ), who were once so audible there.
One passing phenomenon we expressly know he
saw; a human, not a historically important one. Driving
through the streets from place to place, his Majesty
came athwart some questionable quaint procession,
ribbony, perhaps musical; Majesty questioned it: "A
wedding procession, your Majesty! " -- "Will the Bride
step out, then, and let us see how she is dressed! "
"Vom Herzen gern; will have the honour. " Bride stept
out, with blushes, -- handsome we will hope: Majesty
surveyed her, on the streets of Augsburg, having a
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? CHAP. VI. I JOURNEY HOMEWARDS FROM THE REICH. 41
lst-12th Aug. 1730.
human heart in him; and (says Fassmann, as if with
insidious insinuation) "is said to have made her a pre-
sent. " She went her way; fulfilled her destiny in an
anonymous manner: Friedrich Wilhelm, loudly named
in the world, did the like; and their two orbits never
intersected again. -- Some forty-five miles south of
Augsburg, up the Wertach River, more properly up
the Mindel River, lies Mindelheim, once a name known
in England and in Prussia; once the Duke of Marlbo-
rough's "Principality:" given him by a grateful Kaiser
Joseph; taken from him by a necessitous Kaiser
Karl, Joseph's Brother, that now is. I know not if
his Majesty remembers that transaction, now while in
these localities: but know well, if he does, he must
think it a shabby one.
On the same. day, 1st August 1730, we quit Augs-
burg; set out fairly homewards again. The route
bends westward this time; towards Frankfurt-on-the-
Mayn; there yachts are to be ready; and mere sailing
thenceforth, gallantly down the Rhine-stream, -- such
a yacht-voyage, in the summer weather, with no
Tourists yet infesting it, -- to end, happily we will
hope, at Wesel, in the review of regiments, and other
business. First stage, first pause, is to be at Ludwigs-
burg, and the wicked old Duke of Wurtemberg's;
thither first from Augsburg. We cross the Donau at
Dillingen, at Gilnzberg, or I know not where; and by
tomorrow's sunset, being rapid travellers, find ourselves
at Ludwigsburg, -- clear through Canstatt, Stuttgard,
and certainly no Katte waiting there! Safe across the
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? 42 SHIPWRECK OF DOUBLE-MARRIAGE-PROJECT, [book VII.
1st-12th Aug. 1730.
intermediate uplands, here are we fairly in the Neckar
Country, in the Basin of the Rhine again; and old
Duke Eherhard Ludwig of Wiirtemberg bidding us
kindly welcome, poor old bewildered creature, who has
become the talk of Germany in those times. Will
English readers consent to a momentary glance into
his affairs and him? Strange things are going on at
Ludwigsburg; nay the origin of Ludwigsburg, and that
the Duke should be there and not at Stuttgard, is itself
strange. Let us take this Excerpt, headed Ludwigsburg
in 1730, and then hasten on:
Ludwigsburg in 1730.
"Duke Eberhard Ludwig, now an elderly gentleman of
"fifty-four, has distinguished himself in his long reign, not by
"political obliquities and obstinacies, though those also were
"not wanting, but by matrimonial and amatory; which have
"rendered him conspicuous to his fellow-creatures, andstill
"keep him mentionable in History, briefly and for a sad
"reason. Duke Eberhard Ludwig was duly wedded to an ir-
"reproachable Princess of Baden-Durlach (Johanna Eliza-
beth) upwards of thirty years ago; and he duly produced
"one Son in consequence, with other good results to himself
"and her. But in course of time Duke Eberhard Ludwig
"took to consorting with bad creatures; took,infact,toswash-
"ing about at random in the pool of amatory iniquity, as if
"there had been no law known, or of the least validity, in that
"matter.
"Perceiving which, a certain young fellow, Gravenitz by
"name, who had come to him from the Mecklenburg regions,
"by way of pushing fortune, and had got some pageship or
"the like here in Wiirtemberg, recollected that he had a
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? CHAP, vi. ] JOURNEY HOMEWARDS PROM THE REICH. 43
lst-12th Aug. 1730.
"young Sister at home; pretty and artful, who perhaps might
"do a stroke of work here. He sends for the young Sister;
"very pretty indeed, and a gentlewoman by birth, though
"penniless. He borrows clothes for her (by onerous contract
"with the haberdashers, it is said, being poor to a degree);
"he easily gets her introduced to the Ducal Soirees; bids her
"-- She knows what to do? Right well she knows what;
"catches, with her piquant face, the dull eye of Eberhard
"Ludwig, kindles Eberhard Ludwig, and will not for some-
"thing quench him. Not she at all: How can she; your
"Serene Highness, ask her not! A virtuous young lady, she,
"and come of a stainless Family! -- In brief, she hooks, she
"of all the fishes in the pool, this lumber of a Duke; enchants
"him, keeps him hooked; and has made such a pennyworth of
"him, for the last twenty years and more, as Germany cannot
"match. * Her Brother Gravenitz the page has become
"Count Gravenitz the prime minister, or chief of the Govem-
"ing Cabal; she Countess Gravenitz and Autocrat of Wiirtem-
"berg. Loaded with wealth, with so-called honours, she and
"hers, there go they, flaunting sky-high; none else admitted
"to more than the liberty of breathing in silence in this
"Duchy; -- the poor Duke Eberhard Ludwig making no com-
"plaint; obedient as a child to the bidding of his Gravenitz.
"He is become a mere enchanted simulacrum of a Duke; be-
"witched under worse than Thessalian spells; without faculty
"of willing, except as she wills; his People and he the play-
"thing of this Circe or Hecate, that has got hold of him. So
"it has lasted for above twenty years. Gravenitz has become
"the wonder of Germany; and requires, on these bad grounds,
"a slight mention in Human History for some time to come.
"Certainly it is by the Gravenitz alonethatEberhardLudwigis
* Michaelis, ill. 440.
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? 44 SHIPWRECK OF DOUBLE-MARRIAGE PROJECT, [book VII.
lst-12th Aug. 1730.
"remembered: and yet, down since Ulrich with the Thumb,*
"which of those serene abstruse Beutelsbachers, always an
"abstruse obstinate set, has so fixed himself in your inemo-
<<ry? --
"Most persons in Wiirtemberg, for quiet's sake, have com-
"plied with the Gravenitz; though not without protest, and
"sometimes spoken protest. Thus the Right Reverend
"Osiander (let us name Osiander, Head of the Church in
"Wurtemberg) flatly refused to have her name inserted in the
"Public Prayers: 'Is not she already prayed for? ' said
"Osiander: 'Do we not say, Deliver us from evil? ' said the in-
"dignant Protestant man. And there is one other person that
"never will comply with her: the lawful Wife of Eberhard
"Ludwig. Serene Lady, she has had a sad existence of it;
"the voice of her wrongs audible, to little purpose, this long
"while in Heaven and in Earth. But it is not in the power of
"reward or punishment to bend her female will in the essential
"point: 'Divorce, your Highness? When /am found guilty,
"yes. Till then, never, your Highness, never, never,' in
"steady crescendo tone: -- so that his Highness is glad to
"escape again, and drop the subject. On which the Serene
"Lady again falls silent. Gravenitz, in fact, hopes always to
"be wedded with the right, nay were it only with the left
"hand: and this Serene Lady stands like a fateful monument
'' irremovably in the way. The Serene Lady steadily inhabits
"her own wing of the Ducal House, would not exchange it for
"the Palace of Aladdin; looks out there upon the grand
"equipages, high doings, impure splendours of her Duke and
"his Gravenitz with a clear-eyed silence, which seems to say
"more eloquently than words,'Mene, mene, You are weighed 1'
''In the Land of Wiirtemberg, or under the Sun, is no reward,
* Ulricas Pollex (right thumb bigger than left); died, a. d. 1265 (Ml-
chaelis, iii. 202).
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? CHAP. VI. J JOURNEY HOMEWARDS FROM THE REICH. 45
lst-12tta Aug. 1730.
"or punishment that can abate this silence. Speak of divorce,
"the answer is as above: leave divorce lying, there is silence
"looking forth clear-eyed from that particular wing of the
"Palace, on things which the gods permit for a time.
"Clear-eyed silence, which, as there was no abating of it,
"grew at last intolerable to the two sinners. 'Let us remove,'
"said the Gravenitz, 'since her Serene Highness will not:
"build a new charming Palace, -- say at our Hunting Seat,
"among those pleasant Hills in the Waiblingen region,--
"and take the Court out thither. " And they have done so,
"in these late bad years; taking out with them by degrees all
"the Courtier Gentry, all the Raths, Government Boards,
"public businesses; and building new houses for them, there. *
"Founding, in fact, a second Capital for Wiirtemberg, with
"what distress, sulky misery and disarrangement to Stuttgard
"and the old Capital, readers can fancy. There it stands,
"that Ludwigsburg, the second Capital of Wiirtemberg, some
"ten or twenty miles from Stuttgard the first; a lastingme-
"morial of Circe Gravenitz and her Ludwig. Has not she,
'' by her incantations, made the stone houses dance out hither?
"It remains to this day a pleasant town, and occasional resi-
"dence of sovereignty. Waiblingen, within an hour's ride, has
"got memorability on other grounds; --what reader has not
"heard of Ghibbelincs, meaning Waiblingens? And in another
"hour up the River, you will come to Beutelsbach itself,
"where Ulrich with the Thumb had his abode (better luck to
"him), and generated this Lover of the Gravenitz, and much
"other nonsense loud now and then for the last four centuries
"in the world! --
? "From 1727 to 1730" was this latter removal. A hunting-lodge, of
Eberhard Ludwlg's building, and named by him Ludwigsburg, stood here
since 1705; nucleus of the subsequent palace, with its "Pheasantries," its
"Favoritas," &c. Ac. The place had originally been monastic (Biisching,
Erdbetchreibung, vi. 1519).
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? 46 SHIPWRECK OF DOUBLE-MARRIAGE PROJECT, [book VII.
lst-12th Aug. 1730.
"There is something of abstruse in all these Beutels-
"baehers, from Ulrich with the Thumb downwards: a mute
"ennui, an inexorable obstinacy; a certain streak of natural
"gloom which no illumination can abolish. Veracity of all
"kinds is great in them; sullen passive courage plenty of it;
"active courage rarer; articulate intellect defective: hence a
"strange stiff perversity of conduct visible among them, often
"marring what wisdom they have; -- it is the royal stamp of
"Fate put upon these men. What are called fateful or fated
"men; such as are often seen on the top-places of the world,
"making an indifferent figure there. Something of this, I
"doubt not, is concerned in Eberhard Ludwig's fascina-
tion: and we shall see other instances farther down in this
"History.
"But so, for twenty years, the absurd Duke, transformed
"into amerePorcus by his Circe in that scandalous miraculous
"manner, has lived; and so he still lives. And his serene
"Wife, equally obstinate, is living at Stuttgard, happily out
"of his sight now. One Son, a weakly man, who had one
"heir, but has now none, is her only comfort. His Wife is a
"Prussian Margravine (Friedrich Wilhelm's Half-Aunt), and
"cultivates Calvinism in the Lutheran Country: this Husband
"of hers, he too has an abstruse life, not likely to last. We
"need not doubt 'the Fates' are busy, and the evil demons,
"with those poor fellow-beings! Nay it is said the Circe is
"becoming much of a Hecate now; if the bewitched Duke
"could see it. She is getting haggard beyond the power of
"rouge; her mind, any mind she has, more and more filled
"with spleen, malice, and the dregs of pride run sour. A dis-
"gusting creature, testifies one Ex-Official gentleman, once
"a Hofrath under her, but obliged to run for life, and invoke
"free press in his defence:* no end to the foul things she will
* Apologie de Monsieur Fonlner de Breitembourg, <&o. (Paris, 1716; or
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? CHJtp. VI. ] JOURNEY HOMEWARDS FROM THE REICH. 47
lst-12th Aug. 1730.
"say, of an unspeakable nature, about the very Duke her
"victim, testifies this Ex-Official: malicious as a witch, says
"he, and as ugly as one in spite of paint, -- Houjours un lave-
"ment a ses trousses. ' Good Heavens! "
But here is the august Prussian Travelling Party:
shove aside your bewitchments and bewilderments;
hang a decent screen over many things! Poor Eber-
hard Ludwig, who is infinitely the gentleman, bestirs
himself a good deal to welcome old royal friends; nor
do we hear that the least thing went awry during this
transit of the royalties. "Field of Blenheim, says your
Majesty? Ah me! " -- For Eberhard Ludwig knows
that ground; stood the World-Battle there, and so much
has come and gone since then: Ah me, indeed!
Friedrich Wilhelm and he have met before this,
and have much to tell one another; Treaty of Seville
by no means their only topic. Nay the flood of
cordiality went at length so far, that at last Friedrich
Wilhelm, the conscientious King, came upon the most
intimate topics: Gravenitz; the Word of God; scandal
to the Protestant Religion: no likely heir to your
Dukedom; clear peril to your own soul. Is not her
Serene Highness an unexceptionable Lady, heroic
under sore woes; and your wedded Wife above all? --
'M-na, and might bring Heirs too: only forty come
"aLondres, aax d? pens de la Compagnie, 1745"): in Splttlor, Geschichle
Wbrtembergs (Spittlers Werkr, Stuttgard und Tiibingen, 1828; vol. v. ), 491-
539. Michaelis, Hi. 428-439, gives (in abstruse Chancery German) a Sequel
to this fine affair of Forstner's.
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? 48 SHIPWRECK OF DOUBLE-MARRIAGE PROJECT. [BOOK Tit
lst-12th Aug. 1730.
October: -- Ah Duke, ah Friend! Avisez la fin, Eber-
hard Ludwig; consider the end of it all; we are grow-
ing old fellows now!
The Duke, I conceive, who was
rather a fat little man, blushed blue, then red, and
various colours; at length settling into steady pale, as
it were, indicating anthracitic white-heat: it is certain
he said, at length, with emphasis, "I will! " And he
did so by and by. Friedrich Wilhelm sent a messenger
to Stuttgard to do his reverence to the high injured
Lady there, perhaps to show her afar off some ray of
hope if she could endure. Eberhard Ludwig, raised to
a white-heat, perceives that in fact he is heartily tired
of this Circe-Hecate; that in fact she has long been
an intolerable nightmare to him, could he but have
known it.
And his Royal Highness the Crown-Prince all this
while? Well, yes; his Royal Highness has got a Court
Tailor at Ludwigsburg; and, in all privacy (seen well
by Rochow), has had the Augsburg red cloth cut into
a fine upper wrappage, overcoat or roquelaure for him-
self; intending to use the same before long. Thus
they severally, the Father and the son; these are their
known acts at Ludwigsburg, That the Father persuaded
Eberhard Ludwig of the Gravenitz enormity, and that
the Son got his red topcoat ready. On Thursday, 3d
of August (late in the afternoon, as I perceive), they,
well entertained, depart toward Mannheim, Kur-Pfalz
(Elector Palatine) old Karl Philip of the Pfalz's place;
hope to be there on the morrow some time, if all go
well. Gloomy much enlightened Eberhard takes leave
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? CHAP. VI. ] JOURNEY HOMEWARDS PROM THE REICH. 49
lst-12th Aug. 1730.
of them, with abstruse but grateful feelings; will stand
by the Kaiser, and dismiss that Gravenitz nightmare by
the first opportunity.
As accordingly he did. Next summer, going on a
visit northward, specially to Berlin,* he left order that
the Gravenitz was to be got out of his sight, safe
stowed away, before his return. Which by the proper
officers, military certain of them, was accomplished, --
by fixed bayonets at last, and not without futile demur
on the part of the Gravenitz. Poor Eberhard Ludwig,
"he published in the pulpits, That he was now minded
to lead a better life," -- had time now been left him.
Same year, 1731, November being come, gloomy
Eberhard Ludwig lost, not unexpectedly, his one Son,
-- the one Grandson was gone long since. The serene
steadfast Duchess now had her Duke again, what was
left of him: but he was fallen into the sere and yellow
leaf; in two years more, he died childless;** and his
younger Brother, Karl Alexander, an Austrian Feld-
marschall of repute, succeeded in Wiirtemberg. With
whom we may transiently meet, in time coming; with
whom, and perhaps less pleasantly with certain of his
children; for they continue to this day, -- with the
old abstruse element still too traceable in them.
Old Karl Philip, Kurfurst of the Pfalz, towards
whom Friedrich Wilhelm is now driving, with intent
* There for some three weeks, "till 9th June 1731, with a suite of
above fifty persons" (Fassmann, pp. 421, 422).
*? 31st October 1733, Michaelis, iii. 441.
Carlyle, Frederic the Great. IV. 4
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? 50 SHIPWRECK OF DOUBLE-MARRIAGE PROJECT, [book vn.
lst-12th Aug. 1730.
to be there tomorrow evening, is not quite a stranger
to readers here; and to Friedrich Wilhelm he is much
the reverse, perhaps too much. This is he who ran
away with poor Prince Sobieski's Bride from Berlin,
at starting in life, who fell upon his own poor Pro-
testant Heidelbergers and their Church of the Holy
Ghost (being himself Papist, ever since that slap on
the face to his ancestor); and who has been in many
quarrels with Friedrich Wilhelm and others. A high
expensive sovereign gentleman, this old Karl Philip;
not, I should suppose, the pleasantest of men to lodge
with. One apprehends, he cannot be peculiarly well
disposed to Friedrich Wilhelm, after that sad Heidel-
berg passage of fence, twelve or eleven years ago.
Not to mention the inextricable Julich-and-Berg busi-
ness, which is a standing controversy between them.
Poor old Kurfiirst, he is now within a year of
seventy. He has had crosses and losses; terrible cam-
paignings against the Turk, in old times; and always
such a stock of quarrels, at home, as must have been
still worse to bear. A life of perpetual arguing,
squabbling and battling, -- one's neighbours being
such an unreasonable set! Brabbles about Heidelberg
Catechism, and Church of the Holy Ghost, so that
foreign Kings interfered, shaking their whips upon us.
Then brabbles about boundaries; about inheritances,
and detached properties very many, -- clearly mine,
were the neighbours reasonable! In fact this sovereign
old gentleman has been in the Kaiser's courts, or even
on the edge of fight, oftener than most other men; and
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? CHAP. VI. ] JOURNEY HOMEWARDS FROM THE REICH. 51
lst-12th Aug. 1730.
it is as if that first adventure, of the Sobieski wedding
turned topsyturvy, had been symbolical of much that
followed in his life.
We remember that unpleasant Heidelberg affair;
how hopeful it once looked; fact done, Church of the
Holy Ghost fairly ours; your Corpus Evangelicorum
fallen quasi-dead; and nothing now for it but proto-
colling by diplomatists, pleading in the Diets by men
in bombazeen, never like ending at all; -- when
Friedrich Wilhelm did suddenly end it; suddenly
locked-up his own Catholic establishments and revenues,
and quietly inexorable put the key in his pocket; as it
were, drew his own whip, with a "Will you whip my
Jew? " -- and we had to cower out of the affair,
Kaiser himself ordering us, in a most humiliated manner!
Headers can judge whether Kur-Pfalz was likely to
have a kindly note of Friedrich Wilhelm in that corner
of his memory. The poor man felt so disgusted with
Heidelberg, he quitted it soon after. He would not go
to Dusseldorf (in the Berg-and-Julich quarter), as his
Forefathers used to do; but set up his abode at Mann-
heim, where he still is. Friedrich Wilhelm, who was
far from meaning harm or insolence in that Heidelberg
affair, hopes there is no grudge remaining. But so
stand the facts: it is towards Mannheim, not towards
Heidelberg that we are now travelling! -- For the
rest, this scheme of reprisals, or whipping your Jew if
you whip mine, answered so well, Friedrich Wilhelm
has used it, or threatened to use, as the real method,
ever since, where needful; and has saved thereby much
4*
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? 52 SHIPWRECK OF DOTJBLE-MAKRIAGE PROJECT, [book vn.
lst-12lh Aug. 1730.
bombazeen eloquence, and confusion to mankind, on
several occasions.
But the worst between these two High Gentlemen
is that Jiilich-and-Berg controversy; which is a sore
still running, and beyond reach of probable surgery.
Old Karl Philip has no male Heir; and is like to be
(what he indeed proved) the last of the Neuburg Elec-
tors Palatine. What trouble there rose with the first
of them, about that sad business; and how the then
Brandenburger, much wrought upon, smote the then
Neuburger across the very face and drove him into
Catholicism, we have not forgotten; how can we ever?
-- It is one Hundred and sixteen years since that
after-dinner scene; and, 0 Heavens, what bickering
and brabbling and confused negotiation there has been;
lawyers' pens going almost continually ever since,
shadowing out the mutual darkness of sovereignties;
and from time to time the military implements
brandishing themselves, though loth generally to draw
blood! For a Hundred and sixteen years: -- but the
Final Bargain, lying in parchment in the archives of
both parties, and always acknowledged as final, was to
this effect: "You, serene Neuburg, keep what you have
"got; we serene Brandenburg the like: Cleve with
"detached pertinents ours; Jiilich and Berg mainly
"yours. And let us live in perpetual amity on that
"footing. And, note only furthermore, when our Line
"fails, the whole of these fine Duchies shall be yours:
"if your Line fail, ours. " That was the plain bargain,
done solemnly in 1624, and again more solemnly and
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? CHAP. Vl. j JOURNEY HOMEWARDS PROM THE REICH. 53
lst-12th Aug. 1730.
brought to parchment with signature in 1666, as Fried-
rich Wilhelm knows too well. And now the very
case is about to occur; this old man, childless at
seventy, is the last of the Neuburgs. May not one
reasonably pretend that a bargain should be kept?
"Tush," answers old Karl Philip always: "Bargain? "
And will not hear reason against himself on the sub-
ject; not even when the Kaiser asks him, -- as the
Kaiser really did, after that Wusterhausen Treaty, but
could get only negatives. Karl Philip has no roman-
tic ideas of justice, or of old parchments tying up a
man. Karl Philip had one Daughter by that dear
Radzivil Princess, Sobieski's stolen Bride; and he
never, by the dear Radzivil or her dear successor,*
had any son, or other daughter that lived to wed.
One daughter, we say; a first-born, extremely precious
to him. Her he married to the young fortunate Sulz-
bach Cousin, Karl Joseph Heir-Apparent of Sulzbach,
who by all laws, was to succeed in the Pfalz as well,
-- Karl Philip thinking furthermore, "He and she,
please Heaven, shall hold fast by Ditsseldorf too, and
that fine Jiilich-and-Berg Territory, which is mine.
Bargains? " Such was, and is, the old man's inflexible
notion. Alas, this one Daughter died lately and her
Husband lately;** again leaving only Daughters: will
not this change the notion? Not a whit, -- though
Friedrich Wilhelm may have fondly hoped it by
? See Buchholz, i. 61 n.
*<< She in 1728; he, 1729: their eldest Daughter was born, 1T21 (Hubner,
t. 140; Michaelis, 11. 101, 123).
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/hvd. hwiijm Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 54 SHIPWRECK OP DODBLE-MARRIAGE PROJECT. [BOOK VII.
lst-12th Aug. 1730.
possibility might. Not a whit: Karl Philip cherishes
his little Granddaughter, now a child of nine, as he
did her Mother and her Mother's Mother; hopes one
day to see her wedded (as he did) to a new Heir-
Apparent of the Pfalz and Sulzbach; and, for her
behoof, will hold fast by Berg and Jiilich, and part
with no square inch of it for any parchment.
What is Friedrich Wilhelm to do? Seek justice
for himself by his 80,000 men and the iron ramrods?
Apparently he will not get it otherwise. He is loth
to begin that terrible game. If indeed Europe do take
fire, as is likely at Seville or elsewhere -- But in the
mean while how happy if negotiation would but serve!
Alas, and if the Kaiser, England, Holland, and the
others, could be brought to guarantee me, -- as indeed
they should (to avoid a casus belli), and some of them
have said they will! Friedrich Wilhelm tried this
Jiilich-and-Berg Problem by the pacific method, all his
life; strenuously, and without effect. Result perhaps
was coming, nevertheless; at the distance of another
hundred years! One thing I know: whatever rectitude
and patience, whatever courage, perseverance, or other
human virtue he has put into this or another matter, is
not lost; not it nor any fraction of it, to Friedrich
Wilhelm and his sons' sons; but will well avail him
and them, if not soon, then later, if not in Berg and
Jiilich, then in some other quarter of the Universe,
which is a wide Entity and a long-lived! Courage,
your Majesty!
So stand matters as Friedrich Wilhelm journeys to-
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? CHAP. VI. ] CATASTROPHE ON JOURNEY HOMEWARDS. 55
3d Aug. 1730.
wards Mannheim: human politeness will have to cloak
well, and keep well down, a good many prickly points
in the visit ahead. Alas, poor Friedrich Wilhelm has
got other matter to think of, by the time we arrive in
Mannheim.
Catastrophe on Journey Homewards.
The Royal Party, quitting Ludwigsburg, -- on
Thursday 3d August 1730, some hours after dinner, as
I calculate it, -- had but a rather short journey before
them: journey to a place called Sinzheim, some fifty
or sixty miles; a long way short of Heidelberg; the
King's purpose being to lodge in that dilapidated silent
Town of Sinzheim, and leave both Heidelberg and
Mannheim, with their civic noises, for the next day's
work. Sinzheim, such was the program, as the Prince
and others understood it; but by some accident, or on
better calculation, it was otherwise decided in the royal
mind: not at Sinzheim, intricate decayed old Town,
shall we lodge tonight, but five or six miles short of
it, in the naturally silent Village of Steinfurth, where
good clean empty Barns are to be found. Which latter
is a favourite method of his Majesty, fond always of
free air and the absence of fuss. Shake-downs, a tem-
porary cooking apparatus, plenty of tobacco, and a tub
to wash in: this is what man requires, and this without
difficulty can be got. His Majesty's tastes are simple;
simple, and yet good and human. Here is a small
Royal Order which I read once, and ever since re-
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/hvd. hwiijm Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 56 SHIPWRECK OF DOUBLE-MARRIAGE PROJECT, [book TO.
3d Ang. 1780.
member, -- though the reference is now blown away,
and lost in those unindexed Sibylline Farragos, the
terror of human nature; -- let us copy it from memory,
till some deliverer arise with finger on page. * "At
"Magdeburg, on this Review-Journey, have dinner for
"me, under a certain Tree you know of, outside the
"ramparts. " Dinner of one sound portion solid, one
ditto liquid, of the due quality; readied honestly, --
and to be eaten under a shady Tree; on the Review-
ground itself, with the summer sky over one's head.
Could Jupiter Tonans, had he been travelling on
business in those parts, have done better with his
dinner? --
"At Sinzheim? " thinks his Royal Highness; and
has spoken privily to the Page Keith. To glide out
of their quarters there, in that waste negligent old
Town (where post-horses can be had), in the gray of
the summer's dawn? Across the Rhine to Speyer is but
three-hours riding; thence to Landau, into France,
into --? Enough, Page Keith has undertaken to get
horses, and the flight shall at last be. Husht, husht.
Tomorrow morning, before the sparrow wake, it is our
determination to be upon the road!
Ruins of the Tower of Stauffen, Hohen or High
Staufen, where Kaiser Barbarossa lived once, young
and ruddy, and was not yet a Myth "winking and
* Probably in Rb'denbeck's Beytrdge,-- but long sad searching there,
and elsewhere, proves unavailing at present. Historical Farragos without
index; a hundred, or several hundred, blind sacks of Historical clippings,
generally authentic too if useless, and not the least scrap of label on
them: -- are not these a handy articlel -
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/hvd.