What will plead for me with a Princess who so well knows the duties of friendship, is, that I have been occupied with the reception of a Sister, who has come to seek consolation in the bosom of her kindred for the loss of a loved Husband, the remembrance of whom saddens and afflicts her." And again, two months later: "... Your Royal Highness deigns to take so obliging an interest in the visit I have had [and still have] from the Queen of Sweden. I beheld her as if raised from the dead to me; for an absence of eight-and-twenty years, in the short space of our duration, is almost equivalent to death. She arrived among us, still in great affliction for the loss she had had of the King; and I tried to distract her sad thoughts by all the dissipations possible. It is only by dint of such that one compels the mind to shift away from the fatal idea where grief has fixed it: this is not the work of a day, but of time, which in the end succeeds in everything.
I congratulate your Royal Highness on your Journey to Bavaria [on a somewhat similar errand, we may politely say]; where you will find yourself in the bosom of a Family that adores you:" after which, and the sight of old scenes, how pleasant to go on to Italy, as you propose! [ OEuvres de Frederic, xxiv. 230, 235. "24th December 1771," "February, 1772." See also,
"Eptire a la Reine Douairiere de Suede" (Poem on the Troubles she has had: OEuvres de Frederic,
xiii. 74, "written in December, 1770"), and "Vers a la Reine de Suede," "January, 1771" (ib. 79).]
Queen Ulrique--a solid and ingenuous character (in childhood a favorite of her Father's, so rational, truthful and of silent staid ways)--appears to have been popular in the Berlin circles;pleasant and pleased, during these eight months. Formey, especially Thiebault, are copious on this Visit of hers; and give a number of insipid Anecdotes; How there was solemn Session of the Academy made for her, a Paper of the King's to be read there, ["DISCOURS DEL'UTILITE DES SCIENCES ET DES ARTS DAM UN ETAT" (in
OEuvres de Frederic, ix. 169 et seq.): read "27th January, 1772." Formey, ii. 16, &c. &c.]--reading beautifully done by me, Thiebault (one of my main functions, this of reading the King's Academy Papers, and my dates of THEM always correct);how Thiebault was invited to dinner in consequence, and again invited; how Formey dined with her Majesty "twenty-five times;"and "preached to her in the Palace, August 19th" (should be August 9th): insipid wholly, vapid and stupid; descriptive of nothing, except of the vapidities and vanities of certain persons.
Leaving these, we will take an Excerpt, probably our last, from authentic Busching, which is at least to be depended on for perfect accuracy, and has a feature or two of portraiture.
Busching, for the last five or six years, is home from Russia;comfortably established here as Consistorialrath, much concerned with School-Superintendence; still more with GEOGRAPHY, with copious rugged Literature of the undigested kind: a man well seen in society; has "six families of rank which invite him to dinner;"all the dining he is equal to, with so much undigested writing on his hands. Busching, in his final Section, headed BERLIN LIFE, Section more incondite even than its foregoers, has this passage:--"On the Queen-Dowager of Sweden, Louise Ulrique's, coming to Berlin, I felt not a little embarrassed. The case was this:
Most part of the SIXTH VOLUME of my MAGAZINE [meritorious curious Book, sometimes quoted by us here, not yet known in English Libraries] was printed; and in it, in the printed part, were various things that concerned the deceased Sovereign, King Adolf Friedrich, and his Spouse [now come to visit us],--and among these were Articles which the then ruling party in Sweden could certainly not like. And now I was afraid these people would come upon the false notion, that it was from the Queen-Dowager I had got the Articles in question;--notion altogether false, as they had been furnished me by Baron Korf [well known to Hordt and others of us, at Petersburg, in the Czar-Peter time], now Russian Minister at Copenhagen. However, when Duke Friedrich of Brunswick [one of the juniors, soldiering here with his Uncle, as they almost all are]
wrote to me, one day, That his Lady Aunt the Queen of Sweden invited me to dine with her to-morrow, and that he, the Duke, would introduce me,--I at once decided to lay my embarrassment before the Queen herself.
"Next day, when I was presented to her Majesty, she took me by the hand, and led me to a window [as was her custom with guests whom she judged to be worth questioning and talking to], and so placed herself in a corner there that I came to stand close before her;when she did me the honor to ask a great many questions about Russia, the Imperial Court especially, and most of all the Grand-Duke [Czar Paul that is to be,--a kind of kinsman he, his poor Father was my late Husband's Cousin-german, as perhaps you know].
A great deal of time was spent in this way; so that the Princes and Princesses, punctual to invitation, had to wait above half an hour long; and the Queen was more than once informed that dinner was on the table and getting cold. I could get nothing of my own mentioned here; all I could do was to draw back, in a polite way, so soon as the Queen would permit: and afterwards, at table, to explain with brevity my concern about what was printed in the MAGAZINE;and request the Queen to permit me to send it her to read for herself. She had it, accordingly, that same afternoon.
