Beyond doubt a bright airy lady, shining in mild radiance in those Northern parts; very graceful, very witty and ingenious; skilled to speak, skilled to hold her tongue,--which latter art also was frequently in requisition with her. She did not much venerate her Husband, nor the Court population, male or female, whom he chose to have about him: his and their ways were by no means hers, if she had cared to publish her thoughts. Friedrich I., it is admitted on all hands, was "an expensive Herr;" much given to magnificent ceremonies, etiquettes and solemnities; making no great way any-whither, and that always with noise enough, and with a dust vortex of courtier intrigues and cabals encircling him,--from which it is better to stand quite to windward. Moreover, he was slightly crooked; most sensitive, thin of skin and liable to sudden flaws of temper, though at heart very kind and good.
Sophie Charlotte is she who wrote once, "Leibnitz talked to me of the infinitely little ( de l'infiniment petit): mon Dieu, as if I did not know enough of that!" Besides, it is whispered she was once near marrying to Louis XIV.'s Dauphin; her Mother Sophie, and her Cousin the Dowager Duchess of Orleans, cunning women both, had brought her to Paris in her girlhood, with that secret object; and had very nearly managed it. Queen of France that might have been; and now it is but Brandenburg, and the dice have fallen somewhat wrong for us! She had Friedrich Wilhelm, the rough boy; and perhaps nothing more of very precious property. Her first child, likewise a boy, had soon died, and there came no third: tedious ceremonials, and the infinitely little, were mainly her lot in this world.
All which, however, she had the art to take up not in the tragic way, but in the mildly comic,--often not to take up at all, but leave lying there;--and thus to manage in a handsome and softly victorious manner. With delicate female tact, with fine female stoicism too; keeping all things within limits. She was much respected by her Husband, much loved indeed; and greatly mourned for by the poor man: the village Lutzelburg (Little-town), close by Berlin, where she had built a mansion for herself, he fondly named Charlottenburg (Charlotte's-town), after her death, which name both House and Village still bear.
Leibnitz found her of an almost troublesome sharpness of intellect; "wants to know the why even of the why," says Leibnitz.
That is the way of female intellects when they are good; nothing equals their acuteness, and their rapidity is almost excessive.
Samuel Johnson, too, had a young-lady friend once "with the acutest intellect I have ever known."On the whole, we may pronounce her clearly a superior woman, this Sophie Charlotte; notable not for her Grandson alone, though now pretty much forgotten by the world,--as indeed all things and persons have, one day or other, to be! A LIFE of her, in feeble watery style, and distracted arrangement, by one Erman, <end italic [Monsieur Erman, Historiographe de Brandebourg, Memoires pour servir a l'Histoire de Sophie Charlotte, Reine de Preusse, las dans les Seances, &c. (1 vol.
8vo, Berlin, 1801.)] a Berlin Frenchman, is in existence, and will repay a cursory perusal; curious traits of her, in still looser form, are also to be found in Pollnitz: [Carl Ludwig Freiherr von Pollnitz, Memoiren zur Lebens- und Regierunge-Geschichte der vier letzten Regenten des Preussischen Staats (was published in French also), 2 vols. 12mo, Berlin, 1791.] but for our purposes here is enough, and more than enough.
Chapter V.
KING FRIEDRICH I.
The Prussian royalty is now in its twelfth year when this little Friedrich, who is to carry it to such a height, comes into the world. Old Friedrich the Grandfather achieved this dignity, after long and intricate negotiations, in the first year of the Century;16th November, 1700, his ambassador returned triumphant from Vienna; the Kaiser had at last consented: We are to wear a crown royal on the top of our periwig; the old Electorate of Brandenburg is to become the Kingdom of Prussia; and the Family of Hohenzollern, slowly mounting these many centuries, has reached the uppermost round of the ladder.
Friedrich, the old Gentleman who now looks upon his little Grandson (destined to be Third King of Prussia) with such interest,--is not a very memorable man; but he has had his adventures too, his losses and his gains: and surely among the latter, the gain of a crown royal into his House gives him, if only as a chronological milestone, some place in History.
He was son of him they call the Great Elector, Friedrich Wilhelm by name; of whom the Prussians speak much, in an eagerly celebrating manner, and whose strenuous toilsome work in this world, celebrated or not, is still deeply legible in the actual life and affairs of Germany. A man of whom we must yet find some opportunity to say a word. From him and a beautiful and excellent Princess Luise, Princess of Orange,--Dutch William, OUR Dutch William's aunt,--this, crooked royal Friedrich came.
