The King's Mistress: The True & Scandalous Story of the Woman Who Stole the Heart of George I (6 page)

A union between the first cousins George and Sophia Dorothea had become imperative to the promotion of the state. Hanover and Celle were already acting as one, sharing a single diplomat to represent their interests.
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Sophia was obliged to overcome her distaste for Sophia Dorothea’s initial illegitimacy. She wrote avariciously of her agreement to the marriage: ‘if it is gilded with 100,000 crowns [thaler] a year in our full control we may shut our eyes to take it . . .’ By 1681 the details of the marriage contract had been decided. Sophia Dorothea, destined to become one of the most pitiful of Europe’s princesses, brought the promise of a unified Celle and Hanover, a dowry of 100,000 thaler, as well as an income of 4,000 thaler per annum to her future in-laws. She would have no financial independence; her income was to be under George’s control.
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Although George was undoubtedly attracted to his bride, Sophia noted that his desire to improve the fortunes of their house was so great that he would ‘marry a cripple’.
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The pair were married at Celle on 22 November 1682. The bride was sixteen years old, her husband twenty-two.

Unlike his bride, George had some sexual experience by the time of his marriage. An affair with his sister Figuelotte’s under-governess in 1676 produced a son, to his mother’s horror. His father was equally apoplectic, but only because he feared scandal – the girl came from a good Heidelberg family. George never acknowledged the child, as he would never formally acknowledge any of his illegitimate children. After the initial shock of George’s first sexual foray, Ernst August took it upon himself to arrange a mistress for him, urged by his own
maîtresse en titre
, Klara Platen. The woman was Maria Katharine von Meysenbug, Klara’s younger sister.

Ernst August had allowed Klara, who was eighteen years younger than Sophia, to become a considerable force at court. Their affair had begun in the 1670s, and although he continued to have numerous other romantic adventures, it would endure until his death. Her compliant husband, Franz Ernst von Platen, was rewarded for accommodating the affair with political office – he eventually became Hanover’s first minister in 1693.

Klara was exquisitely opulent, with a wide, generous mouth and beautiful hands. She dressed superbly, maddeningly copying Sophia’s taste to vex her. Clothes always looked better on Klara, whereas Sophia’s frame appeared too small to support the rich furs she favoured. Ambitious, scheming and hungry for wealth, which she used her position to gain, Klara was eventually accepted by Sophia as an annoying fixture.

It was typical of Klara to push her sister into George’s arms, largely to extend her own power base. Maria Katherine was five years older than George, mature enough to be exotic but young enough to have the freshness and beauty of youth. Ernst August and Klara believed she was the perfect means of controlling George. But the affair quickly fizzled out and Maria Katherine subsequently married Johann von dem Bussche, a Hanoverian army
officer. George’s split from Maria Katherine frustrated Klara immensely, and from the outset she was Sophia Dorothea’s enemy.

Some historians have speculated that George’s next serious romantic attachment was to his half-sister, Sophia Charlotte von Platen. She was Klara’s daughter by Ernst August and was acknowledged and accepted by the family, even by Sophia, who liked her enormously.
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Illegitimacy was not a stigma in Hanover and illegitimate children had the right to bear their father’s arms, although crossed by the bar sinister. Whether or not they would go on to become lovers later in life, they certainly were not at the beginning of the 1680s: Sophia Charlotte was only born in 1675. But, whatever the truth, George showed her a lifelong devotion. He gave her every honour; after the death of his father this illegitimate half-sister was treated as a sister. As king of Great Britain he gave her lands, titles and income.

Despite its eventual breakdown, the early years of the marriage between George and Sophia Dorothea were relatively companionable. Sophia Dorothea’s looks were perfectly in accord with contemporary taste. She was pleasingly plump, with a pretty face, creamy skin, beautiful hands and cascades of dark curls. And although the European gossips later reported that George had found her distasteful from the start, he was initially attracted to her. Sophia, perhaps guilty of a little embellishment, wrote of the ‘grand passion’ that George had formed for his bride. But their personalities were terribly mismatched. The brothers Ernst August and George William were only concerned that the marriage of their children should elevate their house. They did not consider the consequences of uniting the serious, responsible, hardworking and occasionally dour George to a frivolous young girl. Sophia Dorothea, the doted-on, spoilt only child of parents still completely in love, was shockingly ill-prepared for life as a future duchess.

Sophia Dorothea’s in-laws went out of their way to welcome her. Sophia, although ‘maddened’ by her dizziness and often inappropriate behaviour, did her best to make herself agreeable. Liselotte wrote to Sophia on 7 August 1692, complaining of her own daughter-in-law, ‘the most disagreeable person in the world’.
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But, she continues, ‘Your Grace’s daughter-in-law is only half as bad as ours, and moreover pleasant and kind as a person, which ours certainly is not. No wonder, then, that I find it more difficult to make the effort for ours than Your Grace for hers.’
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By contrast, the notoriously lecherous Ernst August, who found her extremely attractive, sought out his niece’s company as much as possible. George’s brothers were equally entranced, with Karl Philipp playing the courtly lover and Friedrich August calling her the bellissime. Figuelotte, perhaps tired of being the only girl amongst so many men, adored her sense of fun and style. (Sophia found her new daughter-in-law so pernicious an influence on young Figuelotte that she comforted herself, when her only daughter left Hanover in October 1684 to marry Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg-Prussia, that at least Sophia Dorothea could no longer turn her head with frivolities.) There were rumours that Max seriously tried to have an affair with her – Sophia Dorothea felt his advances went too far, beyond the bounds of flirtatious behaviour allowed, even encouraged in court circles – but this may have been part of the allegations of treason later brought against him.

Sophia Dorothea was pregnant by the spring of 1683; in December she gave birth to a boy, Georg August, who would eventually become George II of Great Britain. Hans Kaspar von Bothmer, first gentleman of her household, records in his memoirs how eager the princess was that George should return from campaign in time for the baby’s birth. Three years later a daughter followed, named Sophia Dorothea after her mother. She had been conceived during an Italian holiday, when Sophia Dorothea travelled
with her father-in-law to see George, who had once again been on campaign with his troops in the service of the Emperor against the Turks (part of the cunning Ernst August’s jostling for the electoral cap).

If George had spent more time in Hanover then perhaps the marriage might not have broken down so quickly, if at all. But from 1688 he put himself at his father’s disposal to fight in the Palatinate war on the side of the Emperor against the French. (This war broke Liselotte’s heart, as she saw the troops of the French royal family she had been forced to marry into break up the beloved home of her childhood.) The spoilt, fragile and bored Sophia Dorothea craved attention, and George, either at war or immersed in affairs of state, refused to satisfy what he saw as her unreasonable emotional demands.

She was still young and very immature. Her chief pleasure seems to have been trumping Countess von Platen in the fashion stakes. George had his mother as a perfect wifely role-model. Sophia was completely at one with his father regarding the promotion of their house; her behaviour, although occasionally idiosyncratic, was always exemplary; and she turned a blind eye to Ernst August’s many affairs. George’s tempestuous wife was Sophia’s antithesis. Sophia Dorothea’s lady-in-waiting, Eleonore von dem Knesebeck, tells us that the princess was unhappy a mere four years into her marriage, even before the couple’s daughter was born. Whilst George, ever conscientious, threw himself into war abroad and administration at home, domestically they plodded on without either finding a serious antidote to their miserable situation. George had no preferred mistress at the end of the 1680s and beginning of the 1690s. If he did have a mistress at all, she was too insignificant for her name to have been recorded. At this point Melusine enters the story.

4.
The Mistress

Women signify nothing unless they are the mistress of a prince or a first minister, which I would not be if I were young . . .

– Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough

Melusine arrived in Hanover in 1690 at exactly the right time. George’s marriage to Sophia Dorothea was crumbling and the primogeniture decision had created fury and suspicion within the ducal family while they were still grieving the deaths of Karl Philipp and Friedrich August on the battlefield. Within this febrile atmosphere Melusine and George met, shortly after she entered Sophia’s service. From then on, when George was in Hanover, they were constantly in one another’s company.

Melusine was well connected and well educated. Her family was noble and newly rich. Her brother Johann Matthias was already making a name for himself as one of the brilliant military minds of the era, and her father enjoyed the confidence of the Elector of Brandenburg. The wily Ernst August and his wife could not have failed to note the potential diplomatic benefit Melusine would bring to their house, which is probably why she gained the position in Sophia’s household.

She entered a court peopled by a very small number of the nobility and their servants, dominated by the lecherous and ambitious Ernst August, the snobbish Sophia and the volatile and tricky Sophia Dorothea. Court was about spectacle, wealth and adventure. There were orgies with beautiful courtesans for those that sought them, meandering conversations with Leibniz for those with an intellectual disposition.

There were two distinct types of women at court – the respectable noblewomen and the courtesans. The latter were usually drawn from the families of the burgeoning middle classes, or less frequently, like Melusine, from the minor nobility. They were typically witty, excellent conversationalists, and most were very pretty. But
no matter how accomplished, beautiful and talented they were, they were exchanging sexual favours for gifts and protection; as such they languished on the periphery of respectable society. There was misunderstanding and antipathy between the two groups.
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Characteristically the nobility, men and women, were extremely proud of their lineage. Ernst August, who always made zealous use of the courtesan, obviously saw them as amusing playthings and never referred to them with any respect in his letters. Respect belonged to the ‘proper’ court lady, and relations between the two groups, who rarely mixed, could be chilly. George’s youngest brother Ernst August tells in his correspondence of the outrage expressed by an established court grande dame, Frau von Reden, at the courtesan Katherine von Meysenbug’s temerity in calling on her in her rooms. So furious was she that a mere courtesan should dare to visit her as a social equal that she called her a ‘cat’, a huge insult.
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Perhaps the duke’s regard for Sophia had encouraged the court to divide along these lines. Although he kept mistresses and allowed at least one to grow powerful, he never treated Sophia with anything less than absolute respect.

Why did Melusine accept George as a lover? Had he not divorced Sophia Dorothea then Melusine would have been condemned to the margins of polite society. Her father and stepmother were hopeful that the Hanover appointment would lead to a good marriage – her old, respectable family demanded it. Melusine must have known that her liaison with George would be detrimental to any future marriage, and his track record suggested he would discard her quickly, even if she became pregnant. In 1690 Melusine had little to gain from such a relationship. Even so, this provincial virgin embraced George enthusiastically when there was absolutely no material reason for her to do so. It seems that Melusine – quiet, shy, not conventionally beautiful and possibly lacking in confidence – fell in love.

George has suffered at the hands of historians, who for the most part cast him as narrow-minded and a cultural philistine who was sometimes monstrous to his own family. The scandal of Sophia Dorothea and Königsmarck so horrified Europe that the Frenchman Charles Perrault may well have had George in mind when he penned his bloody folktale ‘Bluebeard’ in 1697, and Charlotte Brontë may at least in part have modelled her anti-hero of
Jane Eyre
, Edward Rochester, on George: both effectively imprisoned their wives in the attic. But the historian Ragnhild Hatton has done much to rehabilitate his character. She produces strong evidence to suggest that George was actually sensitive, wise and capable of great love, sharing Melusine’s huge interest in art, architecture and music. He was also a brilliant soldier and an able administrator. George did not govern lightly either in Hanover or England. He was extremely active, and effective, both as elector and king, whereas many of his contemporary monarchs relied on ministers and courtiers to govern.

Sophia noted with derision the attention George lavished on Melusine, while in his letters George’s brother Ernst August is kinder, quickly accepting George’s new mistress as part of the family’s odd extended circle. From the beginning, Melusine worked hard to create a warm domestic bubble for George, away from the machinations of the court and his appalling marriage.