A German Pompadour - free ebook by Marie Hay

A GERMAN POMPADOUR

WILHELMINE REICHSGRÄFIN VON GRÄVENITZ. WILHELMINE REICHSGRÄFIN VON GRÄVENITZ. From a Portrait in the collection of Frau Anna Remshardt at Heilbronn....

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WILHELMINE VON GRÄVENITZ

Decoration ...

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PREFACE

'The Past that is not overpast, But present here.' In a dusty, time-soiled packet of legal papers which had lain untouched for nigh upon two hundred years, the extraordinary history of Wilhelmine von Grävenitz is set forth in all the colourless reticence of official documents. And yet something of the thrill of the superstitious fear, and the virtuous disapproval of the lawyers who composed these writings, pierces through the stilted phrases. Like a faint fragrance of faded rose-leaves, a breath

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THE INTRIGUE

'Es ist eine Hofkabale.'— Schiller . On the outskirts of the village of Oberhausen in South Wirtemberg stands a deserted house. Rats are its only denizens now; rats and the 'poor ghosts,' so the peasants say. Two hundred years ago this eerie mansion was occupied by living men and women, perchance the ghosts of to-day. Who can tell? But I, who have grown to love them, having studied the depths of their hearts, I pray that they may rest them well in their graves, and that the Neuhaus ghosts be not

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THE AVE MARIA

A room with rudely bulging plaster walls, once painted a harsh blue, now toned by time and damp to a hundred parti-coloured patches. A rough, uneven floor; for furniture a narrow, oaken bedstead, a heavy chair lamed by four legs of various heights, a rickety table steadied by a pad of rags beneath one foot, a long chest of painted wood: such was the sleeping-room of Wilhelmine von Grävenitz, in her mother's house at Güstrow in Mecklemburg. And here on a December morning of the year 1705 Wilhelmi

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THE FIRST STEP

'Happy the nations of the moral North! Where all is virtue, and the winter season Sends sin, without a rag on, shivering forth.' Don Juan , Canto ii. Wilhelmine walked on for some twenty minutes, the cold morning air bringing a bright colour to her cheeks and a sparkle to her eyes. Her gait was one of her greatest charms; it never seemed hurried, and yet the long, even steps carried her swiftly onwards. There was vigorous elasticity in her tread; she walked freely and with perfectly assured bala

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THE JOURNEY

'When the meadow glows, and the orchard snows, And the air's with love notes teeming, When fancies break, and the senses wake, O, life's a dream worth dreaming.' W. E. Henley. A heavy , leaden sky hung over the small town of Cannstatt, and the people looked with foreboding at the lowering black clouds, and the weather-wise foretold a furious thunder-storm. For many weeks the heavens had smiled as though summer had come, though in truth the spring was but just begun, and May counted but few days.

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THE PLAY-ACTING

At eight of the clock on the evening of 15th May 1706, the main street of Stuttgart was crowded with a stream of coaches and foot-passengers. The cries of the running footmen: 'Make way there for his Highness the Duke of Zollern!' 'Room for the high and nobly born Freifrau von Geyling!' 'Let pass the coach of the gracious Countess Gemmingen!' 'Ho, there! for the Witgenstein's coach!' mixed with the comments of the rabble of sightseers, and the retorts of the substantial burghers who were pilotin

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LOVE'S SPRINGTIDE

'A queenly rose of sound, with tune for scent; A pause of shadow in a day of heat; A voice to make God weak as man, And at its pleadings take away the ban 'Neath which so long our spirits have been bent— A voice to make death tender and life sweet!' Philip Bourke Marston. The Hofmarshall's house stood in the 'Graben,' a broad road which ran proudly past the old town ending at the ducal gardens on the west, while to the east began the fields and vineyards leading up to the royal hunting forest, t

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THE FULFILMENT

Now began for Wilhelmine a time of strangely mixed and contending emotions. She loved Eberhard Ludwig with all that fervour and lavish freshness which we give to our first love; she longed to surrender to his passion, yet she held back with a modesty of maidenly reserve which her many jealous enemies ascribed to calculation, or else entirely denied, alleging that she was a mere adventuress plying her illicit trade according to her habit. Of a truth, there may have been a shade of strategy in her

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THE GHETTO

The new lady-in-waiting was installed in two rooms in the castle, very near the roof and hard by Madame de Ruth's apartment. Wilhelmine received a small income, also her food and the services of a waiting-woman of the ducal household. This person was a large, fair-skinned Swabian—a peasant, simple yet suspicious, loud-voiced, rough in manner, very tender of heart. During the first days of her service she feared and disliked her 'foreign' mistress, but, like every one whom Wilhelmine chose to cha

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'SHE COMES TO STAY THIS TIME'

Eberhard Ludwig stood before his dull Duchess, his eyes fixed on her heavy, handsome face with a look of such stern anger, that the unhappy woman felt herself to be a criminal before some harsh, implacable judge. The phrases she had prepared in her mind during the two days since she had expelled her rival from the castle faded away, and seemed to falter from proud statements to a mere apology, an anxious pleading. The Duke remained standing, one hand leant upon the back of a chair, the other hun

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THE ATTACK IN THE GROTTO

The court of Stuttgart soon saw to its cost that Wilhelmine had of a truth 'come to stay this time,' as she herself had announced on the evening of her return from the Judengasse. After a few days spent in her old quarters in the castle, she removed to a hastily improvised abode on the first floor of the Duke's Jägerhaus. Here had been the official residence of his Highness's Grand Maître de la Meute, and this personage, who was relegated to a small and inconvenient dwelling-place, naturally res

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THE MOCK MARRIAGE

Maréchal le Duc de Villars was no brilliant, victorious hero, judged by the standard of a century which had seen such military geniuses as Turenne, as the great Condé, as Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy. Villars was essentially a wily tactician, and his exploits were useful, but he lacked the dash, the verve which characterise the great commanders of that epoch. It was his system to overrun an invaded country, skilfully avoiding actual combat with the defending army, which pursued him impotently

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THE MOCK COURT

'The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. Hamlet. After their marriage his Highness and the Countess of Urach took up their residence in the castle of Hohen-Tübingen, where Wilhelmine had wandered, a lonely stranger, on the morning of her arrival in Wirtemberg. Now she was the queen of the grim fortress, and, looking upon the fair valley and the distant hills, she would often ponder on the marvellous workings of her destiny. The court of Wirtemberg naturally held aloo

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THE DUCHESS'S BLACK ROOMS

'In God's hands are all things. It is blasphemy to fear.' The Imperial decree was uncompromising: 'She leaves your court, this adventuress, or ill betide her. If you take a mistress, well and good—that is not in the power of Emperor to forbid; but you have infringed the Empire's laws by bigamy, Serenissimus, and this we will not tolerate. The lady must depart; if she goes not, the rigours of the law will crush her. No more of your mock marriage, no more of your sorry, sham court.' Thus the gist

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THE SECOND MARRIAGE

The news of the discovery of Ferrari in her Highness's apartments spread through Stuttgart during the evening, and there arose a wave of intense indignation. The Grävenitz was loudly denounced as the instigator of the attempted crime, and a mob gathered before the Jägerhaus, clamouring in their fierce, blind rage to destroy the house where the hated woman had resided. The riot grew so serious that it was necessary to call out the town guard, and though the knot of violent rioters was easily disp

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THE RETURN

A travelling coach and six horses thundered into Stuttgart, driven at a hand gallop, and raised clouds of white dust as it passed down the Graben. An escort of Silver Guards rode with this coach. One of the soldiers' horses knocked over a child playing in the roadway, but the cavalcade passed on unheeding, leaving the little crushed figure lying limp and still in the dust. The coach drew up at the Jägerhaus, where the doors stood wide open, disclosing a company of servants drawn up in solemn lin

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LUDWIGSBURG

'And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the Princess he loved.' Abt Vogler. Five leagues north of Stuttgart, in the heart of the forest, stood the small hunting castle, the Erlachhof, whither Eberhard Ludwig often fled from the world and for many peaceful days lived the life of hunter. In these woods he wandered in early spring, here on summer nights he had slept beneath the trees, dreaming the dreams of his poet nature. The Erlachhof had been greatly rebuilt, his Highness having commanded

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THE BURNING IN EFFIGY

On the morning following the masquerade, his Highness's Chief Officer of the Secret Service of Wirtemberg craved audience. The Secret Service had been instituted by Eberhard Ludwig after the murderous attack upon the Grävenitz in Duke Christopher's grotto. In the unquiet state of the country, rife with discontent and its attendant conspiracies, such a service was absolutely necessary; but, of course, this system of espionage was most unpopular, and as the Landhofmeisterin was credited with the i

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THE SINNER'S PALACE

Forstner's fate worked marvels in the outward behaviour of the Wirtembergers. The strange scene upon the market-place lingered in their minds, and the actual loss which Forstner sustained in confiscated properties, monies, and titles, made the sober burghers careful even in the private expression of their hatred of the Landhofmeisterin. They still spoke of her as the Landverderberin (Land-despoiler), but they greeted her with reverential demeanour when she thundered through town or village in he

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THE GREAT TRIUMPH AND THE SHADOW

For years Germany had gossiped over the so-called 'Persian Court' of Leopold Eberhard of Wirtemberg, Duke of Mömpelgard. This prince had been so pampered by his mother, Anne de Coligny, that he reached the age of twelve years without having learned to read or write. When the over-tender mother died, the boy's father, Duke George, took his dunce-son's education in hand; but this gentleman was peculiar in his notions of the training of young minds. French and German he deemed unnecessary trivialit

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SATIETY

'A Cloud of sorrow hanging as if Gloom Had passed out of men's minds into the air.' Shelley. Friedrich Wilhelm and his Highness of Wirtemberg started early on the morning after the state banquet. A number of wild boars had been tracked in the Kernen forest and good sport was anticipated. The Landhofmeisterin from her couch heard the stir of the sportsmen's departure. In happier days she had waved farewell to her lover from her window, now she turned her face to the wall and moaned in anguish. Bu

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THE DOWNFALL

[2] Joseph Süss Oppenheimer was the son of Michaele, a famous Jewish beauty, daughter of Rabbi Salomon of Frankfort, a musician of talent. Michaele was not only possessed of wonderful beauty, but God had blessed her with a glorious voice. She married Rabbi Isaschar Süsskind Oppenheimer, also a singer and musician, and together the couple wandered from city to city, and from palace to castle, discoursing sweet melodies. The lady's morals suffered from this vagrant life, and the Jewish community o

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REST

'Memories that make the heart a tomb.' There is solace to the mourner in the sound of rushing waters; most of all can the stricken soul find a short oblivion in the ceaseless chant of the ocean's mighty surging; and by the tumult of a great river human unrest is soothed ineffably. At Schaffhausen the Rhine falls in giant cascades, roaring and dashing against those rocks which, legend says, Wotan flung into the river in his mighty rage against a poor husbandman who had drowned himself and his low

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