The King's Mistress: The True & Scandalous Story of the Woman Who Stole the Heart of George I (30 page)

Townshend went on to talk of Melusine’s misery over the whole affair, and his own delight in its consequences which placed Melusine firmly in their camp:

This infidelity, in one whom the duchess honoured with her chief confidence has, you may be sure, given her great uneasiness. However, it has had the immediate good effect, of making her more open and unreserved towards me and I believe . . . she reposes a more entire confidence in me at present, than in any other person about the king. I was very true to the marshal in his grand affair, and notwithstanding the discoveries that have been made, advised the duchess to press his being declared minister, in which situation it is very possible, he may signify less than he did before. At least he will serve to exclude some more dangerous person [Sophie Karoline] from being brought over to England, and will save us from the difficulties and uncertainties that always attend a change of hands. I neither did, nor could (after some things that are come to my knowledge) endeavour to re-establish the marshal’s character of integrity with the duchess, and as I believe it morally impossible, that he should ever regain her confidence entirely, the bringing him back to England must, I think, of course have the effect of throwing her into our hands . . .
¹⁴

Melusine was immensely loyal. Hardenberg would have known of the animosity that existed between her and Sophie Karoline, and although he achieved the position he coveted, she never felt the same affection towards him. Townshend though was delighted, and wrote in excitement to Walpole of the benefits of having Melusine completely on their side: ‘I hope every thing will stand on the same good foot as formerly, with this only difference and advantage, that the marshal by his great dexterity will have transferred the ascendant with the duchess from himself to us . . .’
¹⁵

Young Melusine, loyal like her mother, was livid on Melusine’s behalf. She expected nothing less from Sophie Karoline, but was so disappointed in their old friend Hardenberg, and made her displeasure so well known, that ‘he [Hardenberg] looks on Lady Walsingham [young Melusine was created Lady Walsingham in 1722] as his determined enemy . . .’
¹⁶
Here we catch a glimpse of the devoted relationship that existed between Melusine and her second daughter.

Sophie Karoline did not come to London; disaster was averted. Did George know of the tensions that existed amongst the women of his generation that he cared for most? It is hard to imagine the famously discreet Melusine speaking critically of Sophia Charlotte or Sophie Karoline to George – anything to maintain calm and equilibrium. Wherever possible she kept animosity amongst their circle away from her lover. Instead she confided her fears to her new allies, George’s English ministers – Townshend, Walpole and Newcastle.

But there was to be no respite yet from an unusually stressful and unhappy holiday in Hanover. Before returning home the royal party was obliged to visit George’s daughter Sophia Dorothea and her family in Prussia.

The visit did not begin well. George arrived exhausted, having driven himself from Hanover in his own chaise. On arrival at the feast thrown in his honour, he fainted. Melusine, who had been worried about his health for years, was so anxious that she persuaded Townshend to help her to prevent a trip to Hanover the following year, and they did not return until 1725.

One of the main reasons for the trip was to discuss the ‘double marriage’ project that Wilhelmine recorded in her extensive memoirs as being so dear to her mother Sophia Dorothea. The plan was to arrange for the marriage of Sophia Dorothea’s and Georg August’s children to one another. Wilhelmine, it was proposed, would marry Georg August’s son Frederick Louis, and her brother Friedrich (who would be known to history as Frederick the Great) would marry one of Georg August’s daughters, possibly Anne, as she was closest to him in age. Wilhelmine told of the importance of Melusine in advancing this proposal.

She wrote intriguingly that George was initially against the idea, having such a poor impression of Wilhelmine’s character from her abusive governess Miss Letti, who was living in England on Sophia Charlotte’s charity. She continued:

The queen [Sophia Dorothea], in despair . . . had recourse to the Duchess of Kendal . . .. The latter told the queen that the aversion of the king of England to my marriage arose from certain malicious suggestions instilled into his mind concerning me: that Miss Letti had exhibited such a picture of me as was calculated to deter any man from marrying . . . ‘Your majesty may judge,’ concluded the duchess, ‘whether, after hearing such reports . . . the king your father could consent to this marriage.’ The queen, who could not conceal her indignation, told her how Miss Letti had behaved to me . . . At length the untruth of these rumours was so clearly demonstrated to the duchess that she was completely persuaded of the contrary . . . she advised the Queen of Prussia to persuade the King of England to take a journey to Berlin, that he might with his own eyes undeceive himself respecting the calumnies that had been vented against me. Assisted by the duchess, the queen managed it so well that her father complied with her wishes . . .
¹⁷

Wilhelmine’s memoirs, written much later in life, were probably exaggerated. Her dates are incorrect: the incident described above appears in her memoirs as occurring in the autumn of 1724, when George and Melusine had been back in England for nearly a year. But the sentiments she expresses, of Melusine being able to gently steer George towards her will, are correct. Melusine, having fought off potential rivals and suffered disappointments in the immediate circle, would remain in the ascendant for the rest of George’s reign.

The last obstacle to her singular place in George’s affections was removed when Sophia Charlotte died at her apartments in St James’s Palace on 20 April 1725; as she lay ill in her rooms the musicians were instructed by a distraught George not to play. She was buried four days later with all pomp at Westminster Abbey. Melusine finally had her lover to herself. She entered what was possibly the happiest and most secure period in her relationship with George. But it would last for only two short years.

16.
A Marriage?

How matters really stood between his Majesty and the Duchess of Kendal will remain, for the most part, a secret, until the great ones are pleased to make discoveries.

– Edward Calamy,
Own Life
¹

On a freezing November day in 1726 George’s estranged wife Sophia Dorothea died in her Ahlden prison. She was sixty years old and had been incarcerated for more than half her life. All hopes of freedom had long since evaporated. Depressed, she finally succumbed to a stroke or heart attack on 13 November. In death Sophia Dorothea continued in her state of limbo. George wanted her body buried in the grounds at Ahlden Castle, but the sodden earth, at the mercy of a cold wet winter, prevented it. Instead she remained unburied, and her body was placed in a coffin. It was not until the following May that George finally allowed her to be interred in the Old Church at Celle.

George’s wife was dead. What then of the rumours that George and Melusine married, and how much credence can be given to them?

Many of their contemporaries were convinced that they were married before they came to England. Morganatic or left-handed marriages were reasonably common in Europe. The most high-profile example was Louis XIV, who had married his mistress Madame de Maintenon privately in the 1680s, and George’s own Palatinate uncle had married his mistress Louise von Degenfeld morganatically
^*
. Wilhelmine in her memoirs stated that Melusine was her grandfather’s ‘wife by the left hand’. Coxe believed that
George ‘espoused her [Melusine] with his left hand, a species of marriage not uncommon in Germany’, and later he went on to say that the marriage took place, ‘though his real wife, the unfortunate Sophia Dorothy, was still alive’. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu also repeated court gossip that George had entered into a morganatic marriage with Melusine before he came to England.

During the hysteria that surrounded George’s breach with his son there were reports of Melusine being declared queen, which points to a marriage already having taken place. Edward Harley wrote to his mother at the end of January 1717: ‘There is talk again of the Duchess of M—— [Munster] being declared Q[ueen].’
²

But Liselotte, who enjoyed the Electress Sophia’s complete confidence and as such was arguably a more reputable source than the tittle-tattle Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, or the eighteenth-century historian Coxe, who was writing after the events and often reported court gossip, was convinced that no such ceremony had taken place. On 17 March 1718, at the height of the crisis between the king and the prince, she wrote to her half-sister Louise:

Everything goes from bad to worse in England. It is not safe to write anything about it. All Paris says that King George wants to declare publicly that the Prince of Wales is not his son, and that, in order to spite him still further, he wants to marry the Schulenberg woman who is now Duchess of Munster. I told Lord Stair all this, and he replied that nothing of the sort would happen, and that I had no need to alarm myself.
³

Liselotte would not have written this letter had George and Melusine already been married. If she was privy to information that they had married, she was not in the habit of dissimulation.

George certainly treated Melusine as his wife. It is telling that even before the death of Sophia Dorothea he had often referred to
her as his ‘private wife’. The king was particularly conscious of social propriety, hence the Queen’s Apartments at Kensington were shut up for the duration of George’s reign – even if he had already married her in Germany, she was not allowed to use them because she was not queen consort. But he did everything possible to honour her. She was his hostess in Hanover and in England, she had the use of the best apartments at the royal palaces, he gave her a substantial pension, and most importantly he trusted her to act as an intermediary between himself and his ministers. He treated her as queen consort in all but name.

The painting recently discovered in the basement at Celle Castle shows the high esteem in which George held Melusine. Here she is indistinguishable from a queen, draped in sumptuous velvet, needing no ornament but the royal ermine she clasps so tightly in her left hand. Could it be that her firm hold of the fur in her left hand symbolizes George’s intention to marry her ‘by the left hand’ at the earliest opportunity?

It is difficult to believe that George would have contemplated marrying Melusine while Sophia Dorothea lived. Although he was free to remarry under Continental law (Sophia Dorothea, as their divorce made clear, was not), George and his father had struggled hard to win electoral status for Hanover, and his remarriage might feasibly have endangered it. If George had taken another wife, popular opinion might have swept Sophia Dorothea to remarriage too. Remarried, there was every possibility that her new husband would have taken Celle from George – a significant portion of his territory – and endangered his position as Elector.

Furthermore remarriage was illegal in England while the divorced spouse lived, and George would have been sensitive to the laws of the country of which he expected to become king before 1714; after 1714 he would not have disobeyed the law of the land of which he was now monarch.

Equally it is very hard to imagine Melusine pressing George to marry her. She was too concerned for his wellbeing to request something of him that he was unable to give. Her family were obviously upset on her behalf at her status, as we can see from Johann Matthias’s letter to Fabrice after George’s death: ‘If my sister is not one of the happiest human beings of her time, and if she is currently not in an agreeable situation and not completely independent, then she really only has herself to blame. She was wary of opening her heart to anyone, even those closest to her’.
⁴
This may be an oblique reference to the lack of any formal ceremony between them.

But Sophia Dorothea’s death changed everything. And while her body awaited burial it is entirely credible that George should have finally felt free to marry the woman who had been his mistress for thirty-six years.

There is an intriguing letter in the British Library, written by Robert Walpole’s chaplain, the Reverend Henry Etough, to his school friend Dr Birch. He claims that George and Melusine were married by the archbishop of York. Etough is an invaluable resource for the historian, as he wrote down many of his conversations with Walpole, who would have been privy to private information. Coxe uses him as one of his primary sources in his extensive biography of Walpole, although some historians suggest that he must be taken with a large pinch of salt.

The letter reads: ‘The late king was expensive and vain in his amours. He had Kilmansegg and Platen besides Kendal to whom it is supposed the late Archbishop of York married him.’
⁵

We have seen how the first part of the sentence was a repetition of erroneous contemporary rumours, and how they are perceived by most historians today to be mere gossip. But the death of Sophia Dorothea, coupled with the character of the archbishop of York, Lancelot Blackburne, who is supposed to have married
them, makes it feasible that Etough was, in this instance, telling the truth.

The letter was written sometime after Blackburne’s death in 1743. He was a maverick, not a typical conservative servant of the Church. In 1681 he was performing ‘Secret Services’ for Charles II, and it was widely rumoured that he was a pirate, capturing Spanish gold. Once he joined the Church in 1684, however, he quickly rose to become dean of Exeter, and then archdeacon of Cornwall in 1715. He accompanied George as his personal chaplain to Hanover in 1716 and the visit was obviously a huge success: Blackburne was appointed bishop of Exeter in 1717. He was a staunch supporter of the king and the ministry, and was rewarded by the archbishopric of York, which he assumed in October 1724 after the death of the previous incumbent, the more conventional Sir William Dawes. Dawes was a Tory who had supported the Prince of Wales during the row between father and son. It is unlikely that George would have asked him to perform so private a ceremony between himself and Melusine.