House-Mastiff seeing itself neglected, driven to its hutch, for a tricksy Ape dressed out in ribbons, who gets favor in the drawing-room.
George, I perceive by the very State-Papers, George and his English Lords have a provoking slighting tone towards Friedrich Wilhelm; they answer his violent convictions, and thoroughgoing rapid proposals, by brief official negation, with an air of superiority,--traces of, a polite sneer perceptible, occasionally.
A mere Clown of a King, thinks George; a mere gesticulating Coxcomb, thinks Friedrich Wilhelm. "MEIN BRUDER DER COMODIANT, My Brother the Play-actor" (parti-colored Merry-Andrew, of a high-flying turn)! was Friedrich Wilhelm's private name for him, in after days. Which George repaid by one equal to it, "My Brother the Head-Beadle of the Holy Roman Empire,"--"ERZ-SANDSTREUER," who solemnly brings up the SANDBOX (no blotting-paper yet in use) when the Holy Roman Empire is pleased to write. "ERZ-SANDSTREUER, Arch-Sandbox-Beadle of the HEILIGE ROMISCHE REICH;" it is a lumbering nickname, but intrinsically not without felicity, and the wittiest thing I know of little George.
Special cause of quarrel they had none that was of the least significance; and, at this time, prudent friends were striving to unite them closer and closer, as the true policy for both;English Townshend himself rather wishing it, as the best Prussian Officials eagerly did; Queen Sophie passionate for it; and only a purchased Grumkow, a Seckendorf and the Tobacco-Parliament set against it. The Treaty of Wusterhausen was not known; but the fact of some Treaty made or making, some Imperial negotiation always going on, was too evident; and Friedrich Wilhelm's partialities to the Kaiser and his Seckendorf could be a secret nowhere.
Negotiation always going on, we say; for such indeed was the case,--the Kaiser striving always to be loose again (having excellent reasons, a secret bargain to the contrary, to wit!) in regard to that Julich-and-Berg Succession; proposing "substitutes for Julich and Berg;" and Friedrich Wilhelm refusing to accept any imaginable substitute, anything but the article itself. So that, I believe, the Treaty of Wusterhausen was never perfectly ratified, after all; but hung, for so many years, always on the point of being so. These are the uses of your purchased Grumkow, and of riding the length of a Terrestrial Equator keeping a Majesty in company. If, by a Double-Marriage with England, that intricate web of chicanery had been once fairly slit in two, and new combinations formed, on a basis not of fast-and-loose, could it have been of disadvantage to either of the Countries, or to either of their Kings?--Real and grave causes for agreement we find; real or grave causes for quarrel none anywhere. But light or imaginary causes, which became at last effectual, can be enumerated, to the length of three or four.
CAUSE FIRST: THE HANOVER JOINT-HERITAGES, WHICH ARE NOT IN A LIQUID STATE.
FIRST, the "Ahlden Heritage" was one cause of disagreement, which lasted long. The poor Mother of George II. and of Queen Sophie had left considerable properties; "three million THALERS," that is 900,000 pounds, say some; but all was rather in an unliquid state, not so much as her Will was to be had. The Will, with a 10,000pounds or so, was in the hands of a certain Graf von Bar, one of her confidants in that sad imprisonment: "money lent him,"Busching says, [<italic> Beitrage zur Lebensgeschichte denkwurdiger Personen <end italic> (Halle, 1783-l789), i. 306, ? NUSSLER. Some distracted fractions of Business Correspondence with this Bar, in <italic> Memoirs of Sophia Dorothea, <end italic>--unintelligible as usual there.] "to set up a Wax-Bleachery at Cassel:"--and the said Count von Bar was off with it, Testamentary Paper and all; gone to the REICHSHOFRATH at Vienna, supreme Judges, in the Empire, of such matters.
Who accordingly issued him a "Protection," to start with: so that when the Hanover people attempted to lay hold of the questionable wax-bleaching Count, at Frankfurt-on-Mayn,--secretly sending "a lieutenant and twelve men" for that object,--he producec his Protection Paper, and the lieutenant and twelve men had to hasten home again. [Ibid.] Count von Bar had to be tried at law,--never ask with what results;--and this itself was a long story. Then as to the other properties of the poor Duchess, question arises, Are they ALLODIA, or are they FEUDA,--that is to say, shall the Son have them, or the Daughter? In short, there was no end to questions. Friedrich Wilhelm has an Envoy at Hanover, one Kannegiesser, laboring at Hauover, the second of such he has been obliged to send; who finds plenty of employment in that matter.
"My Brother the COMODIANT quietly put his Father's Will in his pocket, I have heard; and paid no regard to it (except what he was compelled to pay, by Chesterfield and others): will he do the like with his poor Mother's Will?" Patience, your Majesty: he is not a covetous man, but a self-willed and a proud,--always conscious to himself that he is the soul of honor, this poor Brother King!
Nay withal, before these testamentary bickerings are settled, here has a new Joint-Heritage fallen: on which may rise discussions.
Poor Uncle Ernst of Osnabruck--to whom George I., chased by Death, went galloping for shelter that night, and who could only weep over his poor Brother dead --has not survived him many months.
The youngest Brother of the lot is now gone too. Electress Sophie's Seven are now all gone. She had six sons: four became Austrian soldiers, three of whom perished in war long since;the other three, the Bishop, the King, the eldest of the Soldiers, have all died within two years (1726-1728): [Michaelis, i. 153.
