Melusine and her daughters
Oct. 13th, 2021 06:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mildred_of_midgard posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
rheinsbergHatton's George I bio has something I've been looking for for a while now: more detail on Katte's Aunt Melusine, mistress to G1. Not a lot is known about her, apparently. But I got more than is in Wikipedia.
First, I discovered in the detailed "how I rendered their names" section (the one that says "Braunschweig" is too foreign :P) that not only did Ehrengard Melusine von der Schulenberg go by her second name, so did her daughter Petronella Melusine. (I admit, I was very confused by Goldstone calling the older Melusine "Ermengarde", and not just because of the Ehrengard/Ermengarde!)
So the woman who had a fling with Katte whom we've been calling Petronella actually went by Melusine too, just to make it that much harder for writers of fiction. :P
The three daughters were not only never recognized by G1, Hatton is very unsure whether they even ever knew who their parents were. They were, remember, passed off as the daughters of Melusine's sisters and she was passed off as their aunt. Which is why Hervey is able to think that one of them is the mistress rather than the illegitimate kin of G1, G2, and Fritz of Wales.
Hatton says there's some evidence the daughters knew they were the children of G1 and Melusine, but some counterevidence (but that could just be them observing the proprieties).
That was news to me! I thought since Wikipedia lists them as the children of G1 and Melusine that it was common knowledge to contemporaries, but apparently this was a deduction by "recent" (book published in 1978) century scholars based on documentary evidence, like Melusine's will.
As to why the will doesn't say they're her nieces (but also doesn't say they're her daughters, again, this is a deduction), Hatton speculates:
We know that the duchess of Kendal (the title by which Melusine was known in England after 1719) was a regular churchgoer, at least in her later years, and the phraseology of the religious preamble to the will is less stereotyped than those usually encountered. It would seem, therefore, that the solemnity of the occasion made it impossible for her to perpetuate the lie which had been forced upon her by circumstances.
As to why G1 never acknowledged them, she gives these speculative reasons:
1. When he was a young man, he fathered an illegitimate child. His parents, Ernst August and Sophia, came down on him hard and said he could have mistresses, but no scandals. They had an electorate to win! So after this, no more acknowledged illegitimate children.
2. The first two were born before the divorce, which meant there would have been a scandal.
3. After the divorce (this is G1 placing SD's mother SD of Celle under house arrest,cahn, and the disappearance of her lover), the divorce itself was a big scandal that endangered the quest to get recognition for the electoral status of Hanover, so no acknowledging any children that would have raked up the divorce scandal again.
Character portraits of Melusine and her daughters, for those who might want to write fic:
[Melusine] was pliant and patient, a welcome relief to George from his wife's petulant and stormy personality. She tried to please and to soothe, she shared his interest in music and the theatre, she studied him and his moods, and learnt to manage him. That she was useful to George after 1714 is clear from the way she took the initiative in making friends with English ladies known to have influence with their husbands in high positions, and in the manner in which he permitted her to become a kind of sounding-board for ministers in matters where they were reluctant to approach him directly. Her devotion to George was never doubted by his family, or by hers.
It is implied in the letters of George's mother and youngest brother and in those of Melusine's eldest brother; it is made explicit in the section which George's Prussian granddaughter, Wilhelmine, devoted in her memoirs to the lady she was brought up to accept as her grandfather's morganatic wife.54 Wilhelmine's characterization of Melusine as a person ‘without either vices or virtues’ must of necessity be second-hand, derived from her mother – George's daughter – who often visited Hanover and was friendly with Melusine (using her at times, like the British ministers, to figure out the best way to broach a subject with the king-elector), and from the many courtiers, men and women, who travelled between Hanover and Berlin on various missions. It is in any case curiously incomplete.
Melusine's kind disposition is not in doubt. The Gräfin zu Schaumburg-Lippe, who knew her well both in Hanover and in England, praised her concern ‘to do all the good she can’, but Melusine was not as meek and mild as both descriptions might seem to imply. She was intelligent and well-educated, though clearly not as clever as either George's mother or sister. Her French spelling was near perfect, far better than that of George's daughter-in-law, Caroline, and she wrote well also in English. She knew how to sum up people and amused George by cleverly cut paper figures of ministers and others at court which she sometimes exaggerated to the point of caricature. She was, or became with experience, shrewd, and her letters are not without their pointed remarks when she deemed this necessary. In 1720 she let Aislabie know, if politely, that she felt he had mismanaged her South Sea Company stock; and in 1730 she asked Robert Walpole, somewhat tartly, to transfer to her, since she ‘had need of it’, the whole of the sum which had been left in trust with him on her behalf by the late king.
The daughters:
Three daughters were born of their union, [Anna] Louise in 1692, [Petronella] Melusine, who like her mother always used her second baptismal name, in 1693, and [Margarethe] Gertrud, known in the family as Trudchen or Trutjen, in 1701 – beautiful enough to earn the soubriquet die scköne Gertrud among Hanoverian courtiers in England. The eldest daughter was also reckoned a great beauty; as for the middle girl, our sources tell us that she was good-looking and that she was spirited enough to speak her mind to George on issues, even political ones, where she disagreed with him. That they formed part of George's close family circle even before all three came to England with Melusine is clear from the letters which George's youngest brother, Ernst August, wrote to a friend between 1703 and 1726. From 1707 onwards he makes a number of references to them: Louise goes to the opera with Melusine; young Melusine becomes a Hoffräulein with the dowager electress; Trutjen at the age of six reads the newspaper to George at Pyrmont with the gravity of an adult, at twelve she – always George's favourite – is permitted to join his hunting-party at Göhrde, she is a real tomboy, hoping to be a soldier when she grows up.
Melusine was apparently a stickler when it came to proper behavior. We've seen that she was a regular churchgoer, and increasingly devout in her later years, and Hatton speculates that her breaking the silence about her illegitimate daughters in her will is because of the religious context of the will, where she didn't feel she could tell a lie.
New examples have emerged: G1 appears to have been more forgiving than Melusine of their eldest daughter, who took lovers and was divorced when her husband caught her in flagrante. G1 granted the divorce and gave her a title (Gräfin von Delitz). In later years, he gave her a small palace, and in a record in which he's drawing a money order from the Hanoverian treasury for her use, George asks that this 'be done without the knowledge of the Duchess of Kendal' (i.e. her mother Melusine).
Moreover:
She disapproved so strongly of the gambling habits of Philip Dormer Stanhope 4th earl of Chesterfield, who married young Melusine, that he was too scared to confess his losses at cards during a visit to Bath: he pretended he had not played at all.
In her will:
The sums donated to nephews and nieces were quite modest (£300 to each); and the somewhat straitlaced attitude of Melusine as she got older (which we have already noticed in her dislike of gambling for high stakes) is evident in her leaving out one nephew from the list of bequests with the explanation that she did so because he had married against his parents' wishes.
Why is this relevant? Well, Selena pointed out that historical Katte was obviously willing to brave (relative) poverty in exile for Fritz, since he had to know Aunt Melusine might not be willing to host/bankroll him indefinitely.
But now that I've read these examples, I'm not convinced she would have given a deserter and flouter of his father's wishes anything! Remember, Hans Heinrich didn't want his son leaving Prussian service for British even without it being desertion. (And Hans Hermann was reprimanded for overstaying his leave.)
And this is of course relevant to any AU in which he shows up in England in 1730. :D (As an out for the author who needs one, there's always Petronella/young Melusine, whom he was infatuated1, and who might have found a way to get him some money.)
Speaking of Petronella/young Melusine, Hatton tells me that she and her mother were inseparable, and that they continued living together even after young Melusine married Chesterfield. And that young Melusine seems not to have lived with her husband:
Young Melusine's marriage seems to have made little difference: there is hardly a mention of her in Chesterfield, Letters, and her husband's biographers have concluded that, though he behaved towards her with great politeness in society, they lived more or less apart. The duchess of Kendal could not have approved of him; in her will of 1743 she makes sure that he cannot touch any of the money left to the younger Melusine.
Things you would not have guessed!
1. The original Selena summary said "had a fling with", but the text reads "umschwärmte". I take it to mean he was admiring her, with no implications as to whether or not she reciprocated. And while my German admittedly misses a lot of nuances like this, summarizing from memory is also a feature of Selena summaries (just like Mildred summaries), so I'm asking. Do we know from "umschwärmte" whether they had a fling?
Tangent: Oh, and this is interesting. Rereading that passage, Kloosterhuis describes Petronella Melusine as a relative ("Verwandte") of the duchess of Kendal, not a daughter. He cites Schmidt again, who, remember, is writing in 1899. And remember that Hatton told us that the equation of the "nieces" of Melusine with her illegitimate children by G1 was recent as of 1978.
Ooh, Schmidt is saying that that the ADB erroneously says that she was the illegitimate daughter of G1 and Melusine. And Kloosterhuis seems to be going along with this. Okay, guys, but Hatton cites evidence and you don't, so...Schmidt might be 19th century whitewashing and Kloosterhuis might be trustingly following him. Evidence or it didn't happen!
First, I discovered in the detailed "how I rendered their names" section (the one that says "Braunschweig" is too foreign :P) that not only did Ehrengard Melusine von der Schulenberg go by her second name, so did her daughter Petronella Melusine. (I admit, I was very confused by Goldstone calling the older Melusine "Ermengarde", and not just because of the Ehrengard/Ermengarde!)
So the woman who had a fling with Katte whom we've been calling Petronella actually went by Melusine too, just to make it that much harder for writers of fiction. :P
The three daughters were not only never recognized by G1, Hatton is very unsure whether they even ever knew who their parents were. They were, remember, passed off as the daughters of Melusine's sisters and she was passed off as their aunt. Which is why Hervey is able to think that one of them is the mistress rather than the illegitimate kin of G1, G2, and Fritz of Wales.
Hatton says there's some evidence the daughters knew they were the children of G1 and Melusine, but some counterevidence (but that could just be them observing the proprieties).
That was news to me! I thought since Wikipedia lists them as the children of G1 and Melusine that it was common knowledge to contemporaries, but apparently this was a deduction by "recent" (book published in 1978) century scholars based on documentary evidence, like Melusine's will.
As to why the will doesn't say they're her nieces (but also doesn't say they're her daughters, again, this is a deduction), Hatton speculates:
We know that the duchess of Kendal (the title by which Melusine was known in England after 1719) was a regular churchgoer, at least in her later years, and the phraseology of the religious preamble to the will is less stereotyped than those usually encountered. It would seem, therefore, that the solemnity of the occasion made it impossible for her to perpetuate the lie which had been forced upon her by circumstances.
As to why G1 never acknowledged them, she gives these speculative reasons:
1. When he was a young man, he fathered an illegitimate child. His parents, Ernst August and Sophia, came down on him hard and said he could have mistresses, but no scandals. They had an electorate to win! So after this, no more acknowledged illegitimate children.
2. The first two were born before the divorce, which meant there would have been a scandal.
3. After the divorce (this is G1 placing SD's mother SD of Celle under house arrest,
cahn, and the disappearance of her lover), the divorce itself was a big scandal that endangered the quest to get recognition for the electoral status of Hanover, so no acknowledging any children that would have raked up the divorce scandal again.Character portraits of Melusine and her daughters, for those who might want to write fic:
[Melusine] was pliant and patient, a welcome relief to George from his wife's petulant and stormy personality. She tried to please and to soothe, she shared his interest in music and the theatre, she studied him and his moods, and learnt to manage him. That she was useful to George after 1714 is clear from the way she took the initiative in making friends with English ladies known to have influence with their husbands in high positions, and in the manner in which he permitted her to become a kind of sounding-board for ministers in matters where they were reluctant to approach him directly. Her devotion to George was never doubted by his family, or by hers.
It is implied in the letters of George's mother and youngest brother and in those of Melusine's eldest brother; it is made explicit in the section which George's Prussian granddaughter, Wilhelmine, devoted in her memoirs to the lady she was brought up to accept as her grandfather's morganatic wife.54 Wilhelmine's characterization of Melusine as a person ‘without either vices or virtues’ must of necessity be second-hand, derived from her mother – George's daughter – who often visited Hanover and was friendly with Melusine (using her at times, like the British ministers, to figure out the best way to broach a subject with the king-elector), and from the many courtiers, men and women, who travelled between Hanover and Berlin on various missions. It is in any case curiously incomplete.
Melusine's kind disposition is not in doubt. The Gräfin zu Schaumburg-Lippe, who knew her well both in Hanover and in England, praised her concern ‘to do all the good she can’, but Melusine was not as meek and mild as both descriptions might seem to imply. She was intelligent and well-educated, though clearly not as clever as either George's mother or sister. Her French spelling was near perfect, far better than that of George's daughter-in-law, Caroline, and she wrote well also in English. She knew how to sum up people and amused George by cleverly cut paper figures of ministers and others at court which she sometimes exaggerated to the point of caricature. She was, or became with experience, shrewd, and her letters are not without their pointed remarks when she deemed this necessary. In 1720 she let Aislabie know, if politely, that she felt he had mismanaged her South Sea Company stock; and in 1730 she asked Robert Walpole, somewhat tartly, to transfer to her, since she ‘had need of it’, the whole of the sum which had been left in trust with him on her behalf by the late king.
The daughters:
Three daughters were born of their union, [Anna] Louise in 1692, [Petronella] Melusine, who like her mother always used her second baptismal name, in 1693, and [Margarethe] Gertrud, known in the family as Trudchen or Trutjen, in 1701 – beautiful enough to earn the soubriquet die scköne Gertrud among Hanoverian courtiers in England. The eldest daughter was also reckoned a great beauty; as for the middle girl, our sources tell us that she was good-looking and that she was spirited enough to speak her mind to George on issues, even political ones, where she disagreed with him. That they formed part of George's close family circle even before all three came to England with Melusine is clear from the letters which George's youngest brother, Ernst August, wrote to a friend between 1703 and 1726. From 1707 onwards he makes a number of references to them: Louise goes to the opera with Melusine; young Melusine becomes a Hoffräulein with the dowager electress; Trutjen at the age of six reads the newspaper to George at Pyrmont with the gravity of an adult, at twelve she – always George's favourite – is permitted to join his hunting-party at Göhrde, she is a real tomboy, hoping to be a soldier when she grows up.
Melusine was apparently a stickler when it came to proper behavior. We've seen that she was a regular churchgoer, and increasingly devout in her later years, and Hatton speculates that her breaking the silence about her illegitimate daughters in her will is because of the religious context of the will, where she didn't feel she could tell a lie.
New examples have emerged: G1 appears to have been more forgiving than Melusine of their eldest daughter, who took lovers and was divorced when her husband caught her in flagrante. G1 granted the divorce and gave her a title (Gräfin von Delitz). In later years, he gave her a small palace, and in a record in which he's drawing a money order from the Hanoverian treasury for her use, George asks that this 'be done without the knowledge of the Duchess of Kendal' (i.e. her mother Melusine).
Moreover:
She disapproved so strongly of the gambling habits of Philip Dormer Stanhope 4th earl of Chesterfield, who married young Melusine, that he was too scared to confess his losses at cards during a visit to Bath: he pretended he had not played at all.
In her will:
The sums donated to nephews and nieces were quite modest (£300 to each); and the somewhat straitlaced attitude of Melusine as she got older (which we have already noticed in her dislike of gambling for high stakes) is evident in her leaving out one nephew from the list of bequests with the explanation that she did so because he had married against his parents' wishes.
Why is this relevant? Well, Selena pointed out that historical Katte was obviously willing to brave (relative) poverty in exile for Fritz, since he had to know Aunt Melusine might not be willing to host/bankroll him indefinitely.
But now that I've read these examples, I'm not convinced she would have given a deserter and flouter of his father's wishes anything! Remember, Hans Heinrich didn't want his son leaving Prussian service for British even without it being desertion. (And Hans Hermann was reprimanded for overstaying his leave.)
And this is of course relevant to any AU in which he shows up in England in 1730. :D (As an out for the author who needs one, there's always Petronella/young Melusine, whom he was infatuated1, and who might have found a way to get him some money.)
Speaking of Petronella/young Melusine, Hatton tells me that she and her mother were inseparable, and that they continued living together even after young Melusine married Chesterfield. And that young Melusine seems not to have lived with her husband:
Young Melusine's marriage seems to have made little difference: there is hardly a mention of her in Chesterfield, Letters, and her husband's biographers have concluded that, though he behaved towards her with great politeness in society, they lived more or less apart. The duchess of Kendal could not have approved of him; in her will of 1743 she makes sure that he cannot touch any of the money left to the younger Melusine.
Things you would not have guessed!
1. The original Selena summary said "had a fling with", but the text reads "umschwärmte". I take it to mean he was admiring her, with no implications as to whether or not she reciprocated. And while my German admittedly misses a lot of nuances like this, summarizing from memory is also a feature of Selena summaries (just like Mildred summaries), so I'm asking. Do we know from "umschwärmte" whether they had a fling?
Tangent: Oh, and this is interesting. Rereading that passage, Kloosterhuis describes Petronella Melusine as a relative ("Verwandte") of the duchess of Kendal, not a daughter. He cites Schmidt again, who, remember, is writing in 1899. And remember that Hatton told us that the equation of the "nieces" of Melusine with her illegitimate children by G1 was recent as of 1978.
Ooh, Schmidt is saying that that the ADB erroneously says that she was the illegitimate daughter of G1 and Melusine. And Kloosterhuis seems to be going along with this. Okay, guys, but Hatton cites evidence and you don't, so...Schmidt might be 19th century whitewashing and Kloosterhuis might be trustingly following him. Evidence or it didn't happen!
