LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter VI. — WILHELMINA'S WEDDING.

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      Tuesday, 20th November, 1731, Wilhelmina's wedding-day arrived, after a brideship of eight months; and that young Lady's troublesome romance, more happily than might have been expected, did at last wind itself up. Mamma's unreasonable humors continued, more or less; but these also must now end. Old wooers and outlooks, "the four or three crowned heads,"—they lie far over the horizon; faded out of one's very thoughts, all these. Charles XII., Peter II. are dead; Weissenfels is not, but might as well be. Prince Fred, not yet wedded elsewhere, is doing French madrigals in Leicester House; tending forwards the "West Wickham" set of Politicians, the Pitt-Lyttelton set; stands ill with Father and Mother, and will not come to much. August the Dilapidated-Strong is deep in Polish troubles, in Anti-Kaiser politics, in drinking-bouts;—his great-toe never mended, never will mend. Gone to the spectral state all these: here, blooming with life in its cheeks, is the one practical Fact, our good Hereditary Prince of Baireuth—privately our fate all along;—which we will welcome cheerfully; and be thankful to Heaven that we have not died in getting it decided for us!—

      Wedding was of great magnificence; Berlin Palace and all things and creatures at their brightest: the Brunswick-Beverns here, and other high Guests; no end of pompous ceremonials, solemnities and splendors—the very train of one's gown was "twelve yards long." Eschewing all which, the reader shall commodiously conceive it all, by two samples we have picked out for him: one sample of a Person, high Guest present; one of an Apartment where the sublimities went on.

      The Duchess Dowager of Sachsen-Meiningen, who has come to honor us on this occasion, a very large Lady, verging towards sixty; she is the person. A living elderly Daughter of the Great Elector himself; half-sister to the late King, half-aunt to Friedrich Wilhelm; widow now of her third husband: a singular phenomenon to look upon, for a moment, through Wilhelmina's satirical spectacles. One of her three husbands, "Christian Ernst of Baireuth" (Margraf there, while the present Line was but expectant), had been a kind of Welsh-Uncle to the Prince now Bridegroom; so that she has a double right to be here. "She had found the secret of totally ruining Baireuth," says Wilhelmina; "Baireuth, and Courland as well, where her first wedlock was;"—perhaps Meiningen was done to her hand? Here is the Portrait of "my Grand-Aunt;" dashed off in very high colors, not by a flattering pencil:—

      "It is said she was very fond of pleasing, in her youth; one saw as much still by her affected manners. She would have made an excellent actress, to play fantastic parts of that kind. Her flaming red countenance, her shape, of such monstrous extent that she could hardly walk, gave her the air of a Female Bacchus. She took care to expose to view her"—a part of her person, large but no longer beautiful—"and continually kept patting it with her hands, to attract attention thither. Though sixty gone,"—fifty-seven in point of fact—"she was tricked out like a girl; hair done in ribbon-locks (MARRONNES), all filled with gewgaws of rose-pink color, which was the prevailing tint in her complexion, and so loaded with colored jewels, you would have taken her for the rainbow." [Wilhelmina, i. 375.]

      This charming old Lady, daughter of the GROSSE KURFURST, and so very fat and rubicund, had a Son once: he too is mentionable in his way—as a milestone (parish milestone) in the obscure Chronology of those parts. Her first husband was the Duke of Courland; to him she brought an heir, who became Duke in his turn—and was the final Duke, LAST of the "Kettler" or native Line of Dukes there. The Kettlers had been Teutsch Ritters, Commandants in Courland; they picked up that Country, for their own behoof, when the Ritterdom went down; and this was the last of them. He married Anne of Russia with the big cheek (Czar Peter's Niece, who is since become Czarina); and died shortly after, twenty years ago; with tears doubtless from the poor rose-pink Mother, far away in Baireuth and childless otherwise; and also in a sense to the sorrow of Courland, which was hereby left vacant, a prey to enterprising neighbors. And on those terms it was that Saxons Moritz (our dissolute friend, who will be MARECHAL DE SAXE one day) made his clutch at Courland, backed by moneys of the French actress; rumor of which still floats vaguely about. Moritz might have succeeded, could he have done the first part of the feat, fallen in love with Swoln-cheeked Anne, Dowager there; but he could not; could only pretend it: Courland therefore (now that the Swoln-cheek is become Czarina) falls to one Bieren, a born Courlander, who could. [Last Kettler, Anne's Husband, died (leaving only an old Uncle, fallen Into Papistry and other futility, who, till his death some twenty years after, had to reside abroad and be nominal merely), 1711; Moritz's attempt with Adrienne Lecouvreur's cash was, 1726; Anne became Sovereign of all the Russias (on her poor Cousin Peter

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