A German Pompadour Part 1

A German Pompadour.

by Marie Hay.

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 Gravenitz is set forth in all the colourless reticence of official doc.u.ments. And yet something of the thrill of the superst.i.tious 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 of this woman's charm seems to cling and elusively to peep out of the curt record of her crimes. Enough at least to incite the wanderer in History's byways to a further study of this potent German forerunner of the Pompadour.

To search through the Stuttgart archives, to ferret out forgotten books in dusty old book-shops, to fit together the links in the chain of events of the woman's story, to haunt the scenes of bygone splendour in deserted palace and castle, old-world garden and desolate mansion; such has been the delightful labour which has gone to the telling of the true history of the Gravenitz. The Land-despoiler the downtrodden peasantry and indignant burghers named her, for they hated her as their sort must ever hate the beautiful, elegant, haughty woman of the great world. They called her sinner, which she was; and she called them canaille, which they probably were.

And traces of all this linger in Wurttemberg.[1] They still deem the Countess Gravenitz a subject to be mentioned with bated breath--a thing too evil, too terrible, for polite conversation. The very guides at Ludwigsburg slur over her name, and if they go so far as to mention her, they say: 'Ja, das war aber eine schlimme Dame,' and turn the talk to something else. But her memory lives magnificently in the great palace built for her, in her little 'Chateau Joyeux' of La Favorite, and in the many beautiful properties which belonged to this extravagant Land-despoiler. She came to Wurttemberg when the country was at a low financial ebb. Louis XIV. had preyed upon the land for years. Robber raids they called these wars which he waged for trumped-up pretexts.

After these invasions came the war of the Spanish succession, and Wurttemberg lying on the high-road from France to Austria, the belligerent armies swept over the Swabian land on their way to battle.

The Duke of Wurttemberg, loyal to his Suzerain the Emperor at Vienna, joined in the fray and fought bravely at the side of Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy against the French terror. When Blenheim had been fought and won, the war-tide swept northwards to the Netherlands, leaving Southern Germany for the nonce at rest, and Eberhard Ludwig of Wurttemberg repaired to Stuttgart to attend to his Duchy's government.

Now began the love-story of his life, the long-drawn episode which made his name a target for the gossip and scandal of early eighteenth-century Germany; the episode which changed the simple, stiff family life of the Wurttemberg ducal circle to a brilliant, festive court, which travellers tell us in their memoirs vied in magnificence with the glories of Versailles itself.

M. H.

STUTTGART, 1905.

A GERMAN POMPADOUR

CHAPTER I

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 my friends of 1705.

It was a fitting place for intrigues this Neuhaus, standing as it did so near in actual mileage to the court of Stuttgart, and hard by the Jesuit centre of Rottenburg. The high-road was close at hand, yet Neuhaus, shut off by peaceful fields, was hidden from the pa.s.ser-by, and here began the great intrigue, as it was called then. Of a truth the plot, as it was conceived, was no mighty thing; it was designed, as many another gossamer web of court gallantry and petty pecuniary gain, for obscure individuals; but great it became through the potent will of a woman.

On a dreary November afternoon of the year 1705, a party of four was a.s.sembled in the Neuhaus, the seldom-used country mansion of Madame de Ruth, an important personage at Stuttgart's court, and of Monsieur de Ruth, an undistinguished character, who played no role that we know of, save to bequeath his ancient name--and the Neuhaus--to his relict.

The house was a long, two-storied building, with large, black wooden beams showing quaintly outside against the white plastered walls; it was no imposing structure, but a certain air of melancholy aloofness lent it distinction.

A high wall shut off the village street on the one side, while to the south and east the mansion was surrounded by a garden. A row of beech-trees grew close to the windows, a narrow pathway led from a side door across the garden to a vast orchard. It was doubtless a beautiful spot in spring or summer, but on this November afternoon it was inexpressibly dreary. The rain had beaten down the unkempt gra.s.s, which lay in draggled sheaves along the edges of the pathway. Brown, fallen beech leaves made a sodden carpet around the tree-roots; the trees themselves, bare and gaunt, lifted their grey, leafless branches towards the hurrying, wind-driven clouds. The wind moaned fitfully round the house; every now and then, as though in uncontrollable wrath, it broke forth into a whistling howl. At intervals bursts of rain were borne by the tempest against the windows, adding a hurried patter to the tapping of the long beech branches, which grew near enough to enable the wind to drive them against the window-panes, while the greater branches strained and creaked in the blast. Rain-laden clouds swept across the sky, hastening the darkness of approaching night. It seemed strange that on so desolate a gloaming the inmates of the Neuhaus had not drawn the curtains to shut out the sadness of the storm-ravaged garden. The windows remained like despairing, unblinking eyes gazing at the desolate scene without.

The room wherein was a.s.sembled the small company was unlit, save from the glow from the embers in the stove. The upper grating had been opened, and in the furnace a handful of half-dry wood sputtered and crackled, rising sometimes to a momentary flame, in whose glow four persons threw strangely contorted shadows on the ceiling. But for this, and a faint, uncertain light which crept through the windows, the room was entirely dark. When the wood flared, a lady seated to the left of the stove cast a caricature-like shadow slantwise on the ceiling, her head seeming gigantic in its piled-up ma.s.ses of elaborately dressed hair. In the middle of the room was a huddled figure bending over the centre table. It seemed to be a mere heap of dark garments. The firelight caught and illumined a white ruffle and large pale hand belonging to this figure, but as it was flung out across the sombre covering of the table, the arm was invisible, and only the hand in the ruffled sleeve could be seen, and it seemed like some hideous dismembered thing. Outlined against the fading light stood a tall figure with an enormous ringleted wig falling far over the shoulders. When this being moved, his shadow, thrown upon the ceiling by the embers' glow, appeared to join in the wavering, dance-like movements of the other shadows, and seemed like some ungainly monster. One portion of the room was not reached either by light of fire or fading day, and out of this utter darkness came the sound of repressed sobbing, which alone revealed the presence of a fourth member of this lugubrious party. For many minutes the silence was unbroken save for the stealthy sobbing, the sough of the wind without, the pattering rain, and the tap-tap of the twigs on the windows, sounding for all the world like the fumbling of invisible fingers seeking for admittance. The man at the centre table broke silence at length.

'Impossible!' he said in a harsh voice. 'Madame la Baronne cannot imagine we can live in Stuttgart at the court,' this last pompously, in spite of the real distress of the voice. 'How can we? on five hundred gulden a year and debts to pay--alas! No! I must return to the army, only coming on leave once a year to fulfil my court appointment; and, Marie, you must live in Rottenburg with your mother while I am away.'

At this a figure moved out of the darkness behind the stove, and another fantastic shadow was cast upon the ceiling.

'Never, Friedrich! It is cruel to ask it. You know well enough that, if you did not gamble, we could live quite finely on what we have got. Your duties as Kammerjunker need not keep you for ever in Stuttgart; we might live in Rottenburg.' She clasped her hands, her voice trembled between tears and anger.

'Rottenburg----' The man's voice was full of scorn, vibrating with derision. 'Ah! yes!--Ma.s.s each morning, and----'

'Friedrich, I will never let you return to the army; rather would I humble myself before that wicked woman, Madame de Geyling, and beg her to influence Serenissimus to give you a higher and better paid appointment. I tell you----'

'Madame,' broke in a deep voice, and the figure at the window moved forward, 'there are other ways of gaining gold at court; a beautiful woman need never be poor, I can vouch----'

'Monsieur de Stafforth!' almost shouted the first speaker, 'you address my wife! I am poor, but the honour of a wife of a Gravenitz shall not be smirched.'

'Your pardon, Kammerjunker, but we were discussing necessities, not ideals, and surely I proposed a great honour. Serenissimus is charming; besides, there are others----'

The hostess, whose shadow we have seen on the ceiling, rose and joined the three disputants.

'My friends, only fools end their conclaves with quarrels. We have been discussing ways and means for the continuance of our friends Monsieur and Madame de Gravenitz's court life, and finding no practical scheme, here is Gravenitz crying out that he will return to the army. Marie Gravenitz, after sobbing her heart out, flies into a rage and declares she will go whining to that upstart Geyling! And you, Monsieur de Stafforth, Hofmarshall and successful courtier, propose terms to a young husband in so unpolished a fashion, that even a peasant would be obliged to retort with the old affectation of a wife's honour and purity. Now hear me; I know the court better than you do----' The darkness hid the meaning smiles which played over the lips of the others, for Frau von Ruth (Madame de Ruth as she was named at court, German being considered as a language only fitting for peasants' use) was well known to have a knowledge of court life not compatible with strictly decorous behaviour.

'Well! and I say to you, where there is a court there is always a way.

And if you will so far honour me as to drink a bowl of punch to lighten our wits, we may find some solution of our friends' difficulties. First let me call for lights, and let me shut out this dreary evening. Courage, my friends! I warrant we shall smile some day at our present desperate straits, and meanwhile "to wait" is the verb we must conjugate.'

Madame de Ruth went to the door and called for light. A sullen-faced peasant boy appeared, carrying two silver candlesticks of a handsome old German design. He placed them on the middle table, and the feeble yellow flame of the waxen tapers shed a flicker into the long, gloomy room. Then he stood idly staring, with the heavy dull-wittedness of the Swabian peasant. Madame de Ruth eyed him for a moment, with that half-humorous, half-pitying glance which she was wont to bestow on those she found stupid. She was an odd-tempered, free-mannered woman, deeply crafty, absolutely unmoral, and yet with a true kindliness of heart and a thorough understanding of human nature which, together with her ready laugh, her clever, indecorous anecdotes and sharp wit, made her attractive. For these traits people forgave her her ugly face and fifty years of a past even less reputable than was usual in the eighteenth century.

In her early youth, it was whispered, the Duke Wilhelm Ludwig, father of the reigning Duke of Wirtemberg, had initiated her into the ways of the world in general and of courts in particular; in grat.i.tude wherefore she was reputed to have performed the same office, twenty years later, for his son Eberhard Ludwig. The Duke of Zollern, several Hohenlohes, and many Gemmingens had been her slaves; not to mention other less ill.u.s.trious cavaliers to whom she had been rather more than kind. She was now a useful friend to princes, and new arrivals at court found her friendship indispensable, especially if the new arrival happened to be a lady with aspirations to royal favour and a career. Up to date these careers had been brilliant but short, and Madame de Ruth had generally played an important part in each.

'Ah! Dieu! ces paysans, quelles brutes!' she said, as she looked at her servant; and then speaking in the rough Wirtemberg dialect she continued: 'Heinrich, thy mother gave thee hands; G.o.d knows thy father did not forget thy big feet. Use both and bring the punch, as I told thee; or I will give thee hay for thy evening meal, as were fitting for an a.s.s's feed!' This somewhat drastic speech seemed to please the lad and to stir up his slow wits, but the company looked surprised at the familiarity of the 'thou,' it being the general custom in those days for superiors to address their inferiors in the third person singular. Directly to address a serving-man or maid was deemed incorrect, for it would have betokened an unfitting equality. However, Madame de Ruth's peasant lad responded with alacrity to his lady's homely speech, and in an astonishingly short time he reappeared with an enormous bowl of the steaming hot spirits--the punch, which Marlborough's army had brought into fashion on the Continent, and which the damp of South Germany in the autumn made a welcome beverage.

'Come, my friends, and drink to the sharpening of our wits, which are strangely dull this evening. I must announce to you that I await the visit to-night of the Duke of Zollern, but this cruel weather has proved, I fear, too much even for his youthful sixty years.'

'Madame,' said Monsieur de Stafforth, 'if the Duke of Zollern does not brave the elements, in order to visit you, he must indeed be feeling his sixty years.'

'Stafforth, do not natter me in that tone. I adore flattery, but a stupid compliment is worse than an insult. You know the Duke of Zollern and myself have long ceased incommoding ourselves for each other's sakes, with the consequence that we are really friends. He sees me when he wishes, and I see him when I feel inclined. After twenty years _nous avons fini nos simagrees_; but after all, listen, I think I hear wheels.'

Her ugly old face flushed through the overlying paint and powder. In spite of her protest, Madame de Ruth had a remnant of her youth--a poor, faded flower of sentiment for this old man. A huge lumbering coach drew up at the door, and therefrom descended a small and shrunken figure, with a wrinkled, dried-up face. A voluminous peruke fell over the padded shoulders, rich lace ruffles adorned the sleeves of the brown satin longcoat, a waistcoat of heavily embroidered brocade reached far down, nearly to the shrunken knees, below which were a pair of calves thin as pipe-stems and adorned with brown silken hose; the shoes were of brown leather with high, red heels and enormous ribbon rosettes and diamond buckles. One withered hand held a cane with a china top, on which, could you have examined it, you would have found mythological subjects depicted with much delicacy of workmanship, but less delicacy of sentiment. A beau indeed, elegant, lavish, and with that air for the which Monsieur de Stafforth, adventurer and burgher by birth, would have given many a year of his successful climbing career to have possessed even a shade,--the indescribable and inimitable air of the Grand Seigneur.

Madame de Ruth met this gentleman at the door of her abode, her peasant servant standing behind her, holding a flaring torch to light the entry of his Grace. She curtseyed deeply, and Monsieur de Zollern, having successfully hobbled from his coach, returned her salute with so tremendous a bow, that the long feather of his three-cornered hat swept the floor.

'I had almost given up the expectation of your visit, Monseigneur,' said the lady, 'but now you are here, the pleasure is all the greater'; and as he bowed once more over her hand, she whispered: 'Pleasure you always gave me, dear friend.'

'Madame chere amie, those times are past, alas! Enfin! we can still laugh together.'

They pa.s.sed on through the gloomy corridor, and Madame de Ruth herself threw open the door of the salon, crying as she did so: 'The Duke of Zollern and Punch together must make even a dark day bright!'

'Madame, in these days the last t.i.tle might describe me perfectly,' he said. Then as he saw the inquiring look on the faces around him, he added: 'Autrefois j'etais polichon, aujourd'hui, helas! ne suis-je qu'un vieux Polichinelle--"Punch" they call it in England.'

'Monseigneur, Punch must be a pretty wit indeed if he be like your Grace,' said Stafforth, with his usual desire to ingratiate himself with the great of the earth; but Monsieur de Zollern did not deign to answer.

Like Madame de Ruth he preferred less directly expressed adulation. 'The fine flavour of flattery is delicious,' he was wont to aver, 'but like all else in life, to practise it requires an expert or a genius. Open compliments on any subject are like sausages, to be appreciated by peasants and our greasy friends the burghers, but for us--we cannot digest them!' So he looked away from Stafforth, giving his attention to the Gravenitz couple. 'Madame de Gravenitz,' he said, 'I observed you at Ma.s.s in the Cathedral of Rottenburg a few days since. G.o.d forgives the inattention at Ma.s.s of an old man when he sleeps; of a young man when he loves; and the wandering attention of an _old_ man blessed with a _young_ heart the Almighty will surely pardon, for He Himself must admire beauty, since He made it.' Madame de Gravenitz looked perturbed. She was a good and conscientious Catholic, and this light way of speaking of things sacred seemed alarmingly daring to her; also, being rather stupid, it bewildered her, and she had no answer for the old courtier.

'Ah, Monsieur de Gravenitz,' continued Zollern, 'what news from Mecklemburg? Does not your heart smite you when you think of the country which gave you birth?'

'Monseigneur, it was the only gift Mecklemburg ever gave me, and indeed, to-night I am hardly grateful for the gift. What is the use of life when it is so fierce a struggle not to die of hunger?' he said, and drained his gla.s.s of punch. 'I have such simple tastes.--Madame de Ruth, may I drink another gla.s.s of your excellent punch?--I have such simple tastes, and even these I cannot satisfy!'

The Duke of Zollern watched him, and his fine smile was more of a commentary than many a spoken word. Gravenitz observing it broke into a laugh, which was echoed by the company.