It was already agreed, before they met in Hanover, that the flight was to take place on the second of July 1694.
The liaison was three years old. If it was not openly spoken of by this time, the whispering was so near the surface that very few people could have pretended to be unaware of it. Sophie Dorothea and Philipp Königsmark were like actors on a brilliantly lit stage who cannot see their audience and who become so absorbed in their roles that they actually forget they are watched. Mechanically they still went through the customary gestures of caution—the smuggled letter suggesting a rendezvous, the eager lover awaiting his signal as he lurks near his beloved’s window, the faithful handmaiden craftily letting him in, but that night, July 1, they were not afraid. They were so near their deliverance!
It is a question how carefully the Countess Platen had timed the moment to close in on her prey. Certainly she had planned her revenge ever since the news of Königsmark’s loose talk came from Dresden, but one cannot be sure how much she knew of the elopement plans. That she should have sprung the trap on the very last night she could have caught her victims was either coincidence or a calculated cruelty that was fiendish. That night somebody watched the princess, and somebody else watched the count, so closely that their every movement was observed.
Königsmark walked straight to the garden outside the nearest entrance to the princess’s apartments. He whistled a few bars of music and a light flashed briefly in the window. Then he went in the door, which opened at his touch. The man who had followed him hurried to report to his employer, Countess Platen.
She, in turn, hurried to the bedchamber of the elector, and told him excitedly what she had discovered. To say that Ernest Augustus was amazed and horrified would be to exaggerate, for like everyone else at court he had heard the whispers, and suspected as much as his son did about his daughter-in-law’s longstanding affaire. He was not surprised, but he was very angry; he could not well be anything else. Now he was forced to face the truth, and with the furious countess waiting for his orders, he could not do what he was very likely tempted to do—roll over and go to sleep, pretending nobody had told him anything that might disturb his peace. Resignedly he said that he would go in person, immediately, and catch the impertinent Don Juan in the act, and defend the family honor.
No, no, said his mistress, that would never do. It would be beneath an elector’s dignity, and would create a frightful scandal besides. She, the Countess Platen, would manage the matter with dignity and discretion; all the elector need do was provide her with a few armed men, and she guaranteed to capture Königsmark quietly, and bring him straight to Ernest Augustus for questioning. It was a very grave matter, which must be dealt with delicately.
The elector was an old man, ailing and depressed. After a lifetime of giving in to women, especially to this one, he felt no compunction in taking her advice in this crisis; besides, he was greatly relieved to be spared what was bound to be an unpleasant scene. Without much protest he gave the countess the direction she asked for to the commandant of the Palace Guard, to let her have four halberdiers who would obey her orders.
There is no doubt that the royal mistress was overexcited, or she would not have given these men the commands she did, to take Königsmark “dead or alive.” She must have been trembling with a variety of strong emotions. Königsmark had humiliated her once too often. It had been appallingly bad mannered of him to have dropped her after that one night’s enjoyment; that slight alone, in her estimation, should have been washed out in blood. But after that he had behaved as badly again. He had dared to fall seriously in love with the silly, doll-faced little princess from Celle, though the countess could not abide the creature; he had tricked the countess and deceived her with courtesy and friendly words; he had refused to marry her daughter, and as a final insult he had boasted openly of his earlier insults. She would show him! God, aided by spies, had delivered him into her hand.
The princess’s apartments were approached by a long, wide corridor truncated at the other end by a great room, the Knight’s Hall. Near this end was a small room of the sort which has various euphemistic names; in those days it was known as a House, or Room, of Ease. The countess disposed her four men-at-arms in a hiding place in the Knight’s Hall, under the great jutting chimney piece; she herself hid behind the door of the Room of Ease.
All this traveling back and forth, to the elector’s apartments and the guard room, with a side journey to obtain refreshments for the men, had used up a good deal of time. The halberdiers had not long to wait before Philipp stepped out of the princess’s room and started down the corridor, walking softly, to the door leading out of the Hall, through which he had entered.
The men under the chimney piece waited.
Königsmark tried to open the door. It was locked. He turned back, still unsuspecting, to call Fräulein Knesebeck, and as he stepped toward the princess’s door the four men leaped at him. The count was not prepared either in mood or weapon for an assault; he was carrying only a small sword, but he fought bravely and well, wounding two of his enemies before his sword broke. Perhaps that is what angered them to murderous fury. One of the unwounded men ran him through, the other hit him in the head with a battle-ax, and Königsmark fell. It is said that he was still conscious when the countess leaned over him with a candle, eagerly peering, and that he cursed her with such a stream of foul abuse that she stopped his mouth with her foot, stamping on that pretty face she had so admired. Soon afterward, he died.
It was over. Countess Platen had her revenge. But now, in cooler blood, she grew apprehensive. Ernest Augustus had not expected murder; even she knew that the consequences could be very awkward. The countess began to rail at her halberdiers for having been overzealous, but soon, realizing that she was wasting time, she ran from the Hall, back to the elector, to report the calamity. Just as she had feared, he flew into a rage, and all his bellowing could not hide the fact that he too was afraid of what might happen. Whatever had possessed her? He could not understand how anyone could be so maladroit. Now there would be the devil to pay. Königsmark’s Swedish relatives would be bad enough, but there were other people, nearer home … The countess knew he was thinking of the Elector of Dresden. Then he turned to the matter of Sophie Dorothea and she felt herself on firmer ground. There at least Ernest Augustus would not be too timid to mete out justice.
They must have proof, he said suddenly. Had the count been carrying any papers, any documents they could use? Ernest Augustus dressed hastily, and with the countess and the crestfallen halberdiers who had accompanied her he went down himself to the Knight’s Hall where lay the poor bloody corpse. No more time must be wasted. More members of the Guard were summoned, and very quietly, so that not even Sophie Dorothea or Knesebeck heard a sound, they did their work.
They searched the body for any line, scrap, or shred of incriminating evidence, and when they found none, for his papers had all been left at home, they had no further need of the corpse. In the little room where the countess had maintained her vigil there was, of course, a hole in the floor. Seventeenth-century plumbing was crude. They thrust Count Philipp Christoph von Königsmark down this hole, covered him with quicklime, and filled in the aperture with masonry. As well as could be managed they cleaned up everything, though it was impossible to wash away quite all the blood. Before sunrise their work was finished.
Sophie Dorothea was raving mad for some months. She was so wild and intractable that it was exceedingly difficult for the grave ministers and other officials handling the case to deal with her at all. When she grew more coherent she was ready and eager to be divorced, she said over and over emphatically; she would do anything they asked, sign anything they liked, if only she need remain no longer in Hanover, and be spared for the rest of her miserable life the sight of any of George Louis’s breed. She could hardly wait to affix her signature to the paper which consented to divorce, and incidentally gave the Hanovers their right to keep her confined and retain her dowry while
doing so.
When she was sent into captivity, it was at first thought this was merely a temporary disposal of a princess who was a great but equally temporary embarrassment. A good deal of thought had gone into the matter, but nothing very satisfactory came out. The electoral princess had contemplated treason and betrayed her husband, but she could not be executed, like one of Henry the Eighth’s wives, however much the family would have liked to do it; times were different now, and Hanover was not England. On the other hand, she must not be permitted to see anybody who wasn’t owned by the Hanovers. If she were, she would most certainly talk in wild fashion, accuse everyone, and spread even further the whisperings which were going on already. Knesebeck had been locked up and held incommunicado; Sophie Dorothea must be dealt with in the same way, though it could not be quite so frank an incarceration.
They sent Sophie Dorothea to Ahlden, a lonely village and castle about twenty miles from Hanover. She was given the rank of Duchess of Ahlden, and placed under a guard camouflaged as attendants and military escort. She was permitted to go out, but when out of doors was always guarded by several men; she held no communication with any outsiders. She could wander in the castle yard but not in the village. She could be driven in her coach as far as a certain bridge, six miles from the castle, and that was all. During the first years she was allowed no visitors; later her mother came to see her. All communication with her children, of course, was cut off.
This attended to, Ernest Augustus and his worried family, wife and mistress and son, turned to the awkward task of replying to, or evading, the questions about Königsmark which kept pouring in. There could have been no real doubt as to his fate. The townspeople, for example, knew that the Electoral Palace Guard had gone through Königsmark’s house and taken away all the papers they could find. There were whispers among the staff, too, about the blood on the floor of the Hall, and the closed hole in the room of necessity. However, nothing could be definitely proved, and as long as Sophie Dorothea did not get out, there was no one within the limits of Hanover and Celle who dared to push the matter.
Inquiries arrived thick and fast, but they were from abroad and could be parried. Many Swedish noblemen and the Swedish court itself kept asking. Königsmark had friends all over Germany, and they too were exigent, especially the powerful Elector Frederick Augustus, at whose elbow stood Aurora, urging him to greater and greater efforts. She was almost convinced her brother was dead, but there was still a faint hope that he languished in some dungeon. Amalie Lewenhaupt, who with her husband had been sent away from Celle as soon as the discovery took place, joined her sister at a safe distance from Hanover and helped her keep things stirred up. Ernest Augustus mopped his brow, took fresh counsel with his women, and went on fighting. Secrecy, mystery, diplomacy were his only weapons, but in the end they served.
Later, when the emergency had passed, there never seemed a right moment to let the princess out. Eléonore d’Olbreuse kept after everyone, but Ernest Augustus ruled his brother, the Countess Platen ruled Ernest Augustus, and with each year the countess’s venom grew. Königsmark’s friends were not confined to foreign countries; many people at the court of Hanover liked him too, and Sophie Dorothea had been loved and pitied. These friends of the lovers could do nothing overtly, but they knew the countess was to blame for whatever crime had taken place that night, and they showed their sentiments. None of this gave her any desire to relent toward Sophie Dorothea.
The days, the weeks, the months, the years went by. In 1714 soon after Sophia’s death, George Louis mounted the throne of England as George I, and nobody in his new country liked to ask awkward questions about his wife. Was there or was there not a Queen of England? What was the legal position of the prisoner of Ahlden? Nobody knew. The King was accompanied everywhere by two women, the thin Ermengarda Melusina, Duchess of Kendal, and the fat Madame Kielmansegge, Countess of Darlington. Was Kielmansegge, who was daughter of Countess Platen, the King’s mistress? Was she, instead, his half sister? Was she both? The questions had a grisly sort of fascination at that strange court.
In the meantime, the Duchess of Ahlden spent the days of captivity in all their weary thousands, dressing carefully, putting diamonds in her hair, and driving up and down her allotted six miles. Sometimes she wrote letters to her mother, and, later, to her daughter the Queen of Prussia, who got into communication with Ahlden as soon as she was married and outside George I’s jurisdiction. Various people cooked up plots now and then to get Sophie Dorothea out. The plots never came to anything; George I was not a type to soften with age, or to grow less apprehensive of political trouble.
Sophie Dorothea, wife and mother of kings of England, died in November 1726, having spent more than thirty-two years at Ahlden. On George I’s orders they tried to bury her there and then in the castle grounds, but all the land was waterlogged and so the coffin was left lying about in a cellar for a while, and finally carted by night to Celle, where it was hastily shoved into the church vault.
George I was dead, and George II was reigning in England when some workmen in the Schloss at Hanover made an interesting discovery. Taking up the floor near the Knight’s Hall, they came upon a skeleton. A few shreds of clothing still survived what had obviously been quicklime, and among the bones they found Königsmark’s ring.
The Bearded Demoiselle
D’Eon
In the golden days before most of us were born, we are told, people were nicer, and had codes of conduct which we moderns have lost. There must have been people who did the dirty work, but they lurked in government basements; they weren’t people one met. In the dear old days before Hitler and Stalin, it is said, snoopers were kept out of everyday life. Somehow I cannot believe this. The fascination children feel for spy stories is not a purely modern phenomenon. The secret agent as a romantic conception has always had his admirers. The secret agent as a citizen in good standing has always found his place, and a comfortable one at that, in society. When I say this I am not thinking of Communist fifth columns, but of that eighteenth-century wonder of France and England, the Chevalier d’Eon.
Like most of the people we are discussing in this book, he was not a happy, contented creature living a good solid family life. Had he been, Burgundy would have kept one more vine-growing gentleman at home in Tonnerre, and London, St. Petersburg, and Paris would have missed a most titillating scandal—I had almost written the most titillating scandal of the century, until I remembered how rich that age is in gossip about the great.
D’Eon was not normal. Nobody is, if it comes to that, but d’Eon was doubly un-normal. Most outstanding figures of history had some mental quirk or bias, but not many of them, as far as we know, were hermaphrodites, whereas there is some reason to believe that our chevalier was. Not that the term explains much. The word “hermaphrodite” covers a variety of types, since the dictionary definition gives a lot of leeway: “A human being, or animal, in which parts characteristic of both sexes are combined.” Well, perhaps that describes the chevalier. Outwardly, he must have looked like a man, though he had unusually full breasts. His parts were masculine and he grew a beard. But he had no love affairs. He seems to have had no ordinary sexual desire at all, unless his behavior regarding Beaumarchais, when he was nearly fifty, indicates anything more than an ability to pretend. He must have been able to imitate feminine characteristics, but for the most part his tastes were what used to be called manly—smoking, drinking, swaggering, dueling, and all the rest. There was certainly nothing of the delicate mama’s boy about the young d’Eon.
Strangely enough, the mystery of his sex has remained stubbornly alive. In actual fact it should have been killed long ago, immediately after his own death, when plenty of responsible witnesses (who knew nothing about hermaphrodites) examined the corpse and announced that this difficult creature, after long years of pretense, was indubitably a male. That should have settled it, and would have, had the world wanted it settled. But the world did not. People like mystery. They follow
the hard way from choice, not necessity. It excites them. There was a letdown when the flying saucers were explained; there are people who refuse to believe the explanation. Just so, when d’Eon was dead there were people who continued deliberately to argue the point against all proof; was he a woman, or was she a man?
Whatever they may decide, it seems a pity that this question of the chevalier’s gender should overshadow the rest of his story. He was in many other ways as well an extraordinary person. Not many people have succeeded in blackmailing a powerful king to the extent d’Eon blackmailed Louis XV. For many years he kept the court of France in a cold sweat.
Well, and if it comes to that, Louis himself was extraordinary. A faithful record of his complicated manipulations would make the most seasoned scholar dizzy. Even mystery-story addicts would lose track, sooner or later. Schemes, plots, secret papers, hidy holes—such a thriller needs no sex fillip, no “cheesecake,” to hold the interest. Yet there is cheesecake thrown in for good measure wherever the chevalier enters the picture, as if the author of Louis’s life story had determined not to miss one trick.