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Search - Saraband for Dead Lovers (World Cultural Heritage Library)

Saraband for Dead Lovers - World Cultural Heritage Library
Author: Helen Simpson

A lush 18th century period romance, based on historical fact. Sophie Dorothea is a young woman forced into a loveless marriage with Prince George Louis of Hanover. George Louis is later crowned King George I of England. Despairing of ever experiencing true love, the depressed queen finds life at court no solace. Sophie then falls for a dashing S... more »wedish soldier of fortune, Count Konigsmark. The feeling is mutual, and an affair begins, the couple carefully plotting to flee England to begin a new life together. Disaster strikes when they are overheard by Countess Platen (Flora Robson), a jealous former lover of Konigsmark's who takes her information to the king. *** a selection from the first part: I - DUCHESS SOPHIAAQUILINA. Tell him I am gone to Bed: Tell him I am not at Home; tell himI've better Company with me, or any thing; tell him in short I will notsee him, the eternal troublesome vexatious Fool:--?

MAID. But Madam! He's here already, just enter'd the Doors.?

--Venice Preserv'd. Act III, Scene I.

"I send with all speed," wrote Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orl?ans, tucked away in her little room surrounded by portraits of ancestors, "to wish you, my dearest aunt and Serene Highness, joy of the recent betrothal. It will redound to the happiness of Hanover and Zelle. It links two dominions which have long possessed for each other the affection natural to neighbours, but which now may justly embrace as allies. It appears to me that no arrangement could well be more suitable, and I offer to the high contracting parties my sincerest wishes for a continuance of their happiness." The Duchess smiled grimly, dashed her quill into the ink, and proceeded in a more homely manner. "Civilities apart, What in heaven's name is the Duke of Hanover about? This little Sophie-Doroth?e will never do; she is not even legitimate, and as for her mother, you know as well as I do that El?onore d'Olbreuse is nothing better than a French she-poodle to whom uncle George William of Zelle treated himself when he was younger, I will not say more foolish, and has never been able to get rid of since. What, with all respect, was your husband thinking of to bring French blood into a decent German family, and connected with the English throne, too! In brief, my dearest aunt, all this is a mystery to me. I can only presume that it was concluded over your head, and that money played the chief role. Men, men, men! Clink a thaler in their ear, and hold a carrot in front of a donkey, and forward both animals go, with never a blink, down God knows what precipice. I do beg of you to write me such details as you have time for, and to accept my honest hope that a business so ill-judged may not lead to disaster." This letter, reaching the Duchess of Hanover immediately after the wedding, made no very pleasant reading, even allowing for Charlotte's well-known trick of looking on the gloomier side of all new relationships, and particularly of marriage. Its sting lay in the assumption which permitted the writer to criticise the whole affair with freedom, and to goad the Duchess under cover of her Duke. The fact was, the whole match was of Duchess Sophia's making; but with what agonies of troubled pride, what angry tears! To begin with, the girl Sophia-Dorothea was not exactly illegitimate. She had been legitimised some six years before as a result of a bargain struck between her father and his brother Ernest Augustus, now Duke of Hanover, then Bishop of Osnabruck; after which the official marriage of a morganatic wife with her ducal husband took place before the wondering eyes of their daughter, aged ten, who almost at once was swept into the matrimonial whirlpool with a princeling of Wolfenbuttel....

ISBN-13: 9781438792231
ISBN-10: 1438792239
Publication Date: 9/9/2009
Pages: 150
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Intl Business Pubns USA
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

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