Queen Sophie did not overturn the Empire, but she did almost overturn her own and her family's existence, by these courses;which were not wise in her case. It is certain she persuaded Crown-Prince Friedrich, who was always his Mother's boy, and who perhaps needed little bidding in this instance, "to write to Queen Caroline of England;" Letters one or several: thrice-dangerous Letters; setting forth (in substance), His deathless affection to that Beauty of the world, her Majesty's divine Daughter the Princess Amelia (a very paragon of young women, to judge by her picture and one's own imagination); and likewise the firm resolution he, Friedrich Crown-Prince, has formed, and the vow he hereby makes, Either to wed that celestial creature when permitted, or else never any of the Daughters of Eve in this world. Congresses of Soissons, Smoking Parliaments, Preliminaries of the Pardo and Treaties of Seville may go how they can. If well, it shall be well: if not well, here is my vow, solemn promise and unchangeable determination, which your gracious Majesty is humbly entreated to lay up in the tablets of your royal heart, and to remember on my behalf, should bad days arise!--It is clear such Letters were sent; at what date first beginning, we do not know;--possibly before this date? Nor would matters rise to the vowing pitch all at once. One Letter, supremely dangerous should it come to be known, Wilhelmina has copied for us, [Wilhelmina, i. 183.]--in Official style (for it is the Mother's composition this one) and without date to it:--the guessable date is about two years hence; and we will give the poor Document farther on, if there be place for it.
Such particulars are yet deeply unknown to Friedrich Wilhelm;but he surmises the general drift of things in that quarter;and how a disobedient Son, crossing his Father's will in every point, abets his Mother's disobedience, itself audacious enough, in regard to this one. It is a fearful aggravation of Friedrich Wilhelm's ill-humor with such a Son, which has long been upon the growing hand. His dislikes, we know, were otherwise neither few nor small. Mere "disLIKES" properly so called, or dissimilarities to Friedrich Wilhelm, a good many of them; dissimilarities also to a Higher Pattern, some! But these troubles of the Double-Marriage will now hurry them, the just and the unjust of them, towards the flaming pitch. The poor youth has a bad time; and the poor Father too, whose humor we know! Surly gusts of indignation, not unfrequently cuffs and strokes; or still worse, a settled aversion, and rage of the chronic kind; studied neglect and contempt,--so as not even to help him at table, but leave him fasting while the others eat; [Dubourgay, SCAPIUS.] this the young man has to bear. The innumerable maltreatments, authentically chronicled in Wilhelmina's and the other Books, though in a dateless, unintelligible manner, would make a tragic sum!--Here are two Billets, copied from the Prussian State-Archives, which will show us to what height matters had gone, in this the young man's seventeenth year.
TO HIS MAJESTY (from the Crown-Prince).
"WUSTERHAUSEN, 11th September, 1728.
MY DEAR PAPA,--I have not, for a long while, presumed to come to my dear Papa; partly because he forbade me; but chiefly because Ihad reason to expect a still worse reception than usual: and, for fear of angering my dear Papa by my present request, I have preferred making it in writing to him.
I therefore beg my dear Papa to be gracious to me; and can here say that, after long reflection, my conscience has not accused me of any the least thing with which I could reproach myself. But if I have, against my will and knowledge, done anything that has angered my dear Papa, I herewith most submissively beg forgiveness; and hope my dear Papa will lay aside that cruel hatred which I cannot but notice in all his treatment of me.