His Majesty even honors him by expecting he should quietly keep a monitorial eye upon the Crown-Prince;--being his neighbor in those parts; Colonel-Commandant of a regiment of Horse at Landsberg not many miles off. He has just been at Vienna [September, 1731( Militair-Lexikon, iii. 433).] on some "business", (quasi-diplomatic probably, which can remain unknown to us); and has reported upon it, or otherwise finished it off, at Berlin;--whence rapidly home to Landsberg again. On the way homewards, and after getting home, he writes these three Letters;off-hand and in all privacy, and of course with a business sincerity, to Grumkow;--little thinking they would one day get printed, and wander into these latitudes to be scanned and scrutinized! Undoubtedly an intricate crabbed Document to us;but then an indubitable one. Crown-Prince, Schulenburg himself, and the actual figure of Time and Place, are here mirrored for us, with a business sincerity, in the mind of Schulenburg,--as from an accidental patch of water; ruffled bog-water, in sad twilight, and with sedges and twigs intervening; but under these conditions we do look with our own eyes!
Could not one, by any conceivable method, interpret into legibility this abstruse dull Document; and so pick out here and there a glimpse, actual face-to-face view, of Crown-Prince Friedrich in his light-gray frock with the narrow silver tresses, in his eclipsed condition there in the Custrin region? All is very mysterious about him; his inward opinion about all manner of matters, from the GNADENWAHL to the late Double-Marriage Question.
Even his outward manner of life, in its flesh-and-blood physiognomy,--we search in vain through tons of dusty lucubration totally without interest, to catch here and there the corner of a feature of it. Let us try Schulenburg. We shall know at any rate that to Grumkow, in the Autumn 1731, these words were luculent and significant: consciously they tell us something of young Friedrich; unconsciously a good deal of Lieutenant-General Schulenburg, who with his strict theologies, his military stiffnesses, his reticent, pipe-clayed, rigorous and yet human ways, is worth looking at, as an antique species extinct in our time. He is just home from Vienna, getting towards his own domicile from Berlin, from Custrin, and has seen the Prince.
He writes in a wretched wayside tavern, or post-house, between Custrin and Landsberg,--dates his letter "WIEN (Vienna)," as if he were still in the imperial City, so off-hand is he.
No. 1. TO HIS EXCELLENZ (add a shovelful of other titles)LIEUTENANT-GENERAL HERR BARON VON GRUMKOW, PRESIDENT OF THEKRIEGES- UND DOMANEN-DIRECTORIUM, OF THE (in fact, Vice-President of the Tobacco-Parliament) IN BERLIN.
"WIEN [properly Berlin-Landsberg Highway, other side of Custrin], 4th October, 1731.
"I regret much to have missed the pleasure of seeing your Excellency again before I left Berlin. I set off between seven and eight in the morning yesterday, and got to Custrin [seventy miles or so] before seven at night. But the Prince had gone, that day, to the Bailliage of Himmelstadt" (up the Warta Country, eastward some five-and-thirty miles, much preparatory digging and stubbing there); and he "slept at Massin [circuitous road back], where he shot a few stags this morning. As I was told he might probably dine at Kammin [still nearer Custrin, twelve miles from it;half that distance east of Zorndorf,--mark that, O reader (see Map)] with Madam Colonel Schoning, I drove thither. He had arrrived there a moment before me." And who is Madam Schoning, lady of Kammin here?--Patience, reader.
"I found him much grown; an air of health and gayety about him.
He caressed me greatly (ME GRACIEUSA FORT); afterwards questioned me about my way of life in Vienna; and asked, if I had diverted myself well there? I told him what business had been the occasion of my journey, and that this rather than amusements had occupied me; for the rest, that there had been great affluence of company, and no lack of diversions. He spoke a long time to Madam de Wreech "--"Wrochem" Schulenburg calls her: young Wife of Lieutenant-General von Wreech, a Marlborough Campaigner, made a Knight of Malta the other day; [ Militair-Lexikon, iv. 269.]--HIS charming young Wife, and Daughter of Madam Colonel Schoning our hostess here; lives at Tamsel, in high style, in these parts:
mark the young Lady well,--
"who did not appear indifferent to him." No!--"and in fact she was in all her beauty; a complexion of lily and rose."Charming creature; concerning whom there are anecdotes still afloat, and at least verses of this Prince's writing; not too well seen by Wreech, lately made a Knight of Malta, who, though only turning forty, is perhaps twice her age. The beautifulest, cleverest,--fancy it; and whether the peaty Neumark produces nothing in the floral kind!
"We went to dinner; he asked me to sit beside him.