And slowly, continually turns the screw upon Nussler, till he too raises for himself a firm good house in the Friedrichs Stadt,--Friedrichs Strasse, or STREET, as they now call it, which the Tourist of these days knows. Substantial clear ashlar Street, miles or half-miles long; straight as a line:--Friedrich Wilhelm found it scrag and quagmire; and left it what the Tourist sees, by these hard methods. Thus Herr Privy-Councillor Klinggraf too, Nussler's next neighbor: he did not want to build; far from it;but was obliged, on worse terms than Nussler. You have such work, founding your house;--for the Nussler-Klinggraf spot was a fish-pool, and "carps were dug up" in founding;--such piles, bound platform of solid beams; "4,000 thalers gone before the first stone is laid:" and, in fact, the house must be built honestly, or it will be worse for the house and you. "Cost me 12,000 thalers (l,800 pounds) in all, and is worth perhaps 2,000!" sorrowfully ejaculates Nussler, when the job is over. Still worse with Privy-Councillor Klinggraf: his house, the next to Nussler's, is worth mere nothing to him when built; a soap-boiler offers him 800thalers (120 pounds) for it; and Nussler, to avoid suffocation, purchases it himself of Klinggraf for that sum. Derschau, with his slow screw-machinery, is very formidable;--and Busching knows it for a fact, "that respectable Berlin persons used to run out of the way of Burgermeister Koch and him, when either of them turned up on the streets!"These things were heavy to bear. Truly, yes; where is the liberty of private capital or liberty of almost any kind, on those terms?
Liberty to ANNIHILATE rubbish and chaos, under known conditions, you may have; but not the least liberty to keep them about you, though never so fond of doing it! What shall we say? Nussler and the Soap-boiler do both live in houses more human than they once had. Berlin itself, and some other things, did not spring from Free-trade. Berlin City would, to this day, have been a Place of SCRUBS ("the BERLIN," a mere appellative noun to that effect), had Free-trade always been the rule there. I am sorry his Majesty transgresses the limits;--and we, my friends, if we can make our Chaos into Cosmos by firing Parliamentary eloquence into it, and bombarding it with Blue-Books, we will much triumph over his Majesty, one day!--Thus are the building operations exceedingly pushed forward, the Ear of Jenkins torn off, and Victor Amadeus locked in ward, while our Crown-Prince, in the eclipsed state, is inspected by a Sage in pipe-clay, and Wilhelmina's wedding is coming on.
Chapter VI.
WILHELMINA'S WEDDING.
Tuesday, 20th November, 1731, Wilhelmina's wedding-day arrived, after a brideship of eight months; and that young Lady's troublesome romance, more happily than might have been expected, did at last wind itself up. Mamma's unreasonable humors continued, more or less; but these also must now end. Old wooers and outlooks, "the four or three crowned heads,"--they lie far over the horizon; faded out of one's very thoughts, all these.
Charles XII., Peter II. are dead; Weissenfels is not, but might as well be. Prince Fred, not yet wedded elsewhere, is doing French madrigals in Leicester House; tending fowards the "West Wickham"set of Politicians, the Pitt-Lyttelton set; stands ill with Father and Mother, and will not come to much. August the Dilapidated-Strong is deep in Polish troubles, in Anti-Kaiser politics, in drinking-bouts;--his great-toe never mended, never will mend. Gone to the spectral state all these: here, blooming with life in its cheeks, is the one practical Fact, our good Hereditary Prince of Baireuth,--privately our fate all along;--which we will welcome cheerfully; and be thankful to Heaven that we have not died in getting it decided for us!--Wedding was of great magnificence; Berlin Palace and all things and creatures at their brightest: the Brunswick-Beverns here, and other high Guests; no end of pompous ceremonials, solemnities and splendors,--the very train of one's gown was "twelve yards long."Eschewing all which, the reader shall commodiously conceive it all, by two samples we have picked out for him: one sample of a Person, high Guest present; one of an Apartment where the sublimities went on.
The Duchess Dowager of Sachsen-Meiningen, who has come to honor us on this occasion, a very large Lady, verging towards sixty; she is the person. A living elderly Daughter of the Great Elector himself; half-sister to the late King, half-aunt to Friedrich Wilhelm; widow now of her third husband: a singular phenomenon to look upon, for a moment, through Wilhelmina's satirical spectacles. One of her three husbands, "Christian Ernst of Baireuth" (Margraf there, while the present Line was but expectant), had been a kind of Welsh-Uncle to the Prince now Bridegroom; so that she has a double right to be here. "She had found the secret of totally ruining Baireuth," says Wilhelmina;"Baireuth, and Courland as well, where her first wedlock was;"--perhaps Meiningen was done to her hand? Here is the Portrait of "my Grand-Aunt;" dashed off in very high colors, not by a flattering pencil:--"It is said she was very fond of pleasing, in her youth; one saw as much still by her affected manners. She would have made an excellent actress, to play fantastic parts of that kind.
Her flaming red countenance, her shape, of such monstrous extent that she could hardly walk, gave her the air of a Female Bacchus.
She took care to expose to view her"--a part of her person, large but no longer beautiful,--"and continually kept patting it with her hands, to attract attention thither. Though sixty gone,"--fifty-seven in point of fact,--"she was tricked out like a girl;hair done in ribbon-locks (MARRONNES), all filled with gewgaws of rose-pink color, which was the prevailing tint in her complexion, and so loaded with colored jewels, you would have taken her for the rainbow." [Wilhelmina, i. 375.]