He really loved music, even opera music, and knew that his people loved it; to the rough natural man, all rhythm, even of a Barberina's feet, may be didactic, beneficial: do not higgle, let us do what is to be done in a liberal style. His agent at Venice--for he has agents everywhere on the outlook for him--reports that here is a Female Dancer of the first quality, who has shone in London, Paris and the Capital Cities, and might answer well, but whose terms will probably be dear. "Engage her," answers Friedrich.
And she is engaged on pretty terms; she will be free in a month or two, and then start. [Zimmermann, Fragmente uber Friedrich den Grossen (Leipzig, 1790), i. 88-92; Collini, ubi infra; Denina; &c.: compare Rodenbeck, p. 191.]
Well;--but Barberina had, as is usual, subsidiary trades to her dancing: in particular, a young English Gentleman had followed her up and down, says Zimmermann, and was still here in Venice passionately attached to her. Which fact, especially which young English gentleman, should have been extremely indifferent to me, but for a circumstance soon to be mentioned. The young English gentleman, clear against Barberina's Prussian scheme, passionately opposes the same, passionately renews his own offers;--induces Barberina to inform the Prussian agent that she renounces her engagement in that quarter. Prussian agent answers that it is not renounceable; that he has legal writing on it, and that it must be kept. Barberina rises into contumacy, will laugh at all writing and compulsion. Prussian agent applies to Doge and Senate on the subject, in his King's name; who answer politely, but do nothing:
"How happy to oblige so great a King; but--" And so it lasts for certain months; Barberina and the young English gentleman contumacious in Venice, and Doge and Senate merely wishing we may get her.
Meanwhile a Venetian Ambassador happens to be passing through Berlin, in his way to or from some Hyperborean State; arrives at some hotel, in Berlin;--finds, on the morrow, that his luggage is arrested by Royal Order; that he, or at least IT, cannot get farther, neither advance nor return, till Barberina do come.
"Impossible, Signor: a bargain is a bargain; and States ought to have law-courts that enforce contracts entered into in their territories." The Venetian Doge and Senate do now lay hold of Barberina; pack her into post-chaises, off towards Berlin, under the charge of armed men, with the proper transit-papers,--as it were under the address, "For his Majesty of Prussia, this side uppermost,"--and thus she actually is conveyed, date or month uncertain, by Innspruck or the Splugen, I cannot say which, over mountain, over valley, from country to country, and from stage to stage, till she arrives at Berlin; Ambassador with baggage having been let go, so soon as the affair was seen to be safe.
As for the young English gentleman passionately attached, he followed, it is understood; faithful, constant as shadow to the sun, always a stage behind; arrived in Berlin two hours after his Barberina, still passionately attached; and now, as the rumor goes, was threatening even to marry her, and so save the matter.
Supremely indifferent to my readers and me. But here now is the circumstance that makes it mentionable. The young English is properly a young Scotch gentleman; James Mackenzie the name of him,--a grandson of the celebrated Advocate, Sir George Mackenzie;and younger Brother of a personage who, as Earl of Bute, became extremely conspicuous in this Kingdom in after years. That makes it mentionable,--if only in the shape of MYTH. For Friedrich, according to rumor, being still like to lose his Dancer in that manner, warned the young gentleman's friends; and had him peremptorily summoned home, and the light fantastic toe left free in that respect. Which procedure the indignant young gentleman (thinks my Author) never forgave; continuing a hater of Friedrich all his days; and instilling the same sentiment into the Earl of Bute at a period which was very critical, as we shall see.
This is my Author's, the often fallacious though not mendacious Dr. Zimmermann's, rather deliberate account; a man not given to mendacity, though filled with much vague wind, which renders him fallacious in historical points.
Readers of Walpole's George the Third know enough of this Mackenzie, "Earl's Brother, MACKINSY," and the sorrowful difficulties about his Scotch law-office or benefice;in which matter "Mackinsy" behaves always in a high way, and only the Ministerial Outs and Inns higgle pedler-like, vigilant of the Liberties of England, as they call them. In the end, Mackinsy kept his law-office or got it restored to him; 3,000 pounds a year without excess of work; a man much the gentleman, according to the rule then current: in contemplative rare moments, the man, looking back through the dim posterns of the mind, might see afar off a certain pirouetting Figure, once far from indifferent, and not yet quite melted into cheerless gray smoke, as so much of the rest is--to Mr. Mackinsy and us. I have made, in the Scotch Mackenzie circles, what inquiry was due; find no evidence, but various likelihoods, that this of the Barberina and him is fact, and a piece of his biography. As to the inference deduced from it, in regard to Friedrich and the Earl of Bute, on a critical occasion,--that rests entirely with Zimmermann; and the candid mind inclines to admit that, probably, it is but rumor and conjecture;street-dust sticking to the Doctor's shoes, and demanding merely to be well swept out again. Heigho!--Barberina, though a dancer, did not want for more essential graces.