ELÉONORE D'OLBREUSE AND

QUEEN VICTORIA

THERE is now living in Paris a well-known clubman, M. Henri d'Olbreuse, who has no pretensions whatever to regal honours, but who accepts with a certain amount of pleasure the nickname given to him, half in earnest, half in joke, by his intimate friends-that of the 'Queen's little cousin '-the Queen without any further appellation meaning, of course, Victoria of England. And as a matter of fact this young Frenchman is undoubtedly connected with our Queen through a Mlle. d'Olbreuse, who after a curious and eventful life ended by marrying George William of Brunswick; she was a native of Poitou, a province in the west of France, and the sister of Pierre d'Olbreuse, from whom Henri d'Olbreuse descends in a straight line, from father to son.

George William, the eldest of the reigning family of Brunswick, was a dissipated young man whose chief aim in life was to escape from the monotony of his stiff and uninteresting little Court; but at the same time he understood that he had some duties to perform towards the subjects who paid his Civil List; and he seriously considered the matter when the Members of State remonstrated with him, and threatened to cut short his ducal allowance if he did not marry as soon as possible. They suggested, at the same time, that the Princess Sophia, daughter of Frederick the First, Elector Palatine, and grand-daughter of James the First of England, would make a suitable duchess; and as a wife was in George William's eyes nothing more than a necessary evil, he did not ask any further questions, but accepted the fiancée of their choice.

The marriage was officially announced to his people, and all was ready for the celebration of the happy event when suddenly, after a night of revelry, he woke in the morning, absolutely determined that he would not forfeit his liberty and tie himself to a Princess; his sense of honour not allowing him coolly to accomplish the ruin of a woman's life.

The case was an embarrassing one, but George William was not easily disconcerted; and, after a short time spent in deep thought,

rubbing his chin in his hand, he was struck by a capital idea: his youngest brother, Ernest Augustus, was made of the right stuff to become a husband and the probable continuator of a dynasty; he was as poor as a church mouse, and just the man to help him out of a delicate situation; so all could be arranged satisfactorily. He thereupon sent for him, and, without even the shortest preamble, offered to the scared young prince his fiancée, a fine and clever girl, together with a deed by which he made a solemn engagement never to marry, so as to leave his inheritance and all his rights to the man who would kindly take charge of his ducal ties and his intended bride.

This offer was an unexpected windfall to Ernest Augustus, condemned as he was, in his quality of 'cadet,' to perpetual obscurity and almost poverty. The bargain even appeared to be such a good one that the second brother, John Frederick, having come into the room just as the treaty was being signed, jumped on Ernest Augustus and almost throttled him in his endeavours to snatch the paper from him and tear it to pieces; for the ducal crown and the pretty bride would have suited him admirably. George William looked calmly at his brothers, who were fighting like two puppies for a bone; then he dismissed them from his apartments, got up, shook himself with delight, and began his preparations for departure; his intention being to go a round of all the Courts of Europe, major and minor, and amuse himself.

But he was to meet his fate before long. During a stay in Holland he had been introduced to a German Princess of HesseCassel, the wife of a French nobleman, Henri de la Trémouille, Prince of Tarente, and he soon became the most assiduous visitor in her house, for she had amongst her companions a French girl from the province of Poitou, Eléonore d'Olbreuse, who was remarkably pretty and the true type of French wit and loveliness. The heart of the heavy Duke was completely smitten by so much grace, and, accustomed as he was to easy victories on the borders of the land of Love, he began at once the siege of a citadel which, however, he soon found to be much stronger than it looked at first sight; so, after a few weeks of constant and useless courtship, his passion having now reached its climax, he decided to take a desperate step, and wrote for advice to his brother Ernest Augustus, who laid the matter before his wife.

The Duchess Sophia reigned supreme in the Court as well as in the heart of her husband, and apparently she was not overwhelmed with common scruples, for she did not brood or fret long on a case which was rather an awkward one, but simply suggested that the young lady should be attached to her person with considerable pecuniary advantages, granted, of course, from the purse of her lover, who was to return to Brunswick and try his chance on more favourable

ground. A marriage was out of question; George William himself seems to have had no intention of marrying the girl in a hurry, and he considered a union with a Frenchwoman of small nobility as a dire extremity, to be avoided if possible; apparently he held ducal grandeur in great respect and knew the obligations attached to rank. But Mademoiselle d'Olbreuse, who had lived for two years at the Court of Louis the Fourteenth, was up to all the tricks of the menue galanterie; and though she had been much admired and closely courted, the reputation she had left behind her was that of a stern virtue not to be trifled with. The Duchess of Brunswick shrugged her shoulders and laughed scornfully at the report, nevertheless she had to write many wily letters before she could allure the girl into the net which she had spread for her in the ducal castle. She succeeded, however, in the end, and when Eléonore at length came she was received with the greatest empressement; Sophia met her at the bottom of the grand staircase, accompanied by her brother-in-law, who led the new comer by the hand up to the Wohnzimmer of the Duchess, where coffee and salt biscuits were offered to her, an unheard-of honour, which created at once an atmosphere of intense jealousy round the new lady-inwaiting.

At this time Eléonore d'Olbreuse was apparently sure of becoming the wife of George William, for she knew nothing of the parole he had given to his brother; and confident in his love, which he adroitly kept within the bounds of respect, she relented from her haughty conduct till she found herself so desperately entangled in the snare that she consented at last to accept the fate which was offered to her. A contract was made, worded almost as if for a regular marriage; the signatures of the reigning Duke and Duchess were written under those of George William of Brunswick and Eléonore d'Olbreuse, and, to the astonishment of the prim little Court, the two lovers began to live openly together in a sort of hazy and undecided condition. They appeared to be very happy nevertheless, for Eléonore had become sincerely attached to her semihusband, who in return dropped one by one his fast and disorderly habits to become a good German domesticated Gemahl. Eléonore d'Olbreuse was granted the title of Dame de Harbourg,' but she lived in no great style. To fulfil the duties of lady-in-waiting, she sent for her eldest sister, Angelica, whom she married later on to the Count of Reuss, who belonged to the princely family of that name; besides her, she had only three maids to attend to her person. She was not admitted to the ducal table, at least as an active guest, but she was allowed to sit on a low chair, without anything to eat before her, and at a respectful distance from the Duchess, while George William, whose appetite was not to be disturbed by such a trifling circumstance, devoured his meal on the right of the lady sovereign. The 'Dame de Harbourg' was, however, granted

permission to remain seated before any princes who might happen to be present.

This etiquette was painful only to her pride, for she says in one of her letters to her uncle that her heart was sadly turned by the enormous dishes brought before the princely eaters, their menu consisting chiefly of a queer composition of honey, beer, and onions, eaten in bowls; greasy sausages thrown in lumps on red cabbage, and a farinaceous mess with ginger and cloves; and all this was abundantly soaked in a cloudy heavy ale, of which they drank glass after glass.' 'Now,' would the fair Duchess exclaim after her plentiful meal, energetically wiping her face up to the ears with a stiff napkin, 'you may go, my dear, and help your "angelic" sister with her saucepans; the fact was well known that the 'Dame de Harbourg' and the future Countess of Reuss had, behind their dressing-rooms, a little kitchen of their own, where they prepared themselves dainty sauces and light dishes to the great disgust of the cooks in the ducal kitchen. The carrosse of Eléonore was drawn by six horses; she had two footmen and a coachman, but she was never seen in the streets either with her husband or the ducal couple of Brunswick; her sister or her maids were her sole companions, and she was not entitled to any salute, bows, or cheers during her daily drives.

For a certain time a sort of good understanding reigned between Sophia of Brunswick and the 'Dame de Harbourg,' thanks to the great tact of the latter, who never at that time tried to advance one step on the road to honours; she was contented with the love of her quasi-husband and the childish grace of her little girl, Sophia Dorothea, born in 1666, who seemed to have inherited all the fascinating ways of her mother. She was scarcely six years old when her hand was sought for by princes of every degree on account of the tremendous fortune which was to be hers at the death of her father; the irregularity of her birth being no obstacle, for a rumour was circulated that the Emperor of Germany had been sounded as to the possible legitimation of the little girl, and was likely to grant it.

This prospect enraged the Duchess Sophia to such an extent that she commenced hostilities at once, and opened the war by slandering Eléonore d'Olbreuse, accusing her publicly of having carried on two intrigues at the same time during her stay at the French Court, doing her best to marry Colin, the footman of the Princess Palatine, wife of Monsieur,' brother of Louis the Fourteenth, and trying to catch George William, the bigger fish of the two. Besides,' writes the Duchess to her niece, the Palatine, 'never would any respectable girl have entered the house of the Princess of Tarente, for, though she is my aunt-to my intense disgust-she is not a person with whom any one can live and remain clean; however,' she adds, 'd'Olbreuse being a nobody it does not matter much.'

This last item of the accusation seems to have made a very disagreeable impression on George William, who thought of a sorry stratagem to defend and establish his lady's nobility; he paid 2,000 thalers to an obscure French genealogist to make out a pompous tree in order to prove that Eléonore d'Olbreuse from Poitou descended in almost direct line from the kings of France; upon which the Princess Palatine, to amuse her aunt, launched into the world an absurd genealogy which she had made out herself, to show clearly that her head-cook was the descendant of Philippe le Hardi!

Another cause of uneasiness which helped to bring to a climax the difference between the two ladies of the Ducal Court was the constant dread in which the Duchess Sophia lived of seeing either the despised d'Olbreuse or her lawful sister-in-law, the wife of John Frederick, give birth to a son; for George William had been elected Duke of Zell, and John Frederick Duke of Hanover; and failing male heirs the sovereignty of these two Duchies was to fall under the sceptre of her husband, Ernest Augustus.

For many years she passed through periods of alternating fears and triumphs, her heart rejoicing and her joy overflowing in rather coarse speeches, when after having seen goodly preparations made by both women to receive with due honours the long wished-for son, " some puny little mouse,' she says, 'would come into the world, to have a narrow escape of feeling under its chin a fatherly thumb, instead of a paternal kiss on its innocent brow. John Frederick had been told by a prophetess,' she adds spitefully, 'that a boy would soon be born to him, and indeed the prophetess was a true one, for his mistress the comédienne presented him with a son, only unfortunately it was not an heir-a great pity to be sure.'

However she was soon reassured as far as her most dangerous rival was concerned; for at the end of the year 1679 John Frederick died, and she could not completely hide her feeling of relief; she relates the death of her brother-in-law in a semi-jocose tone which clearly shows how little she mourned for him :—

He died [she writes] as a true German should, glass in hand. For a few days he had felt unwell, and sent all over the place for a bottle or two of a special very old wine; the cellars of his ducal home being rather poor in good specimens; at last his desire was satisfied, and a venerable flagon was brought to him, the contents of which he drank all in one go. Then, an unnatural burning sensation having invaded his burly person, and chiefly his head, he thought the wine had a heating effect which ought to be counterbalanced by a good draught of refreshing beer; so his Jubelbecher was filled to the brim and emptied in a second; then he went to bed and never woke from a heavy slumber which lasted eighteen hours.

This death made Sophia of Brunswick Duchess of Hanover as well; and the only thorn which remained in her flesh was the Dame de Harbourg, who had become rather independent since the battle of Osnabrück, where George William had so distinguished himself that