The King's Mistress: The True & Scandalous Story of the Woman Who Stole the Heart of George I Read Online Free PDF

Great Garden, the Garden Theatre, the Nouveau Jardin, the Great Parterre, the Gallery, the pavilions and the Great Fountain. Water was everywhere. Sophia would take walk after walk during the summer days, listening to the trickle of the fountain and thegentle lapping of the river against its bank. Heady scents more typical of southern Europe filled the air; the gardens were stocked with exotic plants from far warmer climates, particularly date palms, apricots, peaches, figs, pomegranates and orange trees. The orange trees were housed in the Gallery during the winter, but in the summer when the family and court were in residence they nestled in the courtyard, pervading the gardens with the scent of their blossom.
    The roses in the Rose Garden, or Love Garden, imbued the air with their aromatic perfume, and at the centre of the Labyrinth stood a wooden temple filled with doves. During the carnival or summer festivals musicians accompanied the revellers. For those in a philosophical mood, the Lawn Garden was a perfect place to walk, with no distractions. The grotto, built by Johann Friedrich in 1676, offered relief from the burning midsummer sun. And in the Berggarten, opposite the Great Garden, a beautiful garden theatre was created between 1689 and 1692. Here Sophia encouraged the family to perform; one year George acted in Leibniz’s play Trimalcion , apparently very well. In contrast to the rest of the gardens, the Berggarten was carefully cultivated to present the appearance of being untamed by man, rather than showcasing a mathematical ideal. Here one could lose oneself entirely, and one can imagine the games of chase the ducal children would have played here, and the forbidden liaisons that the frenzied atmosphere of carnival would have encouraged.
    Carnival was an established fixture in the calendar in Johann Friedrich’s time, but under Sophia and Ernst August it became ever wilder and more elaborate, leading contemporaries to call Hanover ‘the Venice of the North’. The canal built at Herrenhausen between 1686 and 1701 provided carnival revellers with gondolas in which to float and contemplate, or to indulge in the debauchery associated with the festival. 13 A Venetian gondolier, Pierre Madonetto,was employed to look after the boats and to ferry those who would not or could not row themselves.
    Carnival, Ernst August believed, served two purposes. The first was to throw a huge party that gave the regime a veneer of accessibility; the second was to burnish the glory of the ruling house. Masques and tableaux where family members would dress as gods and goddesses enhanced the notion of rule by divine right; yet equally the populace was distracted by the music, dancing, free food and access to glorious Herrenhausen. They adored the sight of the nobility in their most outrageous fancy dress parading through the town in open carriages or on horseback, accompanied by musicians. By the time of Ernst August’s death, the Hanoverian carnival rivalled the Venetian for pomp, debauchery and fun; anyone who could afford a mask could join in. Ernst August was a lotus eater and the pleasure seekers of Europe benefited.
    In antithesis to the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War, Hanover became a party town. The war created a huge shift in approaches towards life and happiness. Just as the survivors of the Black Death in the fourteenth century became less risk-averse, so the Thirty Years’ War created a culture of excess, most visibly amongst the rich. Whole generations had been raised under the yoke of death; many responded with a taste for earthly delights.
    If Germany’s princes adored Italian licentiousness, they also coveted French style. Writing nearly one hundred years later, George’s grandson, Frederick the Great of Prussia, wrote of the enduring attraction of France: ‘there is no prince [of Germany] down to the younger member with an apanage who does not imagine himself to be a Louis XIV. He builds his Versailles,