United States or Liechtenstein ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Week by week during his tour, Pueckler addressed to his faithful Lucie long, confidential letters, filled with observations of the manners and customs of the British barbarians, together with minute descriptions of his adventures in love and landscape-gardening.
Pueckler generously admired the splendour that he had had so large a share in creating, and then went contentedly back to his kleine Branitz, his only regret being that he could not live to see it, like Muskau, in the fulness of its matured beauty.
During the summer months they lived at Muskau, where they laboured together over plans for the embellishment of the gardens, while in the winter they kept up a splendid establishment in Berlin. The sight of a divorced couple living together seems to have shocked the Berliners far more than that of a married couple living apart, but to Pueckler, as a chartered 'original, much was forgiven.
Pueckler took part in the triumphal entry of the Allies into Paris, and afterwards accompanied the Duke of Saxe-Weimar to London, where he shared in all the festivities of the wonderful season of 1815, studied the English methods of landscape-gardening, and made an unsuccessful attempt to marry a lady of rank and fortune.
But Helmine gave her royal suitor no encouragement, and he soon consoled himself with the Princess Liegnitz. Lucie spared no pains to marry off the inconvenient beauty, but Pueckler frustrated all her efforts, implored her not to separate him from Helmine, and suggested an arrangement based upon the domestic policy of Goethe's Wahlverwandschaften.
The reason for this inappropriate match probably lay deeper than the desire to astonish the people of Berlin, for Pueckler, with all his surface romanticism, had a keen eye to the main chance. His Lucie had only a moderate dower, but the advantage of being son-in-law to the Chancellor of Prussia could hardly be overestimated.
Muskau having become much too hot to hold him, he spent the next years in travelling about the Continent, always in pecuniary difficulties, and seldom free from some sentimental entanglement. In 1810 Graf Pueckler died, and his son stepped into a splendid inheritance.
She told her lover that he must learn to forget her, and that when they parted at the conclusion of the London season, they must never meet again. In the hope of distracting his thoughts from his disappointment, Prince Pueckler decided to make a lengthened tour through Wales and Ireland, and with this object in view he set out in July 1828.
That curious personage, Prince Pueckler Muskau, was travelling through England and Ireland in 1828, and has left a little vignette of Lady Morgan in the published record of his journey. 'I was very eager, he explains, 'to make the acquaintance of a lady whom I rate so highly as an authoress. I found her, however, very different from what I had pictured to myself.
In 1816 Pueckler became acquainted with Lucie, Graefin von Pappenheim, a daughter of Prince Hardenberg, Chancellor of Prussia. The Graefin, a well-preserved woman of forty, having parted from her husband, was living at Berlin with her daughter, Adelheid, afterwards Princess Carolath, and her adopted daughter, Herminie Lanzendorf.
Word Of The Day