Note 106 — IV THE ELECTORAL HOUSE OF HANOVER (HANOVER AND HERRENHAUSEN, 1688-1701)

For an examination of the whole question of the genuineness of the Lund letters I must refer the reader to an article on the original edition of Mr. Wilkins’ book, The Love of an Uncrowned Queen, contributed by me to the Edinburgh Review for January, 1901. I have since re-examined the cipher with the aid of the key supplied by the late Count Schulenburg to the late Mrs. Everett Green; and it certainly fills one with amazement that any rational human beings should have thought concealment attainable by so perfectly transparent a disguise. But the miserable folly of the whole business is at least consistent with itself.—As to the Berlin letters, Mr. Wilkins does not explicitly say that he had seen them; but it was unnecessary that he should do so, as an exhaustive account of them (with the text of two of them) was given by Dr. Robert Geerds in the Beitlage to the Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 77, Friday, April 4th, 1902. The eminent historian Dr. A. Köcher, after first directing attention to these letters in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, Vol. xxxiv. (art. Sophia Dorothea), and declaring them an audacious forgery (he repeated this assertion privately to myself), deposited in the Royal Archives at Berlin a statement of his belief that a comparison of handwritings left him in no doubt as to the letters being spurious; but Dr. Geerds’ explanations on this head (see Appendix B) are to my mind perfectly satisfactory.—I should like to add that at my request Count Königsmarck, in December last, most kindly allowed the examination of his family archives at Plaue near Berlin on my behalf by Archivrath Dr. Paczkowski, but that no part of any correspondence between Sophia Dorothea and her lover was discovered there. Dr. Paczkowski carried out the task which he was so good as to undertake with a thoroughness and savoir faire reflecting the highest credit upon himself and the distinguished official body of which he forms part.