Memoir of Queen Adelaide, Consort of King William IV.

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THE little Duchy of Saxe-Meinengen was once a portion of the inheritance of the princely Franconian house of Henneberg. The failure of the male line transferred it, in 1583, to the family of reigning Saxon princes. In 1680, it fell to the third son of the Saxon Duke, Ernest the Pious. The name of this son was Bernard. This Duke is looked upon as the founder of the House of Meinengen. He was much devoted to the study of Alchemy, and was of a pious turn, like his father, as far, as may be judged by the volumes of manuscript notes he left behind him – which he had made on the sermons of his various court-preachers.

The law of primogeniture was not yet in force when Duke Bernard died, in 1706. One consequence was, that Bernard's three sons, with Bernard's brother, ruled the little domain in common. In 1746, the sole surviving brother, Antony Ulrich, the luckiest of this ducal Tontine, was monarch of all he surveyed, within a limited space. The conglomerate ducal sovereigns were plain men, formal, much given to ceremony, and not much embarrassed by intellect. There was one man, however, who had enough for them all: namely, George Spanginburg, brother of the Moravian bishop of the latter name, and who was, for some time, the Secretary of State at the court of Saxe-Meinengen.

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These were the "antecedents" of the lover who, in maturer age, took, rather than asked for, the hand of Adelaide of Saxe-Meinengen. Of all the actions of his life, it was the one which brought him the most happiness; and with that true woman he had better fortune than is altogether merited by a man, who, after a long bachelorship of no great repute, settles down in middle-life to respectability and content, under the influences of a virtuous woman, gifted with an excellent degree of common-sense.

In the dusk of a July evening, in the year 1818, this unwooed bride quietly arrived, with her mother, at Grillon's Hotel, Albemarle Street. She had but cool reception for a lady on such mission as her own. There was no one to bid her welcome; the Regent was at Carlton House at dinner, and the Duke of Clarence was out of town on a visit. Except the worthy Mr. Grillon himself, no person seemed the gladder for her coming. In the course of the evening, however, the Regent drove down to Albemarle Street; and, at a later hour, the more tardy future-husband was carried up to the door in a carriage drawn by four horses, with as much rapidity as became a presumed lover of his age, in whom a certain show of zeal was becoming.

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