Life At The British Court
When George Louis became King of Great Britain on the death of Queen Anne in 1714, Sophia and her family followed him to London. She mixed well with the king's British courtiers (who also assumed her to be one of the king's mistresses) but competed for influence with George's mistress, Melusine von der Schulenburg, and was disliked by the Princess of Wales, who 'thought her a wicked woman'. Sophia received many gifts from those seeking patronage; e.g. between 1715 and 1720, she received £9,545 from the Duke of Chandos and 1720, was given £15,000 of stock by the South Sea Company, with a bonus of £120 for every point the stock rose above £154.
Read more about this topic: Sophia Von Kielmansegg, Countess Of Darlington
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“Yet come to me in dreams that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.”
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“Among the virtues and vices that make up the British character, we have one vice, at least, that Americans ought to view with sympathy. For they appear to be the only people who share it with us. I mean our worship of the antique. I do not refer to beauty or even historical association. I refer to age, to a quantity of years.”
—William Golding (b. 1911)
“I know one husband and wife who, whatever the official reasons given to the court for the break up of their marriage, were really divorced because the husband believed that nobody ought to read while he was talking and the wife that nobody ought to talk while she was reading.”
—Vera Brittain (1893–1970)