Her father, to quote the Princess
Christian, 'ruled his family with the same harsh despotism with which he
ruled his country, taking pleasure in making his power felt by all in the
most galling manner,' and the Margravine and her brother 'had much to
suffer, not only from his ungovernable temper, but also from the real
privations to which they were subjected.' Indeed, the picture the
Margravine gives of the King is quite extraordinary. 'He despised all
learning,' she writes, 'and wished me to occupy myself with nothing but
needlework and household duties or details. Had he found me writing or
reading, he would probably have whipped me.' He 'considered music a
capital offence, and maintained that every one should devote himself to
one object: men to the military service, and women to their household
duties. Science and the arts he counted among the "seven deadly sins."'
Sometimes he took to religion, 'and then,' says the Margravine, 'we lived
like Trappists, to the great grief of my brother and myself. Every
afternoon the King preached a sermon, to which we had to listen as
attentively as if it proceeded from an Apostle. My brother and I were
often seized with such an intense sense of the ridiculous that we burst
out laughing, upon which an apostolic curse was poured out on our heads,
which we had to accept with a show of humility and penitence.' Economy
and soldiers were his only topics of conversation; his chief social
amusement was to make his guests intoxicated; and as for his temper, the
accounts the Margravine gives of it would be almost incredible if they
were not amply corroborated from other sources. Suetonius has written of
the strange madness that comes on kings, but even in his melodramatic
chronicles there is hardly anything that rivals what the Margravine has
to tell us. Here is one of her pictures of family life at a Royal Court
in the last century, and it is not by any means the worst scene she
describes:

On one occasion, when his temper was more than usually bad, he told
the Queen that he had received letters from Anspach, in which the
Margrave announced his arrival at Berlin for the beginning of May. He
was coming there for the purpose of marrying my sister, and one of his
ministers would arrive previously with the betrothal ring. My father
asked my sister whether she were pleased at this prospect, and how she
would arrange her household. Now my sister had always made a point of
telling him whatever came into her head, even the greatest
home-truths, and he had never taken her outspokenness amiss. On this
occasion, therefore, relying on former experience, she answered him as
follows: 'When I have a house of my own, I shall take care to have a
well-appointed dinner-table, better than yours is, and if I have
children of my own, I shall not plague them as you do yours, and force
them to eat things they thoroughly dislike!'

'What is amiss with my dinner-table?' the King enquired, getting very
red in the face.

'You ask what is the matter with it,' my sister replied; 'there is not
enough on it for us to eat, and what there is is cabbage and carrots,
which we detest.' Her first answer had already angered my father, but
now he gave vent to his fury. But instead of punishing my sister he
poured it all on my mother, my brother, and myself.