intrigues), there would be more ceremony, larger banquets, balls and comedies and plays. But the above record forms a fair specimen of the average day at the court of Hanover. ----- Footnote 23: The morning bath was not a daily institution at the end of the seventeenth century, even with princesses; for aught I know, it may not be in Germany to-day. Cleanliness was not a prominent virtue, and in the long list of servants at the court of Hanover there appear to have been only two washerwomen employed! ----- In this way the winter passed. The spring dawned, the lime-trees and acacias flowered along the banks of the river Leine. The summer came and went. There were pastoral plays in the gardens of Herrenhausen, and masques, and visits of princes and princesses. But Sophie Dorothea gradually withdrew herself from the festivities, and with the autumn days there came good news to the courts of Hanover and Celle. The Princess gave birth to a son and heir, who was born at Hanover on October 30, 1683, and who was destined forty-four years later to ascend the mighty throne of England.[24] ----- Footnote 24: George II. succeeded his father in 1727. ----- The christening was celebrated with much rejoicing, and the infant was given the names of George Augustus, after his two grandfathers. The event naturally increased Sophie Dorothea’s importance, and it set the seal upon the reconciliation of the duchies of Hanover and Celle. Henceforward we find the Duke and Duchess of Celle visiting Hanover, and Ernest Augustus and sometimes George Louis, but rarely the Duchess Sophia, returning the visit at Celle, or staying with George William and his wife at their hunting-lodges of Göhre, Brockhausen, and Wienhausen. Sophie Dorothea also visited her parents frequently, and for long intervals. After the birth of the son and heir, the Duchess Sophia’s manner towards her daughter-in-law seems to have altered for the better. She apparently determined to make the best of Sophie Dorothea, and though she never liked her, and had little in common with her, she dissembled her dislike, and treated her with outward courtesy. For good or evil, Sophie Dorothea was her son’s wife, and the mother of the child on whom the accumulated dignities of the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg would one day descend. It even seemed that the birth of the son might form a link between George Louis and his wife; such an event surely made for greater identity of interest between them, for a man, unless he be thoroughly bad, can hardly withhold some sympathy from the mother of his firstborn child, and George Louis was by no means wholly bad. He recognised the beauty and grace of his wife, and if they had been left to themselves, the young couple, despite their uncongenial temperaments, might have managed to rub along together fairly well.