THE QUEEN'S FRENCH DESCENT.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sra,—Your correspondent in the Spectator of June 9th is wrong in asserting that Sophie Dorothea of Celle, daughter of Eleonore d'Olbreuse and Duke George William of Celle, was married en prepares noces to Prince Augustus of Wolfenbiittel. She was never married to him. She was betrothed to him in 1676, when she was a child ten years old, and the same year the young Prince was killed by a cannon-ball at the siege of Phillipsburg. Six years later, in 1682, Sophie Dorothea was married to her first cousin, Prince George Louis of Hanover, who afterwards became King George L of England. From the issue of that marriage are descended in a direct line two of the greatest reigning Monarchs in the world to-day,- Queen Victoria, from their son, George IL of England; and the German Emperor, from their daughter, Sophie Dorothea, Queen of Prussia, the mother of Frederick the Great. I may add, as your reviewer did not mention it, that a table of this descent is given on p. 29 of my book, "The Love of an Un- crowned Queen." The d'Olbreuses were Huguenot exiles of an ancient family of Poitou. I believe that one of their descendants, M. Henri d'Olbreuse, is now living in Paris, a gentleman well known in club circles, whom his friends some- times call, half in jest, half in earnest, the "Queen's little cousin,"—the Queen, of course, being Queen Victoria, with whom the young Frenchman can undoubtedly claim a distant kinship, and also with the German Emperor. He is a descendant in the straight line of Pierre d'Olbreuse, brother of Eleonore d'Olbreuse, the mother of Sophie Dorothea of Celle, the "uncrowned Queen" of the first of our Hanoverian
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