The Royal Physician's Visit

by Per Olov Enquist

  “Your Majesty, it’s not always easy to understand you.”

  He thought this remark would slip past the King completely unnoticed. But Christian put down his pen and regarded Struensee with an expression of intense sorrow, or terror, or as if he wanted to make Struensee understand.

  “Yes,” he said. “I have many faces.”

  Struensee gave him an intent look. He had noted a tone of voice that was new to him.

  The King then went on:

  “But Doctor Struensee, in the kingdom of reason that we will create, perhaps there is only room for those who have been cast all of one piece?”

  And after a moment he added:

  “But if so, would there be room for me?”

  7.

  They seemed to be waiting.

  After her encounter with Struensee in the park, the Queen felt a peculiar rage; she had clearly identified it as rage.

  She did not feel calm. It was rage.

  At night she once again took off her nightgown and intensely stroked her private parts. Three times desire came in a great wave, yet now nothing brought her any peace, but left only rage behind.

  I’m about to lose control, she thought. I must regain control.

  I must regain control.

  Christian, Caroline Mathilde, Struensee. Those three.

  They seemed to be observing each other with curiosity and suspicion. The court observed them too. As they observed the court. Everyone seemed to be waiting.

  Sometimes they were also observed from the outside. Later that autumn a letter was written that, in a certain way, was a portent of what would come. A sharp-eyed observe r, Crown Prince Gustav of Sweden, later to be King Gustav III, traveled to Paris that year and stopped for a short time in Copenhagen. He saw something. Perhaps not something that had occurred but something that might take place.

  He reports in several letters to his mother about the situation at the Danish court.

  He is dissatisfied with the Danish court, finding the palace tasteless. Gold, gold, everything is gold, gilded with more gold. No style. The parades are pitiful. The soldiers do not march in step; they turn slowly, without precision. Lechery and depravity at court, “even worse than at our own.” Denmark can hardly be considered a military threat to Sweden, in his judgment.

  Bad taste and slow turns.

  Yet it is the royal couple and Struensee who capture his greatest interest.

  “But the strangest of all is the lord of the palace and everything about him. A fine-looking figure, but he is so small and slender that it would be easy to mistake him for a child of thirteen or a girl dressed up as a man. Madame du Londelle in men’s clothing would look a good deal like him, and I don’t think the King is much bigger than she is.

  “What makes it absolutely impossible to believe that he could be the King is that he wears no medals; not only has he renounced wearing the Order of the Seraphim, but he wears no Order of the Star. He bears a strong resemblance to our Crown Princess, and he talks like her, although he talks more. He seems shy, and whenever he says anything he corrects himself just as she does and seems to fear that he may have said something wrong. His gait is quite extraordinary; as if his legs were about to give way under him.

  “The Queen is an entirely different story. She gives the impression of being daring, strong, and robust. Her manner is quite unrestrained and without inhibitions. Her speech is lively and witty but also very quick. She is neither pretty nor homely; in height she is about the same as most people, but she is stocky without being fat, always clad in a riding habit, with boots, and all the women in her retinue have to dress as she does; this means that in the theater, in fact anywhere at all, the women in her entourage can be easily distinguished from the others.”

  Crown Prince Gustav also studied Struensee closely. At the dinner table Struensee was seated directly across from the Queen. He “ogled” the Queen in a manner that displeased the Swedish Crown Prince. “But the strangest thing of all is that Struensee has become lord of the palace; he even rules over the King. There is tremendous disapproval about this, and it seems to be growing daily. If there was as much force in this country as there is disapproval in it right now, things might take a serious turn.”

  This was in the autumn. The Swedish Crown Prince, later to be King Gustav III—he inherits the throne later that same year—seems to have seen something.

  And something had taken place.

  CHAPTER 8

  A LIVE HUMAN BEING

  1.

  GULDBERG OFTEN SEEMED to see history as a river inexorably swelling as it moved toward the sea, merging there with the vast waters that he envisioned as the embodiment of the Eternal.

  The movement of the waters was God’s will. Guldberg was merely the insignificant observer on the shore.

  This ostensibly left little place for him in the great course of history. But at the same time he imagined that this small, insignificant observer, Guldberg, he with his clear, ice-blue eyes, had been given a role, thanks to his insignificance, his tenacity, and his sharp and unblinking eyes. He was not only the observer of God’s inexorable power, but he was also an interpreter of the maelstroms in the water. The river was by nature inscrutable. But to some it had been given to see the undercurrents of the maelstroms, to master the logic of the inscrutable, and to understand the secrets of God’s will.

  That was also why, for safety’s sake, he had acquired informants.

  After his meeting with the Dowager Queen in the palace chapel, he understood what his task was to be. It was not only that of interpreter. His interpretation had to be given a direction. His task was to love her little son, the little misshapen boy; and through his love for this most insignificant of all persons, God’s will would finally be realized in Denmark.

  But it was God’s will, first and foremost, to burn away all filth and to consume the ideas of the Enlightenment in God’s great fire.

  The meeting in the palace chapel was of enormous importance. But he had not become a hired henchman. This task, this calling, was not the result of a desire for reward. He could not be bought. He wanted to say this to the Dowager Queen during their meeting in the chapel, but he had not been able to do so. He had taken offense at the word “reward.” She didn’t understand that he could not be bought. He didn’t want titles, rewards, power; he wanted to remain someone of little consequence, whose task it was to interpret the great, inscrutable waters of God.

  He felt tremendously uneasy about the way things were developing. This had to do with his belief that Struensee could not be bought either. If he could, in fact, be bought, Guldberg still had no idea with what. Perhaps he could not be bought. Perhaps this great tree could be felled by something else; but if so, he would have to see through Struensee, understand where his weak point might be.

  Struensee was an upstart; in that sense he was like Guldberg. They were both small shrubs among the great, arrogant trees. He loved these images. Shrubs, trees, felled forests. And finally: triumph. Sometimes he hated Struensee with love, almost with empathy, even tenderness. But he knew that his task was to see through him.

  He feared that Struensee was no ordinary intellectual. But he had an inkling of what his weak point might be. Guldberg alone, from the bank of the river, had understood. Struensee’s weakness, paradoxically enough, was that he had no desire for power. His hypocritical idealism was genuine. Perhaps it was because Struensee didn’t wish to be entrapped or corrupted by power. Perhaps he had renounced the great game. Perhaps he was a thoroughly pure human being in the service of evil. Perhaps he harbored a naive dream that purity was possible. Perhaps he didn’t want to be sullied by power. Perhaps he might succeed at this, be able to withstand the filth of power, not kill, not annihilate, not play the great power game. Be able to remain pure.

  And that was precisely why Struensee was doomed to fall.

  2.

  Guldberg had followed the grand European tour from a distance, almost day by day, through his informan
ts. Without expression he had read the letters about this insane extravagance. Yet he did not grow uneasy until the first letters from Paris began to arrive.

  That was when he realized that a new danger was looming.

  Who could have known? Rantzau might have known. He had recommended Struensee, and he must have known. The report of the King’s meeting with the encyclopedists was the last straw. That was why, in June, he had a long talk with Count Rantzau.

  It was carried out in a businesslike tone. Guldberg reviewed part of Rantzau’s curriculum vitae, including his alleged espionage for the Russian Tsarina and how important it was to forget this minor incident, considering the unreasonably harsh punishment for treason. He briefly outlined the conditions for the game. They agreed on certain matters: that Struensee was an interloper and highly dangerous.

  Rantzau, for his part, was either silent or seemed nervous.

  For Guldberg, this confirmed everything. Rantzau was a thoroughly spineless individual.

  In addition, he had enormous debts.

  During their talk Guldberg was forced to exert the utmost restraint, so as not to reveal his contempt. The great, noble trees could be bought, and would be felled.

  But the small shrubs: no.

  In May the situation became confused, and thus dangerous. In July he was forced to make a special report to the Dowager Queen.

  They had agreed to meet at the Royal Theater, since a conversation in the Dowager Queen’s royal box before a performance would hardly be suspected as conspiratorial, and thus the high degree of public scrutiny was advantageous to a secret conversation.

  And besides, the orchestra was tuning up.

  He presented a quick, detailed summary. In May the cupping of the little Crown Prince was carried out and proved successful. That had strengthened the position of “the Silent One.” The state of the intrigue was that Holck was out of favor, while Rantzau was in, but a spineless and harmless individual. Foreign Minister Bernstorff was to be dismissed in the fall. Struensee was no longer Rantzau’s protégé, and Struensee would soon be all-powerful. That was why Rantzau hated him, although he considered himself to be Struensee’s only close friend. Brandt was in favor. The King, beyond anyone’s control, had automatically signed the decree. The following week Struensee was to be named Councillor of State with an annual salary of fifteen hundred riksdaler. The document regarding a prohibition or “suspension” of the awarding of medals and rewards, which the King had signed the week before, was written by “the Silent One.” A flood of reforms was in the offing.

  “How do you know?” asked the Dowager Queen. “Surely Struensee hasn’t told you of this.”

  “But he may have told Rantzau,” was Guldberg’s reply.

  “Isn’t he Struensee’s only friend?”

  “Struensee has refused to recommend that his debts should be canceled,” Guldberg explained curtly.

  “An intellectual with debts in conflict with an enlightened man with principles,” the Dowager Queen said thoughtfully as if to herself. “A tragedy for both of them.”

  Guldberg then went on with his analysis. What Struensee had recently called “linguistic reworking”of the King’s decrees had now become blatant power manipulation. The King signed everything that Struensee put before him. Reforms were surging forward like a flood. The plans that would soon be realized also included unrestricted freedom of the press, religious freedom, the transfer of Øresund tariffs to the state instead of to the royal household, resolution of the peasant question and the abolition of serfdom, the cessation of subsidies to unprofitable industries owned by the nobility, reformation of the health services, as well as a long list of detailed plans such as the seizure of church facilities on Amaliegade, which would be transformed into an orphanage.

  “An orphanage for the spawn of whores,” the Dowager Queen bitterly interjected.

  “And, of course, a ban on the use of torture during interrogations.”

  “That point, at any rate,” the Dowager Queen retorted, “will definitely be repealed when we capture this rat and disarm him.”

  The musicians had now finished tuning their instruments, and the Dowager Queen whispered her final question:

  “And the Queen’s view of Struensee?”

  “As to her,” Guldberg replied, also in a whisper, “no one knows a thing. But as soon as anyone does, I’ll be the first to hear of it.”

  3.

  She ordered her coachman to drive her down to the shore more and more often. She would get out and stand waiting at the very edge of the water. The smell was the same, sea and seaweed, and yet not the same. At first it was merely boredom. Then it became the fusion of desire and death. Then it became something else.

  Perhaps it had something to do with Struensee. She wanted to know what it was.

  She had made inquiries and learned of his whereabouts; that was why she had switched her afternoon walk to the Royal Stables, since every Tuesday and Friday Doctor Struensee was accustomed to going out riding.

  And true enough, he was there. That was why she went there, without the escort of her ladies-in-waiting. She went there to find out what was causing her rage, and to put him in his place.

  He was preoccupied with saddling his horse, and since she was furious and had decided to put him in his place, she got straight to the point.

  “Doctor Struensee,” she said, “oh, I see that you’re preoccupied with your riding. I don’t wish to disturb you when you’re so busy.”

  Perplexed, he merely bowed and continued to saddle up his horse, but without a word. That was unprecedented. Even the slightest knowledge of royal protocol dictated that he had to answer, and in a prescribed, courtly manner; but he was only a commoner.

  “You have insulted the Queen of Denmark,” she then told him. “I speak to you but you do not answer. How shameless.”

  “That was not my intention,” he said.

  He did not seem at all fearful.

  “Always preoccupied,” she went on. “What exactly is it that you do?”

  “I’m working,” he replied.

  “On what?”

  “I am at the King’s disposal. To prepare documents. To discuss matters. Occasionally to offer advice, if the King so wishes.”

  “You promised to give me riding lessons; I allowed you to promise that, and ever since you haven’t had time! No time! But beware, you can fall into disfavor! DISFAVOR!!!”

  He then stopped saddling his horse, turned around, and merely looked at her with surprise, perhaps annoyance.

  “May I ask,” she added with her voice so out of control that for a moment she heard it herself and was filled with shame, “may I ask whether this WORK is so necessary, may I ask you that? And I will!!! What is it that—”

  “Shall I answer?” he asked.

  “Do that, Doctor Struensee.”

  It happened so suddenly. She hadn’t expected it. He answered with a burst of fury that surprised them both.

  “Your Majesty, with all due respect, I truly am working,” he said, his voice low with rage, “but not as much as I should be. What I should be working on requires time, which I don’t have; I also have to sleep. I may be inadequate, but no one can say that I’m not trying. Unfortunately, I know quite well what I’m not doing, Your Majesty, unfortunately. I ought to work to make this cursed Denmark respectable, work on the rights of the peasants, which I’m not doing; work on cutting the royal household at least by half! At least!!! But I’m not doing that either. Work on changing the laws so that mothers of illegitimate children are no longer punished, ARE NO LONGER PUNISHED!!! I’m not doing that. Work on abolishing the hypocritical penalties for adultery; I’m not doing that either, my Highly Esteemed Queen. There is such an inconceivable number of things that I’m not!—not!!!—working on, that I ought to do, but cannot. I could go on and on with other examples of what I’m not!!! workingon, I could—”

  Abruptly he broke off. He knew that he had lost his temper. A long silence ensued, and th
en he said:

  “I beg your forgiveness. I beg you … to forgive me. For this …”

  “Yes?”

  “For this unpardonable indiscretion.”

  Suddenly she felt completely calm. Her rage vanished, not because she had put him in his place, nor because she had been put in her place; no, it was simply gone.

  “What a beautiful horse,” she said.

  Yes, the horses were beautiful. How wonderful it must be to work with these handsome creatures, their skin, their nostrils, their eyes, which regarded her in utter silence and tranquility.

  She stepped up to the horse, stroked its hindquarters.

  “Such a beautiful animal. Do you think horses like their bodies?”

  He didn’t reply. She kept on stroking: its neck, mane, head. The horse stood quite still, waiting. She did not turn to face Struensee as she said in a low voice:

  “Do you despise me?”

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “Do you think: pretty little girl, seventeen years old, stupid, has seen nothing of the world, understands nothing. A beautiful creature. Is that what you think?”

  He merely shook his head.

  “No.”

  “Then what am I?”

  He had begun grooming the horse, slowly; then he stopped.

  “Alive.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A live human being.”

  “So you’ve noticed that?”

  “Yes. I’ve noticed.”

  “How nice,” she said very quietly. “How … nice. There aren’t many live human beings in Copenhagen.”

  He looked at her.

  “That’s not something Your Majesty can know. There is another world outside the court.”

  She thought: It’s true, but imagine that he dares to say so. Perhaps he has seen something other than the armored warship, or my body. He sees something else, and he is bold. But is he saying this because he sees me as a little girl, or is he saying it because it’s true?