The Lost Queen: The Tragedy of a Royal Marriage

by Norah Lofts

  She was aware of being repulsed: but she parted from him cordially, repeating her thanks, saying that she would always remember his timely intervention.

  So she would; so she would. At least once a fortnight when she went to Fredericksborg...

  Left temporarily alone, Christian congratulated himself on having been firm, articulate and dictatorial. But, as always, there was the other side. Some of Caroline’s words had left an impression: “Torpid idol,” “vegetable,” “slipping backward.” Should a child of that age be beginning to walk and talk? Who would know? Whom to ask? Struensee, with his absurd ideas culled from a Frenchman’s book? No. Juliana? She was not doing her duty; she had the title; she drew the salary; she’d made only two visits. She must be reproved. But how, cajolingly? Masterfully? The constant present conflict between his need to dominate and his desire to be dominated, made his head clang.

  There was also the threat to be considered...“I will not make another appearance.” If she held to that it would be awkward. A breach of etiquette. Husbands and wives, whatever the differences between them, always appeared together when occasion required. On the other hand, if she withdrew, what a relief, no more false smiles needed, no more chatter to be listened to.

  The gap between his two minds was full of pain, and pressure by his hands no longer relieved it. He had, quite recently, found another method. Take the two heads to the wall and bang them together. An extraordinary thing to do, but it worked. It hurt, but the physical pain seemed to drive out the other worse one.

  Struensee, although he was a big and heavy man, moved lightly and from experience of sickrooms had a habit of opening and closing doors quietly. So he came in and found his Majesty of Denmark vigorously and rhythmically beating his head against the wall.

  He knew then that he had failed; his care, his advice—moderation in all things—had not been effective. Sympathy and understanding were not enough. Pity remained. Pulling Christian from the wall, hearing him say, “But Johann it helps,” Struensee thought, Poor fellow, and was then immediately led away in his own mind by the consideration of the intricate links between mind and body.

  He decided to try upon the King, in place of the laudanum which had a soothing effect, but was in itself a deadly thing, a new drug, about which he had only lately heard and which, as a doctor, he had regarded with proper, professional caution. It came from the East; the captain of a Dutch East Indiaman had first mentioned it in Europe. It was derived from a plant and in India it had been used for a thousand years as a cure for melancholy, for moon madness and for split minds. It was called rauwolfia. The Dutch seaman’s wife had gone crazy after losing her baby; the drug had cured her and he, thinking of all the other people in similar straits, had brought back a supply, unappreciated, practically unnoticed. The Western world had its own methods of dealing with the demented; chain them, whip them. Drive out the devil of madness by making him uncomfortable...Johann Struensee no longer believed in the devil, nor in God, but he had an open mind; and when a patient was driven to bang his head against the wall experiment was justifiable.

  On Christian the stuff had an almost miraculous effect. He ceased to complain about his head, become calm and even, at times, cheerful, not in his former noisy, frenzied manner, but in a way which greatly encouraged Struensee to hope that a cure had been effected. Christian, in gratitude, appointed Struensee to the State Council where, though he would be only one voice—and that a lonely one—Struensee felt that he could make a beginning toward the changes he wished to bring about.

  The first of these had nothing at all to do with politics. Now that the King was becoming rational, open to argument, Struensee intended to discuss with him again the upbringing of the Crown Prince and urge more modern, liberal measures and the return of the child to his mother. That proposal had to be delayed however, because the Queen herself fell ill.

  To Caroline her affliction seemed like a punishment for having made the threat to withdraw from Court. She had begun to tell Christian that she would not stand beside him, and though in her own mind her burst of temper and her threat had been fully justified, she was punished by being made unfit and then unable to stand anywhere at all. First came a recurrence of a disfigurement to which both Edward and George had been prone, and which she herself had suffered once or twice. Raised red weals all over the body accompanied by a slight fever. The marks could vanish as suddenly as they had appeared, within a few hours, in two days at most. Even Mamma had not taken this seriously; George II had suffered from it and at Kew it had come to be known as Grandfather’s Stripes.

  This attack, however, was accompanied by more feverish symptoms than she remembered, and by a swelling of her feet and legs. “I will not stand...” I cannot stand; I cannot even force my feet into my slippers.

  Doctor Imer said, “Is it possible that Your Majesty is again pregnant?”

  “I know I am not.”

  He advised rest, the feet raised. To himself, with great regret, he murmured the word “dropsy,” sad in so young a woman; but it ran in families. A Queen of England, not a direct ancestor, but a relative of Her Majesty, had died of it, grossly swollen.

  Tapping, in the early stages could give some relief; so presently Dr. Imer tapped. Her Majesty bore the making of the punctures with admirable fortitude, but the results were disappointing. “Dropsy,” a nasty word, apt to a nasty condition, began to be whispered about.

  It helped to establish the King’s new serenity of mind. No question now of keeping up appearances. Her Majesty is unwell; she has dropsy. How sad!

  The word reached the Dowager Princess and horrified her. She’d borne and reared, past the first dangerous year, nine of the healthiest, most beautiful children; fresh air, plain food, plenty of sleep, every rule applied and with what result? Four in their graves, and now Caroline, dropsical. Another thing handed down from that disagreeable little grandfather. But one must not give up hope. Caroline was so young! Hastily she scribbled down the recipe for every diuretic she had ever heard of. “Take of celery root, well pounded,” she wrote, knowing, as she wrote that no celery would have a root worth pounding until September.

  Caroline insisted upon making her regular visits to Fredericksborg; eager, willing hands, those of Alice and her page, Mantel, aided her heavy, dragging steps into the carriage, and out again. The child did not know her or Alice, who had been one of his favorite people.

  “At least he’s growing,” said Alice, trying to comfort, “They can’t grow every way at once.” Alice saw the situation clearly; the boy was daft, like his father. But daft or not he was her child and she’d suffered for him; she wanted to have charge of him. And so she should have, as soon as Alice, now armed by Smith, had a chance of going into action. She should be top dog. But it wasn’t quite as easy as dealing with Phyllis because here she had no access to the kitchen, but she’d arrange it somehow. Just let him wait; let him wait...

  Caroline accepted Doctor Imer’s verdict and believed that her days were numbered. Sometimes she could stand away from herself and pity this girl, just eighteen years old, who had started out on life so eagerly, with such good intentions, and who had been disappointed and frustrated at every turn. Often the self-pity brimmed over and melted into a more corrosive flood of feeling, pity for all poor human beings born, through no choice of their own, into a pitiless world. The lame, the halt, the blind, the deaf and dumb, women who longed for a child and never had one, women who bore a child and lost it, and another...People worse off than I am; but what is the comfort there? All lost, helpless, doomed. It was a horrid world and since she could be of no use to anyone, she would be glad to be out of it. She decided that she would rather die at Hirscholm than in Copenhagen and Doctor Imer favored the move. Alice, torn between her intention, which involved contact with the kitchens, where she was just beginning to be accepted and unnoticed and her need to be wherever Princess Caroline was, went to Hirscholm rather unwillingly. Alice did not believe in the dropsy talk; Princess Carolin
e was sick from grief.

  “You’ll get him back, you’ll see,” Alice said. “And he’s all right; a bit fat and lazy, that’s all. And you should be ready to have him back. If you ask me, pingling at your food is why your legs swell. There’s swelling from undereating as well as over. Did you know that? I’ve seen it. Eat something now. Just try.”

  “What is the use, Alice? I’ve nothing to live for. I might as well be dead.”

  “That’s no way to talk,” Alice said sturdily. “While the boy’s alive and you’re alive, there’s hope. Mrs. Brewster always said, Tut a hard heart against a hard sorrow.’ “

  The change of air was beneficial: the dropsical symptom disappeared, but Caroline’s spirits remained low and her body languid. She roused herself to make the torturing visit each fortnight and refused to take interest in anything else. Her ladies-in-waiting complained of the dullness of Hirscholm and absented themselves as much as possible.

  So far as Caroline had hardened her heart it was against Christian. When she heard that in September he and the Court were coming to Hirscholm she determined to make ill health an excuse for not participating in anything. If she could avoid it she would not even meet Christian; even pretense was ended now.

  Christian was due to arrive on Saturday and there was the usual bustle of preparation. By Friday evening his apartments were polished and ready down to the last detail. But he was not yet in residence and the guards, who usually stood immobile as statues at the head and foot of stairs and in corridors, had not yet taken their positions. The outside of the palace was patrolled as usual, and if between midnight and one o’clock in the morning any yawning sentry looked up and saw a faint light move inside the tall windows, he thought nothing of it. Hirscholm, like other palaces, had its ghosts.

  The move to Hirscholm, where Caroline was already installed, had agitated the King. He had not seen her since the interview which Knut had interrupted, but he remembered her threat. All summer the story of dropsy had explained her absence; but she was well again now, and simply sulking. There would soon be—if there were not already—talk of an open breach between them and this he was anxious to avoid. He feared that he would be driven to compromise, an idea repugnant to him. A weekly visit to Fredericksborg perhaps which would be a triumph to her. He knew that on this subject his one true friend was against him, and so was his other, new friend, ignorant bachelors both of them, siding with her because they thought she was pretty—pretty, with all that hair like an old man’s beard. But he was King of Denmark...

  By the time they had arrived and were installed and served with supper he was approaching incoherence, saying that one head ached and the company that was to perform Le Sorcier on Monday evening should do so in the Queen’s presence if he had to drag her to it by the old man’s beard. Knut thought she was pretty; a pretty wife, with no welcome; Who asked her to stand? She could sit at table, couldn’t she, and it was all the fault of Dr. Imer; Johann had better take a look at her...

  Struensee decided that a dose of rauwolfia was needed. He proffered it, in the form of a sugar-coated pill, and Christian washed it down with a draught of water from the carafe that stood on the table by his bed.

  “Everything will seem better in the morning,” Struensee promised.

  “She won’t. Not to me. This water is putrid!”

  It was September, the end of summer; wells were low, rivers shallow; nowhere was water at its best.

  Early on Sunday morning Christian woke to terrible pain and the same condition which Alice had once used euphemistic terms for. He managed to rouse Axel, who ran for Doctor Struensee; not far to run now, because as a member of the Council the doctor was now entitled to a room in the palace and was not relegated, as he had been before, to a place in a distant annex.

  Neither doctor nor patient knew it, but Struensee saved Christian’s life by forbidding him to drink cold water between the bouts of vomiting. Cold drink would only increase the stomach cramps; warm milk was the thing.

  Knut, roused by the noise, was obliged to take his squeamishness away; and even Struensee, hardened to unpleasant scenes in insanitary places, gave orders that another room should be made ready so that His Majesty could be carried there as soon as the vomiting and purging ceased.

  Struensee blamed the rauwolfia, partly because there was nothing else to blame and because he had been told that it sometimes had side effects; as with other drugs, as indeed with certain food, there was in some people a limit of toleration; Struensee knew cases where men had lived on fat bacon for twenty, thirty years, then unaccountably been sickened by it and never able to eat it again. It was the same with the rich red wine of Portugal. Hundreds of men drank it in vast quantities and suffered no ill; but there were a few who, after drinking it for years, had a fit of gout, and ever after, if they took so much as a glass, were stricken again.

  There would be no more rauwolfia for Christian.

  The room in which the King had been taken sick was thoroughly cleaned next day; one of the nose-wrinkling, irreverent-comment-making servants took the half-empty carafe, poured its contents down the drain and refilled it.

  “But I tell you there are nettles,” Christian said. “They sting my hands and my feet. It has been so all my life. I always knew, but of course I was clever. I always kept away from them, but I do not intend to walk on them. And I shall make no compromise. I’ve been thinking this over. She’s proud. Now that I realized from the first. Nobody else did. She said, that day, at Roskilde? Yes, at Roskilde, some burghers and a clock, she said she wished to do whatever I wished her to do. That was a lie. I wanted her to go away. I never took to her, you know. One can always pretend not to care. I’ve had a great deal of practice, one way and another. But I will not walk on nettles.”

  Struensee, listening to this rambling talk, realized that behind the placid, near rationality imposed by the rauwolfia, the King’s mental condition had been deteriorating. Insanity, seeming to be halted in its creeping advance, had simply turned about and, under cover, broken into a gallop.

  Poor fellow, Struensee thought, looking down upon his King, relaxed now in the clean bed, the fresh room, comfortable except for the imaginary nettles that stung his hands and feet.

  Pitiable; and at the same time useless; a tool broken in the hand.

  His old father, the pastor in Altona, had been given to trite sayings. One was, “When God closes one door He opens another.” Struensee preferred the word opportunity. The door of opportunity toward which he had been making a cautious and rational approach had now slammed in his face. This poor wrecked mind would never back or push through the forms that Struensee planned. It seemed, indeed, doubtful the moment whether he would ever sit in Council again.

  Struensee cast about, looking for another door marked opportunity; and he thought of the Queen.

  HIRSCHOLM; SEPTEMBER 1769

  Caroline submitted to Doctor Struensee’s examination with bad grace, proffering the minimum of information, answering his questions in grudging monosyllables. His visit had been forced upon her and she resented it and was suspicious of its purpose.

  Finally he pushed back into his pocket the wooden tube which he had held between her chest and his ear and said, “I am happy to inform Your Majesty that so far as I can tell there is nothing organically wrong.”

  She had known that he would say that; he had been sent to say it. Her two ladies-in-waiting, standing at the foot of the bed, their hands folded at waist level, exchanged a look: Haven’t we always said so?

  “Then why do I feel so ill?” There was a sharpness in her voice, a new development. The children of the Princess Dowager had been taught that even rebukes must be administered in a gentle tone.

  “It is possible to feel ill, to be ill, even to die from causes not detectable by auscultation.” His voice was deep and its tone not unsympathetic. Part of the trick!

  “Whatever your conclusions, Doctor Struensee, I do not feel well enough to attend the opera this evening.” />
  On account of the King’s indisposition the performance had been postponed for three days. She guessed that Christian was anxious to resume the false, outwardly agreeable relationship so abruptly ended on the evening of that other opera in May; he did not believe in her plea of ill health and had sent his own physician to say that there was nothing wrong with her and that she was keeping to her own apartments, having nothing to do with him, or his Court, simply because she was still sulking. Doctor Struensee would report as he had been told; Christian would order her to take her place beside him, and she would still refuse. Then he would probably say that if she were too ill to lead an ordinary life she was too ill to visit Fredericksborg; and she was now too low in mind and spirit to care very much. The visits had grown worse. They were now dosing the child with calomel, which in Mamma’s opinion had killed more children than smallpox. Every now and then his apathy gave way to screaming rage, and the fools couldn’t see that this was his protest against his unnatural way of life; they thought he needed a dose. She, his mother, had no say in the matter; her visits served no purpose, they merely tortured her. She would relinquish them, cut her last link with this world, lie on this bed and die.

  “The pain in your side puzzles me,” Struensee said, standing between her and the window and looking down at her. “I cannot account for it.”

  Or believe in it, she thought; if I had an open wound it would attract sympathy, though it might not hurt me half so much.

  “Then you cannot prescribe?”

  “Oh yes,” he said easily, “one can always prescribe.” Do it then and go away. Between her and the window he loomed like a great brown bear, brown face and hands, brown clothes, the cloth of good quality and well cut, but worn wrongly, as though he had dressed in the dark. She had never before been so close to him, for until he was made a member of the King’s Council he had not been eligible for admittance to Court circles, and by that time she had retired. She’d seen him, but always at a distance. He was said to be a great womanizer; what women could see in him puzzled her.