by Norah Lofts
A temporary landing stage had been built out from the top of the gray stone seawall against which the tides beat themselves in vain, to the point where the water was deep enough to bear a boat. At its end waited Captain MacBride’s own barge. On to this landing stage she stepped, her hand on Count Holstein’s stiffly bent arm. Then Captain MacBride had his great moment. She was English and would understand; there was no need to bother with Froggie talk. At the exact point where highwater mark showed, he stepped forward and tapped the man whom he still thought of as Compte de Holstein, smartly on the shoulder and said, “From now on Her Majesty is in my charge. Madam, permit me...” He offered his arm and Caroline laid her hand on it and gave him a smile that he remembered to the end of his days. Moving as though he were walking on eggs he took her to the end of the little landing stage and in the scoured, furbished-up barge the biggest, best looking member of the Southampton’s crew—who never could understand what he had done to be selected for this tricky task, stood up and handed the Queen of Denmark down. She was nimbler than most women and the transfer from Danish soil to what Captain MacBride thought to be an extension of England was made neatly and without hitch. And the moment she was seated, safe in this bit of England, all the flags broke out on the frigates and the guns roared a royal salute.
Her departure in summer sunshine, banished, disgraced and bereft, was more spectacular than her arrival in Roskilde. Captain John MacBride was a better scene setter than Christian.
She should have been delighted, and in a way she was, this was England, this was George, but it meant nothing, just another little scene, well-played; the actors in it to be thanked and congratulated. The great thing was, she now realized, that as one served one’s life sentence, passed through this tunnel, crossed this bridge, one must try to make everybody happy, so far as one could.
PART SEVEN
ZELL; JUNE 1772—SEPTEMBER 1774
One of the difficulties about keeping everybody happy at Zell was the matter of boredom; her small suite was now composed of Hanoverians, some of them not ill-disposed toward her, but her Court was not really a Court, people became bored, and then because they were, they quarreled; changes were frequent. The other problem was money, something she had never been obliged to think about before.
With her dowry and her jewels she looked upon herself as a rich woman. Other people thought so, too; tradesmen exploited her, stewards cheated, mendicants at all levels begged. Baron Seckendorf who was Comptroller of her Household made unavailing attempts to explain to her the difference between capital and income and would point out if the former were drawn upon the latter would decrease. Then she would say, “I don’t mind. I wouldn’t mind being poor.” Maybe not, he thought, but His Majesty of England would mind, and be compelled to supply you, and that he would not like. At the same time the Baron found it impossible to be strict enough with her; he thought she was charming and ill-used; when she suggested the construction of a little theater so that the Court could have some entertainment, he sighed and gave in, merely remarking that it would be very expensive.
Hospitality was expensive, too, and during her first year she was called upon to supply a great deal of it. Visitors every country in Europe were eager to see the woman who had been the cause of so much scandal. If their credentials were in order they had to be fed, sometimes lodged: and then, every other Wednesday Augusta came, and Caroline was always anxious that nothing should be lacking then.
Augusta’s first, second, even third visit, had been very welcome to Caroline; another of the family lining up alongside, giving proof of family solidarity. Someone to whom she was Caro. But her pleasure in these visits steadily decreased. Augusta was very inquisitive, very critical, and much given remarks which began, “Had you only...” or “Had you not...” She could even convey this phrase in a look, and she invariably did so when Caroline made any mention of her children. Augusta herself had a daughter—named Caroline—and was planning to marry her to George’s eldest son; and that struck an odd echo. Not that it mattered.
What did matter was the steady lessening of affection; it seemed so sad that Augusta should travel between thirty and forty miles, once a fortnight, in good weather and bad, and then kill all sisterly fondness by criticism, advice that sounded like criticism, and questions. One day a very distasteful thought occurred to Caroline: Does she come to spy on me? It was not a thing one should think about one’s sister, but once the possibility had entered one’s mind it refused to be dislodged.
Augusta, who was firm and businesslike thought the household at Zell a very ramshackle affair and Caroline’s whole attitude most unsatisfactory. She gave no sign of any real penitence for her outrageous behavior, little interest in or curiosity about affairs in the outside world; no real concern about what she wore, what she ate, or how she was served. She’d say, “Yes, I know,” or “Well, does it matter so much?” And once she said, “I don’t care.”
“And that,” Augusta said with asperity, “has always been your trouble. ‘Don’t care was made to care’” she said, quoting the old nursery rhyme.
“That was one of Alice’s sayings,” Caroline said. For a second her face assumed the wistful look that it took on when she mentioned her children. Then she said, “Dear Alice!” and smiled.
Over the matter of possessions the new government of Denmark had been extraordinarily generous—Caroline never suspected to whom she owed this gesture. She had been allowed to bring away not only the things which she had taken from England but anything she wished from the gifts that had been presented to her while she was Queen. One of these was a beautiful centerpiece for a table, made in the Copenhagen factory which was rapidly expanding the range of its work. Four cherubs held a bowl in which fruit or flowers could be placed. Out of myriads of things she had chosen it to bring away because she liked it.
One day, sitting down to dinner, Augusta said, “Has the cherub bowl been broken?”
“No so far as I know.”
“You don’t sound very sure. You should insist, Caro, that any damage to your personal belongings should be reported to you at once. That is a rule that I made, and held to, in a household larger than this. And far busier. With your permission I shall inquire about that bowl and I shall speak severely to anyone who has been careless.”
“I sold it,” Caroline said. “I needed some money and poor Seckendorf sighs and sighs...So I picked out a few things with which I could dispense and Mantel took them into Hanover and sold them for me. They fetched far more than I dared hope.”
“No wonder,” Augusta said when she had recovered her breath. “Every fat, rich burgher’s wife would be only too pleased to have in her house something that you, once a Queen, had been obliged to sell. How could you? Will you never learn? Selling things from your table. How does that reflect upon George, upon me?”
“In no way,” Caroline said placidly. “Mantel is far too discreet. And his sense of what is seemly equals your own. He had some story, I forget now. Something about his grandmother—who keeps an inn and sometimes takes payment in kind.”
“So now,” Augusta said with intense bitterness, “you connive with servants!” She added, irrelevantly, “And Mantel is too old and too big to be a page.”
“I know,” Caroline said placidly. “I promoted him. He is now my valet de chambre. I was,” she said, “locked up in Kronborg for four months and apart from Alice he was my only friend there. Often I feel that apart from Baron Seckendorf, he is my only friend here.”
As she said this she looked at her sister. It was a look so candid, so—Augusta thought—witless, that the immediately following thought was, No wonder she came to grief! Absolutely no sense at all. And yet, of all the sisters, Caro had always been regarded as the clever one: which simply showed how mistaken governesses and tutors, and even Mamma had been.
Even in this slapdash establishment, enough of formality was preserved to require that anyone calling upon the Queen and wishing to be received by her, must step i
nto a cold little cell to the right of the entry and sign his name in a big leather-bound book and give some information about his nationality and social standing. He would then go away and await invitation. Whether he were merely received, invited drawing room, or the theater, or to dinner, was later entered in a separate column. On each of her visits Augusta inspected this book, keeping a sharp lookout for the names of people—men especially—who came too frequently and also for anyone of Danish nationality: Caroline, having so little sense of self-preservation, must be protected.
Over her visitors—growing steadily fewer as time went on—Caroline was as vague as about everything else. Augusta would say, “And whom have you seen since I was here last?” and Caroline would try to remember, adding where possible, some comment. When she forgot, as she often did, to mention a name that Augusta had noticed, Augusta would mention it herself, at the same time giving Caroline a suspicious look. What are you trying to hide from me? You can hide nothing from me!
Spy was an ugly word, and even in the mind to be avoided; but the conviction that Augusta had been told to keep an eye on her grew steadily as time went on. And it seemed a pity that as the visits became less pleasurable, they became more prolonged. Augusta grumbled about the food, the bedclothes, the service, the temperature of the rooms, yet she came regularly on alternate Wednesdays and now stayed until Friday, or Saturday, even Sunday occasionally.
One day in September 1774, she arrived, studied the book and presently invited Caroline to account for her doings in the last eleven days. Caroline made no mention of one visitor, who had been received twice in a week, once to a drawing room and once to dinner. So, when nothing more seemed to be forthcoming, Augusta asked in a sharp tone, and with that look, “And who is this Nicolas Wraxall?”
“Oh,” Caroline said, “how could I have forgotten him? Such a pleasant young man. English: a great traveler and most interesting to talk to.” It might be as well not to mention that he had promised to do his best to obtain a picture of her children whose portraits were being painted by someone whom he had known in Florence and who would, if asked, as a favor to a friend, make some additional sketches; to mention Freddy and Louise-Augusta would only provoke another look.
“You received him twice in a week.”
“That is true. I invited him first to a drawing room and he was most entertaining. And he is a very respectable young man—the Prince of Anhalt-Dessau entertained him; I could hardly do less. Also he undertook a little errand for me.”
“What?”
“Augusta, we were always told that except as an exclamation of surprise, ‘What’ was not a word to be used alone.”
Then—and this the sorry part of it—at this reminder of the upbringing which they had shared, Augusta smiled, almost in a shame-faced way. We are sisters, we could be friends, Caroline thought, if only she would take me as I am.
“He was going from here to Hamburg,” she volunteered. “And he said he would see the British Minister there, Mr. Mathias, and ask him to arrange for a company of French comedians to come and perform here in my little theater. If they come I hope it will be on an evening when you are here.”
“If you inform me in time I will make a point of being here,” Augusta promised. There was the absurdity of it: her visits to Zell, begun as a duty, had become a pleasure to her. The place was ill-run, the food often inferior, there were so many changes that often Augusta thought that only Baron Seckendorf and Mantel were permanencies, disputes were frequent, visitors growing rare; and yet there was something lively about it, informal, warm, almost happy that made it compare favorably with her own establishment. After all, Augusta, too, had spent her formative years at Kew.
HAMBURG; ZELL; OCTOBER 1774
Nicolas Wraxall had friends and acquaintances in almost every major city in Europe. Young, presentable, rich, restless, he was typical of the English gentlemen who went about spending freely and by their demands greatly improving the service in inns and the quality of post horses. He was more amusing than most, endlessly inquisitive, a confirmed gossip he was also romantic and completely intrepid.
In Hamburg, as soon as he had installed himself at the where he was remembered and warmly greeted, he washed changed from his traveling clothes and strolled along to make his presence in the city known to his friend, Hans Loesel, a ship owner who lived like a prince. He hoped to be invited to supper, and he was. “It will be quite a party,” Hans said; “They have eight or nine other guests, all men. Two or three Danes from Altona across the river. And a suckling pig is cooking.”
Wraxall’s last meal under a private roof had been with Queen Caroline, in Zell, and a very bad dinner it had been; since then he had been on the road, served with the ubiquitous veal of German inns. A supper party, with suckling pig and the chance of making fresh acquaintances opened out a most engaging prospect.
He was a gossip, but he was a man of breeding, and he decided not to mention his visit to the ex-Queen of Denmark. With Danes it might well be a sore subject: but he could and did mention that he had dined with the Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, and that he had seen and talked to the Princess Royal of Prussia who was confined in Stettin, in much the same circumstances and for exactly the same alleged offense as Caroline was at Zell.
A man on the opposite side of the table, leaned a little forward and said, “Mr. Wraxall; you are English, I understand. Zell was no great distance. Why did you not visit your own Princess, so similarly immured?”
“I did,” Wraxall said, slightly irked by the implied reproach. “I attended one of Her Majesty’s drawing rooms and on another day had the honor of being asked to dine.” He spoke with some emphasis; after all, he had not tactlessly volunteered this information; he had been challenged to give it, and he managed to put into the words Her Majesty and honored the feeling which he had experienced as soon as he had actually seen the Queen; she was innocent and she had been treated disgracefully. It would be rather shocking to offend anyone at the supper table of a mutual friend; perhaps it would have been better in the circumstances, to have refused to sit down at table with Danes at all. Now that the rift was made, he might as well be explicit.
“I chose not to mention Queen Caroline alongside the Princess Christina because it is my opinion that the two cases are in no way comparable,” he said, looking about him defiantly. Nobody spoke. But silence could convey dissent as well as consent. He said, almost fiercely because once a thing was started one might as well make a good job of it, “I think Her Majesty innocent, and very ill-used.” He looked toward the head of the table where his friend Hans sat, and said, “Hans, I am sorry. So controversial a subject is out of place at table. But that is the way I feel and nothing can alter it.”
The man opposite who had provoked the outburst said, with something of cool rebuke in his voice, “It is possible that you are not alone in your opinion, Mr. Wraxall. You are a great traveler; tell us, have you visited Pompeii?”
It was a smooth, gentlemanly change of subject and Wraxall responded to it in smooth, gentlemanly fashion. Nobody else at the table had visited the excavations of the city that had lain under a sealing crust of lava for seventeen hundred years, a seal so airtight that loaves of bread, placed in an oven on the day of the eruption, were still recognizable as loaves. Wraxall, eagerly and meticulously describing what he had seen on his three visits, held the table entranced and hoped that he had made up to his host for the near contretemps.
It seemed so, for as he took his leave, Hans said, “For how long are you in Hamburg, my friend?”
“Two days; perhaps three.” He never knew; he moved as the whim, the itching foot took him. “I have a small commission. Perhaps three.”
“Then you must come again when I can have you to myself. If that is agreeable to you.”
“It would be most agreeable.”
The inn where he was lodging and the house where he had supped were within walking distance, and both in a quiet, respectable part of the city. Responsible and obedi
ent residents in this quarter hung lanterns over their doors at sunset, so there was no need to hire linkboys or to go attended by a servant armed with a cudgel. Wraxall set out alone; and in no time at all knew the spine-creeping feeling of being followed. He heard nothing; no dogging footsteps; glancing back over his shoulder he saw nothing; but he was being followed. He felt no fear; his pistols were locked in his valise; but he had his heavy silver knobbed stick in his hand and he did not doubt his ability to defend himself. He rounded a corner, took ten paces and backed into a dark, yawning doorway. The corner was lighted and for a second as the follower rounded it, he was illumined; a tall man, with, it seemed, no face; the collar of his cloak held so high, his hat so far drawn down. And under the light he paused, looking over his shoulder as though he feared that he might be followed; or as though he were looking for a confederate.
He passed from the lighted corner into the gloom between them, and then he said, quietly, “Mr. Wraxall?”
“I’m here,” Wraxall said, stepping out of the doorway, reassured by the diffident, cultivated tone of voice and the use of his name. “What do you want with me?”
“A few words,” the man said. “Forgive me; it is better for the moment that I do not tell my name or show my face. Will you cross the road with me?”
The other side of the road was unlighted; it was the boundary of the little square, dusty laurels, graveled paths and a fountain, visible from Wraxall’s window at the inn. The unknown man was more familiar with it; in complete darkness he found a seat and said, “It is better to sit while talking. And I apologize, we apologize, for this approach. There is no other way. The business is secret; it could be dangerous.”
Excitement tingled in Wraxall’s blood. This unknown spoke good English, with a faint foreign accent; the last Jacobite attempt to seize the English throne for the Stuarts was less than thirty years away. Secret. Possibly dangerous. Was it possible that Nicolas Wraxall was about to be asked to connive with the hopeful exiles, scattered all over Europe and the diehards in England who, toasting the King, were always careful to have a glass of water handy over which the wineglass could be passed so that they drank to the King over the water? As to all romantics, a lost cause appealed to Nicolas Wraxall, though as a man of the world he had no rigid political affiliations.
