W. H. Wilkins

“ Walking, chaises, levées, and audiences fill the morning; at night the King plays at commerce and backgammon, and the Queen at quadrille, where poor Lady Charlotte (de Roussie) runs her usual nightly gauntlet—the Queen pulling her hood, Mr. Schütz sputtering in her face, and the Princess Royal rapping her knuckles, all at a time. It was in vain she fled from persecution for her religion: she suffers for her pride what she escaped for her faith; undergoes in a drawing-room what she dreaded from the Inquisition, and will die a martyr to a Court, though not to a Church. ”

“ First there came a rumour of a fresh outrage on the part of Struensee, and of an attempt to assassinate the King. But swift on the heels of this came the truth: the King, with the aid of the Queen-Dowager and his brother, had asserted himself; the favourite and his colleagues were in prison, and Queen Matilda had been conveyed to Kronborg. During the silent hours of the night a revolution had been effected, and the mob, like all mobs, shouted on the winning side. The news ran like wildfire round Copenhagen, and soon every one was in the streets. ”

“ The court of Denmark over which Matilda was now the reigning Queen, though not the ruling spirit, was the last place in the world for a young and innocent girl to be sent alone. It was a hotbed of intrigue, a stye of vile epicurism, where even decency was disregarded. Cunning as foxes, and like foxes in their lust and greed, the majority of the courtiers thought only of advancing their personal interests at the expense of each other, or by vain and frivolous amusement to kill the passing hour. ”

“ Leibniz often met the Princess of Ansbach at the Queen of Prussia’s reunions, and he noted how high she stood in the favour of his royal mistress. He became attracted to her by her wit and conversation, which were unusual in a princess of her years. He spoke of her in glowing terms to the Electress Sophia, who later made acquaintance with the young princess at Berlin, and she, too, was charmed with her talents and beauty. Leibniz, who was much at Berlin in those days, kept his venerable mistress at Hanover acquainted with the movements of the princess. ”

“ One of the most potent causes of this vice and misery is undoubtedly the unlimited pouring in of destitute and objectionable foreigners. Again I ask, Can nothing be done to rescue these women—our sisters—from the attendant horrors of this fierce and degrading foreign competition? Can nothing be done to place the price of their labour upon such a level as to enable them by honest work to lead virtuous and happy lives? ”

“ How could life possess any charms for me, who am separated from all those I love—my husband, my children and my relatives? I, who am myself a queen and of royal blood, have lived the most wretched life, and stand before the world an example that neither crown nor sceptre affords any protection against misfortune! ”

“ It was not enough for her that she had become Queen through her husband, she was determined to rule through him also. Did this inscrutable woman, we wonder, in this her hour of glory, recall the parallel Leibniz had drawn long before, when the prospects of the House of Hanover were darkest, between her and England’s greatest Queen, Elizabeth? May-be, for, like Elizabeth, Caroline determined to have her Cecil. She knew there was but one man in England capable of maintaining the Hanoverian dynasty upon the throne in peace, and that one was Walpole. ”

“ The young Queen must have often felt friendless and depressed as she paced the terraces of Frederiksborg or looked down from the windows of her apartments into the green water which lapped the castle walls, or gazed out on the clear northern night, and watched the moonlight play on the towers and pinnacles of the palace. Sometimes of a morning she would wander forth to the beech woods beyond the gardens. ”

“ In 1714 the fickle tide to popular feeling seemed to be flowing in his favour. For the last year or two the birthday of James had been celebrated as openly as if he had been de facto and not de jure the heir to the crown, and his adherents were to be found everywhere—in the Army, in the Navy, in the Church, in both Houses of Parliament, and even in the councils of the Queen herself. But as a result of the Revolution Settlement of 1688, the balance of power rested, not with the people, nor with the Queen, nor even with her chosen advisers, but with the Whig oligarchy. ”

“ The long months of solitary confinement, the ceaseless exhortations and prayers of the fervent Münter, the near approach of death, perhaps, too, some echo from the pious home in which he had been reared, combined to detach Struensee’s thoughts from the world and to concentrate them on his soul. He had reached that point which counts earth’s sufferings as little in comparison with the problems of eternity. The worldling, who had once thought of nothing but his material advancement, was now equally ambitious for his spiritual welfare. ”

“ As long as that remains, poor souls may struggle on heroically, pure amid penury, filth, degradation unspeakable. But when self-respect is lost, they are lost with it. And whatever may be the fate of virtuous parents, children brought up in these dens of physical and moral filth cannot retrieve self-respect. They sink, and they must sink, into a life on a level with the sights, sounds, aye, the very smells, which surround them. ”

“ The Queen: “Why, child, I am the King’s subject as well as you.”
Lady Suffolk: “Madam, what I mean is what I cannot make your Majesty understand unless you are pleased to lay aside the Queen and put yourself in my place for some moments. After twenty years to be ill-treated without knowing your crime, and then stay upon the foot of the Duchess of A——!”
The Queen: “Upon my word, Lady Suffolk, you do not consider what the world will say. For God’s sake, consider your character. You leave me because the King will not be more particular to you than to others.” ”

“ He had the preposterous coat of arms engraved on the seal which he affixed to cabinet orders; he built himself a magnificent coach, resplendent with crimson and gold, and blazoned it on the panels. He vested his servants and running footmen in gaudy liveries of scarlet and white, and decked them with diamond badges. When Struensee’s valet appeared for the first time in his new livery he fell down the palace stairs, and in his fall broke his badge and his nose, and the blood spoiled his finery. ”

“ Every one, both in England and Hanover, felt that a crisis was imminent, yet no one, on either side of the water, prepared for it. The Queen’s death was likely to be accelerated by her own mental struggles with regard to the succession to her crown, and by the fierce quarrels and jealousies that raged among her advisers. The rival ministers could scarce forbear coming to blows in her presence, the rival claimants to her throne were eager to snatch the sceptre from her failing hand almost before she was dead. ”

“ If a life of honest labour has no better reward to offer than the meagre wages and attendant horrors of the sweaters' dens, can it be wondered if in despair of earning an honest livelihood, hundreds, nay thousands, of our people are tempted to abandon the unequal struggle, and to drift into idleness, drunkenness, and vice? ”

“ Sire, believe your dying sister, a queen and even more, a Christian, who would gaze with terror on the other world if her last confession were a falsehood. I die willingly, for the unhappy bless the tomb. But more than all else, and even than death, [Pg 302] it pains me that not one of all those I loved in life is standing by my dying bed to grant me a last consolation by a pressure of the hand, or a glance of compassion, to close my eyes in death. ”

“ Queen Caroline held firmly to the principle that the welfare of the people should be the first care of princes, and she strove in every way to ameliorate their lot. Parliament did little for them in Caroline’s day, the era of social legislation had scarcely begun to dawn. The wars of nations, the conflicts of dynasties, the strife of creeds absorbed all energies, and in the noise and heat thus engendered the needs of the people were thrust aside and forgotten. The condition of the poor not only in the large towns, but in the country districts, was deplorable in the extreme. ”

“ Caroline could not mourn for ever, and thanks to a strong constitution, youth and health asserted themselves, and she quite recovered her beauty and her vivacity. The Ansbach burghers knew all about her refusal of the future Emperor, and they honoured her for her courage and firmness, and were proud of their beautiful young princess, whom the greatest prince in Europe had sued in vain. Caroline interested herself in many schemes of usefulness in her brother’s principality, and went in and out among the people displaying those rare social gifts which stood her in good stead in later years. ”

“ Not even that most mighty empress, Catherine of Russia, was so great an autocrat as this. In the Lex Regia of Denmark we find the most boundless, irresponsible, unmitigated despotism, without a single provision in favour of the life, substance, or liberty of any subject, high or low. The re-establishment of this despotism in all its nakedness was the essence of Struensee’s policy, for, since the reign of the monarch who promulgated it a century before, it had gradually fallen into disuse. ”

“ Thus unhappy is Queen Caroline Matilda, and she alone among all the queens of Denmark. In the bloom of her youth, [Pg 161] and dowered with every gift to ensure happiness, she finds herself to-day standing on the brink of an abyss, down which her honour, her dignity, her peace of mind, may be cast. In one day she may lose her husband, her children and her throne, and yet be compelled to survive the loss. Suspected, accused, in danger of living a life of wretchedness for long years to come—can anything be more heart-rending than her position? ”