The Royal Physician's Visit

by Per Olov Enquist

  When the evil and the lecherous were cut away, then he would exonerate the King. And even if evil had harmed the King, he would become like a child once again. Guldberg knew that deep inside, Christian had always been a child. He was not insane. And when it was all over and the child chosen by God was saved, the King would once again follow him like a shadow, like a child, meek and pure. He would once again be a pure child, and one of the outcast would once again become one of the rulers.

  He would defend the King. Against them. For the King was also one of the most outcast, and the most disdained.

  But equestrian statues are not given to wine treaders.

  6.

  Guldberg had been present at the deathbed of Christian’s father, King Frederik.

  He died on January 14, 1766, in the morning.

  During his last years King Frederik had become physically heavier and heavier; he drank steadily, his hands shook, and his flesh had swollen up, becoming doughy and gray; his face resembled that of a drunkard—it looked as if you could pluck pieces of flesh from his face—and hidden deep inside were his eyes, pale and runny with a yellow discharge, as if his body were already beginning to seep.

  The King had also been seized with agitation and dread, and he constantly demanded that whores share his bed to assuage his dread. As time passed, more and more of the priests who stood at his side were outraged by this. Those who were commanded at his bedside to say the prayers that would assuage his fear became sickened by this. The King, thanks to his physical flabbiness, was no longer capable of satisfying his fleshly desires; yet he demanded that the whores who were brought to him from the city should share his bed naked. That’s when the priests felt that their prayers, in particular the ritual of Holy Communion, became blasphemous. The King would spit out Christ’s Holy Body but drink deeply of His Blood, while the whores, with ill-concealed revulsion, fondled his body.

  Even worse was that the rumor of the King’s condition had spread among the public, and the priests began to see themselves sullied by common gossip.

  The last week before his death, the King was in great fear.

  He used this simple word “fear” instead of “dread” or “agitation.” His spells of vomiting now occurred more often. On the day he died, he commanded that Crown Prince Christian be called to his sickbed.

  The bishop of the city then demanded that all the whores be removed.

  For a long time the King stared in silence at those in attendance, which included his valets, the bishop, and two priests; then in a voice filled with such extraordinary hatred that they almost recoiled, he shouted that the women would one day be with him in heaven; he hoped, on the other hand, that those now flocking around him, especially the Archbishop of Aarhus, would be afflicted by the eternal torments of hell. The King had misunderstood the situation, however: the Archbishop of Aarhus had returned to his congregation the day before.

  Then the King vomited and with effort returned to his drinking.

  After an hour he again grew intractable and shouted for his son, whom he now wished to bless.

  Christian, the Crown Prince, was led in to see him around nine o’clock. He was accompanied by his Swiss tutor, Reverdil. At the time, Christian was sixteen years old. He stared at his father in horror.

  The King finally noticed him and motioned him closer, but Christian remained where he was, petrified. Reverdil then took him by the arm to lead him to the King’s bedside, but Christian clung to his tutor and uttered a few inaudible words; his lips clearly moved, he was trying to say something, but no sound came out.

  “Come … here … my beloved … son,” the King then murmured, and with a violent thrust of his arm he flung aside the empty wine tankard.

  When Christian refused to obey his command, the King began shouting, wild and plaintive; when one of the priests took pity on him and inquired if there was anything he wanted, the King repeated:

  “I want … by Satan … to bless the little … the little … wretch!”

  After another brief pause Christian, almost without resisting, was led forward to the King’s deathbed. The King grabbed Christian by the head and neck and tried to pull him closer.

  “How will it all … turn out … for you … you little … wretch?”

  The King then had difficulty finding words, but in a moment his speech returned.

  “You little worm! You have to be hard … hard … HARD!!! You little … are you hard? Are you hard? You have to make yourself… invulnerable!!! Otherwise …”

  Christian couldn’t say a word since he was being gripped by the neck and pressed against the King’s naked flank. The King was now panting loudly, as if he couldn’t breathe, but then he seethed:

  “Christian! You have to make yourself hard … hard … hard!!! Otherwise they’ll swallow you up!!! Otherwise they’ll devour… crush …”

  Then he sank back against the pillows. There was utter silence in the room. The only sound to be heard was Christian’s vigorous sobbing.

  And the King, now dozing and with his head on his pillow, then said in a very low voice, almost without slurring:

  “You’re not hard enough, you little wretch. I give you my blessing.”

  Yellow fluid ran out of his mouth. A few minutes later King Frederik V was dead.

  Guldberg saw everything and remembered everything. He also saw how the Swiss tutor Reverdil took the boy by the hand, as if the new King were still a little child; he led him by the hand, like a child, something that surprised everyone and was later much discussed. They left the room in this manner, they walked down the corridors, passing the main guard, which presented arms, and went out into the palace courtyard. It was now midday, around noon, the sun was low in the sky, light snow had fallen overnight. The boy was still sobbing forlornly and tightly clutching the hand of the Swiss tutor Reverdil.

  In the middle of the courtyard they abruptly stopped. Many people were watching them. Why did they stop? Where were they going?

  The boy was slender and short. Members of the court, upon learning the news of the King’s tragic and unexpected demise, had streamed into the palace courtyard. A hundred people stood there, silent and curious.

  Guldberg was among them, still the lowliest of them all. He was still without distinctions. He was present only by right of the title of teacher to the moronic Crown Prince Frederik; with no other rights, with no power, but with the certainty that great trees would fall, that he had time and could wait.

  Christian and his tutor stood still, apparently in deep confusion, and waited for nothing. They stood there with the sun low over the palace courtyard, which was covered by a light snow, and waited for nothing as the boy continued his endless weeping.

  Reverdil held tight to the young King’s hand. How small the new King of Denmark was, like a child. Guldberg felt a boundless sorrow as he looked at them. Someone else had taken the place at the King’s side that belonged to him. A great deal of work now remained to conquer that position. His sorrow was still boundless. Then he mustered his courage.

  His time would come.

  And so it was that Christian was blessed.

  The same afternoon Christian VII was proclaimed Denmark’s new King.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE INVULNERABLE ONE

  1.

  THE SWISS TUTOR was gaunt, stooped, and had a dream of the Enlightenment that was like a quiet and very beautiful dawn; at first imperceptible, then it was there and the day had begun.

  That’s how he thought of it. Gentle, quiet, and unresisting. That’s how it should always be.

  His name was François Reverdil. He was the one in the palace courtyard.

  Reverdil took Christian’s hand because he had forgotten about protocol and felt only sorrow at the boy’s tears.

  That was why they stood there, motionless, in the palace courtyard, in the snow, after Christian was blessed.

  On the afternoon of the same day, from the palace balcony, Christian VII was proclaimed King of Denmar
k. Reverdil stood behind him, off to one side. The new King provoked displeasure by waving and laughing.

  This was regarded as unseemly. No explanation was given for the King’s objectionable behavior.

  When the Swiss tutor François Reverdil was hired in 1760 as tutor to eleven-year-old Crown Prince Christan, he managed to conceal for a long time that he was of Jewish descent. His two other given names—Élie Salomon—were left out of the contract of employment.

  Such caution was probably unnecessary. Pogroms had not occurred in Copenhagen for more than ten years.

  The fact that Reverdil was an enlightened man was also not reported. In his opinion this was irrelevant information, which might cause harm. His political views were a private matter.

  Caution was his fundamental principle.

  His first impression of the boy was quite positive.

  Christian was “charming.” He was delicate, of slight build, almost girlish, but with a winning appearance and manner. He had a nimble intellect, moved with grace and elegance, and spoke three languages fluently: Danish, German, and French.

  But after only a few weeks the picture grew more complicated. The boy quickly seemed to develop an attachment to Reverdil, for whom, after one month, the Crown Prince said he felt “no terror.” When Reverdil inquired about the puzzling word “terror,” he was given to understand that fear was the boy’s natural state.

  “Charming” eventually failed to describe the whole picture of Christian.

  During the obligatory walks, which were conducted at a brisk pace and with no one else present, the eleven-year-old expressed feelings and views that Reverdil found increasingly alarming. They were also cloaked in a peculiar linguistic garb. Christian’s manically repeated longing to be “strong” or “hard” by no means expressed a wish to develop a vigorous physical constitution; he meant something else. He wanted to make “progress,” but here again it was not possible to interpret this concept in a rational manner. His language seemed to consist of an enormous number of words that were formulated according to a secret code, impossible for the uninitiated to break. During the conversations that took place in the presence of a third person or within the court,this coded language was completely absent. But in private, with Reverdil, the code words were almost manically frequent.

  The most peculiar were “flesh,” “man-eaters,” and “punishment,” which were used without any coherent meaning. Several expressions, however, were immediately comprehensible.

  When they returned to their studies after these walks, the boy might say that they were now going to an “intense examination”or an “intense interrogation.” The expression, in Danish legal terms, was the same as “torture,” which at the time was both permitted and zealously employed within the jurisdiction. Reverdil asked the boy in jest whether he thought himself tormented by fire tongs or pincers.

  The boy surprisingly said yes.

  It was obvious.

  Only after a while did Reverdil realize that this particular expression was not a code word that concealed some secretive other meaning but rather a statement of fact.

  They were torturing him. This was normal.

  2.

  The tutor’s task was the training of a Danish monarch who held absolute power.

  Yet he was not alone in this task.

  Reverdil assumed his post on the one hundredth anniversary of the revolution of 1660, which had largely crushed the power of the nobles and returned absolute rule to the King. Reverdil also impressed upon the young Prince the importance of his position: that in his hands he held the future of the country. For reasons of discretion, however, he failed to tell the young Prince of the background: that it was the decline of royal power under the previous Kings, and their degeneration, that had given complete power to those within the court who now controlled his own upbringing, education, and outlook.

  “The boy”(Reverdil uses this term) seems to have known only anxiety, aversion, and desperation with regard to his future role as King.

  The King was the absolute ruler, but the government officials exercised all power. Everyone considered this natural. Pedagogy, for Christian’s part, was adjusted accordingly. Power had been conferred by God on the King. He, in turn, did not make use of his power but rather delegated it. The idea that the King should not make use of his power was not a given. The assumption was that he was insane, seriously alcoholic, or unwilling to work. If he was none of these things, his will had to be broken. The King’s apathy and decline were thus either inherent or could be instilled.

  Christian’s intelligence indicated to those around him that passivity would have to be instilled in him. Reverdil describes the methods used on “the boy”as “the systematic pedagogy that is used to develop powerlessness and degradation for the purpose of maintaining the influence of the real rulers.” He soon realized that the Danish court was also willing to sacrifice the mental health of the young Prince to achieve the results that were evident in previous Kings.

  The aim was to create in this child “a new Frederik.” As Reverdil later writes in his memoirs, the intent was “through the moral decline of royal power to create a power vacuum in which they themselves could exercise power with impunity. What they had not counted on was that one day a Royal Physician by the name of Struensee would visit this power vacuum.”

  Reverdil is the one who uses the expression “the Royal Physician’s visit.” He does not mean to be ironic. Rather, he witnesses the breaking of the boy with clear eyes—and outrage.

  Of Christian’s family, it is said that his mother died when he was two, that he knew his father only by his bad reputation, and that the person who planned and guided his upbringing, Count Ditlev Reventlow, was a man of integrity.

  Reventlow was a strong personality.

  His view of upbringing was that it was “training that even the most dull-witted peasant could carry out as long as he had a whip in hand.” That was why Count Reventlow carried a whip in his hand. Great weight ought to be placed on “spiritual subjugation,” and all “independence should be broken.”

  He didn’t hesitate to bring these principles to bear on little Christian. The methods were hardly unusual elements in the upbringing of children at the time. What was unique and what made the results so startling even for those days was that this was not a child being raised within the nobility or middle class. The person who was supposed to be broken, through training and spiritual subjugation, with the help of a whip in hand, in order to rob him of all independence, was the absolute monarch of Denmark, chosen by God.

  Sufficiently broken, subjugated, and with shattered will, the monarch was then to be given all power, only to relinquish it to those who had brought him up.

  Much later, long after the Danish revolution was over, Reverdil asks in his memoirs why he did not intervene.

  He has no answer to this. He describes himself as an intellectual, and his analysis is clear.

  But he gives no answer, not to this particular question.

  Reverdil assumed the post of subordinate language teacher in German and French. Upon his arrival he makes note of the results of the first ten years of pedagogy.

  It’s true that he was a subordinate. Count Reventlow determined the principles.There were no parents, after all.

  “So for five years I left the palace each day in sorrow. I saw how they were ceaselessly trying to break my pupil’s spiritual fortitude so that he learned nothing of his role as monarch or what came under his authority. He was given no education in the civil laws of his country; he knew nothing about the way the governmental offices divided up their work or the details of how the country was ruled; nor how power emanated from the Crown and was distributed among the individual officials. No one had ever told him what relationships he might fall into regarding neighboring countries; he was ignorant of the kingdom’s military and naval forces. His Lord Chancellor, who oversaw his education and each day supervised my lessons, had become Finance Minister without giving up his
position as headmaster, but he didn’t teach his pupil anything about the duties of his office. The funds the land contributed to the monarchy, the way in which they were added to the Royal Treasury, and what they were to be used for—these things were completely unknown to the person who would one day rule over all. Several years before, his father the King had given him a country manor; but there the Prince had never appointed a lodgekeeper or personally handed out a single ducat or planted even one tree. The Lord Chancellor and Finance Minister Reventlow ran everything as he saw fit, and with good reason he could say:

  “My Melons! My Figs!”

  The tutor concludes that the role Herr Reventlow—Finance Minister, country squire, and Count—came to play in the King’s education was central. It contributed to Reverdil being able to solve to some extent the mystery posed by the boy’s code language.

  The Prince’s physical peculiarities were becoming more and more pronounced. His body seemed to be filled with restlessness: he constantly gestured with his hands, plucked at his stomach, tapped his fingertips against his skin, and muttered that he would soon be “making progress.” Then he would achieve the “state of perfection” that would allow him to become “like the Italian actors.”

  The concepts of “the theater”and Passauer Kunst became intertwined for young Christian. There is no logic to it, other than the logic that the “intense interrogations” summoned up in the boy.

  Among the many peculiar ideas that flourished in the European courts at the time was the belief that there was a way to make human beings invulnerable. The myth was created during the Thirty Years’ War in Germany; it was the dream of invulnerability, and it came to play a particularly important role among sovereigns. The belief in this art—which was called Passauer Kunst—was embraced by both Christian’s father and his grandfather.