The Royal Physician's Visit

by Per Olov Enquist

  She spoke soothingly to the fifteen-year-old, who was dissolved in tears. Take small, slow steps toward His Majesty, she advised. Keep your eyes lowered, count out fifteen steps, raise your eyes, look at him, display a modest but happy little smile, take another three steps forward, stop. I will be ten paces behind you.

  The girl had nodded as she wept and, sobbing, she repeated in French:

  “Fifteen steps. Smile happily.”

  Upon succeeding to the throne at the beginning of the year, King Christian VII had received a dog as a gift from his tutor Reverdil; it was a schnauzer, to which he gradually became deeply attached. For the meeting with the little English girl in Roskilde he was supposed to arrive by carriage with a great entourage, directly from Copenhagen.

  Seated in the King’s calash, in addition to Christian, was a former professor at Sorø Academy by the name of Guldberg, along with the King’s teacher Reverdil and a courtier by the name of Brandt, who would later play an important role in the events that took place. Guldberg,who under normal circumstances should not have been seated in the King’s carriage since his position at court was still much too insignificant, came along for reasons that will become apparent.

  Also in the carriage was the dog, who sat the whole time on Christian’s knee.

  Before the meeting, Guldberg, who was well versed in classical literature, had specifically composed for the meeting a declaration of love that was based on sections of a play by Racine, and in the carriage was giving what Reverdil in his memoirs calls “the last reassuring directions before the love meeting.”

  Begin forcefully, Guldberg said to His Majesty, who seemed quite distracted and was desperately hugging the little dog in his arms. The Princess must understand His Majesty’s strong passion well before the first meeting. Tempo! “I bow to the god of love … I BOW to the god of love …”Tempo! Tempo!

  The mood in the carriage was strained, and the King’s tics and bodily twitchings were at times wilder than ever. Upon arrival Guldberg hinted that the dog should not be present at the love meeting of the royal couple but should be left behind in the carriage. Christian at first refused to let go of the dog but was finally forced to do so.

  The dog whimpered and then could be seen barking fiercely in the window of the calash. Reverdil writes that this was “one of the most agonizing moments of the boy’s life. Finally, however, he seemed as apathetic as if he were walking in a dream.”

  The word “terror” recurs frequently. Nevertheless, in the end Princess Caroline Mathilde and her betrothed, Christian VII, did everything nearly perfectly.

  A chamber orchestra was positioned next to the glass pavilion. The twilight was very beautiful.The square surrounding the pavilion was filled with thousands of people; they were held back by soldiers who stood guard in double rows.

  At precisely the same moment, and accompanied by music, the two young royal personages stepped through the doors. They approached each other exactly as the ceremony prescribed. When they stood three paces from each other the music fell silent. The Princess had gazed steadily at Christian but with an expression that seemed lifeless, or as if she—she too—were walking in a dream.

  Christian held the poem in his hand, printed out on a sheet of paper. When they at last stood motionless, facing each other, he said:

  “I will now declare my love, dear Princess.”

  He then waited for a word from her, but she merely looked at him in utter silence. His hands were shaking but at last he mustered his courage and read Guldberg’s declaration of love, which, like the play it was based on, was in French.

  I bow to the God of Love where’er I go

  Helpless beneath thy power I am brought low

  Before thy beauty astonishment holds sway

  Thy lovely image enchants me when thou art away

  Deep in the woods thy image doth me delight

  In light of day or e’en in darkest night

  My love for thee, a light that shall never fail

  See, that is the reason thou art my Holy Grail

  She then gestured with her hand, perhaps by mistake; but he perceived this as a sign for him to stop. He therefore stopped reading and gave her an inquiring glance. After a moment she said:

  “Thank you.”

  “Perhaps that’s enough,” he whispered.

  “Yes, it’s enough.”

  “With these words I wish to profess my ardor for you,” he said.

  “I feel the same ardor for you, Your Majesty,” she whispered,her lips moving almost imperceptibly. Her face was extremely pale, her tears had been powdered over, and her face seemed almost whitewashed.

  “Thank you.”

  “Shall we end the ceremony now?” she asked.

  He bowed. At a sign from the master of ceremonies, the music started up once again, and the betrothed couple, both terrified but in perfect unison, proceeded toward the greater ceremonies, which included the cheering crowds,the arrival in Copenhagen,the wedding, their brief marriage, and the Danish revolution.

  On November 8 at seven-thirty the young couple entered the cathedral in Copenhagen, where the formal sanctification of the marriage would take place. The festivities continued for six days. “Immeasurable hopes rest with the captivating English Queen,” writes the British ambassador in his report to London.

  Her conduct was viewed as irreproachable.

  No protests against Christian. No outbursts, no faux pas.The dog was excluded from the wedding ceremony as well.

  4.

  In his growing confusion, Christian considered court life to be like a theater; the performance in which he and the little English girl were now participating was also a depiction of morals. The play dealt with immorality, or “integrity” as Christian called it; but was it piety that prompted lechery or was it ennui?

  What voluptuousness can be found in contemporary descriptions of the lechery and ennui at court! That insular world of courtiers, mistresses, whores, and masked balls, those intrigues alluding to titles and appanage but not to work, that endlessly drawn-out dance of absurd intrigues that were linked to one another and that, for posterity’s sake, are reflected only in the official texts: respectable, learned, and perfectly composed correspondence, in French of course, and collected in those exquisite volumes. They provide a description of the way in which the actors in the madhouse carried out their absurdities, which were both tedious and lecherous.

  How natural it seemed, in the eyes of posterity, for the outbursts and bizarre actions of the mad King Christian to fit in with the stage sets of the madhouse.

  How inextricably linked were piety, lechery, and people who had been ravaged.

  There was a great deal of concern about Christian’s sex life.

  One contemporary explanation in particular is often given for Christian’s melancholy, his peculiar fits of rage, his inexplicable spells of despair, and finally his periods of day-long apathy. At the early age of thirteen he was introduced to a vice by a favorite named Sperling, who thenceforth disappears from history, which paralyzed his will and prompted his dementia and increasing physical weak-ness. This vice shows up in all the testimony of the time. The vice is seldom described in direct terms, although several testimonies do venture the leap; the vice is masturbation.

  Christian’s manic way of quelling his melancholy by means of this vice gradually weakened his spine, assaulted his heart, and contributed to the tragedy that was to come. Manically, for hours, he would try to masturbate forth some form of coherence or try to masturbate away his confusion. But it never seemed to be enough. The arrival of the little English girl had only made everything worse.

  Something had now fallen apart. He seemed completely at wits’ end.

  Reverdil’s notes express sorrow, but more than that.“At long last I discovered that what I called ‘upbringing’ consisted, in his world-view, of those ‘hardening’ experiences that would help him to make ‘progress.’ They essentially consisted of rebelling against everything that
beloned to his childhood and adolescence, perhaps even against the very court in which he lived. To this end there was no behavior so aberrant, excessive, or violent that he wouldn’t employ it. He grouped all of them under the expression ‘becoming healthy,’ which meant free of scruples, dignity, and pedantry. I then told him that his task was to set the kingdom on its feet again. The kingdom he had inherited was in greater debt and weighed down by more taxes after eighty-five years of peace than it would have been after a war. I told him that he should try to resolve the nation’s debts and ease the people’s burdens, a goal he could achieve by abolishing all the unnecessary expenses of the royal household, by reducing the army, by emancipating the peasantry in Denmark, and through sensible legislation that would foster Norway’s fishing, mining, and forestry.”

  His response was to go into his room and masturbate.

  He refused to visit the Queen. Toward her he felt only terror.

  Christian had many faces. One is suffused with terror, confusion, and hatred. Another is bent forward, calm, leaning over the letter he is writing to Monsieur Voltaire, who was the one, by his own testimony, who had taught him to think.

  Count Enevold Brandt was seated in the royal calash on the way to Roskilde.

  He belonged to the Altona Circle, the circle of enlightened men who gathered around Count Rantzau and the young German doctor Struensee in the early 1760s.

  He was now in Copenhagen. He was now a climber.

  He was driven by an irrepressible desire to please the ladies while at the same time establishing his career at court, and for this reason he sought the title that would best satisfy both of his ambitions. In one of his later letters to Voltaire, Reverdil writes that the Danish court, more than anywhere else, was ruled by those who were title-hungry. “There’s a proverb that in France people ask: Is he an educated man? In Germany:Does he come from a good family? In Holland:How large is his fortune? But in Denmark:What is his title? Here life is largely marked by this title hierarchy. Moving from one room to another is done by rank, sitting down at the table is done the same way, the servants present the dishes in accordance with rank, and if you meet an intelligent and clever man who is the last through the door, meaning he has no title, and you ask who he is, the answer will be: He’s nobody. Consequently, those who are somebody possess great prestige, rank high in appanage, and accomplish nothing, but are merely parasites guarding their rank.”

  Enevold Brandt, however, saw himself as an artist; he had a lively personality, played the flute, and succeeded in capturing the title of Theater Director, later Maître de plaisir, that is,”Cultural Minister,” and Grand Master of the Robes, with the right to be addressed as Excellency.

  The role of Cultural Minister, unlike other roles, included practical duties, which meant power. Among them were summoning the French theater troupes as well as organizing entertainments and masked balls for the court. He also had influence over and access to the ladies of the theater troupes, which for many became an imperative reason for promoting the art of the theater.

  Maître de plaisir was therefore the title that was most sought after.

  Brandt was also concerned about the King’s sex life. One reason was that five months after the marriage of King Christian VII to Caroline Mathilde, no sexual intercourse had yet occurred between the royal personages.

  That was horrifying.

  At this time Brandt had organized a riding tournament in the palace courtyard. For the event a wooden grandstand had been constructed in which members of the court were invited to take their places according to rank. Armor-clad knights on horseback jousted against each other, and contests of various kinds were arranged.

  One of these contests consisted of the jousters racing toward hanging rings that were to be speared with the lance. The rings hung from ropes that swung back and forth, making the task of the contestants all the more difficult.

  One of the contestants missed his first two attempts but succeeded in spearing the third ring. Triumphantly he turned his horse around, made it rear up, and held his lance pointed upward at an angle.

  The Queen was seated at King Christian’s side. Behind her, off to the side, sat Enevold Brandt. Behind the King was the tutor Guldberg; during recent months, in an odd way, he seemed to have drawn closer to the center, although he was still thoroughly insignificant.

  The royal couple had watched the tournament with expressionless faces. Christian, who under other circumstances certainly would have enjoyed the festivities, seemed paralyzed with shame and distaste because of the Queen’s intimate presence; she was seated only five inches away. Brandt leaned forward and whispered in the Queen’s ear:

  “I am already rejoicing over the occasion when the royal lance will be equally victorious.”

  The Queen then rose indignantly and departed.

  Afterward Guldberg asked Brandt what he had said. Brandt responded with the truth. Guldberg did not admonish him but said merely:

  “In his great anguish and confusion, His Majesty needs help and support.”

  Brandt took this to be a pronouncement that might be considered a form of advice. Yet Guldberg was an insignificant man. How could this be construed as a form of advice, coming from someone so insignificant?

  Perhaps Brandt had seen his eyes.

  The next day the Queen was sitting on a chair in the palace courtyard.

  Christian approached, walking slowly.

  As he passed her without saying a word, giving only a small bow, she said in a low voice:

  “Christian?”

  He pretended not to hear.

  She then repeated in a louder voice, almost shouting:

  “Christian!!!”

  He merely hastened his steps.

  It was horrifying. But that wasn’t all.

  During her visit to England, Fru von Plessen had had a long conversation with Caroline Mathilde’s mother. They found that they held common views on many things. The court was a pestilence. Immorality flourished. Purity had to be protected.

  As the months passed, Fru von Plessen was seized by a strong, almost burning devotion to the young girl. They developed a bond that was strengthened by the King’s aloofness. Fru von Plessen did not grieve over the King’s coldness. On the contrary, she saw how it increased the Queen’s attachment to her, her dependence on her, and perhaps with time also her love.

  As for the Queen, Fru von Plessen had developed a strategy for “propagating” the King’s love and for breaking through the inexplicable wall of ice that now seemed to have arisen between the spouses. The Queen was to appear unapproachable and thereby summon forth his love. A decisive event occurred five months after the Queen’s arrival in Denmark.

  To everyone’s surprise, one evening around ten o’clock Christian came to the Queen’s suite and announced that he wished to meet with the Queen before she retired for the night.

  His intention was all too clear.

  Fru von Plessen then explained that the Queen had planned to play a game of chess with her, and Christian would have to wait.

  They started their chess game.

  Christian wandered around the room with an expression of growing annoyance, which greatly amused the two women. At midnight the game was over; upon the whispered advice of Fru von Plessen, as the two conspirators exchanged secretive laughs, the Queen said that she wanted a rematch.

  Fru von Plessen informed the King of this “with a triumphant smile,” whereupon he left the room in a fury, slamming the door behind him.

  For the next two weeks the King refused to speak to the Queen. He looked away whenever they met; he didn’t say a word. The Queen was then seized with despair, but also with rancor toward Fru von Plessen.

  It was after this that the event reported by Guldberg occurred. The Queen was lying apathetically on her bed. She asked why Christian didn’t come. She told Fru von Plessen to leave. And the Queen then had the unfortunate conversation with Guldberg in which she asked him about release from passion, composu
re, and emptiness; and then she leaned so provocatively toward him that her nearly exposed bosom had shouted an affront to him, making him aware of the little English whore’s wantonness, of how dangerous she would come to be, and that here was the source of the contagion of sin.

  He saw it. That was the source.

  That was how it happened.

  5.

  The person who finally convinced Christian to conquer his terror was Reverdil.

  He implored Christian to overcome his distaste and make himself hard. Just once, to silence the gossip and to show that he was a man. Later the same day Reverdil saw Christian sitting on the floor with his dog in front of him, muttering intently to the animal, as if explaining some important problem; and the dog was alertly regarding his master’s face.

  That very night Christian paid a visit to the Queen’s bedchamber.

  He didn’t say a word, but she understood.

  He performed the intercourse with his eyes furiously shut tight.

  The young Queen tried helplessly to caress his thin white back, but he performed the servicing in spite of it. Nine months later she gave birth to a son, Frederik.

  That was the only time he ever came to visit her.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE SOVEREIGN OF THE UNIVERSE

  1.

  THE PORTRAITS OF them that exist from this period are in a certain sense misleading. The paintings seem to show adult individuals. Yet that was not the case.

  When the conflict between the royal couple intensified in the spring of 1767, Christian was eighteen years old, Caroline Mathilde was fifteen.

  It’s easy to forget that they were still adolescents. If the portraits were truthful and correct, they would depict dread, terror, but also uncertainty and an air of expectation.

  Nothing yet firmly established. As if anything were still possible.

  Fru von Plessen was a problem.