The Royal Physician's Visit

by Per Olov Enquist

  There ought to be a place for Christian as well. Wasn’t that what this was all about? Wasn’t that why the aperture in history would open before Struensee? Wasn’t that also part of his task?

  What was his task, after all? He could picture himself in the eyes of posterity as the German doctor who came to visit the madhouse.

  And the one who was given a mission?

  “Visit” was a better word, better than “calling” or “task.” Yes, that‘s what he had begun to think. It had grown inside him. A visit, a task to be completed, a task that was assigned, an aperture that would open in history; and then he would step inside and disappear.

  Holding Christian by the hand. Perhaps this was the important thing. Not to leave Christian behind. He who had many faces and was not cast in one piece, and inside of whom a black torch burned ever stronger, hurling its darkness over everything.

  The two of us, Struensee sometimes thought. A splendid pair. The boy with his black torch emanating darkness, and I with my clear gaze and terrible fear, which I conceal so cleverly.

  And these two would put a lever under the house of the world.

  2.

  He knew that he should not have permitted the gift.

  The little Negro boy was a plaything. It was not playthings the King needed; they led him in the wrong direction, like a poorly aimed jab at a billiard ball.

  The reason that he “gave in”—as he later thought—was an incident that occurred during the first week of June 1770.

  Christian had started following him around like a dog: babbling devotedly, or simply imploring him in silence. Something had to be done to jolt the King out of his lethargy. Struensee therefore decided that an excursion would be taken, a brief one, not to the European courts but to reality. Reality would jolt the King out of his melancholy. The journey would take them to the Danish countryside and give the King a picture of the situation of the Danish serfs; but a real, true picture, without court trappings, without the serfs being aware of the King’s presence among them, observing their lives.

  For that reason the journey had to be made incognito.

  The day before the journey, which had been approved by the King without objection since he was neither informed of its true purpose nor would have shown the slightest interest in it, rumors of the plan leaked out. This led to a fierce confrontation with Rantzau, who at that time seemed to have regained his position at court, was once more in the King’s favor, and was considered to be one of Struensee’s closest friends.

  On that morning Struensee went to the stables to go for an early ride; it was shortly before dawn. He saddled his horse and rode out through the stable gate, but that was where Rantzau caught up with him, taking hold of the horse’s bridle. Struensee, with a trace of irritation, asked him what he wanted.

  “From what I understand,” Rantzau said with ill-concealed anger, “you’re the one who wants so much. But what’s all this about? What is all this about? The King is going to be dragged around among the peasants? Not seeking out the decision makers or others whom we need for our reforms. But peasants. To see … what?”

  “Reality.”

  “You have his trust. But you’re about to make a mistake.”

  For a moment Struensee was close to losing his temper, but he controlled himself. He explained that the King’s lethargy and melancholy had to be cured. The King had spent so much time in this madhouse that he was losing his wits. The King knew nothing about Denmark.

  “What does the Queen say?” asked Rantzau.

  “I haven’t asked her,” replied Struensee. “Let go of my horse.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” Rantzau then shrieked in such a loud voice that he could be heard by everyone around. “You’re being naive; soon you’ll have everything in your hands, but you don’t understand the game. Let the fool be, you can’t …”

  “Let go,” said Struensee. “And I won’t allow you to call him a fool.”

  But Rantzau refused to let go and continued to talk in a loud voice.

  Then Struensee spurred his horse, Rantzau stumbled backward and fell, and Struensee rode off without looking back.

  The next morning the King and Struensee set off on their journey of observation among the Danish peasants.

  The first two days were extremely successful. On the third day disaster struck.

  It was late in the afternoon, near Hillerød. From the coach they could see in the distance a group of peasants gathered around … something. As if at some innocent meeting. Then the coach drew closer, and the situation became clear.

  A group of people was clustered around some object. As the coach came near, a tumult erupted, the group dispersed, and some set off running toward the main building of the nearby manor.

  The coach stopped. From inside, the King and Struensee could see someone sitting on a wooden framework. The King commanded the coach to drive closer, and then it was possible to see the figure more clearly.

  Seated on a wooden horse, made of two trestles with a rough-hewn beam in between, was a young peasant boy, naked, with his hands tied behind his back, and his feet bound together beneath the beam. He was perhaps sixteen. His back was bloody; he had apparently been whipped, and the blood had clotted.

  He was shaking violently and seemed close to losing consciousness.

  “I presume,” said Struensee, “that he tried to run away. That’s when they put them on wooden horses. The ones who survive never run away again. The ones who die escape from serfdom. That’s the way things are in your kingdom, Your Majesty.”

  Christian, with his mouth agape and overcome with horror, stared at the tortured boy. The small group of people had gradually retreated.

  “An entire peasant class is sitting there on that wooden horse,” Struensee said. “That is reality. Liberate them. Liberate them.”

  When adscription was instituted in 1733, it was a means for the nobility to control, or rather to prevent, movement among the workforce. A person who was a peasant on an estate was not allowed to leave the estate until the age of forty. The conditions, wages, terms of work, and housing were all determined by the owner of the estate. After forty years the person was allowed to move. The reality was that by that time most peasants had become so passive, seriously alcoholic, weighed down by debt, or physically debilitated that no moving usually occurred.

  It was a Danish form of slavery. It functioned superbly as an economic basis for the nobles; conditions were worse in the north than in the south of Jutland, but it was slavery.

  Occasionally slaves would escape. Struensee was right about that. And that was why they had to be punished.

  But Christian didn’t seem to understand; it was as if the scene only reminded him of something else that he had experienced earlier. He didn’t seem to follow Struensee’s explanations but began chewing wildly, grinding his jaw as if the words refused to come out; and after only a few seconds he began screaming an incoherent string of words, which finally gave way to a muttering.

  “But this peasant boy—is perhaps a changeling—like me!!! Why are they punishing me? Like this!!! Struensee!!! What have I done, is it a just punishment, Struensee, am I being punished now …?”

  Christian’s muttering grew louder.

  “He ran away, the punishment is the wooden horse,” Struensee tried to explain, but the King merely continued with his meaningless paroxysms, which grew more and more confused.

  “You must calm yourself,” Struensee urged him. “Be calm. Calm.”

  But no.

  Dusk had fallen, the back of the bound boy was black with clotted blood; he must have been sitting on the wooden horse for a long time. Struensee, who finally had to give up trying to calm the King, watched as the tortured boy slowly slumped forward, slid under the wooden beam, and hung there with his head down.

  Christian gave a sudden shriek, wild and incoherent. The boy on the wooden horse was silent. Everything was now out of control.

  It was impossible to calm the Ki
ng. People came running from the main building. The King screamed and screamed, shrill and piercing, and refused to be hushed.

  The boy on the wooden horse hung there mutely, with his face only a foot above the ground.

  Struensee shouted to the coachman to turn the coach around. The King is indisposed, we must return to Copenhagen. But just as the coach was turning in great haste, Struensee happened to think about the boy hanging from the wooden horse. They couldn’t leave him like that. He would surely die. Struensee jumped out of the coach to try to negotiate a possible pardon; but the coach started off at once, and Christian’s desperate screams grew louder.

  The boy was hanging motionless. The approaching crowd seemed hostile. Struensee was frightened. It was beyond his control. He was out in the Danish wilderness. Reason, rules, titles, or power had no authority in this wilderness. Here the people were animals. They would tear him limb from limb.

  He felt an enormous sense of terror come over him.

  That was why Struensee gave up the idea of rescuing the boy on the wooden horse.

  The horses and the coach, with the King still screaming as he hung out the window, were about to vanish in the dusk. It had rained. The road was muddy. Struensee ran, shouting to the coachman to stop; stumbling in the mud, he ran after the coach.

  That was the end of the journey to the Danish slaves.

  3.

  The King spent more and more time playing with Moranti, the Negro page.

  No one was surprised. The King was calm whenever he was playing.

  In early August Moranti was struck by a sudden fever and for three weeks lay in bed, making a slow recovery; the King was extremely upset and reverted to his melancholy. During the two days when Moranti’s illness seemed life threatening, the King’s mood was anything but stable. Chief Secretary B.W. Luxdorph, who witnessed the incident from the window of the chancellery building, writes briefly in his diary that “between 11 and 12 o’clock porcelain dolls, books, bookcases, sheet music, etc. were thrown from the palace balcony. Over 400 people gathered under the balcony. Everyone ran off with whatever they could grab.”

  After Moranti’s recovery, the King became calmer, but the scene was repeated once again, although with a difference that was not insignificant: he was no longer alone on the balcony. The incident was reported by a diplomat, discreetly phrased. “The King, who is young and has a playful temperament, took it into his head on Friday morning to go out on the balcony, accompanied by his little Negro page, and amuse himself by tossing everything he could find over the side. A bottle struck the secretary of the Russian legation in the leg and badly injured him.”

  No mention of whether Moranti also took part in actually throwing things.

  The outburst was characterized as utterly inexplicable.

  They were circling around each other, with the circles becoming smaller and smaller. They were moving toward each other.

  The relationship between Queen Caroline Mathilde and the Royal Physician Struensee was becoming more intense.

  They often went walking in the woods.

  In the woods they could converse, in the woods the attendants following them might suddenly lag behind; the Queen found it amusing to walk in the woods with Struensee.

  It was a beech forest.

  Struensee talked about the importance of strengthening the limbs of the little Crown Prince through physical exercises; the boy was now two years old. The Queen talked about horses. Struensee stressed the importance of the little boy learning to play like ordinary children. She spoke of the sea and the swans on the water’s surface that was like quicksilver. He thought the little boy should learn all the details of statesmanship; the Queen asked him again whether trees could think.

  He answered: Only in situations of utmost danger. She replied: Only when the tree was supremely happy could it think.

  When they walked through the woods where there was thick shrubbery, the attendants often could not keep up. She liked walking in the woods. She believed that beech trees could love. She found quite natural the idea that trees could dream. All one had to do was observe a forest at dusk to be convinced.

  He asked her whether a tree could also feel fear.

  Suddenly she was able to tell him almost everything. No, not quite everything. She could ask him why everyone was upset about her going riding in men’s clothing, and he would answer. But she could not ask him why she had been chosen to become this royal cow that had to be serviced. Why am I the first and most exalted of women, when I am only breeding stock, the lowest of the low?

  She walked quickly. Sometimes she would get ahead of him; she would purposely get ahead of him. It was easier to ask certain questions if he couldn’t see her face. She would not turn around but ask with her back to him:

  “How can you have such patience with that mad fool? I can’t understand it.”

  “The King?”

  “He’s ill.”

  “No, no,” he told her. “I refuse to allow you to speak of your husband in that way. You love him, after all.”

  She stopped abruptly.

  It was a dense forest. He could see that her back had begun to shake. She was weeping, soundlessly. Far behind he heard the sound of the ladies-in-waiting, their voices as they cautiously worked their way through the thickets.

  He went up to her. She sobbed in despair, leaning on his shoulder. They stood motionless for a few moments. The sounds came closer.

  “Your Majesty,” he said in a low voice. “You must be careful so that …”

  She looked up at him, seemed suddenly calm.

  “Why?”

  “People might … misinterpret …”

  The sounds were now quite near, she was still standing close to him, pressing against his shoulder; and she looked up and said almost without expression:

  “Then let them. I’m not afraid. Not of anything. Not of anything.”

  And then he saw the first prying faces among the branches of the trees and bushes; coming nearer, much too near. But for another few moments the Queen was afraid of nothing at all; she too saw the faces through the branches of the forest, but she was not afraid.

  He knew that she was not afraid, and this filled him with a sudden terror.

  “You’re not afraid of anything,” he said in a low voice.

  Then they continued on their way through the woods.

  4.

  The evening card games, which had previously taken place so regularly for the three Queens, had now stopped; the Dowager Queen was given no explanation for this. Caroline Mathilde was no longer interested. No explanation why. The tarot evenings had simply ceased.

  But the Dowager Queen knew what the reason was. She no longer found herself at the center of things.

  Nevertheless, to extract an explanation, or to settle the matter once and for all, the Dowager Queen went to see Caroline Mathilde in her chamber.

  The Dowager Queen did not wish to sit down. She stood in the middle of the room.

  “You’ve changed since you came to Denmark,” said the Dowager Queen in an icy voice. “You’re no longer charming. In no respect are you as enchanting as you were before. That is not just my opinion, it is everyone’s opinion. You keep your distance. You have no idea how to behave properly.”

  Caroline Mathilde’s expression did not change; she merely said:

  “That’s true.”

  “I beg you—most urgently—not to go riding in men’s clothing. Never before has a woman of royal blood worn men’s clothing. It’s shocking.”

  “It doesn’t shock me.”

  “And this Doctor Struensee …”

  “It doesn’t shock him either.”

  “I beg you.”

  “I’ll do as I please,” Caroline Mathilde replied. “I’ll dress as I like. I’ll ride as I like. I’ll talk to whomever I like. I am the Queen. Therefore I make all the rules. The way I behave is also good manners. Aren’t you jealous?”

  The Dowager Queen did not reply but merely
gave her a mute look, rigid with anger.

  “Yes, isn’t that what it is?” Caroline Mathilde added. “You’re jealous of me.”

  “Mind your tongue,” said the Dowager Queen.

  “That,” said the Queen with a smile, “I shall most certainly do. But when it pleases me.”

  “You’re shameless.”

  “Soon,” said Caroline Mathilde, “I’ll be riding bareback. They say it’s so interesting. Aren’t you jealous? Because I know what the world looks like? I think you’re jealous of me.”

  “Mind your tongue. You’re a child. You know nothing.”

  “But some people can reach a hundred and still have seen nothing. Know nothing. And there is a world outside the court.”

  And with that the Dowager Queen left, infuriated.

  The Queen remained sitting where she was. She thought: He was right, after all. Some people can reach a hundred without seeing a thing. There is a world outside the court; and when I say this, the membrane splits, terror and fury flare up, and I am free.

  5.

  On September 26 the royal couple, accompanied by Struensee and a small entourage, set off on a short holiday trip to Holsten. They were to visit Ascheberg, and Struensee was going to show Rousseau’s famous hut to the Queen.

  It was such a lovely autumn. A few days of cool weather had colored the leaves golden and a faint crimson. As they drove toward Ascheberg in the afternoon, the Mountain glittered with all the fall colors, and the air was mild and marvelous.

  It was Indian summer in 1770. By the following day they began taking their walks.

  During the summer he had started reading aloud to her. For this journey she had requested that he select a book that particularly engaged him. He was to choose a book that would amuse her, that would capture her interest by offering new information, that would teach her something about Struensee himself, and that was appropriate to the place they were going to visit.

  An easy choice, he told her, but refused to say more. He would surprise her, he said, when they had taken their seats in Rousseau’s hut.