Behind the Palace Doors (28 page)

Within a week of Struensee’s execution, Caroline Mathilde was on her way to Germany aboard the British ship
Southampton
. But the twenty-year-old woman who had given up everything to become Denmark’s queen was not about to accept her circumstances gently. “She went into exile with anger in her arms and only hatred for company,” wrote Stella Tillyard. “Her heart was in Denmark, and she must return.”

In the meantime, though, she was at the mercy of her brother King George, who insisted that she live a quiet, retired life in Celle, with a moated castle as her home. Denmark, he told her, would be best banished from her mind. Stuck in such circumstances, Caroline Mathilde may have felt some connection to her ill-fated great-grandmother, Sophia Dorothea (see
Chapter 17
), who, after years of imprisonment in a castle, deprived of her children, now lay buried in Celle.

The fallen queen was determined not to endure a similar fate. Though she seemed to be making the best of her new situation—gaily greeting visitors and, in the absence of her own children, even adopting a young girl—Caroline Mathilde burned with the ambition to be restored to her former glory, and to exact revenge on those who had snatched it away from her.

“Her countenance is not entirely free,” observed one visitor, “and in her eyes, especially as soon as she stops smiling, glares something defiant and very fiery. Her complexion is healthy, though more pale than red, and her face is certainly not what one could describe as beautiful. One can see there, in my opinion, the courage and resolution which she certainly displayed at her arrest.”

Caroline Mathilde’s secret maneuverings to regain power in Denmark were usually thwarted when her letters were intercepted or her activities reported by spies. However, there was one plot that did show promise. It involved an English adventurer named Nathaniel William Wraxall, who, with a group of disaffected Danish exiles, colluded to topple the current government in Denmark and restore the deposed queen to her throne. Even the ever cautious George III indicated that he would not stand in the way of the plotters and would recognize the new regime if the coup was successful.

But Caroline Mathilde would never see Denmark again, for on May 11, 1775, at the age of twenty-three, she succumbed suddenly to scarlet fever. The supporters who had rallied to her cause were shocked by her sudden death, while those who had dethroned her in Denmark were relieved. “Alas, it is not until now that I feel that my head is safe,” one of them remarked.

Despite her untimely demise, Caroline Mathilde did leave a pronounced legacy in Denmark. Her son became regent for his mad father in 1784 and immediately removed the government that had dethroned his mother, the memory of whom he
always revered. He became King Frederick VI in 1808. Caroline Mathilde’s daughter, Louise, went on to have her own daughter, Caroline Amelia, who was the wife of King Christian VIII.
^‖
Thus, in one of history’s great ironies, Struensee’s granddaughter wore Caroline Mathilde’s crown as queen of Denmark.

Five years after losing the American colonies in 1783, George III began to lose his mind. It was a frightening decline for the once restrained and dutiful monarch, marked by strange hallucinations, inappropriate behavior, and incessant babbling. Most historians now attribute the king’s unsettled state of mind to a particularly virulent form of the metabolic disorder known as porphyria
.

Early one August morning in 1788, the pages at Windsor Castle were shocked to see the king’s wife, Queen Charlotte, run out of the royal apartments “in great alarm, in her
shift
, or with very little clothes.” The men turned their backs to save the queen the embarrassment of being seen in such a state, but she came right up to them and told one to go immediately and fetch a doctor in Richmond. King George III was in a terrible state, suffering through the early stages of what would soon become a nightmare of madness.

The fifty-year-old monarch was seized by violent stomach pains that left him hunched over in agony. These were accompanied by painful cramps in his legs and a rash on his arms that
his daughter Elizabeth described as vivid red “and in great weal, as if it had been scourged with cords.”

The doctors were bewildered by the symptoms. Some said it was gout; Sir George Baker concluded that the king’s illness was caused by his having “walked on the grass several hours; and, without having changed his stockings (which were very wet) went to St. James’s; and that at night he ate four large pears for supper,” having had no dinner. Soon enough, though, worrisome signs of mental distress began manifesting as well.

Fanny Burney, a member of Queen Charlotte’s household, reported in late October that the normally composed king spoke in “a manner so uncommon, that a high fever alone could not account for it; a rapidity, a hoarseness of voice, a volubility, an earnestness—a vehemence, rather—it startled me inexpressibly.… The Queen,” she added, “grows more and more uneasy.”

Poor Charlotte was actually growing frightened of her husband, with whom she had shared a loving relationship. “Their behaviour to each other speaks the most cordial confidence and happiness,” one of the queen’s attendants had observed several years earlier. “The King seems to admire as much as he enjoys her conversation.… The Queen appears to feel the most grateful regard for him.” Now Charlotte couldn’t keep far enough away, even as George became ever more dependent on her in his disordered state. “How nervous I am!” the queen exclaimed to Fanny Burney. “I’m quite a fool. Don’t you think so?”

The queen was worried about what she called King George’s “great hurry of spirits and incessant loquacity.” One day at chapel, he suddenly jumped up during the sermon, threw his arms around Charlotte and his daughters, and exclaimed, “You know what it is to be nervous. But, was you ever as bad as this?” On another occasion, Sir George Baker found him at a concert recital at Windsor, repeatedly rising and sitting throughout, “not seeming to attend to the music,” and talking continuously,
“making frequent and sudden transitions from one subject to another.”

The king was aware of his incessant babbling and endeavored unsuccessfully to control it. He had his attendants read aloud to him in the hope that that would keep him quiet, but he just spoke right over them. He even suggested that he be taken to General Sir George Howard’s home in Buckinghamshire, where, he said, the general would give an account of the campaigns he made in Germany, “and that will keep me from talking.”

Sadly, King George still had enough presence of mind to realizing he was losing his. “They would make me believe I have the gout,” he said, kicking one foot against the other; “but if it was gout how could I kick the part without any pain?” In despair, the king sobbed on the shoulder of his favorite son, the Duke of York. “I wish to God I may die,” he cried, “for I am going to be mad.”

That seemed certain on the evening of November 5, when the king’s heir, George, Prince of Wales, dropped by Windsor for dinner. Father and son had always had an uneasy relationship (see
Chapter 23
), but something snapped that evening that sent King George into a blind frenzy. He suddenly rose from the table, grabbed his son by the collar, pulled him out of his chair, and slammed him against the wall. It was a devastating scene that left Queen Charlotte in hysterics and the weeping Prince of Wales on the verge of fainting. Sir George Baker concluded afterward that the king was now “under an entire alienation of mind and much more agitated than he had ever been.”

King George was a frightening sight the next day. Charlotte told Lady Harcourt that his eyes were like “black currant jelly, the veins in his face were swelled, the sound of his voice was dreadful. He often spoke till he was exhausted, and, the moment he could recover his breath, began again, while the foam ran out of his mouth.”

“I am nervous,” King George insisted. “I am not ill, but I am nervous. If you would know what is the matter with me, I am nervous.”

With the king in such a state, it was decided that he should be moved out of the queen’s bedroom under the pretext that she was ill. Unsettled by her absence, George got up in the middle of the night and stole into Charlotte’s room. For a half hour he hovered over her, candle in hand. The next night the queen moved to apartments farther away. Finding her door locked, the king burst into tears. “We’ve been married twenty-eight years,” he said to the queen, “and never separated a day until now; and now you abandon me in my misfortunes.”

As George’s condition worsened, he became increasingly violent and uncontrollable. His incessant chatter, which one day went on “for nineteen hours without scarce intermission,” was now sprinkled with obscenities that would have once mortified the normally pious monarch. Then there were the delusions. The king gave orders to dead people, or to individuals who never even existed. On one occasion be became convinced that London was flooded and ordered his yacht there. Looking through a telescope, he insisted that he could see his ancestral homeland of Hanover. He composed letters to foreign courts filled with fanciful tales, and lavished honors on all who approached him—even the lowliest servant.

A succession of doctors was brought in to treat the king, but each was baffled by his condition. They prescribed wildly divergent courses of treatment, most of them barbaric, none successful. Dr. Richard Warren, for example, ordered that the king’s shaved head be blistered to draw out the bad humors from his brain. Leeches were attached to his forehead. He was administered strong purges and emetics, followed by sedatives, and his room was kept freezing cold. Little wonder there was no improvement.

Then, on December 5, Francis Willis took on the task of
curing the king, assisted by his son John. It was not a good match. “I hate all the physicians,” railed the ailing monarch, “but most the Willises; they beat me like a madman.” The king’s distaste for Francis Willis was evident from the beginning, when Willis acknowledged that he had been a clergyman before becoming a doctor.

“I am sorry for it,” George said with mounting agitation. “You have quitted a profession I have always loved, and you have embraced one I most heartily detest.”

“Sir,” Willis protested, “Our Savior Himself went about healing the sick.”

“Yes, yes,” the king answered irritably, “but He had not 700 pounds a year for it, hey!”

The treatment that followed this testy introduction was nothing short of torture. Willis was determined to tame his wild patient. If the king spoke out of turn, became too restless, or refused to eat, he would be confined in a straightjacket. Willis also had a chair specially made to confine the king until he complied with the doctor’s demands. With bitter irony, George called the horrible contraption his “coronation chair.” Once Willis kept him strapped in the chair, gagged, while he lectured the king on the impropriety of his lewd ranting about a certain lady of the court.

Brutal as Willis’s methods were, they did seem to cow the king and keep him grudgingly compliant. “Dr. Willis remained firm and reproved him in determined language,” Colonel Robert Fulke Greville reported. “He conducted himself with wonderful management and force. As the King’s voice rose, attempting mastery, Willis raised his and its tone was stronger and decided. As the King softened his, that of Dr. Willis dropped to softening unison.… The King found stronger powers in Dr. Willis, gave way and returned to somewhat of composure.”