The Queen's Lover (6 page)

And so I tied the crown of myrtles around my brow and went to the altar accompanied by my ladies of honor—my sister, Hedda, and my closest friend, Charlotte, Duchess of Södermanland, the pretty girl who’d been hopelessly in love with Axel since her teens. Swedish weddings are three-day-long events; and as my maids, on the second day, buttoned me into my first black dress—symbol of the rite of passage into the marital status—this custom I’d always looked on as inane suddenly seemed fitting: how appropriate to wear black to betoken the gloom of being married to Count Piper! I shall not elaborate on the horrors of my wedding night. Suffice it to say that the count’s sexual habits were as overbearing as his appearance and general demeanor. “I shall ride you,” he said with a coarse laugh, “ride you like a bull.” And so he did. And in the next seven years I had three children with Piper. By that time he had gone through several mistresses; I told Axel I’d had enough, and as he had predicted, I took a lover of my own. His name was Evert Taube, and (wouldn’t you know it?) he was my brother’s closest friend, a man of probity, depth, and tenderness equal to Axel’s. As my brother had foretold, our union lasted many decades; I lost him only a few years before I lost my beloved sibling.

W
HENEVER
I
LEAVE
S
WEDEN
and feel
Hemlängtan
—nostalgia for the home country—I think of water, of the constant presence of water in our native land. I dream of Stockholm, the “Venice of the North” as it is often called, built on twenty-two islands, its sherbet-hued buildings
shimmering like mirages on the still water of the city’s canals. I think of the marine view I had from my childhood bedroom in our home, which looked out on the bay where hundreds of sailboats were moored, swaying on the water in the gentle breezes that always waft through our city. Walking through the narrow medieval streets of Gamla Stan, Stockholm’s largest island and the site of its earliest settlements, there are few corners from which one can not see the gleam of a canal, the outline of a fishing boat setting off on its daily journey.

It is with water too, that I associate the buildings of our youth: the Fersen Palace, our winter home in Stockholm, was a jewel of a dwelling directly facing the royal palace, and designed by the same great architect, Carl Harleman, who designed part of the royal residence. Come summer we spent much of our time at Steninge, some thirty-five kilometers north of the capital, a golden yellow mansion of luminous simplicity, overlooking a large stream, which is considered the finest example of Swedish baroque. Or else we went to Löfstad, several hours by coach south of Stockholm, an equally superb dwelling that hovers over a large lake and a wealth of pine forests. Not far from Löfstad we owned yet another great castle, Ljung, which we favored for winter holidays.

To return to my brother Axel, a few last words: whichever of our palaces he was living in, whatever country he was visiting, he eschewed many pastimes traditional to the nobility: hunting, for instance, which, loving animals as much as he did, he adamantly refused to engage in. His energies were focused on music, for which he had a considerable gift. He played the piano and the flute excellently, and had a powerful, lusty baritone. His portable clavichord accompanied him on most of his voyages. He also painted very beautifully. And only I know him well enough to say this: it is a pity that our family’s high ranking in the Swedish aristocracy disqualified him from choosing an artistic vocation and giving free vent to his great talents.

Axel:

GUSTAVUS III, MY KING

I
T WOULD NOT BE
fitting to speak any more about myself without first portraying the king who reigned over our nation during much of my adult life, my dear friend Gustavus III.

By the time he had reached the age of eighteen, Crown Prince Gustavus was a very slender man with handsome though irregular features and large, penetrating blue eyes. A slight depression on his left temple, caused by a midwife’s ineptness, made the left side of his face appear oblique and a tad eerie. His left hip was a bit higher than his right one, causing a slight limp, which he tried to disguise by graceful motions of his cane. His delicate frame and the hairlessness of his face gave him a somewhat effeminate appearance. Yet I realized early on in our friendship that this delicacy was deceptive—his energy and determination were formidable, and he could work for days on end with little food or sleep without any apparent strain.

At the time of Gustavus’s birth his father, a gentle, mild-tempered man, bore the title of Crown Prince Adolphus Frederick, son of Christian August of Holstein-Gottorp. However, his very brilliant mother, Ulrica, a sister of Frederick the Great, was as meddling, power-hungry, eccentric a woman as ever plagued the planet. Ulrica forbade her son to play boys’ games in fear he would perspire too much. She insisted that he
be fed only soups, creams, and vegetables because it was her opinion that solid food dulled the mind. From his childhood on, she kept him up until long after midnight so that he might not “sleep his wits away.” Gustavus greatly desired to learn English, which in addition to French was taught to many young aristocrats, but French was the only language she allowed him to study. Mathematics was not permitted either. Louisa Ulrica’s only wise decision was to choose as Gustavus’s tutor Carl Gustaf Tessin, the son of the great architect who had designed Stockholm’s royal palace.

Tessin, who deeply regretted not having been an actor, used to illustrate historical feats through grand theatrical gestures, and this may have incited the passion for drama that absorbed Gustavus throughout his life. In Tessin’s reports to Crown Princess Louisa Ulrica, he depicts his pupil as a petulant but industrious and honest boy. Early in his instructions, Tessin also perceived that the precocious young Gustavus, who enjoyed playing with dolls and loathed such traditional male pastimes as hunting or even riding, had a vivid imagination and an amazingly retentive memory. His mastery of the dramatic arts and his grasp of ancient history were particularly notable. Aged ten, he composed a tragedy on the death of Julian the Apostate. Aged eleven, he began to write plays in French. By his midteens there were few French books he had not read; Voltaire shed tears of joy when the Swedish ambassador to France, Creutz, reported that the prince knew the philosopher’s epic poem
La Henriade
by heart before he was sixteen.

But it was the stage that most absorbed young Gustavus. Upon seeing a play that enthused him, he committed long portions of its dialogues to memory, especially those recited by beautifully clad female characters. As a young child—I was nine years younger than he—I remember seeing him pace his room for hours after he was supposed to have been in bed, rehearsing his favorite feminine roles, decked out with sheets and towels that served as the trains or headdresses of his dramatic
personae. In his adult years he would occasionally remain in disguise all day long, speaking and acting according to role and demanding that his entourage do the same. As one of the families closest to Prince Gustavus, all the Fersens had to get on stage at some point to act in his theatrical ventures—I took turns playing a jockey, a shepherd, a giant, and a medieval knight, the latter of which caused me to suffer through the day from the weight of a twenty-pound suit of armor.

In 1751, when Gustavus was five years old, his grandfather died at an advanced age, and his father ascended the Swedish throne under the name of Adolphus Frederick. As crown prince, young Gustavus’s role models were Henry IV of France, Henry V of England, and above all the formidable Gustavus II Adolphus, father of Queen Christina, all monarchs far more authoritarian than his own benign parent. By his teens, Gustavus had assiduously cultivated that innate charm of manner that enticed me when I first met him, and that, he surely realized, made him so winsome to all. “One can not imagine greater ease, gaiety, tact, and politeness,” so the French
saloniste
Madame du Deffand described the young crown prince upon meeting him during his first visit to Paris.

Since childhood Gustavus had ardently desired to go to France, and his opportunity came in 1770, when he was twenty-four. Accompanied by his younger brother, he arrived in Paris and instantly won the heart of Louis XV, who received the two princes as if they were his own sons. During their stay at Marly they were lodged in the apartments of the Children of France, a rare privilege. My prudish mother was shocked to hear of the manner in which Gustavus reciprocated the French king’s kindness: he presented Madame du Barry’s poodle with a diamond collar, which pleased Louis XV greatly. Ambassador Creutz also introduced the Swedish princes to all the foremost salons, and Gustavus would maintain a lifetime correspondence with France’s most accomplished blue-stockings—Madame Lespinasse, Madame d’Epinay, and Madame Necker along with Madame du Deffand.

It strikes me that many pivotal events in the life of Gustavus, who was so stagestruck, would be in some way related to the theater. In February 1771, the crown prince was at the Paris Opera, watching a performance of Lampe’s
Pyramus and Thisbe,
when a messenger appeared bearing the news that his father had died. Gustavus had much loved his gentle, indulgent parent. He hastened back to the Swedish embassy, where he remained in seclusion for the following four days, suffering great sorrow. Having been promised three hundred thousand livres by Louis XV to bolster his country’s faltering finances, he went home to prepare for the business of being a king.

Soon after his coronation, it was announced that His Majesty Gustavus III had chosen Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday afternoons as those times when his subjects could come to present their petitions and discuss their griefs with him personally. On the appointed hours the palace was thronged by crowds of every rank and age, and of both genders. The monarch listened with exemplary patience to the complaints of his humblest subjects. He bestowed favors as graciously as if he were receiving them. To some he offered money, to others he gave advice; every visitor was greeted with a friendly smile or a sympathetic word. The citizens were dazzled by their new monarch. To have seen the king and shaken his hand was looked on as the height of felicity, and he was lauded to the skies. My father, at the time, was still the head of the Hat faction, and he was immediately summoned by the king to open negotiations with the Caps. In June 1771 it was my privilege to see Gustavus, in full regalia and with the silver scepter of his ancestors in hand, formally open his first Riksdag, or parliament. His speech stirred deep emotions in those who heard it, all the more because everyone in attendance understood it: Gustavus felt close to his humbler subjects, and addressed the Riksdag in Swedish instead of French. It was the first time in more than a century that a Swedish king—and what an orator this one was—addressed a Riksdag from the throne in his native language.

After a moving allusion to his father’s death, Gustavus proceeded to say: “Born and bred among you, I have learned to love my country from my earliest youth, and consider it the highest privilege to be born a Swede…to be the first citizen of a free people…. To rule over a happy people is my dearest desire, to govern a free people the highest aim of my ambition…. I have found that neither the pomp nor the magnificence of monarchy, neither the most prosperous economy, can ensure content or prosperity when a nation is not united. It rests with you, therefore, to become the happiest country in the world. Let this Riksdag remain forever memorable in our annals for the annulment of all party animosities, of all self-interested motives. I shall do all I can to reunite our diverging opinions, to reconcile your estranged affections, so that the nation may forever look back with gratitude on a parliament upon whose deliberations I now invoke the blessing of the Most High.”

This encomium, delivered with the dramatic skill of a consummate actor, produced an extraordinary effect. If my own rigid, judgmental father was astonished and delighted by it, one can well imagine its impact on the entire assembly. It was unanimously decided, by all four estates, that the royal address should be printed in Swedish, German, and Finnish, and that a framed copy of it should be preserved on a wall of every parish in the realm. A translation of Gustavus’s speech even appeared in the
Gazette de France
and was admired by many Parisians. Gustavus’s reputation grew throughout Europe as he hired dozens of foreign and native architects to make Stockholm into an eminent cultural center. He built Stockholm’s first opera house and a score of new theaters throughout the capital; founded the Royal Ballet and the Royal Dramatic Theater, where some of his own plays were performed; and established the Swedish Academy. In 1772 he created a highly progressive constitution that forbade him from declaring war without the consent of the Riksdag. And in time he worked toward social reform as few Enlightenment rulers would. He abolished torture, annulled the death
penalty for many crimes, offered far greater religious liberty to Catholics and Jews, and proclaimed a limited freedom of the press that was equaled, at that time, only by Great Britain’s. He was also a keen supporter of the American side in the 1776 War of Independence, writing about that conflict in the passage that follows:

“This might well be America’s century. The new republic…may perhaps take advantage of Europe someday, in the same manner as Europe has taken advantage of America for two centuries. I can not but admire their courage and enthusiastically appreciate their daring.”

On the military level of his own nation, one should note that it was Gustavus III who built up the Swedish fleet and made it into one of the three great naval forces in Europe, alongside France’s and Great Britain’s. It is all these political and cultural achievements that led his reign to be referred to as “the Gustavian age” and caused the arts he promoted to be known as “the Gustavian style.”

But Gustavus had to struggle mightily with his parliament, the Riksdag, a combat that would have great consequences for the rest of his reign. I must explain that our parliament is not a liberal force, as it is in most other countries. On the contrary. Our Riksdag is composed of four estates—the aristocracy, the clergy, the burghers, and the peasantry. And the nobility then comprised a group of conservative nobles who much resented Gustavus’s liberal measures, and his foreign policy. The king was singularly apprehensive of the power and ambition of Catherine the Great of Russia. She would happily have gobbled up Sweden upon the slightest provocation, and was then preparing to invade Turkey, with which Sweden had signed a peace pact nearly half a century earlier. In the 1780s, Sweden’s principal ally was France, which was so weakened by its impending revolution that it could not possibly help Gustavus in any of his military ventures. Riding roughshod over his own constitution by not consulting the Riksdag, Gustavus engaged his navy in a naval battle with Russia in which both sides lost their most
important ships, but which essentially favored Russia. Gustavus realized that the Russian capital, Saint Petersburg, could only be attacked by land. But he was prevented from engaging in any substantial conflict by a massive mutiny of Swedish officers, who refused to do battle because the king had not consulted the Riksdag concerning his naval engagement with Russia.