The Lost Queen: The Tragedy of a Royal Marriage Read online

  THE LOST QUEEN

  The Tragedy of a Royal Marriage

  Norah Lofts

  A FAWCETT CREST BOOK

  Fawcett Publications, Inc., Greenwich, Conn.

  Member of American Book Publishers Council, Inc.

  Table of Contents

  COPYRIGHT

  PART ONE KEW HOUSE; JANUARY 1765

  KEW AND LONDON; 1765—1766

  HARWICH; OCTOBER 2, 1766

  PART TWO ROSKILDE; NOVEMBER 1, 1766

  CHRISTIANSBORG; NOVEMBER 1, 1766

  CHRISTIANSBORG; NOVEMBER 1, 1766

  FREDERICKSBORG; NOVEMBER 2, 1766

  CHRISTIANSBORG; NOVEMBER 8, 1766

  PART THREE CHRISTIANSBORG; NOVEMBER 10, 1766

  COPENHAGEN; NOVEMBER 1766—JUNE 1767

  FREDERICKSBORG; COPENHAGEN; JUNE 1767—JANUARY 1768

  COPENHAGEN; FREDERICKSBORG; JANUARY—MAY 1768

  LONDON; OCTOBER 1768

  COPENHAGEN; JANUARY 1769

  PART FOUR COPENHAGEN, HIRSCHOLM; JANUARY—SEPTEMBER 1769

  HIRSCHOLM; SEPTEMBER 1769

  COPENHAGEN; WINTER 1769—SPRING 1770

  COPENHAGEN; MAY 1770

  LÜNEBERG; AUGUST 1770

  CHRISTIANSBORG; NOVEMBER 1770—JULY 1771

  PART FIVE COPENHAGEN, HIRSCHOLM; NOVEMBER 1770—JULY 1771

  COPENHAGEN; WINTER 1771—1772

  COPENHAGEN; JANUARY 1772

  COPENHAGEN; JANUARY 16—17, 1772

  COPENHAGEN; JANUARY 1772

  CARLTON HOUSE, LONDON; FEBRUARY 1772

  KRONBORG; JANUARY—APRIL 1772

  KRONBORG; FEBRUARY—APRIL 1772

  COPENHAGEN; MARCH 1772

  PART SIX COPENHAGEN; KRONBORG; MARCH—APRIL 1772

  COPENHAGEN; APRIL 28, 1772

  COPENHAGEN; APRIL 28, 1772

  KRONBORG; MAY 27—30, 1772

  PART SEVEN ZELL; JUNE 1772—SEPTEMBER 1774

  HAMBURG; ZELL; OCTOBER 1774

  ZELL; LONDON; FEBRUARY—MAY 1775

  PART EIGHT

  ZELL; JUNE 1775

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright © 1968, 1969 by Norah Lofts

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Fawcett World Library

  67 West 44th Street, New York, NY 10036

  This edition published October, 1981

  Doubleday edition published, February 7, 1969

  A Fawcett Crest Book reprinted by arrangement with Doubleday & Company, Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 69-13645

  Most of the events here described actually took place: all but three of the characters existed. The book is based on facts taken from such sources as contemporary letters, memoirs, the Annual Register and other documents. For help in the research, and prticularly for providing excerpts translated from books not available in English, thanks are due to Miss Margery Weiner. Records are sometimes controversial; motives are often secret, private conversation seldom overheard. I have tried to make a coherent story, to attribute logical motives, and to provide likely conversation.

  ISBN-10: 0449221547

  ISBN-13: 978-0449221549

  FOR Eleanor Willy who suggested the theme, and died before she could read the story;

  FOR Robert, my husband, and

  FOR Pearl, my sister, who made complete concentration possible.

  THEIR BOOK.

  PART ONE

  KEW HOUSE; JANUARY 1765

  The Dowager Princess of Wales had long ago learned to control her voice, her facial expression, and her hands; but in anger or distress the pupils of her eyes widened, reducing blue to a mere rim.

  Caroline saw the danger sign and was not deceived whet Mamma said, mildly, “But, my dear child.” Her mother’s most stringent rebukes often began with an expression of endearment. Mamma could say, “My dear George,” and the say something which would make even George wince. George was twenty-seven years old and King of England. Caroline was thirteen; and she had just blurted out that she did not wish to be Crown Princess of Denmark.

  “But you knew,” the Princess said. “Negotiations have gone on for a year and you were informed, young as you were. If I remember rightly you taunted Augusta; you told her that she would be a Duchess and you would one day be Queen.”

  The taunt had been punished—rightly.

  “It did not seem real to me then,” Caroline said. “I was a child and to a child a year ahead is too far to be understood. It is...it is a little like death. We all know that we must die. One day. But nobody worries about it. It never seemed real to me, until yesterday when George announced it in his speech from the throne. And then I knew. I should be homesick that I should die.”

  The Princess gave a little laugh, dry but not entirely out sympathy. She had known homesickness herself.

  “I have yet to hear of a case of homesickness ending fatally. Princesses are born to be exiled. What is the alternative? Think of your aunts.”

  “Louise could go. Louise would very much like be...”

  “And do you imagine that had Louise been suitable you would have been chosen? Come, come, Caroline, I credit you with more sense. With Louise there would have been delay: the marriage could have taken place immediately, which would have been a great advantage. But the climate in Denmark is more rigorous than that of England, and Louise does not enjoy your good health.”

  The simple, brutal fact was that there were indications that Louise would never bear a child; and princesses were born not only to be exiles, but to be brood mares.

  And in the girl now standing before her the Dowager Princess saw every promise and thought to herself that the King of Denmark, and his son, Denmark itself, had been singularly fortunate. Caroline did credit to her mother’s unorthodox beliefs as to how children should be brought up; plenty of good plain food, plenty of exercise in the open air, early to bed and early to rise, freedom, simplicity, and behind it all the firm hand, the watchful eye.

  At the age of thirty-eight the Princess of Wales had been widowed, eight living children and the ninth, Caroline, due in four months. Not a pleasant or easy situation, but she had made her stand. Her children should have nothing to do with the Court where their grandfather, George II, dallied with his ugly mistresses, and his ugly but clever wife, Caroline, tolerated licentiousness; they should be brought up in purity and innocence in the country at Kew, and told that their father had been a paragon of virtue. Even George, thirteen when his father died, was young enough to be susceptible to references to the dead man—”Your Papa would be much grieved,” or “Greatly pleased,” or “Would say.” She had deluded them all without for a moment ever being deluded herself; Frederick, Prince of Wales, though possessed of a vagrant charm, had been frivolous, a gambler, a lecher, a runner up of debts; his death was timely; a bad influence removed before it had corrupted the children; no more infidelities or extravagances.

  The Princess was pleased with her life’s work; George was as different from his father and grandfather as a man could be. He was, naturally, her favorite, though she always concealed the fact. Of her daughters she loved Caroline best, partly because she did most credit to the rules under which she had been reared. She glowed with health; there had never been any need to pin a sprig of holly to her breast in order to make her hold her head high. And her spirit was as strong and lively as her frame. She appeared to have realized at quite an early age that strictness did not imply lack of love and sympathy. In Caroline’s present position Augusta would have sulked, Louise would have wept. Caroline had come along and said in her blunt, forthright way—so oddly pleasing to her au
tocratic mother—exactly how she felt.

  She must, of course, be talked out of this absurd attitude.

  “If you think a little, Caroline, you will see that you are very fortunate. Christian is young and, I am told, very handsome. Also, being your cousin, he may well resemble you in disposition and share your love of horses and music and books.” The Princess made the last statement in a particularly firm voice, almost defiantly. She had seen enough of marriages between people closely related to doubt their wisdom, but there was no help for it. Religion was to blame; Protestant must marry Protestant, Catholic, Catholic, so choice was restricted and inbreeding inevitable. “There is this to remember, too. You are not the daughter of a reigning monarch, only the sister of one. To become Queen of Denmark and Norway is rather more than one would have hoped for you.”

  “I know. The truth is, Mamma, I have no particular wish to be a queen. I know I taunted Augusta, but that was half-teasing. And it was a year ago. All those ladies in waiting and people fussing round, saying what stockings, even, one should wear; that wouldn’t suit me at all. And I know now that the idea of being married does not appeal to me either.”

  Ha! the Princess Dowager said to herself: Now we come to the nub of the matter.

  “Have you received a letter from Augusta that I have not seen?”

  “From Augusta, Mamma? I have never received a letter from anyone that has not been seen by you.” And Augusta’s letters, ever since her marriage a year ago—matter-of-fact epistles with a faint undertone of boasting, how many presents she had been given, how many entertainments had been arranged in her honor, what a wonderful place Brunswick was—had, no matter to which member of the family they were addressed, been intended to be shared by all, and had been so shared.

  “I merely wondered whether Augusta had written her bridal letter to you.”

  “Her bridal letter, Mamma?”

  “Sooner or later most brides write one. Often in the first week, to their mothers, asking for pity, which is not forthcoming, since the mother, obviously, has been a bride herself and survived. Others wait awhile and then try to frighten some ignorant young girl by warning her of the tortures of the marriage bed. Is that what troubles you? Has some indiscreet, self-pitying female...” At the thought the cold, relentless anger of the self-controlled woman moved like a snake in the Princess’s vitals. “Who was it?” Whoever it was should pay for this infringement of a mother’s rights. In her own time, and in her own words, she was prepared to give the necessary, the minimum information. Who had forestalled her?

  Her eyes had darkened again and her youngest daughter, well trained in every trick of self-control, the sneeze which could be prevented by the firm pressure of a little finger to the upper lip, the tremor of the legs controlled by clenched buttocks, like nut-crackers, the blush defeated by drawing a deep breath and holding it while one counted up to ten, the belch disguised by a discreet small cough, said, “Mamma, I do not know what you mean.”

  But she did; because of Alice.

  Two years and six months before Caroline was born the Princess of Wales had wakened in a dark December night and heard a piteous mewing sound somewhere in or around the house in Leicester Field where she, her husband, and family had moved in to keep Christmas. Search had revealed a baby on the doorstep, newborn, naked, enclosed in the kind of basket used for the delivery of fish. The Princess was not a believer in indiscriminate charity, she thought that most professional beggars were frauds, but, like many other ladies of quality she was interested in and patronized the properly conducted homes for foundlings. To the one in St. Giles the abandoned baby had been dispatched, given the name of Alice, and reared. The Princess had always shown a special interest in the child who—but for her determination to find the origin of the piteous noise—would have died, and when Alice was twelve, she had made a place for her in her household. Alice became a runabout maid. Nobody who had not been a member of a royal, or even semi-royal household could understand how much people like Alice contributed to the comfort of their employers. Precedent and protocol had reached the point where the King of England coming back from a theater, hungry and thirsty, could, lacking an Alice, go hungry and thirsty to bed.

  Soon after her arrival in the household, Alice was called upon to take a part in some play which the royal children were performing and showed herself to be a natural actress. After that she often took part in their games. The Dowager Princess actually preferred her children to associate with Alice than with those more nearly their equals who tended to be sophisticated before their time and given to gossip. Alice had been brought up in a good Christian home, had never run the streets, learned bad language or undesirable habits. When they played at charades, as they often did, the child found Alice most useful; she had the gift of invention.

  It was Alice who had told Caroline and Louise how babies were begotten and born. Unwittingly she had done so in best possible way, in the plainest terms without coyness prurience, making it sound as simple and straightforward using a tinder box to make a light. Louise said, “I don’t believe it, Caro. She made it up. Think how good she is at charades.” But Caroline had believed and accepted the facts. It sounded slightly undignified, but after all Mamma must have gone through the whole process nine times and her dignity was unimpaired.

  But Alice, before revealing this secret about which such a mystery was made, had sworn them to secrecy—cross my heart and hope to die! It was therefore necessary to deny all knowledge.

  Mamma said, “I am glad of that. At the right time I shall tell you all that a girl needs to know. Now, we have agreed that you will be homesick, but that you will outlive. You are not frightened of marriage, not knowing what it means. So what is all this about?”

  Outside the windows, in the fading light of the January afternoon, Kew garden lay under snow; the evergreen trees wore snow like a blanket; every leafless twig wore a frill of white. But yesterday, before the snowfall, the lilac buds had shone green on the boughs and the tips of daffodils green in the soil. The snow would melt, the sun would shine, season would follow season. And I not here!

  But there was more to it. Fanciful and inexplicable. In the moment when she had realized that her future was decided, that she would be married, be a queen, be homesick, son thing else had happened, something for which there were no words. She had been able to come and say to Mamma that she did not wish to go to Denmark, or to be married, or to be a Queen with even her stockings chosen for her. But how could she explain...Denmark—not a place on the map, a place where she would be a wife, and if God willed, a mother, and eat and drink, sleep, ride, walk, but a place of threat, of looming, inescapable danger. It had happened inside her head, in less than a moment, between two breaths, and it was like a bad dream which had broken away, shown itself in the full light of day and then vanished. A gray sea, a gray sky, and between them, darker gray turrets and cupolas, and a sense of terror and loss. It had no connection with anything, it had a nightmare quality—though she had been wide awake, sitting next to her favorite brother, Edward, Duke of York, admiring George, thinking how well he looked in his robes, how clearly and firmly he spoke, and knowing that presently her name, her betrothal, would be mentioned. She had faced the certainty of homesickness and her distaste for the process that Alice had so succinctly and bluntly described and known that they could both be borne. But this was a different thing altogether.

  She had thought about it, all through the evening and the first wakeful night she had known except when suffering from toothache. And now she had appealed to Mamma, giving all reasons except the true one. And quite rightly, in her usual way of cutting through any obscure or evasive talk, Mamma had asked. What is all this about?

  A leaden sea and a leaden sky; an island, with towers, some sharp, some rounded—I saw it as clearly as I see you now—and I was afraid...

  And fear, in itself, was new to her; she had never been afraid of the dark, or of spiders, of breaking her neck turning somersaults, of heigh
ts, of bad-tempered dogs or difficult horses. She was not, as most people were, afraid of Mamma; she wished not to displease, but when on occasions displeasure and punishment had fallen upon her, she had not been intimidated, looking upon them as part of ordinary daily life.

  Nothing like this—a fear that had struck, left its mark, and now defied description. Even as she tried to put it into words it eluded her. She said with what appeared to be wooden obstinacy,

  “I don’t want to be sent away, or to be married, or be a queen, or go to Denmark.”

  “And that,” Mamma said, “brings us to where we started.”

  There was a short silence during which they regarded one another steadily. Not only my healthiest daughter, the Princess Dowager thought, and the highest-spirited, but far and away the best looking. Beautiful; a perfect complexion, remarkable eyes, large, vividly blue and dark-lashed; while her hair was so fair, a true silver-gilt, that on formal occasions it would need only the lightest of powdering; the figure not yet fully formed, but very graceful. Wasted on Denmark, really Empress, Queen of France...Staunch Lutheran as she was the Princess regretted for a moment the religious barrier. Then, returning to practical things she recognized one possible drawback in Caroline’s physique; already, at thirteen and a half, she was rather tall for her age. And Christian of Denmark was said to be small.

  Caroline braced herself for one last effort.

  “Suppose I said I couldn’t, wouldn’t go?”

  The Princess’s eyes darkened again, but she spoke amiably. “You would bring ridicule upon George who has trouble enough already, what with the Whigs and Wilkes and those dreadful colonists in America. You would wreck England’s foreign policy. You would break my heart.”