"Pray, sir," the messenger asked, "is not the King of Denmark in your house?"
"The King of Denmark? No, sir, only a Mr. Frederikson."
"That is the king, the son of Frederick V. The gentleman with him is Count Holck, master of his Majesty's wardrobe, and I am sent by the Princess Dowager of Wales with orders to deliver this letter into his Majesty's own hands."
The confusion of the merchant and his wife at the dénouement may safely be left to the imagination. The former disappeared, but the good-natured king, forcing a ring on the fat finger of the latter, and desiring her to tell her husband that Christian would never feel offended at what he had said confidentially to Mr. Frederikson, skipped down stairs, laughing heartily at the adventure, and regretting that it had been so suddenly terminated. Such is the story as it is told, and I can only add, that si non è vero, è ben trovato.
Walpole, who was prejudiced against Christian, probably because, at the king's request, he sent him a collection of the Strawberry Hill books, and received no answer,[72] gives a very bitter account of him in his reign of George III., although there is a certain amount of truth in it. He says that the Danish king was in reality an insipid boy; and there appeared no cause for his expensive ramble, though to support it he had laid a tax on all his placemen and pensionaries. He took notice of nothing, took pleasure in nothing, and hurried post through most parts of England without attention, dining and supping at seats on the road, without giving himself time enough to remark so much of their beauties as would flatter the great lords who treated him. This indifference was excused in a whisper by Bernstorff, his prime minister, who attributed it to his Majesty's extreme short sight, which Bernstorff confessed was the great secret of the state; yet Walpole allows that the king's manner was very civil, and though his person was diminutive and delicate, he did not want graceful dignity.
The natural good nature of the English made them give the most favourable construction to the motives of the king's travels, which were, in fact, the natural consequence of his giddiness and levity. Whatever he seemed desirous of seeing, and all the inquiries worthy of a monarch who seeks for instruction and improvement in the arts, civilisation, and government, were suggested by Count Bernstorff, the only man of merit and genius in his retinue. His own inclination led him to plays, operas, balls, and excursions of pleasure into the country, in which amusements a sovereign may indulge occasionally, when they are intended as a relaxation from the grand objects of useful study and information.
According to a well-informed author,[73] Christian, while in London, was gracious and accessible, but without discernment and without dignity. The very citizens of both sexes, who resorted daily to his apartments to see him dine in public with his favourites, mistook him more than once for a young girl dressed in men's clothes, whose conversation and deportment commanded neither respect nor attention.
Really the unhappy Danes had some cause for grumbling that their hard-earned money was squandered in so very useless a fashion.