Copenhagen held high festival for a week after the royal wedding, and the populace as well as the court joined in the festivities. There was a gala performance at the theatre including a “Felicitation Ballet,” in which there were many pretty allusions to the young Queen, who was styled Venus or “la plus belle”. Two days after the marriage the knights’ hall of the Christiansborg Palace was the scene of a wedding ball. Queen Matilda opened the ball by dancing a minuet with the King with much grace and spirit. She then honoured the English envoy, Gunning, by commanding him to dance with her—a very natural proceeding, for she wished to pay honour to her native country. But it gave offence to some of the other foreign envoys present, especially to the Spanish minister, who was the doyen of the corps diplomatique at Copenhagen, and he reported the circumstance to the Spanish court, who later demanded an explanation.[73] Nor was this the only unpleasantness at the ball. After supper the kehraus, a Danish country dance, was danced, and one figure was danced in procession. The kehraus was led by Prince Charles of Hesse and his wife, the Princess Louise—probably because they knew all the figures. The King came next with the Queen, and all the rest of the company followed, two and two. The King, who had supped freely, was in boisterous spirits, and called out to Prince Charles: “Lead the kehraus through all the apartments”. The Prince therefore led the procession through the rooms on the first floor of the palace, the band, presumably, going before. The procession of laughing and dancing men and women followed, until they came to the ante-chamber of the Queen’s apartments. At the door of the Queen’s bedchamber Prince Charles found Madame de Plessen standing like a dragon in his path. Imperiously she waved him back, and declared that his entrance would be an outrage, alike on etiquette and decency. But the King, whom any opposition goaded to anger, shouted: “Do not heed an old woman’s nonsense! Go on! Go on!” Therefore Madame de Plessen, still expostulating, was thrust aside, and the procession danced through the Queen’s bedchamber, and so back to the ballroom.
[73] Gunning’s despatch, Copenhagen, November 18, 1766.
THE MARRIAGE BALL OF CHRISTIAN VII. AND QUEEN MATILDA IN THE CHRISTIANSBORG PALACE.
From a Contemporary Print.
These incidents, trivial though they were, revealed the rocks ahead in the way of the young Queen, and showed that no common care would be necessary to avoid them. As the English Secretary of State, Conway, wrote to Gunning not long after Matilda’s arrival at Copenhagen:—
“Her Majesty is entering upon the most important era of her life, and at a tender age is launched, as it were alone, into a strange and wide ocean, where it might require the utmost care and prudence to steer with that nice conduct which may at once conciliate the affections of her court and people, and support the dignity of that high station to which Providence has called her”.[74]
[74] Conway’s despatch to Gunning, St. James’s, November 18, 1766.