[132] Though the treaty was signed in 1768, the actual exchange of territory between Russia and Denmark was not carried out until some years later. The original understanding was that it should wait until the Grand Duke Paul attained his majority and gave it his sanction.
The King and Queen remained at Traventhal nearly a month in seclusion. The Queen was left without any of her ladies, and nearly the whole of the King’s suite had gone too. Except for Bernstorff, who was kept that Struensee might have an eye on him, the King and Queen were surrounded only by the favourite and his creatures. At Traventhal Struensee was very busy maturing his plans. In concert with Rantzau and General Gahler, an officer of some eminence who had been given a post in the royal household, Struensee discussed the steps that were to be taken for overthrowing Bernstorff and the other ministers, and reforming the administration. There is nothing to show that the Queen took a leading part in these discussions, though she was of course consulted as a matter of form. Unlike her mother, the Princess-Dowager of Wales, or her grandmother, the illustrious Caroline, Matilda cared nothing for politics for their own sake, but she liked to have the semblance of power, and was jealous of her privileges as the reigning Queen. When she had a personal grievance against a minister, as against Bernstorff, she wished him removed, and when she was thwarted by a foreign influence, as in the case of Russia, she wished that influence broken; but otherwise it was a matter of indifference to her who filled the chief offices of state, or whether France or Russia reigned supreme at Copenhagen. Her good heart made her keenly solicitous for the welfare of her people, and some of the social reforms carried out by Struensee may have had their origin with the Queen; but for affairs of state in the larger sense Matilda cared nothing, and she lent herself blindly to abetting Struensee’s policy in all things. In complete abandonment she placed her hands beneath his feet and let him do with her as he would. Her birth as Princess of Great Britain, her rank as Queen of Denmark and Norway, her beauty, her talents, her popularity, were valued by her only as means whereby she might advance Struensee and his schemes.
Rumours of the amazing state of affairs at the Danish court reached England in the spring of 1770, and before long George III. and the Princess-Dowager of Wales were acquainted with the sudden rise of Struensee, and the extraordinary favour shown to him by the Queen. They also heard of the check which Russia had received at Copenhagen, and the probability of Bernstorff (who was regarded as the friend of England) being hurled from power to make room for the ambitious adventurer. Too late George III. may have felt a twinge of remorse for having married his sister against her will to a profligate and foolish prince, and sent her, without a friend in the world, to encounter the perils and temptations of a strange court in a far-off land. Moreover, the political object for which Matilda had been sacrificed had signally failed. The marriage had in no way advanced English interests in the north. Russia and France had benefited by it, but England not at all. Now there seemed a probability that, with the fall of the Russian influence at Copenhagen, France, the enemy of England, would again be in the ascendant there. Both personal and political reasons therefore made it desirable that some remonstrance should be addressed to the Queen of Denmark by her brother of England. The matter was of too delicate and difficult a nature to be dealt with satisfactorily by letter, and there was the fear that Struensee might intercept the King’s letter to the Queen. Even if he did not venture thus far, he would be sure to learn its contents and seek to counteract its influence. In this difficulty George III. took counsel with his mother, with the result that on June 9, 1770, the Dowager-Princess of Wales set out from Carlton House for the Continent. It was announced that she was going to pay a visit to her daughter Augusta, Hereditary Princess of Brunswick.
Royal journeys were not very frequent in these days, and as this was the first time the Princess-Dowager had quitted England since her marriage many years ago, her sudden departure gave rise to the wildest conjectures. It was generally believed that she was going to meet Lord Bute, who was still wandering in exile about Europe; some said that she was going to bring him back to England for the purpose of fresh intrigue; others that she was not returning to England at all, but meant to spend the rest of her life with Bute in an Italian palace. Against these absurd rumours was to be set the fact that the Duke of Gloucester accompanied his mother, and more charitable persons supposed that she was trying to break off his liaison with Lady Waldegrave, for their secret marriage had not yet been published. Some declared that the Princess-Dowager and Queen Charlotte had had a battle royal, in which the mother-in-law had been signally routed, and was leaving the country to cover her confusion. Others, and this seemed the most probable conjecture, thought that she was going abroad for a little time to escape the scandal which had been brought upon the royal family by her youngest son, Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland.
AUGUSTA, PRINCESS OF WALES, MOTHER OF QUEEN MATILDA.
After a Painting by J. B. Vanloo.
The Duke of Cumberland was the least amiable of the sons of Frederick Prince of Wales. Physically and mentally he was a degenerate. Walpole pictures him as a garrulous, dissipated and impudent youth, vulgarly boasting his rank, yet with a marked predilection for low society. Unfortunately he did not confine himself to it, but betrayed to her ruin a young and beautiful woman of rank, the Countess Grosvenor, daughter of Henry Vernon and wife of Richard, first Earl Grosvenor. Lord Grosvenor discovered the intrigue, and brought an action of divorce in which the Duke of Cumberland figured as co-respondent. For the first time in England a prince of the blood appeared in the divorce court, and, what was worse, cut a supremely ridiculous and contemptible figure in it. Several of the Duke’s letters to the Lady Grosvenor were read in court, and were so grossly ill-spelt and illiterate that they were greeted with shouts of derision, and furnished eloquent comment upon the education of the King’s brother.[133]
[133] Lord Grosvenor got his divorce, and the jury awarded him £10,000 damages, which the Duke had great difficulty in paying, and George III., much to his disgust, had to arrange for settlement to avoid a further scandal. So base a creature was this royal Lothario that he abandoned to her shame the woman whom he had betrayed, and scarcely had the verdict been pronounced than he began another disreputable intrigue.
It was easy to imagine, had there been no other reason, that the Princess-Dowager of Wales would be glad to be out of England while these proceedings were being made public. The King, who lived a virtuous and sober life, and his intensely respectable Queen Charlotte, were scandalised beyond measure at these revelations, and the possibility of another, and even worse, scandal maturing in Denmark filled them with dismay. At present the secret was well kept in England. Whatever the English envoy might write in private despatches, or Prince Charles of Hesse retail through his mother, or the Princess Augusta transmit from Brunswick respecting the indiscretions of Matilda, no whisper was heard in England at this time, outside the inner circle of the royal family. Therefore all the conjectures as to the reason of the Princess-Dowager’s visit to the Continent were wide of the mark. The real motive of her journey was not even hinted.