[81] Suffolk’s despatch to Woodford at Copenhagen, December 15, 1772.
[82] Woodford’s despatch, Copenhagen, December 2, 1772.
[83] Ibid., December 8 and 29, 1772.
[84] Andreas Peter Bernstorff, nephew and successor of the famous minister, who became foreign minister on the disgrace of Osten in 1773 and resigned in 1780. He was recalled by the Crown Prince when Regent, afterwards Frederick VI.
[85] Woodford’s despatch, May 1, 1773.
Queen Matilda was exceedingly touched by the way in which she was received by the townsfolk of Celle, and as the days went by she more than confirmed the first impressions they had formed of her, and won the affection of all the inhabitants from the highest to the lowest. Celle now, as then, is a quiet little town, with quaint old houses and irregular streets, and no description could convey a complete idea of its homelike charm. The houses are not built with the magnificence of those of Lübeck or Brunswick, whose style they resemble, but on a more modest scale. Most of the old houses date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with high-pitched, red-tiled roofs, and with huge wooden beams built into the walls, and the intervening spaces filled up with brickwork or clay. Here a window, there a doorway or gable-end, calls up the glamour of the past. The outside walls of the old houses are often painted with figures, vines, grapes, oak-leaves, and so forth, while the beams, sills, ties and other woodwork are enriched with carvings showing quaint devices, or texts or mottoes—sometimes humorous and sometimes pious.[86]
[86] The town of Celle has altered very little since Matilda’s day. It has grown towards the south, and is now the seat of the higher provincial tribunal of the province of Hanover. The town has nearly twenty thousand inhabitants.
The Queen walked almost daily about the town, generally attended by only one lady. She went freely in and out among the people, making purchases in the shops, visiting the poor and sick, comforting them with kind words and deeds, and taking a sympathetic interest in everything that concerned them. In her intercourse with the townsfolk of Celle she showed herself opposed to all pride and etiquette, and did her best to bridge over the gulf which separated the classes even more in the eighteenth century than to-day. It was known that she had her sorrows, but she never complained, and conducted herself with a gentle kindness which won all with whom she came into contact. She found great consolation in the society of her former friend, Madame de Plessen, who, soon after she had been banished from Copenhagen, took a house at Celle, and who now renewed her friendship with her young mistress. Matilda never rode, fond though she was of that exercise, and though horses in the royal stables were at her disposal. But she drove occasionally in the country around Celle, which was not very interesting, being for the most part a flat plain varied by clumps of birches, firs and patches of heather. Her farthest excursion was to Hanover, whither she went at long intervals on visits of some ceremony.[87]
[87] Malortie II., Beiträge zur Geschichte des Braunschweig-Lüneburgischen Hauses und Hoses.