QUEEN MATILDA.
From the Painting formerly at Celle.
The Queen’s favourite walk was in the French garden outside the town—so-called because it was planned out after the fashion Le Nôtre had set at Versailles. The paths ran in straight lines between avenues of lime-trees and clipped hedges, something after the manner of Herrenhausen, but smaller. The French garden was public to the town, and in her walks there Matilda made many friends. She often conversed with the townsfolk, walking there, with such affability that they were speedily put at their ease, and became convinced that the Queen’s friendliness was not feigned, but true and natural. She was especially fond of children, and rarely passed them without a kind word; almost every day the school children were able to tell their parents that the “good Queen,” as she was everywhere called, had talked to them. She often invited children to a little party at the castle, where all sorts of things were done to give them pleasure; sometimes she would go to the parents of quite poor children in the town and ask them to spare her their little ones for a few hours.
The Queen was never so happy as in the society of children, and her great grief was her forced separation from her own; she was never heard to regret the loss of her throne or the brilliant life of courts, but she frequently bewailed the loss of her children. Juliana Maria was determined to prevent every means of communication between the exiled Queen and her children, and for good reason. The secretary at the British Legation writes of her “apprehension” that the Crown Prince “might one day revenge the injurious treatment his royal mother had undergone”.[88] It was with much difficulty that Matilda at last obtained from Copenhagen a picture of her little son. She hung it in her bedroom, immediately facing her bed, and often gazed at it longingly. Once when she was repeating some verses to the picture, she was surprised by the Baroness d’Ompteda. The Queen repeated the lines, which she said she had altered to suit her sad case:—
Eh! qui donc, comme moi, gouterait la douceur
De t’appeller mon fils, d’être chère à ton cœur!
Toi, qu’on arrache aux bras d’une mère sensible,
Qui ne pleure que toi, dans ce destin terrible.[89]
[88] J. J. Haber’s despatch, November 27, 1773.