The Queen's Lover (35 page)

I
N
1800
MY MOTHER DIED
, a loss that I can’t pretend afflicted me deeply, for we were never close. I had been far more sorrowful, earlier that year, about the health of my sister Sophie, who had been very ill with influenza, and whose demise would have killed me. Sophie and I had become even more deeply bonded since Marie Antoinette’s and Taube’s deaths. Since our childhoods we’d had no secrets from one another, had shared all sorrows and joys, and now we lived exclusively for each other. Sophie was my All. Her children, to whom I was devoted, might as well have been my own, and when her daughter Edwig, a maid of honor at court, found herself pregnant, I offered her a handsome wedding and provided the young couple with a good living. “Ah my tender Sophie,” I had written her after Marie Antoinette’s death, “since destiny assails us with its cruelest blows, let us live to recall our joys and console each other for our sorrows.”

Sophie and I had decided to live at Blasieholmen, in the stately Stockholm home, directly across from the Royal Palace, in which we had spent our childhoods. We were much similar to each other physically: known as the handsomest woman in Stockholm, Sophie was almost as tall as I was, and, so it was said, equally haughty. Both of us were fastidious about our domestic surroundings, both of us were lazy about tending to anything that did not totally enthrall us, both of us were indefatigable travelers and not truly at home anywhere in the world. We were twin images of each other. Referred to as
“le couple
Fersen,” we were looked upon with admiration or animosity, seldom with indifference.

King Gustav Adolf spent several months of 1804 traveling in Germany, and upon returning called me in to offer me the post of Chancellor of the Realm. The position, frankly, scared me. I feared that my assuming it might greatly harm relations between Sweden and the French
Republic. After so antagonizing Napoleon, how could I, Fersen, possibly deal with Sweden’s foreign policy? Bonaparte was marching from victory to victory, and Gustav Adolf was planning to draw closer to France. Besides, I wished to preserve my freedom, and the position was too time-consuming; I would only accept one that would allow me several free months a year to travel. The king considered these objections for a few days, and called me back in. The courtiers waiting outside of the king’s apartments fully expected the chancellor of the realm to walk out of the room; but instead they saw…the grand marshal of the kingdom.

I would later learn that the Duchess of Södermanland, who unlike her husband was fond of me, had doubted whether I was up to the job of being chancellor. “He loves his comfort too much to hold a post that demands that much time and application,” she wrote. “Moreover, his clearly French manners would not be suitable.”

I was fairly mortified by the duchess’s words, but started working hard at my new position, which consisted of taking care of every detail of the king’s palaces, down to the supervision of the royal stables and of household supplies. I went at the job with great diligence, as I had at my work at Uppsala, surveying financial accounts, tracking down thieves of royal silver, counting the coffee spoons of the royal dinner service, while dreaming of my next trip abroad. I thus had occasion to observe the king closely. He was growing more erratic, brusque, and rude than ever, most particularly toward the foreign diplomatic corps. I was startled by his indolence, his lack of ability for matters of state, and his refusal to abide by etiquette. Sophie and I were so struck by his uncouthness, in fact, that we had never once invited him to dine at Blasieholmen, which in retrospect might have been a serious mistake.

In the mid-1800s I left for another grand tour in the company of Sophie, her daughter, and her son-in-law. Among the domestics who accompanied us was a notoriously fine French chef, Pierre-Felix Berger,
who would often write his family about the pride he took in serving a gastronome as reputed as I was. “I can not tell you how affectionate [my master] is with me,” Berger would write about me in a letter to his brother. “He is Sweden’s greatest lord, well known in France…. He loves me as if I were his own child…. [At his home] I am well lodged, well heated, served by my own domestic, who takes care of my clothes, cleans my room, makes my fire…. I cook at least fifteen courses at lunch and at dinner, other times as many as thirty or forty courses.” Both Berger and I, understandably, suffered exceedingly from gout, and exchanged remedies for it in a spirit of great intimacy. I was as popular with my servants as I was unpopular with Stockholm’s bourgeoisie, among whom I had an increasing number of enemies.

L
ET ME NOTE
that amid all these travels, diversions, responsibilities, I never failed to commemorate the death of my cherished Marie Antoinette. “Losing
Her
remains the greatest grief of my life,” I wrote in my journal a decade or so after the queen’s death, “and my sorrows will only abate when I die. Never have I felt so powerfully the emotions I had for Her, and never have I loved Her as much.”

While traveling with Sophie and her party I continued to pursue this beloved shadow, and took turns visiting all those of Marie Antoinette’s sisters who still survived: Archduchess Elizabeth, the lofty abbess of a convent in Innsbruck; Maria Amalia, Duchess of Parma, who reiterated the gratitude she felt for my devotion to her sister; and Maria Carolina, future queen of Naples, the sibling Toinette had been closest to, and who received me with particular affability. They painfully evoked my great love through their proud, majestic carriage. I found that the towns and principalities over which they reigned, and others I visited, had been devastated by
le mal Français
. Traveling to Florence, which I’d seen flourishing years earlier under the reign of Marie Antoinette’s
brother Grand Duke Leopold, I found it pillaged by Bonaparte’s troops. I proceeded to Rome, where I had an audience with Pope Pius VII, whom I found to be living in a state of great poverty, as were most of Vatican City’s denizens, who foraged for bones and shreds of vegetables thrown out of windows by the privileged few. I was saddened and angered by the way in which Europe had been impoverished by the French Revolution, and continued to be deprived by the devil Bonaparte.

While in Italy love interests continued to take up my time. Marianne La Grua, now delivered of her child, appeared in Rome, and swore to me that I was the only man she held to her heart. I did not believe a word of this, but played along with her delusions until I met Princess Yekaterina Nikolaevna Menshikova, a Russian belle whose qualities matched those of any French woman I’d known. “Ketty,” as I called you, what treasures I encountered in your arms! You were small and as delicately modeled as a Meissen figurine, but oh the softness, the creamy softness of your skin! Your golden hair, when you untied it from its formal braided chignon, cascaded to below your hips. I enjoyed wrapping those satiny strands about my private parts, thus providing an additional layer of silkiness for my exquisite entrances and exits. You put your mouth to my nipples, suckling them like a babe, and that too was a novel sensation I found paradisiacal.

I had seldom witnessed so many qualities—beauty, amiability, sensuality—united in one woman. But our liaison lasted only six months, for Ketty had to return to her husband in Russia. “I’ve always had to be separated from those I love,” I wrote Sophie; “It seems to be part of my destiny to never be happy.”

Returning to Stockholm after my last grand tour with Sophie, I found some consolation in a romance—a platonic one, for once!—with a neighbor of mine at Lövstad, Emelie Aurora De Geer. A few years earlier, when her mother had died, Emelie had renounced her position as lady-in-waiting at court to dedicate herself to her family estate, which
adjoined mine. Emelie was a delicate, willowy brunette with huge, pale blue eyes and a waist so tiny that my hands could almost span it. I’d admired her beauty, intelligence, and dedication, and did all I could to help her with her domestic affairs. We were often separated by my frequent trips to Stockholm, and our relationship was close enough that we wrote each other almost daily when I was in the capital. Though I continued my lifelong wariness of marriage, the beautiful, virginal Emelie would consider nothing less. We became even more closely bonded when, upon her father’s death in 1809, I was named one of her guardians. So there we were, vaguely affianced. For a variety of reasons, I kept postponing a definitive offer of marriage—emotional exhaustion, a fear of abandoning the sweet accumulated habits of a lifetime….

Upon returning to Stockholm I found the king to have grown even more irrational. He kept talking about being visited by the White Lady, a spectral character of Swedish mythology whose appearances bode bad luck to those who saw her. Upon his bouts of foul humor, which could last for days, he lashed out at everyone and sought every pretext to be aroused. He became so enraged, for instance, upon hearing a page coughing in the vestibule that he wanted to send him to jail. Nevertheless, I had to accept a new and important charge from him: that of overlooking the education of his son, a frail child, Gustav, now three years old.

Yet despite this important duty I remained
“L’Étranger
” to most denizens of Stockholm. Notable citizens were barely civil to me at social gatherings, and even cut me off at dinner parties. I started pondering the fact that I had always tried to
impress
others, but had never in my life tried to be
liked
. I had never cared. This was part of the Fersen pride. My father had been the same way, haughty and aloof, and had led a magnificent life…. At times I thought I should try a new tack, be obliging, engaging, prepossessing. Those who had known me long and well, after all, had just that view of me. I took solace in a letter I was shown, written years earlier by the Duchess of Södermanland, who had this to
say about me: “He is the most honest and loyal of friends. He’s a true royalist and is ready to do anything for his king; he tried to rescue his benefactor Louis XVI and suffered much as a result. He is too proud to be intriguing, he expresses his opinions frankly and fearlessly, he suffers in silence and never utters a critical word. He is full of tact…. He is not any haughtier than anyone needs to be to inspire respect.”

Amen and much gratitude, I say to a friend who truly understood me.

T
HE POLITICAL CLIMATE
in Sweden was growing increasingly troubled. Gustav IV Adolf was becoming a more and more implacable, tenacious enemy of the French Republic, and one event particularly increased his ire: in early 1804, in revenge against an attempted royalist coup planned by the Comte d’ Artois, Bonaparte masterminded the murder of the Duc d’Enghien. D’Enghien, son of the Duc de Bourbon-Condé, a cousin of Louis XVI, had emigrated with his father at the outbreak of the Revolution and settled in Baden. Upon hearing a false rumor that d’Enghien was preparing a coup to depose him, Bonaparte, then first consul, had him kidnapped by his police and brought to the castle of Vincennes, where a court-martial was hurriedly gathered to try him. D’Enghien was convicted of bearing arms against France, and was shot a few days after his arrest, thus putting an end to the house of Condé. This transgression of Bonaparte’s caused his foreign minister, Talleyrand, who had opposed the prosecution, to make a typically sardonic comment: “It’s worse than a crime, sire, it’s a mistake.”

The indignation provoked by d’Enghien’s murder spread throughout Europe, and few monarchs were more aroused than Gustav Adolf, who swore vengeance against all things French. He ordered all French residents of Stockholm—including diplomats—expelled from the capital; all French books and magazines were burned; no event occurring in
France was allowed to be mentioned in the Swedish press. To make things worse, Gustav Adolf had fallen under the influence of a self-styled prophet who, basing himself on the Apocalypse, had persuaded him that Bonaparte was the Antichrist and that he, Gustav Adolf, was the prophet destined to abolish him. When, later that year, Bonaparte proclaimed himself emperor, the king of Sweden persisted in referring to him as “Monsieur Bonaparte,” refusing to recognize him as monarch of France.

Although wary of such excesses, I kept advising my king to pursue resolutely antirepublican principles. And my own attachment to royalist causes would remain undiminished. In 1805 I began to see more of Louis XVI’s two brothers, who had sought exile in various European countries. The Comte d’Artois received me with the greatest affection. The Comte de Provence, or Louis XVIII, as he called himself, was piqued at me because I’d discouraged him from settling in Sweden, which would have gone against our principles of neutrality; but he continued to flatter me, as he did most people whose help he might eventually need. I dined almost every night at the table of the “King of France,” as Provence also referred to himself, and returned his invitations at my home with a magnificence that was well noticed. I found erudition and wit in Provence, but too weak a character for the kingly role he aspired to, and a tendency to drink too much. I esteemed Artois as somewhat superior to his brother, and found him very matured by his unhappy exile. However great the joy I experienced in visiting these princes, it was troubled by the memory of the tragedies visited upon their brother and sister-in-law.

I
N THOSE YEARS
Gustav Adolf’s personal conduct continued to grow increasingly bizarre. He threw away his sword and his uniform, donned a bourgeois frock coat and gray trousers, and grew a mustache, which
none of our kings had ever done before. He alienated the emperor of Prussia when he returned the Prussian Order of the Black Eagle on the grounds that the emperor had accepted the Legion of Honor from the French government. (“It is impossible to calculate the consequences of this insult,” I wrote a friend, “which is in fact a harsh criticism of other nations.”) Aware of the fact that he was greatly disliked in his capital, Gustav spoke of retiring to Moravia, or to the southern province of Scania. He began by seeking refuge in the royal castle of Gripsholm, where he kept total silence, not even speaking to his wife, and communicating with his aides solely by writing. He exclusively bonded with Gripsholm’s inept, boorish caretaker, another self-styled psychic who spoke solely of ghosts and specters. Upon spending a few days at Gripsholm, I was dismayed by the funereal atmosphere of the court. Dinner was announced as a battle might have been, by a guard with a saber at his side. The dishes were few and poor, the women dressed in severe gray dresses; I recognized only one or two courtiers of Gustavus’s time. How I missed my dear friend, that king! Even though he’d made some political mistakes, how nostalgically I recalled his intellect, his grace and polish, his faultless aesthetic, his charm and warmth and wit!