CHAPTER THE TENTH.

1782 to 1785.

COPENHAGEN.

THE first letters which my grandfather wrote from Copenhagen in the winter of 1782 and 1783 give an agreeable account of his impressions of the place. Even through the clouds and mist of winter he gazed with pleasure on a fertile and undulating country, a sea alive with shipping, and a handsome capital surrounded by country residences standing in wooded and picturesque parks. The contrast offered by such scenes to those he had lately left was sensibly grateful to him; and when in July 1783 he returned from the painful agitations of Berlin to his beautiful villa at Christiansholm, it seemed to him like "a haven of peace to a shipwrecked mariner.”

He appears to have been at once cordially received into the society of the Schimmelmanns and Reventlows,1 families allied by ties of blood and by congenial tastes and pursuits, and frequent mention is made by him of their delicate kindness to himself, and of the resources he found in their attractive society.

1 The readers of the Memoirs of Perthes will be familiar with several accomplished members of the above-named families.

Other friendships he owed to his intimacy with Countess Bentinck-a very remarkable old lady-who resided at Hamburg, and whose unblemished life and strong mental powers had made her the respected centre of a distinguished circle. My grandfather had made her acquaintance during the many visits to Hamburg which in the early years of his residence at Berlin had afforded him rest and relaxation. She had been the confidant of his love-story; in her later letters she confesses that often, while sitting with him in her garden at Elmsbüttel, listening to the delicious pictures of an ideal happiness of which he, " le cœur rempli d'un espoir bien doux," anticipated the realisation in his future home, she had asked herself, with fear and trembling, if it were indeed possible that a female character such as that described to her could "come out of Nazareth?" and had prayed that even such a miracle might be worked in favour of her friend-" un être composé d'esprit et de cœur."

When Mr. Elliot first learned the circumstances which made the immediate removal of his child from his wife's care a matter of urgent necessity, it was to Countess Bentinck that he turned for help and assistance, and, throwing himself on her generosity, he implored her to give his child temporary protection should anything happen to him, or should obstacles be raised to his removal of her from the country. This appeal was received by his venerable friend as a most gratifying proof of the confidence with which her character had inspired him; for not only did he know

her to be a near relation of the man who had so sorely injured him, but to be connected with him by other ties-Baron Kniphausen's mother having, on her deathbed, left him, with others of his family, to the tender care of the Countess Bentinck, whose sister, I believe, she was. Mr. Elliot's trust was amply justified by the tenderness with which Madame de Bentinck responded to his request; and not only did she promise his child such love and care as she would have given to her own, but she placed her château of Doorwerth, in Guelderland, at his disposal, should he think it a safer refuge than Hamburg for his infant daughter.

As we have seen, however, Mr. Elliot succeeded in carrying her out of Prussia without coming into collision with the Prussian Government, and Countess Bentinck tells him in one of her letters, immediately after his return to Copenhagen, that the King not only did not blame his conduct, but that, on the contrary, he had said: "Qu' Elliot étant père, était louable d'en avoir les entrailles," and that all the royal indignation was directed against the officer in charge of the gates who had been taken by surprise by Mr. Elliot's sudden revelation of himself. Hence a very severe ordonnance had been published, to the vexation of all subsequent travellers, who were to be submitted to "une inquisition de Goa" before passing the gates of Berlin.

To Countess Bentinck's good offices, Mr. Elliot was indebted for the friendship of her nieces, Countess de Wedel and Countess de Holstein-Letraborg. Of the first of these ladies she says, "Elle a des qualités rares dans

toutes les cours, et serait digne d'être Angloise-ou même Romaine par son caractère serieux et digne." Of the Countess of Holstein she gives a more elaborate and very charming portrait. "Once a charming girl, she is now an incomparable wife and mother, living only for her family and friends. She goes rarely to Copenhagen, and it would be as hard for you to wean her from her happy simple tastes, as for the Spaniards to take Gibraltar from the keeping of your kinsman." She had a peculiar claim to the interest of an Englishman, having been strongly attached to the unfortunate Queen Matilda, who selected Countess Holstein for the painful duty of attending her in her terrible journey to Stade. The Countess, though barely three weeks had passed since her confinement, would not disobey the orders of a princess whom she adored, though she could not always approve, and together they nearly perished by the way in a violent tempest. "Elle s'est fait sa gloire," says her aunt, "of being the last Danish lady who conformed to the royal prohibition against wearing the order by which Queen Matilda had decorated the ladies whom she especially distinguished by her favour."

The first court reception, or " appartement" as it was called, at which Mr. Elliot assisted, is described by him as brilliant and striking, though on general occasions the vast apartments were ill lighted and worse filled-neither courtiers nor candles being sufficiently numerous for their large dimensions.

The Royal family consisted of the King, Christian VII. (who had married and divorced Matilda of England,

sister of George III.), of his stepmother, Juliana Maria of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, widow of Frederick V., of her son Prince Frederick and his wife, and of the young Prince Royal and his sister-children of the King and of Queen Matilda. The Prince Royal was, at the time of Mr. Elliot's arrival in Denmark, a slight slim boy of fourteen, of noble and easy carriage, "very like his English relations." The Princess, "a little fairy, having, at the age of ten or eleven, possessed herself of all graces and all charms, dancing, talking, and holding her circle in perfection."1

The circumstances under which my grandfather made his début in the society of Copenhagen were not such as to dispose him towards taking an active part in its pleasures; for" when the stormy rain was past, the drops remained still."

Dispirited and suffering in body as well as in mind, he held aloof as far as was compatible with his position from the world around him, and occupied himself with "his child, his books, and his thoughts." He relates with pride the growth of his little girl's vocabulary, and the increasing intelligence of her remarks; and the " dear

1 She was born a few months before the Revolution took place which cast her mother from the throne, and the nursing and rearing of this infant had been the only comfort of Queen Matilda during her melancholy confinement at Cronburg. She afterwards said that the parting with her child was the severest pang she felt, when removed from Den. mark to a safer and more dignified prison in her brother's castle of Zell. Some years after her death, Coxe, the traveller, was told at Zell by an eye-witness of the fact, that the Queen constantly apostrophised and wept over the portraits of her two children, for whom she retained to the end of her life the warmest affection.