Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/151

 Caroline she was a stickler for etiquette, her conversation was as unrefined as her spelling was incorrect, but for these defects she need not be held responsible. She had a broad wit of her own, which she exercised freely on both friend and foe. She was not averse to the ordinary amusements of her times, and it was the king's taste which condemned her to spend most of her evenings 'knotting' and listening to his objurgatory talk. But she learnt to study other characters besides her husband's, and became, as Sir Robert Walpole phrased it, 'main good at pumping.' She was a good hater, as Chesterfield and others found; she was a faithful friend, and full of active sympathy for the unprotected. Her greatest error, as Horace Walpole truly observes, was that she cherished too high an opinion of her own power of dealing with others, so that her designs were more often seen through than she thought. Her greatest merit, and the source of the power which she wielded during a hard and joyless reign for the benefit of her husband and of the British nation, was her patience—the patience of a strong and not ungenerous mind.

The National Portrait Gallery contains a portrait of Caroline as Princess of Wales by Jervas, and another of her as queen by Enoch Seeman.

 CAROLINE MATILDA (1751–1775), queen of Denmark and Norway, was the ninth and youngest child of Frederick and Augusta, prince and princess of Wales. She was born at Leicester House in London, 22 July 1751, a little more than four months after her father's death. Her childhood was spent in the comparative seclusion of her mother's court, where she was well, though we may conclude by no means rigorously, educated. Pleasant traditions attach themselves to this period of her life, at Kew and elsewhere. It came to a close with her engagement, announced to parliament 10 Jan. 1765, to Christian, prince royal of Denmark, son of Frederick V and his popular first wife Louisa, youngest daughter of George II of Great Britain. The match seems to have given satisfaction in England as 'adding security to the protestant religion;' but it possessed no special political significance. By the death of Frederick V, 14 Jan. 1766, Christian VII succeeded to the Danish throne, and 1 Oct. in the same year Caroline Matilda was married to him by proxy (her brother the Duke of York) at the Chapel Royal, St. James's. Two days afterwards she embarked from Harwich for Rotterdam, whence she proceeded to Altona and Roeskilde. From this place Christian VII conducted her to the palace of Frederiksberg, near Copenhagen, where her solemn entry and formal marriage followed 8 Nov. (Annual Register for 1766;, ii. 63-9). Her English and Hanoverian suite having quitted her at Altona, Caroline Matilda was left alone in a strange land among doubtful surroundings. Her popular reception had been warm; but the king was indifferent to her. Christian VII, a youth of feeble character and selfish disposition, was by self-indulgence beginning to reduce himself to a mental condition which in some measure justified Niebuhr's comparison of him to Caligula. Next by birth to the throne stood his stepbrother Frederick, the son of his father's second wife Juliana Maria, a princess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. There is no reason whatever for supposing that Juliana Maria was either now or for some time afterwards animated by jealous or hostile feelings against the young queen (this supposition, of which the Authentische Aufklärungen are a main source, is refuted by, 327, and by the other evidence reviewed by , 185-8); on the contrary, they and the other queen dowager, Sophia Magdalena, widow of Christian VI, lived together 'dans une grande intimité et dans un ennui paisible' (, 138). Queen Caroline Matilda took no interest in public affairs (ib. 162; cf., 26). Though she was from the first treated with coldness by her husband, her troubles began when Count von Holck, by taking advantage of the peculiarities in the king's temper, established himself as favourite; on 21 Dec. 1767 he was appointed marshal of the court. On the king's return from a journey to Holstein in the previous summer, on which he was not accompanied by the queen, he