The Court in the Countryside: Privacy and Political Sociability in the Suburban Villas of Copenhagen’s Late Eighteenth-Century Court Elite

Abstract

In the early modern period, country house areas developed on the outskirts of resident towns throughout Europe. During summertime when the royal court withdrew from the capital to its summer palace, higher-ranking members of court would also retire to the suburbs. For members of the diplomatic corps or high nobility, keeping up with the politics and sociability of court life was crucial, even in the warmer months. The countryside was a recreational space, and the political function of the suburban villa was therefore different from that of the town. The suburban villa was characterised by a relative simplicity and intimacy in appearance, yet it was a highly political arena. Court members and royals were free from their urban duties, having retired to the privacy of the countryside, but this article argues that the political sociability of court life continued, adapting to a different setting. Indeed, the suburban villa was a space where relationships could be deepened, or vital political matters discussed on more private terms. Court members went on carriage rides, held pique-niques or even balls during these stays in the suburbs, often employing for political purposes the connection between privacy and sociability that was intrinsic to countryside existence. The article discusses the experiences and agency of men and women, and the dynamics of court and countryside on the outskirts of the Danish capital of Copenhagen in the late eighteenth century.

When summer descended on the capitals and courts of eighteenth-century Europe, members of the court and urban elite would retire from the city for the summer. To some members of court, this meant withdrawing to their country homes in distant parts of the country, attending to matters of management of land and harvest on grand estates.¹ For other members of the elite, the summer was a time for traveling to visit friends and family, or for going to the spa.² For those who needed to stay near the capital and the machinations of court and administration, the suburban villas were a space in between the countryside and the city. Suburban villas could be found on the outskirts of London, Paris, Stockholm³ — or near Copenhagen, where these villas were located in an area today known as Klampenborg or Lyngby, on the northern periphery of the capital.⁴

Withdrawal to the countryside usually took place by the month of May, when the summer heat would start to kick in. In May 1784, a Danish noblewoman, Frederikke, countess von Reventlow (1747–1822), wrote of her stay in one of these country villas: ‘What is country living in such proximity to court life? There is talk of sociability, tours de plaisir — I am already yawning at the thought! Gêne and ennui are inseparable from life at court.’⁵ Frederikke was the wife of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Christian Ditlev, count von Reventlow. Just one month prior to writing this letter, her husband, along with a group of noblemen in their thirties, had been involved in a bloodless coup d’état at the Danish royal castle, Christiansborg. This group of elite men and women with the surnames of Reventlow, Schimmelmann and Bernstorff were the new group in power, in their capacity as advisers to the sixteen-year-old Crown Prince who was now in charge with absolute powers.⁶ Court life therefore took on a new significance that summer, leading Frederikke Reventlow to notice its influence on her country existence.

Leaving the city to go to the country was part of the annual rhythm of court life, the idea of withdrawing to the country being to withdraw from court, leaving the city and political life behind. It was time to enjoy fresh, country air in more natural and effortless surroundings. The suburban villa held within it a contradiction, however, as it was still located in the proximity of the city, and often close to the suburban homes of other members of court. The perceived relaxation, or privacy, of country living, was contradicted by the demands of being near to the centre of power. Later that summer, Frederikke Reventlow noted having attended court at Frederiksberg, the royal family’s summer residence, where she had enjoyed herself rather well.⁷

Taking as a starting point Frederikke Reventlow’s question, ‘What is country living in the proximity to court life?’, this article will examine the suburban villa as a space of perceived privacy and political sociability for the Danish court elite in 1780s and 1790s Copenhagen. Through a discussion of the social life of the elite during those months of the year when courtiers lived in the countryside, this article explores how the elite’s informal networks and social events were practised in an informal setting and on an everyday basis, when removed from the formal etiquette of court itself. Was the suburban villa inherently an informal space, and how did this space relate to the capital and court, vis-à-vis the country house or manor? Did men and women use and practice their social life in the setting of the suburban villa differently, when they occupied different positions of formality at court?

The first part of the article delves into how the suburban villa was perceived as an informal space for relaxation and pleasure. The second part explores those events or balls that did take place in the suburban villa, and an important royal privilege and leisure activity associated with residence in the countryside: the hunt. Finally, I will discuss informal meetings with members of the royal family taking place in the setting of the suburban villa. The study presented here is built on extracts from more than 3,000 pages of correspondence from the women of the Bernstorff-Schimmelmann-Reventlow elite circle of advisers to the Crown Prince. A 1784 bloodless coup d’état had installed Crown Prince Frederik as the de facto ruler of Denmark-Norway on behalf of his father, King Christian VII, who was ill and unfit to rule — however, the Crown Prince was not officially regent, so the King remained the formal head of power. The coup had removed from power the King’s stepmother, the Dowager Queen Juliane Marie (1729–96), and halfbrother, another Frederik (1753–1805), known as the Hereditary Prince because he was next in line to the throne before the Crown Prince came of age. In their capacity as royal family members, the Dowager Queen and the Hereditary Prince remained a part of elite social life in the countryside.

The recipient of the majority of the correspondence between the royal advisers’ wives was Louise, countess von Stolberg (1746–1824), sister of the two ‘reformer group’ political figures Christian Ditlev Frederik Reventlow (1748–1827) and Johan Ludvig Reventlow (1751–1801). Louise Stolberg’s vast collection of correspondence was discovered by the historian of literature and archivist Louis Bobé around 1900. Together with one of her brothers’ descendants, Christian Einar, count von Reventlow of the Brahetrolleborg Estate, Louis Bobé collected the Reventlow family circle’s correspondence and published excerpts of it in ten volumes of Efterladte Papirer fra den Reventlowske Familiekreds (1895–1931).⁸ Today, the letters have been handed over from the Brahetrolleborg Estate to the Danish State Archives, where they are kept in bound volumes. Another collection of correspondence used here is also to be found in the Danish State Archives; namely the letters of two other members of the faction later known for its introduction of various reforms: Charlotte, contess von Schimmelmann (1757–1816) and her husband, Ernst, count von Schimmelmann (1747–1831). Dating from the years 1784–1800, the correspondence highlights the social practices of the court elite, providing insight into how men and women participated in the informal sociability of life in the countryside.⁹

Petites Maisons and Political Sociability

The suburban villa as a rural retreat for the city’s intellectual and political elite can trace its history back to the rural villas of the Roman senators.¹⁰ The petite maison or maison de plaisance was noted by Jacques-François Blondel in his 1771 architectural treatise on French architecture as a house ‘for pleasure and liberty’, underscoring its purpose of relaxation.¹¹ Escaping the gêne and ennui of city life, as mentioned by Frederikke Reventlow in 1784, was one of the aims of retreating to one’s suburban villa. Claire Ollagnier, in a 2016 dissertation and article, has highlighted the petite maison as a space for a relaxed sociability and even communal bathing, arguing that the petite maison heralded a ‘revolution in sociability’ — that this was a space for informal, enlightened sociability.¹² As Antoine Lilti has shown, the petites maisons were where the fashionable elite withdrew from the salons of Paris, to engage in informal dinners and intellectual exchanges or to host theatre plays that had been transformed from the grand stages of the capital to informal social activities for the elite, who would also take on roles and participate in the plays themselves.¹³

Suburban villas also populated the outskirts of eighteenth-century London, where Jon Stobart has examined their functions and ties with the country estate.¹⁴ The suburban villa was not an economical unit in the manner of the country house or estate, but Stobart and Ollagnier both note that it did sometimes have a dairy or other facilities for producing food. Links with the country seat were signalled through its staff and their uniforms, or by the provisioning of food for the villa from the countryside.¹⁵ The suburban villa was, however, often simpler in style than town houses and country seats. It rather signalled its status through the visitor’s awareness of its owner’s other homes; this building might not include guest rooms for visitors to stay in overnight, because it was an extra home.

Though the villa was located in the countryside, its proximity to the city was a key feature. Hannah Greig and Amanda Vickery, in a recent article on ‘The Political Day in Georgian London’, have demonstrated that eighteenth-century politicians spent strikingly little time in Parliament; instead, these male political figures would go ‘knocking on doors’ or attend morning levers at the town houses of other members of the elite, before attending events at court later in the day, thus delineating a political space that was wider than Parliament, but centred around the capital and in certain elite neighbourhoods.¹⁶ Drawing on Elaine Chalus’ work on elite women’s political sociability,¹⁷ their study raises the question: What may be considered as political practices, when a member of Parliament spent most of his time engaging in the same social activities, within the same social spaces, as did his disenfranchised female partner?¹⁸

The Danish monarchy was among the most centralised and authoritarian kingdoms of Europe, but at the same time, it was the first state in the world to implement a legally bound, unrestricted freedom of the press, which has recently been explored by Ulrik Langen, Frederik Stjernfeldt and Henrik Horstbøll.¹⁹ This freedom was restricted in 1773, but a relatively open political debate was allowed through the 1780s and 1790s, as progressive agrarian reforms were implemented on estates owned by members of the court nobility.²⁰ Danish and Norwegian researchers have shown that lower-ranking government officials, such as pastors and clerks, contributed to public debates through public discussion and patriotic societies.²¹ The sociability of the elite, and how political matters were discussed and criticism aired within the ranks of courtiers, government officials and their social circles, has received less attention. Examining how this court elite performed their summertime sociability in the rural suburbs of Copenhagen therefore offers an opportunity to extend our understanding of the dynamics of court life and political culture in a strictly absolutist setting.

Elaine Chalus and Antoine Lilti have both combined an interest in spaces and political practices in their work on elite women’s sociability in French salons and British political circles.²² Taking their use of the concepts ‘political sociability’ and ‘salon diplomacy’ as a point of departure, this article will investigate the suburban villa or petite maison as a political space in late eighteenth-century Denmark, arguing that this space with its innate connotations of informality, was an integral part of the spatial repertoire of Copenhagen’s court elite, for both men and women.

Copenhagen’s Northern Suburbs

The suburban villas of the Danish eighteenth-century elite were located on the northern outskirts of Copenhagen, the Danish capital. Reaching from the banks of the Furesø lake, where the Dowager Queen Juliane Marie’s summer residence Sorgenfri marked an eastern endpoint near Kongens Lyngby; bordering to the north on Dyrehaven, the royal hunting grounds at what is today Denmark’s most expensive municipality, Gentofte; and touching the coastal line of the Baltic Sea at Klampenborg, this ten kilometre stretch of land on the northern outskirts of Copenhagen is still today a green, hilly and forested landscape where the homes of the elite may be found dispersed among the trees.²³ Members of the elite who were not members of court might also own a country villa. Indeed, the present-day prime minister’s official residence at Marienborg is situated across the road from Sophienholm, the eighteenth-century suburban home of Frederick de Coninck, a merchant who made his fortune on the ‘flourishing trade’ of Danish neutral foreign policy in the 1780s and 1790s.²⁴ Frederikke Reventlow’s own suburban home at Christiansholm was owned by finance minister Ernst Schimmelmann.²⁵ He himself inhabited the adjacent Sølyst with his salonnière wife, Charlotte Schimmelmann.²⁶ The foreign minister, Bernstorff, had his summer residence at Bernstorff Castle, in the vicinity.

After the April 1784 coup d’état, the new political leaders of the Danish-Norwegian realm retired from the tense political climate of the capital to their suburban villas. Charlotte Schimmelmann also commented on the mobility of the Dowager Queen, who had been disconnected from power by the coup and now had to leave court: ‘She went down on her knees, [begging] to be able to stay with the King over the summer. It is now her greatest interest in this world. She has been abandoned by everyone, even her own son [the ‘Hereditary Prince’, ed.] would gladly throw her on the rocks’. The Foreign Minister and the Crown Prince refused to grant this wish, and the Dowager Queen soon had to leave the capital.²⁷ Charlotte Schimmelmann’s comment had an ironic association to it, as the name of the Dowager Queen's royal residence was ‘free from sorrows’, Sorgenfri. The Dowager Queen’s closest adviser was sent by the Crown Prince and his advisers to Aarhus on the Jutland peninsula, several days’ journey away from the capital, thereby excluding him from participation in the social networks and political conversations of court.²⁸ That the Queen herself was withdrawing to Sorgenfri, however, implied that she would still to some degree be able to participate in court life. In a situation where the Crown Prince had not yet married, nor had any children, the Dowager Queen and her son still held apartments at the royal castle.²⁹ During summertime, from April or May through to September, the royal family members would all take up residence on the outskirts of Copenhagen. The Crown Prince preferred the castle of Frederiksberg. The Hereditary Prince would stay at Sorgenfri with the Dowager Queen in the summer, and in wintertime the Dowager Queen retired to Fredensborg, about 30 kilometres north of Copenhagen.³⁰ Their court and members of Copenhagen’s nobility, merchant elite and diplomatic corps spent their summers in the countryside along with the royal court.

The Social Circles of the Suburbs

The change of scenery at the suburban villa also brought with it a changed perception; in April 1789, Charlotte Schimmelmann described her suburban villa at Sølyst as ‘green’, opposing it to the ‘brown dullness’ of Copenhagen. The trees and bushes of her garden at Sølyst are often mentioned in letters written from her suburban villa.³¹ The suburban villa was juxtaposed with life in the city; writing about the green garden at Sølyst, Charlotte Schimmelmann also told her correspondent that she had come to Sølyst to relax after hosting a dinner in the city. The dinner guests had been members of the international diplomatic corps, including the Dutch representative to Copenhagen, the Swedish ambassador and the Russian ambassador’s wife, and the party had discussed whether Sweden would declare war on Denmark.³²

The spring of 1789 brought with it a tense domestic political climate; it was a season in which Charlotte Schimmelmann’s own political circle had launched a set of land reforms and reforms of the Danish educational system that would meet with fierce opposition over the summer. This situation was augmented by a foreign political matter: an intensifying conflict between Sweden and Russia, which had been exacerbated by the now twenty-year-old Crown Prince going on a military campaign in the borderland between Sweden and Norway, threatening to bring Denmark-Norway into the war, and bringing the English ambassador to Denmark to try to negotiate between the parties.³³ After navigating this intense situation over dinner with the diplomatic corps, the Schimmelmanns left the city the next day and went to their suburban villa.³⁴ Like the country house or manor, the suburban villa was in opposition to the city; a space associated with nature’s calm and with an informality that differed from the formal matters discussed at the previous night’s dinner.

Was the suburban villa then a more private space? The Schimmelmanns left the capital to relax after hosting a dinner in the city in April, but later that year, Charlotte Schimmelmann participated in a dinner hosted by Cardito, a diplomat representing the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies at Copenhagen. Cardito was staying at Frederiksberg for the summer, so he was close to the Crown Prince who governed as regent.³⁵ Though the court may have moved to greener surroundings, the social circles of the elite seem to have remained intact; Charlotte Schimmelmann participated in the same social circles as members of court and the international diplomatic corps, much as she did in the winter season in the city.

Conversation continued to centre on political and diplomatic matters: Cardito’s dinner had included four French participants, who had shared their eye-witness accounts of the Revolution with the guests. The English envoy had been present, listening to the news, and Charlotte Schimmelmann asked her friend and correspondence partner to pass on the news to the Danish ambassador in Berlin.³⁶ Collecting information and building networks were diplomatic tasks, and as a salonnière in the city, Charlotte Schimmelmann not only regularly received diplomats for dinner, she would also discuss political news and diplomatic matters with them.³⁷ Antoine Lilti’s examination of Parisian salons has shown that diplomats used the salon as a space to collect information from each other and from members of court. Spending the summer at suburban villas and country houses in the same areas outside of Paris was, moreover, important to members of the elite, notes Lilti.³⁸ In the case of the Danish court elite and the salonnière Charlotte Schimmelmann, the sociability of the salon would move to the countryside along with its regular participants.

The social practices and habits of this elite group may, however, have differed between court and countryside: Charlotte Schimmelmann’s sister noted in her pocket diaries that the French ambassador had issued an invitation for a pique-nique, a new form of relaxed sociability that was becoming fashionable in the late eighteenth century.³⁹ This new sociability, Claire Ollagnier has argued, was associated with nature and therefore well-suited for the context of the suburban villa. Ollagnier connects this sociability to the mixed company of artists — writers, actors and philosophes — and members of the Parisian elite.⁴⁰ This is in line with Anne Scott Sørensen’s argument about the Schimmelmann suburban villa, Sølyst as a ‘Laterna Magica’, a social hub where artists such as Jens Baggesen and Adam Oehlenschläger met with their patrons, Ernst and Charlotte Schimmelmann.⁴¹

The two artists in question do mention visiting the Schimmelmanns at Sølyst in the early 1800s in their memoirs.⁴² Taken together, these activities point to Sølyst as a suburban space where the Schimmelmanns would meet with their protégés, supporting the thesis of Sølyst as a space of the new sociability that Ollagnier and Scott Sørensen have found.

The original quote is, however, aimed at a different kind of sociability, namely that of entertaining the corps diplomatique, the foreign diplomats in Copenhagen: ‘Who do I see? I see so many different persons, really, we receive many diplomats. Krüdener comes quite often, the French were here yesterday […] right now, my brother is writing to me that van der Goes will arrive, that he has been named ministre [ministre plénipotentiaire, ed.] here’. The letter’s date states that it was written from Copenhagen, in November 1796, so not from the suburban villa at Sølyst [referred to as Seelust in the, otherwise French, letters, indicating that their author also spoke German]. Apart from that, this quote about the social habits of the Schimmelmanns couple also counters the argument that Sølyst and the Schimmelmanns’ sociability there only focused on patronage and a social circle of artists and poets. Instead the letter underscores the couple’s active participation in the political and diplomatic matters of court.⁴³

Charlotte Schimmelmann and Cardito, the Sicilian envoy, had both left the city to spend the summer in the countryside. At the beginning of the season, in April 1789, Charlotte Schimmelmann emphasised the calmness of Sølyst, but her letters from that summer’s stay outside the capital show that she continued to meet with foreign diplomats and collect information from them, on the movement of Swedish troops as well as on the French Revolution, as was the case at the dinner at Cardito’s. The sentence in her letter about contacting the Danish ambassador to Berlin is not included in the publication of Charlotte Schimmelmann’s letters from the early twentieth century.⁴⁴ This detail indicates that the salonnière was collecting information from the diplomats, underscoring that even though the court had moved to the more relaxed context of the countryside, an informal sociability involving diplomats, salonnières and members of court and the royal family persisted.

Privacy and Leisure? Promenades, Hunting and Physiognomie

Spending summer on the outskirts of the capital also provided time to enjoy nature and deepen political relationships. The April 1784 coup d’état was followed by a hot summer, during which Charlotte Schimmelmann spent time at Sølyst promenading with her husband, and with foreign minister Bernstorff and the rest of their group of noblemen and women who surrounded the crown prince as the country’s new regent. One such afternoon was spent at Bernstorff, the suburban home of foreign minister Andreas Peter, count von Bernstorff and his wife, where the group of advisers and their wives, including her sister, Sybille Reventlow, had taken their tea in the garden before returning to court, where the foreign minister was to attend a meeting of the Privy Council.⁴⁵ The informal activities of the suburbs were interwoven with the formal negotiations of court and Privy Council, and location therefore mattered.

For the male members of court, hunting was another informal leisure activity that could intersect with the formal machinations of court. Correspondence from Charlotte Schimmelmann and her sister, Sybille, Countess Reventlow, as well as Sybille Reventlow’s pocketbooks, shows that these women were also part of the hunting entourage, though their participation in the hunt itself is not entirely clear. Sybille Reventlow noted in her letters that she had driven a small carriage to join the Russian Count Razumovsky on his hunt.⁴⁶ Razumovsky was a Russian diplomat, who was travelling by land through Denmark on his way from Sweden to Saint Petersburg. He had rented an inn, Spring-forbi, in the northern suburbs, as his residence for the summer, hosting picnics and dinners from this location.⁴⁷

Sybille Reventlow and Charlotte Schimmelmann both socialised with Razumovsky during his stay in Copenhagen, and Ernst Schimmelmann invited the Russian to his other country home at Hellebæk on the northern coast of Zealand, where the men would go hunting for wild boars — or ‘ogres’ in Sybille Reventlow’s French correspondence — and the women joined the party. Sybille Reventlow emphasised the diplomat’s social qualities; this trip to the countryside would entail a certain degree of representation; a grand dîner, or formal dinner, and the great hunt, but it would also be an activity of leisure, to be undertaken in good company.⁴⁸ Like her sister-in-law Frederikke Reventlow a few years earlier, Sybille Reventlow noted the difference between the perceived leisurely living of the countryside, and the sociability that came with being part of court and the bon ton.

Razumovsky was not an already established contact with whom the Schimmelmanns and Reventlows would have sought to deepen their ties — but he was a representative of the great power of Russia, one of Denmark-Norway’s closest allies.⁴⁹ By inviting him on a hunt, an activity that ranged somewhere between pleasurable on one side, and pompous and representational on the other, the Danish royal advisers managed to represent their sovereign through the traditional royal right to hunt, while at the same time signalling the intimacy of the Russian-Danish relationship through engagement in leisurely activities such as hunting or picnicking in the natural surroundings of the countryside.

Promenades and countryside sociability were not only activities reserved for royals or diplomats. Charlotte and Ernst Schimmelmann also received visits from personalities such as a Mr Turpin, a Canadian explorer and fur trader, who promenaded along the coast of the Oresund with her, persuading his hosts to sing the French revolutionary hymn la Marseillaise. Though the finance minister and his wife were closely tied to the absolutist government, they managed to sing along to ‘Aux armes, citoyens!’, while standing on the beach with their Canadian visitor. ‘But please be quiet about this, the French have done almost everything that they say in this martial song!’, Charlotte Schimmelmann concluded her letter about the event.⁵⁰

Singing the Marseillaise with its call to arms would border on insubordination, and rumours had already cast Charlotte Schimmelmann as a revolutionary just a few weeks before Louis XVI’s execution in January 1793 — leading the minister’s wife to fear retribution.⁵¹ In spite of her anger at these rumours, Charlotte Schimmelmann still sang the Marseillaise along with her Canadian visitor a year and a half later at Sølyst, thus underscoring the character of this location as a liminal space, a sphere of intimacy and perceived privacy where revolutionary opinions could be sung out loud.

Another peculiar visitor in the suburbs was the Swiss Pietist writer, minister of the Reformed Church, and celebrity mystic, Johann Caspar Lavater, who visited Copenhagen in 1793. Lavater had been invited to Denmark by the Crown Prince and his wife, Crown Princess Marie Sofie Frederikke, and by the foreign minister and his wife.⁵² Members of court were enthralled by Lavater during a dinner at Bernstorff, the foreign minister’s summer residence; and Charlotte Schimmelmann invited the spiritual leader to visit her at Sølyst. Lavater was famous for his teachings on ‘physiognomie’, reading character traits from people’s looks.⁵³ His Sunday sermons drew crowds in Copenhagen, but the crown princely couple and their advisers kept their engagement with the mystic away from the royal castle and the Copenhagen court.⁵⁴ Their suburban homes at Bernstorff and Sølyst were more informal, and therefore probably more appropriate, spaces in which to meet with the mystic minister.

Charlotte Schimmelmann had to place a guard at the gate of Sølyst during Lavater’s visit, something that she would otherwise not do, ‘and still we were a group of more than 12 people, and that is really not how you should see Lavater’, wrote the social hostess, underscoring the word ‘see’.⁵⁵ The mystic’s truth-telling abilities — which consisted of looking at his client’s physical features — were tested first on Ernst Schimmelmann’s private secretary, Kirstein, then on the couple’s butler from their Copenhagen residence, before asking Lavater to apply his gifts to finance minister Schimmelmann and his wife.⁵⁶ The finance minister was deemed ‘a delight to his eyes’, while the mystic compared Charlotte Schimmelmann’s looks to his own — and finally, Lavater offered the finance minister couple an opportunity to speak truth to the Crown Prince before leaving:

L. [Lavater] said yesterday to my husband, Tell me if there are one or two things you would like me to say to the Crown Prince, that I, Lavater, can say to him because I will be leaving [again], because I come from Zurich, and because I will never see him again, tell me. (…) Isn’t that charming of him?

Though Charlotte Schimmelmann seems fascinated by this opportunity in her letter, she does not mention having given away any information, nor having asked Johann Caspar Lavater to utter any criticism of the Crown Prince.⁵⁷ The conversation with Lavater does, however, indicate that the setting at Sølyst was not just deemed ‘private’ enough to host dinners with mystics or receive revolutionary fur traders; the suburban villa was also a space where criticism of the absolutist power could be aired among the Crown Prince’s own political advisers. Lavater was praised by the Schimmelmanns for being a ‘freethinker and a democrat in the house of Bernstorff’, indicating that the preacher had uttered some critical opinions during his meetings with the foreign minister⁵⁸ — but the Schimmelmanns do not seem to have taken Lavater up on his offer. The discretion of conversations taking place at Sølyst was not unlimited, and neither was the tolerance for criticism under absolutist rule.

The bal à la jeunesse⁵⁹

The suburban villa was a space for elite sociability such as dinners, picnics, tea-parties and promenades held in a semi-private setting — and in spite of its smaller scale and simple decorations, the suburban home could also be used to host balls for members of the court. The Danish Finance Minister and his wife did host balls at Sølyst. In October 1793, Ernst and Charlotte Schimmelmann hosted a ball in honour of Louise Bernstorff, the foreign minister’s daughter.⁶⁰ The young woman was entering society that spring. At the same time, Charlotte Schimmelmann’s niece, her sister Sybille Reventlow’s thirteen-year-old daughter Charlotte was beginning to prepare for her presentation at court, which would happen a few years later. The young niece, called Charlottine (‘little Charlotte’) by the family, was already taking dancing lessons and preparing for her debut. Charlottine Reventlow would be allowed to participate in the ball in honour of Louise Bernstorff, thus connecting the Reventlow and Bernstorff families and their respective daughters’ entrance into society with the Schimmelmann’s who hosted the ball.⁶¹

The informal setting of the suburban villa seems to have lifted spirits. Members of court and the diplomatic corps had been invited to the ball, and Charlotte Schimmelmann recounted her success as a hostess, when senior members of government, including Christian Ditlev Reventlow, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had danced. Everyone had amused themselves, ‘turning younger with the young ones’, noted the hostess.⁶² The informality of the suburban villa created a less regulated space, perhaps, and by associating the ball with the young women’s debut at court, it may also have taken on an air of innocence, allowing the more adult participants to throw themselves into the dance. Links between sociability and political interest remained; the Crown Prince had danced with young Charlottine during the ball, an act that marked her family circle as his allies — her aunt noted that the young girl was popular in society and even the Crown Prince wanted to dance with her.⁶³ The girl may have been too young to be presented at court, but by using the suburban villa as a setting, her aunt had managed to prepare her debut into society, while also using this event to bring together courtiers, diplomats and royals under less formal circumstances.

The successful party had ended late. Although the Schimmelmanns had added a new ‘autumn wing’ to their villa at Sølyst in 1789,⁶⁴ the guests still had to return to the city, driving through the dark autumn night. Charlotte Schimmelmann wrote in vivid — and slightly nervous — detail about all the guests leaving the house at one o’clock in the morning, and that ‘the dancing caravan’ had experienced new adventures on its way back, as several carriages had slipped and fallen into a stream near Ordrup, outside of Copenhagen. One of the upended carriages belonged to the foreign minister, containing him, his wife and daughters. Luckily, none of the passengers had been hurt, and even the foreign minister, who was a man in his sixties and therefore senior in age and rank to the Schimmelmanns, had laughed at the event. The foreign minister was the leading member of government, frequently described as ‘premier ministre’ by foreign diplomats; the accident could have had serious consequences if he had been hurt. ‘We have nevertheless firmly promised never again to host a ball in the month of October’, ended the letter.⁶⁵

The suburban villa’s status as an informal space offered opportunities different from those at court. Its atmosphere of informality or discretion provided a space for singing the Marseillaise, or engaging with a mystic, activities that would have been deemed unacceptable or reproachable at court. The liminal privacy of the suburban space could also be used for political purposes, however; by hosting a ball in this context, Charlotte and Ernst Schimmelmann allowed their guests to put aside their formal titles and duties in a moment of dancing with the young. Despite this informality, Charlotte Schimmelmann’s comments on the Crown Prince’s choice of dancing partners, or the foreign minister’s health, affirm that the sociability of the suburban villa still had political implications. The ball’s male participants may have been relieved of their political duties in the suburban context, but the responsibilities of the female social hostess — organising the event, her attention to her guests’ actions and safe return to the capital — remained.

Royal Visitors

Members of the royal family could also use the informal atmosphere of the suburban villa to their advantage. The Dowager Queen, Juliane Marie, and her son, Hereditary Prince Frederik, had been excluded from influence after the 1784 coup d’état. Prince Frederik bore the title of ‘hereditary’, because he and his children still held rights of inheritance to the throne — he was, after all, the King’s half-brother and the King’s direct heir, the Crown Prince and his wife the Crown Princess, had only one living daughter, and several of her siblings had died in infancy. The Crown Prince’s sister and brother-in-law, the duchess and duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, usually referred to as Augustenburg, or Augustenborg in its Danish form, did not have any children, though they had been married for over ten years. The only male royal children were the Hereditary Prince Frederik’s, keeping him within the circles of power. This seemed likely to change in the summer of 1796, when the Duchess of Augustenborg gave birth to a daughter.⁶⁶ A daughter would not be able to claim the throne, but the childbirth proved that the ducal couple were able to conceive, and that therefore a rival male heir was a possibility.

Shortly after the child’s birth, Charlotte Schimmelmann received a set of prominent visitors at Sølyst. Firstly, the Hereditary Prince Frederik arrived with his children on a surprise visit. The Prince and Charlotte Schimmelmann promenaded in the park that surrounded the suburban villa and descended on the sea. The social hostess had then invited the Prince and his children home for tea. During their promenade by the sea, a messenger arrived, informing Charlotte Schimmelmann that an even more distinguished guest was waiting at the house; ‘our runner came, out of breath, to say that the Queen was at Sølyst, poor Ernst in his nightgown, with a quill in his hand, was forced to appear - - even though the queen had been told that the house was empty, she insisted on descending.’ Charlotte Schimmelmann, with the Prince as her aide, had driven back to Sølyst to receive the Queen. While the Dowager Queen and the Hereditary Prince belonged to a different court faction and had lost power to the Schimmelmanns, Bernstorffs and Reventlows in the 1784 coup d’état, the two royals now approached Charlotte Schimmelmann. She recognised their gesture, writing about the Dowager Queen, ‘heartily offering me her hand during our promenade, sitting in our midst on her bench - - she stayed until sunset and returned in an open carriage after a divine evening’.⁶⁷

This event is worth recovering because it reveals the tension between the suburban villa’s semi-private qualities and its proximity to court, a factor that could also turn it into a political space. When she surprised Ernst Schimmelmann in his nightgown — embodying the relaxation and restitution associated with retiring to the countryside — the Dowager Queen as a royal figure infringed on the perceived privacy of the suburban villa. Charlotte Schimmelmann’s account exposes the informality of the setting, while underscoring that the meeting was not planned by her. The Dowager Queen and Hereditary Prince had surprised the Schimmelmanns with the purpose of using the informal, natural surroundings to make a political proposal: the Dowager Queen both literally and figuratively offered her hand to Charlotte Schimmelmann during their promenade, offering reconciliation after twelve years’ opposition at court.⁶⁸ Sitting on a bench in the park, this negotiation was made almost in privacy (yet recounted in correspondence), perhaps as an attempt at saving face compared to seeking this alliance in front of the audience of the court.

Charlotte Schimmelmann described the Dowager Queen’s visit in positive terms, underlining the honour of her visit. Rank and honour dictated that the Queen should be treated with respect, yet Charlotte Schimmelmann’s letter also reveals that the royal visit had not been without its agenda. Her Majesty had ‘played us a mean trick, she declared that she will be giving a friendly dinner, on the birthday, next Thursday, of the duchess who has just given birth — and she insisted on our presence’.⁶⁹ The Dowager Queen had, in other words, used the informal and friendly connotations of visiting the Schimmelmanns in their informal surroundings — a gesture associated with intimacy and friendship — to force the finance minister’s wife to attend her dinner, keeping them from showing their allegiance to the Augustenborgs at the Duchess’ birthday. Etiquette and rank made it hard to refuse the Dowager Queen’s offer, which served to ensure that the guests would not be able to celebrate the Duchess and her new baby — ‘one is truly a victim of their niceties’, concluded the letter.⁷⁰

The dinner was, however, cancelled, as the Dowager Queen fell ill. Returning to the city in an open carriage had given her a cold, and Charlotte Schimmelmann now paid a visit to both royal women — the Dowager Queen in her sickbed, and Duchess Louise Augusta with her newborn. After paying her respects to the Dowager Queen, Charlotte Schimmelmann quickly wrote a letter to her contacts, reassuring them of the Queen’s health, and emphasising her interest in the Queen’s good health, ‘We would have been inconsolable, had her life ended after a visit at Sølyst, she was so graceful yesterday!’⁷¹ The Queen’s illness instead relieved Charlotte Schimmelmann of choosing between her dinner and the Duchess of Augustenborg’s birthday. If the Queen had died after a visit at Sølyst, this might have had political consequences for Charlotte Schimmelmann and her husband. Social activities, conversations and negotiations that took place in the perceived privacy of the suburban villa could have political consequences at court, but this time, the Schimmelmanns had managed to navigate between the political interests of the two royal women.

The Social Rhythm of Court Life

Even though a suburban villa might be close enough to the city to be used throughout the year, and even though the Schimmelmanns installed Swedish stoves in their house to heat it,⁷² Charlotte Schimmelmann’s letters also reveal that she had to follow the social rhythm of the court and return to the city, as the rest of elite society gathered in the capital. In October 1794, members of Copenhagen’s diplomatic corps were dissatisfied, as Charlotte Schimmelmann had not yet joined them in the city. She would usually host weekly dinners for the diplomats in the city. Now, the diplomats expected her to resume this practice:

the bad weather is making us think of [going to] the city, as Ernst does need to be on the big road so much, the Chr: Rev: [Christian Reventlows] are already there, and the B: [Bernstorffs] will return today — we are thinking of establishing ourselves there next Wednesday, the Corps [i.e., the diplomatic corps] is already rather disconcerted.⁷³

The suburban villa occupied a space of informality and intimacy reserved for summer, or for taking breaks from the rhythm of court life. The diplomatic corps and the duties of the city now called on Ernst and Charlotte Schimmelmann to return.

For Ernst Schimmelmann, these duties included his official title as finance minister and member of the Privy Council. For Charlotte Schimmelmann, her duties in the city would also entail elite sociability, as a participant in balls, dinners and visits, and as a social hostess giving dinners and receiving visitors at the Schimmelmann residence. In a formal sense, the leisure and privacy offered by life in the suburban villa was an experience mostly reserved for her husband, who could leave his job in the city. Elite women of the court were, on the other hand, almost professionally engaged in sociability, so while their husbands put aside their professional roles in the suburbs, the women remained in their gender-specific professional roles as social hostesses. For Charlotte Schimmelmann and the female members of court, suburban sociability was, on the surface, not very different — and yet the atmosphere and social life that unfolded in the countryside shows that it was a more intimate and informal space. Seeing the suburban villa through the lens of these elite women’s sociability, it emerges as a space where criticism could be aired or alliances sought, for male and female members of court — but due to its inherently informal status, women’s possibilities for speaking their opinions and participating in conversations with rulers, government members, diplomats and visitors, were perhaps greater than in the city, the playing ground being even more level with their male conversation partners.

Conclusion

The suburban villa was both a structure on the outskirts of the city and an integral feature in the rhythm of life at the Copenhagen court, where courtiers and the city’s elite left their urban homes to pursue a countryside existence during the months from May through September. The suburban villa was associated with a simpler lifestyle, but life in the countryside was not entirely calm and free from politics. Social activities in the countryside might take on a less formal character, yet those involved remained members of the court. Promenades were popular, and social events could take the form of a picque-nique or ‘fête paysanne’. Parties provided an opportunity to loosen attitudes, and even older ministers or diplomats joined the dancing at a youth ball at Sølyst. This informal occasion also offered a chance to display and strengthen intimacy and alliances — including with the Crown Prince, as the de facto ruler joined in the dancing. The season did, however, pose a limit to the use of the suburban villa — hosting a ball at Sølyst in October proved challenging, as the foreign minister’s carriage was upended in a forest stream on the way back to Copenhagen. The comfort of the suburban villa was compromised by the discomfort of transportation in the autumn and winter seasons.

The informal atmosphere of the suburban villa also provided a liminal space for its elite actors: opinions could be aired, relationships tested. The Crown Prince and the foreign minister and his wife invited the Swiss pietist writer and mystic, Johann Caspar Lavater, to Copenhagen in 1793, but in spite of the invitation being issued by these power figures themselves, they chose to meet with Lavater in the more informal setting at Bernstorff, the foreign minister’s suburban summer residence. Lavater’s truth-telling abilities, and the Crown Prince’s trust in this capacity, might be used to air critical thoughts to the absolutist ruler, but when offered this opportunity by the mystic, Charlotte and Ernst Schimmelmann refused. Though they had tested the limits of absolutist tolerance by singing the Marseillaise with a Canadian visitor, the suburban villa was not a space private enough to criticise the crown prince’s power and authority directly.

Knowing how to use the informality and perceived privacy of the suburban villa as part of the political game could be an advantage to courtiers and royals alike. Playing on the intimacy of relationships at the suburban villa, the Dowager Queen managed to force Charlotte Schimmelmann to choose between two royal factions, thus using the suburban villa as a space for negotiating power relationships and alliances at court. Though alliances and conversations took place under informal circumstances, they could have real consequences for audiences or relationships at court.

The perceived privacy of the suburban villa’s intimate atmosphere made it a perfect fit for the social repertoire of late eighteenth-century court culture, for men as well as women. The informality of the suburban villa meant that those elite men who participated in its balls, hunts, and promenades, were able to leave their titles and official roles behind, in the capital. It is my argument that the character of suburban social sociability enhanced the opportunities of elite women to participate in political discussion, deepen social relationships with royals and diplomats alike, and test the limits of critical conversation. The suburban villa thus provided a setting where high-ranking government officials and members of court were able to connect with foreign impulses and even seek inspiration that could be deemed politically controversial in other contexts. Examining the informal summertime rural sociability of Copenhagen’s court elite therefore contributes to our understanding of the political culture of the Danish absolutist monarchy and Scandinavian court culture, by demonstrating the essential interaction between court life in Copenhagen and the summertime sociability of the villas on its northern periphery.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kristine Dyrmann

Kristine Dyrmann

Kristine Dyrmann has a PhD in History from Aarhus University in Denmark. She holds a Carlsberg Foundation Visiting Fellowship at the University of Oxford (from 2022 to 2024) to pursue research on women’s diplomatic and political spaces during the Napoleonic Wars. Her PhD thesis (2021) explored women’s involvement in political agency in 1780s and 1790s Denmark-Norway. Her research interests include women’s and gender history, and informal diplomatic and political practices in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Her work has been published in 1700-tal: Nordic Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies; The Scandinavian Journal of History and The International History Review.

Notes

1 Hannah Greig and Amanda Vickery, ‘The Political Day in Georgian London, c. 1697–1834’, Past & Present (August 2021), pp.101-37.

2 Kristine Dyrmann, ‘Spa Diplomacy: Charlotte Schimmelmann at Bad Pyrmont, 1789–94’, International History Review, e-pub ahead of print, 21 June 2021. DOI:10.1080/07075332.2021.1934070.

3 I would like to thank My Hellsing for presenting a joint paper with me on the suburban villas outside Stockholm and Copenhagen at the Nordic Conference on Castles and Estates in 2019. I later presented my part of that paper at the Privacy at Court Conference in 2020, and I would like to thank Dustin Neighbors and the delegates of that conference, as well as those at the Nordic Historians’ Meeting in 2022, and the anonymous peer reviewers on this article for their feedback.

4 The Danish architectural historian Frederik Weilbach’s (1863–1937) overview of the suburban villas to the north of Copenhagen, ‘Nordsjællandske Landsteder i det attende Aarhundrede’, a special issue of Historiske Meddelelser om København (Copenhagen, 1926) still stands as the standard work on Danish suburban villas.

5 Chr. B. Reventlow, En dansk Statsmands Hjem omkring år 1800, vol. I: 1774–1800 (Copenhagen, 1902), p. 91, Frederikke Reventlow to Louise Stolberg, 25 May 1784.

6 Ole Feldbæk, Den lange fred 1700–1800, Gyldendals & Politikens Danmarkshistorie vol. IX (Copenhagen, 2003), pp. 234-7.

7 Reventlow, En dansk Statsmands Hjem, p. 92, Frederikke Reventlow to Louise Stolberg 13 June 1784.

8 I have discussed the collection, editorial choices, publication and subsequent historiography of Louis Bobé’s Efterladte Papirer fra den Reventlowske Familiekreds (10 vols, Copenhagen 1895–1931) in a previous journal article: K. Dyrmann, ‘Salondiplomati og politisk selskabelighed: Charlotte Schimmelmann i dansk historieskrivning fra Louis Bobé til New Diplomatic History’, 1700-tal: Nordic Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 1 (2020), pp. 99-124. The first volume of Charlotte Schimmelmann’s correspondence to Louise Stolberg, which may — presumably — have covered the years up to and including 1786, is missing from the archive, and I have therefore used Louis Bobé’s published excerpts of the letters from this period.

9 Charlotte Schimmelmann’s letters to Ernst Schimmelmann are held in the Schimmelmann Papers in the Copenhagen department of the Danish State Archives (hereafter DSA): Ernst Schimmelmann Archives: Correspondence with Schimmelmann’s two wives. For an extensive overview of the correspondence collections, see my PhD thesis, ‘Salondiplomati og politisk selskabelighed: Kvinderne i reformkredsen som politiske aktører, 1784–1797’, (‘Salon Diplomacy and Political Sociability: The women of the reform reign and their political agency, 1784–1797’), Aarhus University, 2021. The thesis is currently being revised for publication.

10 Jon Stobart, ‘“So agreeable and suitable a place”: The Character, Use and Provisioning of a Late Eighteenth-Century Suburban Villa’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 39:1 (2016), pp. 89-102, p. 89. DOI: 10.1111/1754-0208.12279.

11 Jacques-Francois Blondel, Cours d’architecture contenant les leçons données en 1750 et les années suivantes (Paris, 1771), cited by Claire Ollagnier, ‘La petite maison: un concept architectural au service d’une sociabilité nouvelle’, Lumen 35 (2016), pp. 37-46, p. 37. DOI: 10.7202/1035919ar.

12 Ollagnier, ‘La petite maison’, pp. 45-46.

13 Antoine Lilti, The World of the Salons: Sociability and Worldliness in Eighteenth-Century Paris, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Oxford 2015, translated and abridged version of Le Monde des Salons, Paris 2005), pp. 59-60.

14 Jon Stobart, Comfort in the Eighteenth-Century Country House (London 2022), pp. 46-48.

15 Ollagnier, ‘La petite maison’, p. 43; Stobart, ‘So agreeable and suitable a place’, p. 14.

16 Vickery and Greig, ‘The Political Day’, pp. 13-16.

17 Elaine Chalus, Elite Women in English Political Life, c. 1754–1790 (Oxford 2005).

18 Greig and Vickery, ‘The Political Day’, p. 13.

19 Henrik Horstbøll, Ulrik Langen and Frederik Stjernfeldt, Grov Konfækt: Tre vilde år med trykkefrihed 1770–1773 (Copenhagen, 2020).

20 Eva Krause Jørgensen, ‘The Feud of the Jutlandic Proprietors: Protesting Reform and Facing the Public in Late Eighteenth-Century Denmark’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 52:4 (2019), pp. 411-29. See also: Eva Krause Jørgensen, ‘Breaking the Chains: An Intellectual History of the Discursive Struggles over the Danish Agrarian Reforms, 1784–1797’, Ph.D. dissertation Aarhus University, 2015. Claus Bjørn, ‘Den Jyske Proprietærfejde: En Studie over Godsejerholdninger og Bondepolitik Omkring 1790’, Historie/Jyske Samlinger 13: 1–2 (1981), accessed online via https://tidsskrift.dk/historiejyskesamling/article/view/39246.

21 Michael Bregnsbo, ’Samfundsorden og statsmagt set fra prædikestolen: danske præsters deltagelse i den offentlige opinionsdannelse vedrørende samfundsordenen og statsmagten 1750–1848, belyst ved trykte prædikener: en politisk-idéhistorisk undersøgelse’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Copenhagen 1997; Juliane Engelhardt, Borgerskab og fællesskab: de patriotiske selskaber i den danske helstat 1769–1814 (Copenhagen, 2010). See also: Ellen Krefting, Aina Nøding and Mona Ringvej, En pokkers skrivesyge: 1700-tallets dansk-norske tidsskrifter mellom sensur og ytringsfrihet (Oslo, 2014) and Øystein Rian, Sensuren i Danmark-Norge : vilkårene for offentlige ytringer 1536–1814 (Oslo, 2014).

22 Elaine Chalus, ‘Elite Women, Social Politics, and the Political World of Late Eighteenth-Century England,’ The Historical Journal 43: 3 (2000), pp. 669–97, DOI:10.1017/S0018246X99001314; Lilti, The World of the Salons, pp.192ff, esp. pp. 211-12.

23 Weilbach, ‘Nordsjællandske Landsteder i det attende Aarhundrede’; Sys Hartmann, 50 Palæer og Landsteder (Copenhagen, 1976). On the histories of architectural design and interior décor of individual suburban villas or landsteder, see for example: Tove Clemmensen and Hanne Raabymagle, Brede Hovedbygning 1795–1806: etatsråd Peter van Hemerts sommerbolig (exhibition catalogue, the Danish National Museum, Copenhagen 1996); Harald Jørgensen, Møstings hus: fra eksklusivt landsted til attraktivt kulturhus (Frederiksberg, 1990); Jeppe Tønsberg, Sophienholm — Lyngbybogen (Lyngby, 2001).

24 Karen Klitgaard Povlsen, Salon på Sophienholm omkring år 1800 (Sophienholm, 2010), see pp. 11-16.

25 Claus Bjørn, Den gode sag: en biografi om Christian Ditlev Frederik Reventlow (Copenhagen, 1992), pp. 97, 108.

26 Anne Scott Sørensen, ‘Min Laterna Magica: Om Charlotte Schimmelmanns salon og Sølyst,’ in Anne Scott Sørensen (ed.), Nordisk salonkultur: et studie i nordiske skønånder og salonmiljøer 1780–1850 (Odense, 1998), pp. 77-100.

27 Bobé, Efterladte papirer, vol. IV, pp. 92-93. As mentioned in footnote 8, I have not been able to locate the first volume of correspondence from Charlotte Schimmelmann in the Brahetrolleborg Estate archives, so the letters from before 1786 are quoted from Louis Bobé’s published excerpts.

28 Bobé, Efterladte papirer, vol. IV, p. 90.

29 Harald Jørgensen, Fra Christiansborg til Amalienborg: En begivenhedsrig periode i den danske hofforvaltnings historie, 1784-1808 (Herning, 1996) p. 52.

30 Jens Engberg, Den standhaftige tinsoldat: en biografi om Frederik 6 (Copenhagen, 2009), p. 101.

31 Danish State Archives: Funen: Brahetrolleborg Estate Archives: Letters regarding Frederikke Louise Reventlow, 1746-1824: Letters from Charlotte Schimmelmann 1789-1803. [Hereafter I will refer to the unpublished, original letters by quoting their location as either “DSA; Brahetroleborg: Sender, recipient, date” ]: DSA, Brahetrolleborg Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg, 25 April 1789; undated letter from Sølyst, 1789, ‘Seelust ce 12 May 1793’. Danish State Archives: Copenhagen: Ernst Schimmelmann Archives: Correspondence with Schimmelmann’s two wives [Hereafter I will refer to the unpublished, original letters as: “DSA, Schimmelmann: Sender, recipient, and date”]: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Ernst Schimmelmann 25 May 1790. Where excerpts of a letter are included in Bobé’s publication, it is mentioned after the reference. If not, the reference is followed by: [unpublished source material].

32 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg, 12 May 1793, ‘que ne puis-je V_ montrer Seelust dans sa gloire Printanière ! – nous avons fuis la Ville a la Lettre, hier après un gr: dinner et nous voila ici en repos’ [unpublished source material].

33 Edvard Holm, Danmark-Norges udenrigske Historie under Den franske Revolution og Napoleons Krige fra 1791 til 1807 (2 vols, Copenhagen, 1875), p. 2. Bobé, Efterladte papirer, vol. IV, pp. 298-99.

34 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg undated letter, inserted in the bound archival volume between the 25 April and 9 May, 1789 [unpublished source material].

35 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg, Seelust ce 19 7bre 89 [19 September 1789]. Excerpt in Bobé, Efterladte Papirer, vol. IV, p. 115.

36 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg, Seelust ce 19 7bre 89 [19 September 1789]. Excerpt in Bobé, Efterladte Papirer, vol. IV, p. 115.

37 Dyrmann, ‘Salondiplomati og politisk selskabelighed’, p. 181.

38 Lilti, The World of the Salons, p. 59-60.

39 Ollagnier, ‘La petite maison’, p. 44.

40 Ollagnier, ‘La petite maison’, p. 39, 45-46.

41 Sørensen, ‘Min Laterna Magica’ in Anne Scott Sørensen (ed.), Nordisk Salonkultur, pp. 79, 82-83. Povlsen, Salon på Sophienholm, p. 94.

42 Sørensen, ‘Min Laterna Magica’, p. 79. Jens Engberg, Magten og Kulturen (Copenhagen, 2005), vol. I, p. 310.

43 Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg, 7 November 1796: ‘ Qui je Vois ? [ en Verité ma Chambre est Comme une lanterne Magique ] -- je vois bien des personnes differentes et nous avons eus plusieurs diplomates - Krudn: vient asses souv:, les francais furent hier Ches moi --- ils parloient avec triomphe de la gr: defaite de Moreau -- je la crois un peu exagerée - - - ce Momt_ mon frere m’ecrit que les V: der Goes vont nous arrivers quil X X est nomé Min: ici’. An excerpt of the letter, but not the sentences cited here, is published in Bobé, Efterladte Papirer, vol. IV, p. 183. Bobé’s published excerpt interestingly mentions Baggesen and Schiller, the two poets emphasised in both Bobé’s and Scott Sørensen’s scholarship, and perhaps explaining why the ‘Laterna Magica’ quote has been associated with these two writers. The poet Jens Baggesen is mentioned in the letter, as is the Schimmelmanns’ private secretary, Niebuhr, but the sentences about Charlotte Schimmelmann’s social circle as a ‘magic lantern’ focuses on the diplomats.

44 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg. Letters from Charlotte Schimmelmann, vol. II. Excerpts of four letters written from Seelust, dated the 22 May, 4 August, 15 September and 25 September, 1789, have been included in Louis Bobé’s publications, while the archive holds 11 letters from the same location and year.

45 Bobé, Efterladte Papirer, vol. IV, pp. 91-92.

46 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Sybille Reventlow to Louise Stolberg, letter written from Christiansholm (the Reventlows’ suburban villa, owned by the Schimmelmanns), 15 July 1786 [unpublished source material].

47 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Sybille Reventlow to Louise Stolberg, Christiansholm 29 July 1786, ‘nous dinons tous demain à Springforbi ches [sic] Rasoumofsky [sic]’ [unpublished source material]. (NB: Here I have indicated that the spelling of Razumovsky comes from the original letters.) The diplomat would decades later be known as a patron of the arts during his residence in Vienna for the Congress of 1814-15. Mark Ferraguto, ‘Representing Russia: Luxury and Diplomacy at the Razumovsky Palace in Vienna, 1803–1815,’ Music and Letters 97: 3 (August 1, 2016), pp. 383-408, DOI:10.1093/ml/gcw050.

48 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Sybille Reventlow 15 July 1786, ‘[…] à Hellebeck ou nous allons cet apresmidi, cette partie me rend fort heureuse, quoi qu’elle ne sera pas tout a faite ce qu’elle pourait etre, il y aura grande Chasse d’Oges Sauvages lundi et grand dine [sic] le jour de demain ne sera pas entierement a nous non plus, car Rasoumuoffsky y sera deja alors. il est aureste de fort bonne Societé mais dans ce moment ci j’aurais preferé que nous eussions étés a nous, Ernst et Charl.[Charlotte] Cayus et Wilhelmine.’[unpublished source material]. NB: original spelling throughout.

49 Ole Feldbæk and Knud J.V. Jespersen, Revanche og neutralitet 1648-1814, Dansk Udenrigspolitiks Historie vol. 2, (Copenhagen 2006), 425.

50 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg, 15 November 1794, ‘la journée a finie par l’hymne des Marseil:, mais chut la desus – quand Turpin l’a entoné, avec cette vivacité, cette energie d’un fran: republicain, je fus saisie – ils ont apeutres fait tout ce qu’ils promettent dans cette Chanson trop guerriere.’[unpublished source material].

51 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg, New Year’s Day 1793 (Jour de l’an 1793): ‘Un sot propos de Hamb: et d’Altona quelle me mande ou je passe pr : furieuse democrate (passe pour cela, car je ne suis pas aristocr : et dans o stems l’on Confond), mais Notre Maison est dit-il sur cela le foyer de Revolution. C’est une detestable Calomnie dont je dois tracer la source car je serois une folle ou une Sotte – et mon Mari s’il le souffroit un peu traitre – j’avoue que cela m’a indignée’. An excerpt of the letter, including this quote, has been published in Bobé, Efterladte Papirer, vol. IV, pp. 136-37.

52 J.P. Bang and A. Th. Jørgensen, ‘Lavater, Johann Caspar’, in Christian Blangstrup (ed.), Salmonsens Konversationsleksikon (Copenhagen, 1923), vol. XV, pp. 538-539.

53 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg, 21 June 1793. An excerpt of the letter, including the part quoted here, has been published in Bobé, Efterladte Papirer, vol. IV, pp. 143-44.

54 The historian Louis Bobé also published Johann Caspar Lavater’s diaries (in German) from his 1793 visit to Copenhagen. The diaries were published in 1898, with the financial support of Christian Einar count Reventlow: Johann Caspar Lavater and Louis Bobé, Johan Caspar Lavaters Rejse til Danmark i Sommeren 1793 (Copenhagen, 1898).

55 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg, 21 June 1793, ‘j’avois mis un cerbere a la porte pr: eloigner toutes les visittes, et cepend: nous etions un cercle de pl: de 12 pers: ce n’est reellemt pas Comme cela qu’il faut voir Lavater’.

56 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelman, Seelust a vendredi [June 1793]. An excerpt of the letter, including this quote, has been published in Bobé, Efterladte Papirer, vol. IV, p. 145. The publication dates the letter 28 June 1793.

57 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg, Seelust a vendredi [June 1793]. ‘il dit hier a mon mari, lorsqu’il avoit appris que le Pr: Roy: vouloit le voir encore une fois il dit avec une bonhomie Charmante a Ernst : dites moi s’il y a une ou plusieurs Choses que Vous Voudriés que je dise au Pr: Roy: que moi je pourrois lui dire parceque je vais partir, parceque je viens de Zurik [sic] et parceque je ne le reverrois pl:, dites le moi - si je restois je ne pourrois pas de pl: que Vous les lui dire’ ---- - la n’est-il pas Charmant’. An excerpt of the letter, including this quote, has been published in Bobé, Efterladte Papirer, vol. IV, p. 146.

58 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg, ‘et Comme B: l’aime ! cela me rend B: encore pl: Cher. Lav: est dans cette maison ein democrat [sic], u: frey denker [sic]= C’est [de] lui seul que je le sais.’ An excerpt of the letter, including this quote, has been published in Bobé, Efterladte Papirer, vol. IV, p. 146.

59 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg, 22 April 1793, ‘Nous avons donés un bal avant hier a la jeunesse qui a reussit a mieux car tous ont rajeunis avec les Enfans’ [unpublished source material]. Dyrmann, ‘Salondiplomati og politisk selskabelighed’, (Aarhus University 2021), p. 212 (see below, footnote 62). The ‘bal à la jeunesse’ seems to describe a ball held in honour of the young women, with their families, courtiers, and members of the diplomatic corps attending. I have retained the French term from the original source, ‘bal à la jeunesse’.

60 The following passage about the youth ball at Sølyst is based on a paragraph in my unpublished PhD thesis: Kristine Dyrmann, ‘Salondiplomati og politisk selskabelighed’, (Aarhus University 2021), pp. 209-14.

61 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg, 6 April 1793 [unpublished source material].

62 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg, 22 April 1793, ‘Nous avons donés un bal avant hier a la jeunesse qui a reussit a mieux car tous ont rajeunis avec les Enfans’ [unpublished source material]. Dyrmann, ‘Salondiplomati og politisk selskabelighed’, (Aarhus University 2021), p. 212.

63 DSA. Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg, 1 May 1792, ‘une jeune fille aimable qu’on veut avoir partout [meme le Pr: Roy: a fait gouté Charl:]’[unpublished source material]. For an analysis of the importance of dancing at a comparable eighteenth-century court, see Hillary Burlock, ‘“Tumbling into the Lap of Majesty”: Minuets at the Court of George III’, Journal for eighteenth-century studies 44 (2021), pp. 205-24. DOI:10.1111/1754-0208.12755.

64 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg 23 November 1789. [unpublished source material].

65 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg, 11 October 1793, ‘Nous avions le soir du 7 un petit bal a Seelust pr Louise B: et a 1h: quand tout le monde nous quitta – il s’eleva une temp: si affreuse, par une nuit si noire, que toute la caravane dansante a eus des aventures sans fin – malgré les flamb: les lanterns tout s’est passé sans la moindre suite, et chacun a ri des Scènes nocturnes qui auroient pu devenir funestres […] mais dieu merci tout a fini par des rires – et Bernst: même s’en est amuse. Nous avons cepend: promis de ne pl: donner un bal au mois d’oct:’. [unpublished source material].

66 Jens Engberg, Den standhaftige tinsoldat, p. 226. Charlotte Schimmelmann 28 June 1796. An excerpt of the letter, including this quote, has been published in Bobé, Efterladte Papirer, vol. IV, p. 168. Dyrmann, ‘Salondiplomati og politisk selskabelighed’, (Aarhus University 2021), p. 223.

67 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg, Seelust 1 July 1796, ‘notre Courreur vint haletant me dire que la Reine etoit a Seel: le pauvre Ernst en prof: negl: la plume en Main fut obl: de paroitre - - car quoiqu’on eut dit a la R: - - que la Maison etoit vuide Elle voulut descendre […] S:M: etoit radieuse et de Couleur de rose comme je ne la vis jamais me donant Cordial: la Main a la promen: assise au milieu de nous tous sur son banc - - elle resta jusqu’après le Coucher du Sol: et retourna en Voit: ouverte par une soirée divine.’ An excerpt of the letter, including this quote, has been published in Bobé, Efterladte Papirer, vol. IV, p. 169.

68 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg 1 July 1796. Dyrmann, ‘Salondiplomati og politisk selskabelighed’, (Aarhus University 2021), pp. 207-9.

69 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg, 1 July 1796, ‘Mais la Reine nous joue un tour perfide Elle s’annonce de celebrer par un dinner d’amitié le jour de naiss: jeudi de la duch: accouchée – et a insiste [sic] sur ce que nous en soyons […]’

70 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg, 1 July 1796, ‘il est vray qu’on est victim [sic] de leurs bontés’.

71 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg, 7 July 1796: ‘Nous eussions été inconsol: si a Seel: Elle eut connu le terme de sa vie […] Elle etoit hier d’une grace!’. An excerpt of the letter, including this quote, has been published in Bobé, Efterladte Papirer, vol. IV, p. 171.

72 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann to Louise Stolberg, 15 October 1789 [unpublished source material].

73 DSA, Brahetrolleborg: Charlotte Schimmelmann til Louise Stolberg, Seelust ce 4. Octobre 1794: ‘le mauv: tems nous fait penser a la ville, Comme Ernst doit tant etre sur le gr: Chemin, les Chr: Rev: y sont deja, et les B: y entrent auj. - nous comptons mercredi proch: nous y etablir . le Corps deja est assés decontenancé.’ [unpublished source material].