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63

(1880-1935)
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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - Robert Pearse Gillies, Foreign Quarterly Review och den svenska litteraturen. Av Hedvig af Petersens

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R. P. Gillies, Foreign Quarterly Review och den sv. litteraturen 63

his predecessor Charles XII . . .1 Why this rightful owner of the
crown, this veritable king1, preferred to live at Frankfort, I cannot
guess, unless it were for the sake of the gardens in which he so
often took his lonely walks; or because in this Hans town he was
more utterly neglected and unnoticed than, probably, he would have
been at any resident.

His home at Frankfort consisted of two small apartments, over
the shop of a tinsmith, in a narrow obscure street, where, as a
retired officer, he lived (according to on dit) upon a scale of even
abject poverty; not for want of pecuniary means, though his revenue
was very limited, and not from avarice, for the brave old lion was,
I am sure, as incapable of turning miser as of turning coward; but
because, neither in health nor spirits would his condition have been
improved by habits of luxury. At Frankfort, as I believe, he had
not a single confidant, nor spoke with any one, hardly with the
bankers, Gebhard and Hauck, through whom he received his money.
By the vastly wise and enlightened community of this town, he
was regarded, not as the ex-king, not as a man of varied talents
and accomplishments, which he really was; on the contrary, they
saw merely his eccentricities, and looked upon him as a madman.
In one respect our amiable world is the same in every land; with
admirable clearness and precision it detects in one instant the vices
or incapacity of the fallen; — it matters not whether he be ex-king,
or ex-banker, or ex-laird, only let him be sufficiently impoverished
and enfeebled, there needs no other premiss than this; the
conclusion in regard to madness or vice will follow immediately. For my
own part, from all I heard from Captain Äkenthal, who knew
somewhat of the king’s character and personal history, I believe
he was not, and never had been, mad; but, unfortunately, he did
labour under a certain constitutional malady, which, when
exasperated, tends more than any other to depress the spirits, to cloud
the brain and irritate the temper; and this would have unfitted
him for the cares and responsibility of the goverment, even had
the Swedes desired to get rid of Bernadotte. To this cause also
might be ascribed his lonely and ascetic habits. If he had any
acquintance, I suppose, it was among the booksellers, one of whom
had recently published for him a quarto pamphlet on a scientific

1 Gillies citerar ur minnet och inte ur något kröningsode, utan ur Det
slutand århundradet (1799), som är adresserat till den nyfödde kronprinsen.

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