Poniatowski actually met Fritz twice in the 1750s on his travels. He went on something like a Grand Tour, except that not for Italy for culture, but for more politically minded development, to Austria, Saxony, Prussia, England, France. It comes up in his biographies, he wrote about it in his memoirs, so obviously some time after the fact.
He writes that Fritz was in Electoral Prussia when he himself arrived and came back after three weeks. They met twice and both times Fritz talked to him. He wasn't that impressed. Fritz had "the appearance of a troubled person, who feels that he must always speak better than others and fears whether he will succeed" and also "a very anxious look", "an uncertain manner" and "dirty clothes". "I heard every day in Berlin his subjects of various rank and stature talking about him in very uncomplimentary terms and even rather loudly. Fryderyk apparently knows this well and has become accustomed to it, but he does not care about it." Under Fritz's absence, Poniatowski also visited Charlottenburg, Potsdam, and Sans-Souci, including Fritz's rooms, which were a mess, books and papers all over the place, everywhere fragments of poems written in his hand. The women showing them around said they were ordered to leave things as they were left by the king, so in Charlottenburg the marble head of Julius Caesar lay under a couch, and in all of his bedchambers there were coats they said he never wore. In Sans-Souci there were two small beds in the bedchamber, almost next to each other, about which "all sorts of things" were said in Berlin, but the castellan said that Fritz was changing beds in the middle of the night because he got too hot. She also said that the room Fritz stayed in in the summer was south-facing but there was hardly a day where Fritz didn't have the fire on, so sometimes people would faint there from the heat.
Poniatowski didn't really like Berlin as a whole. The ladies of Berlin were too obsessed with Voltaire and he found them, hmm, unnatural about it (in the tryhard/pretentious sense). But he met Hanbury-Williams there, because he at that time fairly briefly the envoy to the Prussian court.
Anyway, hi! Really what I want is fiction about the Partitions, broadly understood.
Re: Stanislaw August Poniatowski
He writes that Fritz was in Electoral Prussia when he himself arrived and came back after three weeks. They met twice and both times Fritz talked to him. He wasn't that impressed. Fritz had "the appearance of a troubled person, who feels that he must always speak better than others and fears whether he will succeed" and also "a very anxious look", "an uncertain manner" and "dirty clothes". "I heard every day in Berlin his subjects of various rank and stature talking about him in very uncomplimentary terms and even rather loudly. Fryderyk apparently knows this well and has become accustomed to it, but he does not care about it." Under Fritz's absence, Poniatowski also visited Charlottenburg, Potsdam, and Sans-Souci, including Fritz's rooms, which were a mess, books and papers all over the place, everywhere fragments of poems written in his hand. The women showing them around said they were ordered to leave things as they were left by the king, so in Charlottenburg the marble head of Julius Caesar lay under a couch, and in all of his bedchambers there were coats they said he never wore. In Sans-Souci there were two small beds in the bedchamber, almost next to each other, about which "all sorts of things" were said in Berlin, but the castellan said that Fritz was changing beds in the middle of the night because he got too hot. She also said that the room Fritz stayed in in the summer was south-facing but there was hardly a day where Fritz didn't have the fire on, so sometimes people would faint there from the heat.
Poniatowski didn't really like Berlin as a whole. The ladies of Berlin were too obsessed with Voltaire and he found them, hmm, unnatural about it (in the tryhard/pretentious sense). But he met Hanbury-Williams there, because he at that time fairly briefly the envoy to the Prussian court.
Anyway, hi! Really what I want is fiction about the Partitions, broadly understood.