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Yuletide tags are out: Frederician version
Come join us in this crazy Frederick the Great fandom and learn more about all these crazy associated people, like the star-crossed and heartbreaking romance between Maria Theresia's daughter Maria Christina and her daughter-in-law Isabella, wow.
OK, so, there are FOURTEEN characters nominated:
Anna Karolina Orzelska (Frederician RPF)
Elisabeth Christine von Preußen | Elisabeth Christine Queen of Prussia (Frederician RPF)
Francesco Algarotti (Frederician RPF)
François-Marie Arouet | Voltaire (Frederician RPF)
Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great (Frederician RPF)
Hans Hermann Von Katte (Frederician RPF)
Joseph II Holy Roman Emperor (Frederician RPF)
Maria Theresia | Maria Theresa of Austria (Frederician RPF)
Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf (Frederician RPF)
Peter Karl Christoph von Keith (Frederician RPF)
Sophia Dorothea of Hanover (Frederician RPF)
Stanisław August Poniatowski (Frederician RPF)
Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758) (Frederician RPF)
Yekatarina II Alekseyevna | Catherine the Great of Russia (Frederician RPF)
This means some fourth person kindly nominated Algarotti and -- I think? -- Stanislaw August Poniatowski! YAY! Thank you fourth person! Come be our friend! :D Yuletide is so great!
I am definitely requesting Maria Theresia, Wilhelmine, and Fritz (Put them in a room together. Shake. How big is the explosion?), and thinking about Elisabeth Christine, but maybe not this year.
I am also declaring this post another Frederician post, as the last one was getting out of hand. I think I'll still use that one as the overall index to these, though, to keep all the links in one place.
(seriously, every time I think the wild stories are done there is ANOTHER one)
OK, so, there are FOURTEEN characters nominated:
Anna Karolina Orzelska (Frederician RPF)
Elisabeth Christine von Preußen | Elisabeth Christine Queen of Prussia (Frederician RPF)
Francesco Algarotti (Frederician RPF)
François-Marie Arouet | Voltaire (Frederician RPF)
Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great (Frederician RPF)
Hans Hermann Von Katte (Frederician RPF)
Joseph II Holy Roman Emperor (Frederician RPF)
Maria Theresia | Maria Theresa of Austria (Frederician RPF)
Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf (Frederician RPF)
Peter Karl Christoph von Keith (Frederician RPF)
Sophia Dorothea of Hanover (Frederician RPF)
Stanisław August Poniatowski (Frederician RPF)
Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758) (Frederician RPF)
Yekatarina II Alekseyevna | Catherine the Great of Russia (Frederician RPF)
This means some fourth person kindly nominated Algarotti and -- I think? -- Stanislaw August Poniatowski! YAY! Thank you fourth person! Come be our friend! :D Yuletide is so great!
I am definitely requesting Maria Theresia, Wilhelmine, and Fritz (Put them in a room together. Shake. How big is the explosion?), and thinking about Elisabeth Christine, but maybe not this year.
I am also declaring this post another Frederician post, as the last one was getting out of hand. I think I'll still use that one as the overall index to these, though, to keep all the links in one place.
(seriously, every time I think the wild stories are done there is ANOTHER one)
Algarotti
Also, small correction to my previous comment: he is from Venice and moved to Padua. Among other places. You'll see.
Intro
Algarotti: *writes books, poems, essays about philosophy, art, architecture, physics, you name it*
Algarotti: I will be as famous as Frederick the Great! My name will live alongside yours for all of time, Your Majesty.
All of the other reindeer: You'll go down in history!
1726-1739
Algarotti: Time to find my dream job. No worries! How hard can it be?
Algarotti in Venice: Ugh, too much family, always wanting me to get married and go into the family business. Moving on...
Algarotti in Bologna: Can't get a job here either. Third city's the charm, right?
Algarotti in Padua: Why so pedantic and conceited, everyone?
Algarotti in Florence: Much better! Oh, no, everyone here is boring and pretentious. Bunch of has-beens who don't realize they haven't been All That (TM) since the Renaissance.
Algarotti in Rome: I <3 Rome. Oh, shit, religion is a thing in Rome! I forgot.
Algarotti in Paris: The salons! The other intellectuals! The...censorship. Dammit.
Algarotti in Cirey: Voltaire! And Émilie du Châtelet! Three brilliant minds under the same roof! Living with Voltaire! *double take* Living with Voltaire? *sigh*
Algarotti in London: Everyone wants to have sex with me! Who shall I choose from this embarrassment of riches? Okay, not crazy stalker lady Mary Wortley Montagu. How about the guy who's buddy-buddy with the Queen, then I'll be sure to get a job. Lord Hervey! Let's get it on.
Algarotti in London: Still nothing? I thought that was a sure fire path to success!
Algarotti in Milan: Why won't the Italians ever freaking hire me? Oh, right, because I'm on the Church's banned books list. Back to London, then. At least they have freedom of the press.
Algarotti in Paris: Crazy stalker lady in London, you want to pay for the rest of my trip?
Algarotti in London: Still not sleeping with you, crazy stalker lady. Oh, no, the Queen died. No jobs for me.
1739
St. Petersburg: I hear there's a new Tzarina! And everything is modern since Peter the Great.
Algarotti in St. Petersburg: Not so modern you want to hire me. Gotcha.
Algarotti on the way back to London: Let's hit every city on the way, just in case.
Algarotti in Danzig, Dresden, Leipzig, Potsdam, Berlin, Hamburg, Rheinsberg: Anyone want to hire me? Anyone? I'm the second most famous intellectual in Europe! You know you want me!
Algarotti in Rheinsberg: OMG, someone wants to hire me! He's my age and writes poems about how great I am and wants me to read drafts of this pamphlet he's working on--something about ruling justly and having enlightened foreign policy--and he's going to be a totally awesome intellectual king, and I think he might even want me that way too. *heart eyes* Lemme know when your dad dies and you actually have some money, Your Highness!
Algarotti in London: *checking his mail every day*
1740
FW: *dies*
Fritz: Come quickly, Algarotti! All the leading intellectual lights of Europe are coming to my court. It's going to be the BEST.
Algarotti: *comes quickly* I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Fritz: Okay, now that everyone's here, we'll start the intellectual party as soon as I'm done conquering Silesia. Brb.
1741
Algarotti: Um? Are you done conquering yet? It's just the one province, right?
Other famous intellectuals: Yeah, what he said.
Fritz: Who's paying who here? I'll be done when I'm done.
Algarotti: Okay, but I came here on my quest for eternal fame and glory. I don't care how many titles you give me, I'm leaving if I don't get something useful to do.
Other famous intellectuals: Again, what he said. Maupertuis wants to know what happened to all the plans to make him president of the Academy of Sciences, O Enlightened Monarch.
Fritz: Okay, fine. You can help me win my war, since you have, like, no patience whatsoever.
Fritz: Now, Algarotti, you're the second most famous intellectual in Europe, and everybody knows you work for me. So go to Turin, SECRETLY, don't let anyone know you're there, suss out the political situation for me, SECRETLY, see if the King of Sardinia's open to an alliance with Prussia, and above all, don't let anyone know you're doing a job for me. Got it?
Secret Mission Interlude
Newspapers: *report on celebrity Algarotti's every movement*
Everyone in Europe: *follows Algarotti's trip from Berlin to Turin in the papers*
Everyone in Europe: Algarotti seems to be hanging out in Turin a lot these days. Must be doing work for King Frederick. Probably trying to get Prussia an alliance with the King of Sardinia.
Fritz: OMFG this is going to be just like the last time I tried to have a Very Secret Plan and everybody knew about it. Never mind the alliance, Algarotti, just come back to Berlin!
Algarotti: I finally get entrusted with something important, he ties my hands with a set of impossible constraints, and then I'm recalled before I can actually get anything done. SO HUMILIATING. Could my year get any worse?
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Hi! Remember me? I followed you to Italy so we could be together forever.
Algarotti: What the--Do I need a restraining order? Oh, boy. Crazy stalker lady or micromanaging boss? Decisions, decisions.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: My son is your age, but I just know we're meant to be!
Algarotti: Micromanaging boss it is!
1741, back in Berlin
Algarotti: Anyone else bored? I'm bored.
Other famous intellectuals: I'm bored.
Fritz: Seriously, everyone just sit tight. MT's going to give up this province any minute, and then I'll come home, and it'll be fun enlightenment times just like I promised when I invited you.
Time: *passes*
Intellectuals: *twiddle thumbs*
Fritz: ANY MINUTE!
1741, Silesia
Fritz: Meanwhile, I'm getting tired of just having military men to talk to. Maupertuis, come join me on campaign. I hear you're bored.
Maupertuis: *gets captured by Austrians, then released*
Fritz: Oops. Still bored, though? :D
Maupertuis: With all due respect, sir, this is not what I signed up for.
Algarotti: Oh, hell no. Dresden, here I come! The King of Saxony wants an art collector.
Maupertuis: Paris for me.
Algarotti and Fritz: *have a snippy exchange of letters, then silence for five years*
1742
Algarotti in Dresden: *trying to get to Italy to buy art for the King of Saxony, but it's not safe to travel because SOMEONE started a war in central Europe*
1743-1747
Algarotti in Italy: *looking for art*
Algarotti in Italy: Frickin' King of Saxony.
Algarotti in Italy: *looking for a better job*
1745-1747
Fritz: *finally wins the second Silesian War, builds Sanssouci, promises never to go to war again*
Fritz: NOW will you all come back? I've got this lovely new palace for us. It'll be just like Rheinsberg, but with money!
Intellectuals: *cautiously trickle back*
Algarotti in Italy: Well, I don't like my current job and I can't find a better one here, so I guess maybe Fritz has gotten the warmongering out of his system. It was so promising in Rheinsberg, and the new job offer *is* for everything I ever wanted.
1747-1748
Algarotti: Oh, man, on the one hand I finally got my dream job, but on the other, my boss is...Fritz. Fritz, can you pay me to go to Italy? There's, um, an archaeological dig in Herculaneum that is of *great interest* to both of us that I should totally observe so I can report back to you.
Fritz: You seem suspiciously eager to get back to the place you're always complaining about, but sure.
Algarotti in Bologna: I can see
Russia from my houseHerculaneum from here. Not trying to get a job at any of the academic institutes in Bologna, pinky swear!Fritz, in a letter to Wilhelmine: He doesn't know any more about the Herculaneum digs than you or I do. He could have studied them just as well from here. (actual quote)
Fritz: Get back here, Algarotti. You're not fooling anyone.
1749-1753
Algarotti in Berlin: Sorry I can't come to Potsdam, I'm really sick. I still work for you and you should still pay me, though.
Algarotti everywhere else in Prussia at every possible opportunity: Sorry I can't come to Potsdam. Still sick. Still love you, though! (Would love you more if you would stop telling me what to do all the time.)
Algarotti in Potsdam: *still trying to get that elusive job in Italy*
1752-1753
Voltaire in Potsdam: *happens*
Fritz in Potsdam: *happens*
Algarotti in Potsdam: *watches in mounting horror*
Algarotti in Potsdam: Still no job prospects in Italy, but anything is better than Fritz/Voltaire.
Algarotti in Potsdam: Your Majesty, I totally love you, but I have some really pressing personal affairs in Italy. Can I get a hall pass?
Fritz: I think you're lying, but you did come back last time when you were lying, so sure. Bring me some marble from Herculaneum when you return, k?
1753, after the hall pass expires
Fritz: *tapping foot*
Algarotti still in Italy: Sorry, super sick!
Fritz: You know the doctors there aren't any better than here, right?
Algarotti still in Italy: I will come to you soon if it KILLS me. Which my doctors say traveling might, so please understand you might not see me for a little while.
1754
Fritz: Any day now?
Algarotti still in Italy: Any day now!
1755
Algarotti still in Italy: We were really nice to your sister.
Fritz: I heard! Also, I still miss you. Just putting that out there.
1756
Fritz: Well, um, there seems to be a war on here, but I'll invite you again as soon as it's done.
Algarotti still in Italy: Good luck! Not sure how much help I'd be, think I'll just sit it out here. With my bad health, you know.
1756-1763
Algarotti still in Italy: Wow, you seem really busy with that war. Keep kicking butt. I'll keep reading about it in the papers, here in Italy.
Fritz: It's looking like it's gonna be a while. Glad you and your countrymen are being entertained by my adventures. Lucky you, I wish I could be a spectator instead of a participant.
Algarotti still in Italy: You got this. P.S. Still love you! (Plz don't have your agents arrest me outside your country like you did Voltaire.)
Fritz: Not sure why you won't come back, but love you too!
1763
Algarotti still in Italy: I had to move to Pisa for the warm air. *cough cough choke hack* But I heard you won the Seven Years' War! Congrats! You're the best!
Fritz: "I hope you fare as well with your lungs as we did against the Austrians." (actual quote) This doesn't mean you're never coming back to Prussia, does it? Oh, no. Please don't die. Everyone I love keeps dying.
March 9, 1764
Algarotti still in Italy: Really wish I could see you again, but, you know, my health. You understand.
June 1, 1764
Fritz: You wish you could see me? Really?! I have an idea! We have this great doctor here in Prussia, who recently cured a cough just like yours! Nothing would make me happier than if you came and got better. I have a whole list of things we could do together. P.S. I'm really worried about you.
June 12, 1764
Fritz: Dear Algarotti's friend, thank you for letting me know our mutual friend Algarotti died of tuberculosis a month before my last letter. That shaky handwriting was making me nervous, but I was still hoping to see him again someday. Please set up a marble monument to his memory, then tell me where and how much money to send you as reimbursement.
Epilogue
Fritz: So, Algarotti my old friend, I heard you wanted your name to live alongside mine. Here's a grave monument in Pisa where my name is really big and yours is somewhat smaller. That should do it!
Posterity: Algarotti who?
Starring: Algarotti the Perpetual Job Hunter and Fritz the Jerkass Woobie.
One thing to keep in mind about all this is that the dissertation in question is specifically about networking techniques in the intellectual sphere in eighteenth-century Europe, with Algarotti as the case study. It's not a bio of Algarotti. So the whole focus is his job search. Aside from that love triangle with Hervey and Wortley Montagu, which the author depicts as a ruthless endeavor solely motivated by the need to get a good-paying position in London, you get no sense of Algarotti's personal life. So if Fritz was ever more than a paycheck to him, you're not going to get it out of this dissertation.
Another interesting point: Algarotti seems to get up to relatively little after 1753, compared to his extremely detailed and eventful career up to that point. Both the dissertation writer and various Fritz biographers are like, "Well, maybe he was as sick as he said he was. You know, he did die 11 years later. But actually we think he was just trying to get away from Fritz."
But not only does he stay the hell out of Prussia (which, granted, I'm sure his decision to be sick in Italy instead of in Potsdam was motivated by the whole Voltaire/Fritz implosion plus general Fritz-ness), but his output and activity seem to decline, and what he does produce does seem to correlate with gaps in his complaints about his health. That can't be all Fritz.
Poor everybody. /o\
Re: Algarotti
LOL. Thank you so much for this golden overview. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau would like to complain about Algarotti's calling himself the second most famous intellectual in Europe. Whose fanboys were running the French Revoultion, he'd like to know?)
(Giacomo Casanova is not sure whether or not he counts as an intellectual, though "man of letters" is certainly one description for him; he'd like to point out that a) he was better at job-hunting than Algarotti, from inventing the lottery in France to ending up as a librarian in Bohemia as a retirement job, b) his memoirs are still read, which is more than can be said about either the majority of Voltaire's or Rousseau's oeuvre, and c) his name is certainly better known than anyone else's.)
(Dr. Johnson harrumphs and privately wonders whether his fame is too centred on the Anglosaxon world to make him enter this particular competition. THe answer is yes.)
Lady Mary Wortley Montague also briefly showed up in my MT biographies since she, tireless traveller who she was, was convinced MT's police agents had it in for her and were observing her the entire time she was in MT's territories. What with, you know, those sex policing rules. No note of the Austrian police on Lady Mary has survived, though, if they did take any.
Re: Algarotti
No note of the Austrian police on Lady Mary has survived, though, if they did take any.
*spits drink*
Algarotti's not big on sex policing *cough*, but would like to know if the sex police maybe have a sideline in restraining orders. :P
Re: Algarotti
In the same year, Mary met and fell in love with Count Francesco Algarotti, who competed with an equally smitten John Hervey for her affections.
Lady Mary wrote many letters to Algarotti in English and in French after his departure from England in September 1736. In July 1739 Lady Mary departed England ostensibly for health reasons declaring her intentions to winter in the south of France. In reality, she left to visit and live with Algarotti in Venice. Their relationship ended in 1741 after Lady Mary and Algarotti were both on a diplomatic mission in Turin.
....so, Mildred, your comment?
Re: Algarotti
Lol. Well, the Algarotti dissertation has quotes from her letters indicating that, while Algarotti may or may not have encouraged her attentions on his first trip to London when he thought there was a chance of getting a job through her, after that it's all her complaining that she's always writing to him and sending him her unsolicited portrait and he never writes her back, so...maybe they're both right? Maybe during his first stay in London, the two men were competing for her interest, and afterward, Lady Mary and Lord Hervey for Algarotti's?
But even the Lady Mary's wiki entry has *her* writing letters to Algarotti, and not the other way around. And "In reality, she left to visit and live with Algarotti in Venice. Their relationship ended in 1741 after Lady Mary and Algarotti were both on a diplomatic mission in Turin" is correct but misleading. She left in 1739 with the intention of living with him in Venice, but he was in St. Petersburg at the time. She didn't see him for two more years, and here's the chronology of that encounter:
January 1741: Algarotti arrives in Turin from Berlin.
March 1741: Lady Mary arrives in Turin.
May 1741: Lady Mary leaves Turin.
13 June 1741: Algarotti is already back in Berlin.
So they were not exactly living together. In fact, the dissertation has a footnote: "In this year, Algarotti spent some months in Turin in the guise of secret diplomat for Frederick II (the Great). Wortley Montagu also happened to be in the city at this time. Accordingly, the two met up. The details of this meeting are unclear; however, it must have been quite unpleasant, as the two did not communicate with each other at all for several years thereafter." Also, if she was on a diplomatic mission to Turin, that's news to me. They were certainly not on the same diplomatic mission, as Wikipedia implies*.
Furthermore, she wrote a letter to him in May 1741 stating that "the prism of his eyes had allowed her to see into his soul, and although she saw many beautiful fantasies there, when combined, they formed indifference. This would be the last letter exchanged between the two for fifteen years."
Googling doesn't want to seem to yield up a copy of the letter in question. Gutenberg has her letters only from 1708 to 1720, archive.org has a selection that doesn't include Algarotti (I wonder if it excises declarations of love to a man she's not married to), and the complete edition of her letters on oxfordscholarlyeditions.com requires a subscription. However, I can view the list of letters there, and I see 26 from her to him and 0 from him to her in the 1721-1751 period, then 6 from her to him in 1752-1762 and 1 from him to her in 1757.
Interesting, the 1861 foreword to the first volume of the extremely incomplete edition on archive.org says that the 1837 compiler, her great-grandson, had taken many liberties with omitting passages, combining several letters, or passages from several letters, to form one letter, adding unsupported dates, etc. So this is an extremely corrupt edition. In which I don't see a single letter to Algarotti. Man, that rococo frankness did not fare well in the Victorian era, did it?
...And, reading to the end of the foreward, the 1861 editor quotes the 1837 editor, saying, "With regard to the freedom of expression in which Lady Mary indulged...[1837 great-grandson editor] justly remarks that she wrote 'at a period when the feeling upon such subjects was by no means so nice as it now is; and that expressions, with which we now find great fault, might then be used by persons of the greatest propriety of conduct, and would only be considered as painting freely, and more keenly ridiculing, the vices and follies of the society in which the writer found herself, and not as used for the purpose of indulging in grossness of language.' It requires but small familiarity with the originals of the private correspondence of those days, to perceive that Lady Mary's standards of delicacy and propriety were simply those of her time."
Yeeeaaah, I'm gonna go with "all the Algarotti letters got cut from the 1837 edition because she was totes married to another man when she decided to go chasing him." That said, even without Algarotti, she appears to have stayed abroad for the next twenty years anyway, only returning to London in 1761 when she heard of her husband's death, there to die herself in 1762. (Algarotti to follow them into death shortly, as we know, in 1764.)
In conclusion, documentary evidence seems to be that she wanted Algarotti more than the other way around post 1736. Before that, it's hard to tell.
Also, the dates on her 1736 letters to Algarotti after he left England are kind of hilarious. I really wish I could read them.
April 1736, May 1736, August 1736, September 1736, 10 September 1736, 20 September 1736, 29 September 1736, 21 October 1736, December 1736.
I can't view it, but the December 1736 letter is apparently the one where she 1) got upset that he wouldn't write to her even after she sent him a portrait of herself, 2) announced that if he wouldn't come back to London, she'd go to Italy to be with him.
* Can you imagine Fritz sending her to Turin to spy on the King of Sardinia for him? "Pretend you're obsessed with Algarotti, but tell me if the King is open to an alliance. For hundreds of years, no one will ever suspect you're spying for me. Perfect cover story!" I can almost hear the Prussian cyber agents from the beyond typing. "Curses, Wikipedia is onto our boss's Cunning Plan!"
Re: Algarotti
omg, yeah, the dates on those letters and the last in that sequence apparently being the one where she complains about him not writing to her... hee.
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I think that at least Candide is more read than Casanova's memoirs? If only because of Bernstein :) Though I can't argue that Casanova's name is better known than anyone else's!
Re: Algarotti
Seriously, I had never heard of Algarotti except in the Fritz context--and that was minimal enough that, while I must have read about him 20 years ago, I did not remember him at all from that period, and had to relearn who he was from scratch this time around. The dissertation I summarized (written in 2010) is the closest thing to a bio that's been written about him in any language since 1913, and the only one ever in English, and it states that the only other biography about him was written in 1770. There've been a few monographs on his works, and he gets occasional (usually unimpressed) entries in biographical dictionaries. And that's it for Mr. Used to Really Be Someone.
Poor Algarotti. Maybe if he'd been better at job-hunting...or Fritz had been a better boss.
The dissertation's final chapter is on how the mighty have fallen, and it turns out some of it has to do with Algarotti being a polymath instead of a specialist (I sympathize; if I were a specialist, I'd be a lot more famous now too), but much of it has to do with the period when Italian nationalism took off. You see, Algarotti the cosmopolitan wasn't considered sufficiently patriotic, always living abroad, working for foreign monarchs, getting art out of Italy and into foreign collections, and ick, that spying on the King of Sardinia for Old Fritz.
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"...and these techniques worked for a while but then completely fell apart once he was dead."
Yep, sometimes fate screws you over. Especially when a major standard for fame is: "How much did you aggrandize your country?" Fritz: lots. Algarotti: not so much.
Re: Algarotti
"I hope you fare as well with your lungs as we did against the Austrians."
Oh man, Fritz. This makes me... not feel quite as offended about his condolence letter to Heinrich, actually. He can sure turn a phrase.
Re: Algarotti