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Frederick the Great, discussion post 5: or: Yuletide requests are out!
All Yuletide requests are out!
Yuletide related:
-it is sad that I can't watch opera quickly enough these days to have offered any of them, these requests are delightful!
-That is... sure a lot of prompts for MCS/Jingyan. But happily some that are not :D (I like MCS/Jingyan! But there are So Many Other characters!)
Frederician-specific:
-I am so excited someone requested Fritz/Voltaire, please someone write it!!
-I also really want someone to write that request for Poniatowski, although that is... definitely a niche request, even for this niche fandom. But he has memoirs?? apparently they are translated from Polish into French
-But while we are waiting/writing/etc., check out this crack commentfic where Heinrich and Franz Stefan are drinking together while Maria Theresia and Frederick the Great have their secret summit, which turns into a plot to marry the future Emperor Joseph to Fritz...
Master link to Frederick the Great posts and associated online links
Yuletide related:
-it is sad that I can't watch opera quickly enough these days to have offered any of them, these requests are delightful!
-That is... sure a lot of prompts for MCS/Jingyan. But happily some that are not :D (I like MCS/Jingyan! But there are So Many Other characters!)
Frederician-specific:
-I am so excited someone requested Fritz/Voltaire, please someone write it!!
-I also really want someone to write that request for Poniatowski, although that is... definitely a niche request, even for this niche fandom. But he has memoirs?? apparently they are translated from Polish into French
-But while we are waiting/writing/etc., check out this crack commentfic where Heinrich and Franz Stefan are drinking together while Maria Theresia and Frederick the Great have their secret summit, which turns into a plot to marry the future Emperor Joseph to Fritz...
Master link to Frederick the Great posts and associated online links
Re: Algarotti
Guys, they're in French! I had no idea. She broke into French for her most passionate letters, apparently because French is the language of love and English couldn't begin to express the depth and strength of her emotions.
This is not something she normally does! In 500 pages of letters, 32 are in French, and 11 of those are to Algarotti. The others seem to be largely to French people who presumably don't speak English. But she starts writing to Algarotti in English, and then switches to French when her emotions become too strong (switching occasionally back to English). Woooow.
Guys, she's obsessed. o.O
After picking my very slow way through a subset of the French, I accidentally discovered that the back of the book has the English translations, haha. (I discovered this while deciding to flip through the entire book to see how often she writes in French. Then all the French letters were collated and translated in the last few pages, yay. Then I felt silly. :P) So I scanned and uploaded those as well, for those of us whose French is very slow.
Oh, and apologies for the sometimes slanted or wavy writing. Holding the book flat and scanning and getting a good quality picture was hard. But it should be readable in all cases. As always, let me know if you can't access the files. (I live in horror of this, ever since sending a blast email announcing my wedding, with a link to our wedding registry that apparently worked only if you were logged in as me.)
Re: Algarotti
Re: Algarotti
Re: Algarotti
Apr 1736
LM to A: I waited THREE HOURS for you. Quote: "Three Hours of expectation is no small Tryal of Patience, and I beleive [sic] some of your Martyrs have been canoniz'd for suffering less."
May 1736
LM to A: Come visit me tomorrow! If you don't reply, I'll take that to mean you're coming.
Aug 1736
LM to A: Now writing in the Language of Losing Your Mind to Love, aka French. Almost swooned at the thought of seeing you again.
Sep 1736
LM to A: Will love you forever, spend all my time agonizing over whether telling you so will offend you.
Sep 1736
LM to A: Remember Dido? Foreign guy comes to visit her, she falls in love, he abandons her, she kills herself. THAT'S ME RIGHT NOW. I mean, I think I'm tougher than that, but the thought did cross my mind, just so you know.
I had dinner with an acquaintance last night. She said you were the most attractive [aimable--translation the editor's] person she'd ever seen. I made her stay and talk until two am. Not because we talked about you, because we didn't. But just so I could enjoy the company of someone who had once enjoyed yours. THAT'S how far gone I am. The only other pleasure I have in life is writing letters you never answer. I realize this is irrational!
Also, since I never get anything in return, I maintain that makes my love the purest. When people pray to the Virgin Mary, they expect to get something in return. You've made it quite clear I can expect nothing. I LOVE YOU ANYWAY.
Sep 1736
LM to A: You're still not writing to me. I don't think your ship sank, or I would have heard about it. I'm going to go ask Lord Hervey if he has any news. Brb.
LH to LM: Yes, Algarotti writes to me, and no, he never mentions you. And yes, he knows you and I talk. Draw your own conclusions.
Sep 1736
LM to A: OMG, you wrote to me! I went to see Lord Hervey to ask him if you'd arrived safely in Paris. But I was such an emotional mess that I couldn't get this simple question out, and he got super annoyed with me.
LH to A: Omg, I tried to get out of talking to her, and then she caught me, and we had this incredibly painful, extended, and unsuccessful interview. What does she want?! FML
LH to LM: "It is not strange that any body who labours as much as you do to be unintelligible should be misunderstood, but if you will send me word what hour to night I may see you, I will call upon you for better information, if it be but for a minute, to show you that at least it is not willfully (as you say) that I misunderstand."
Oct 1736
LM to A: Pretty sure you haven't written to me. Your letters can't possibly be going astray. I have retired to the countryside to look at trees. Since I can't look at you, I don't want to look at other people.
Addendum later that day: OMG YOU WROTE TO HERVEY AGAIN? You bastard.
Dec 1736
Please find enclosed an unsolicited portrait of me. If you can't come to England, I'm moving to Italy so we can live together.
Feb 1738
LM to A: Everything sucks.
Jun 1738
LM to A: Haven't heard from you in over a month. Remember, me moving to Italy forever just to be with you is totally an option.
Jul 1738
LM to A: What do you mean, I didn't reply to your letter? You know I always reply to your letters the same day I get them. I am your Penelope. You're just lying so you can pretend you didn't get the many letters I sent you. P.S. I love you anyway.
Jul 1738
LM to A: I keep writing to you. I really hope you're getting all these letters. I'm going crazy here.
Aug 1738
LM to A: Ditto above.
Nov 1738
LM to A: Why are you upset with me? I do everything for you! If you're upset, it's all your fault. P.S. If I can't see you again, I want to die. Immediately.
Jan 1739
LM to A: I said I wasn't going to write to you any more until I heard from you, but here I am writing to you. You're probably infatuated with some beautiful Parisian woman. I am in very real danger of falling out of love with you here.
Feb 1739
LM to A: OMG, you're coming to London??!! Yes, I will totally pay for your trip! OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!
Mar 1739
LM to A: ...And now you're unhappy with my method of payment. Fine. We'll do it your way, despite the great inconvenience to me.
Jul 1739
LM to A: Since you managed to leave immediately after arriving, I am officially declaring: fuck this. I'm going to Italy, and we're going to be together forever.
Sep 1739
LM to A: I'm at the foot of the Alps and about to arrive in Italy. Trembling with anticipation. I went all the way through France without thinking about anything except you.
Algarotti: *hasn't been anywhere near Italy for years*
Algarotti: *currently hanging out with Crown Prince Fritz at Rheinsberg*
Dec 1739
LM to A: What the actual fuck. Now you're claiming you had no idea I was coming to Venice to live with you? You think I came here for the freaking Carnival*? NO I cannot go to Paris! You agreed to this plan! I'm staying here, I like it here, and if you don't want to join me, you can just stay wherever the heck you are now and feel bad about me coming all this way for you, you ingrate. You know, I could be happy here if it weren't for you.
* Footnote: the Carnival in Venice is kind of a big deal. You go there at the furthest removed time from Carnival, i.e. autumn, and you're like, "Wow, Carnival masks for sale everywhere."
Mar 1740
LM to A: What do you mean, you told me not to come to Italy? You totally agreed I should come to Italy! I have it in writing! I would have gone to Japan for you. Now. Seriously. I'm going to stay here, unless you tell me you really want me, and then I'll go anywhere. But you need to be super clear about it if you expect me to relocate again.
July 1740
LM to A: Still waiting for you.
Oct 1740
LM to A: Prepared to go anywhere in the world with you. Just say the word.
May 1741
LM to A: Newton did not study light more than I studied you. And when I looked into the prism of your eyes, I saw only indifference toward me. I'm sure this is my fault for not being interesting enough to spark emotion in a soul like yours.
Footnote: Critically, this letter is undated. Its content makes the most sense if it dates to May 1741, when they ran into each other in Turin, met up, and it was unpleasant enough that she stopped writing to him for the next decade and a half. BUT. The ink and paper are most similar to letters she wrote in England in the 1730s, so she might have gone through a period of disillusionment with him after his brief visit to London in spring 1739.
I'm sort of torn between sympathy and horror. Train wreck much? Without Algarotti's letters (of course, there aren't many), it's hard to say how much he encouraged her, but aside from the one where she claims he agreed to live in Venice with her, it sounds like not much. She's clearly suffering, but she's also clearly driving him crazy and she *knows* it (she repeatedly says so), so I am also totally sympathetic to Algarotti here. Since he was apparently a notorious people pleaser, I could imagine him going, "Suuuuuure, you should tooootally come to Venice
for, like, a two-day visit" hoping she didn't follow through, and making sure she didn't know he was far, far away when she did.Nothing about everything I know about Algarotti indicates that he was any good at confrontation, like, at all, so he probably carries some share of the blame here, but I can imagine him trying to be distantly polite in the face of her relentlessness, and her latching onto the least bit of encouragement and ignoring all the attempts at discouragement he claims to have made. It's also quite possible he wrote something that read to him as, "If you're in town, you're welcome to my guest room," and to her as, "Drop everything and come to Venice so we can fulfill our destiny of being together forever."
In the end, I'm glad she managed to enjoy Italy more than England and be much happier there than she was at home, to the point where she lived there for the next twenty years without him. Silver lining?
Re: Algarotti
But yes, silver lining. BTW, Burgdorf the unreliable GAY GAY AND DID I MENTION GAY Fritz biographer of course lists Alagarotti among the Fritzian conquests and assures his readers that never ever did Algarotti consort with anyone female ever. For verily, bi people do not exist. Sigh.
Re: Algarotti
True. As we've seen elsewhere, he was on a desperate job hunt at the time, hence his very brief stay, buuuut, you're right, that may not have been the most ethical move ever.
BTW, Burgdorf the unreliable GAY GAY AND DID I MENTION GAY Fritz biographer of course lists Alagarotti among the Fritzian conquests and assures his readers that never ever did Algarotti consort with anyone female ever. For verily, bi people do not exist.
Sigh, sigh, and sigh. I mean, Algarotti is generally listed among the Fritzian conquests (orgasm poem, anyone?), but Algarotti was almost certainly bi! And not just because of Lady Mary. Omg, reactionary historians are terrible.
Re: Algarotti
It is nice she liked Italy, though :P