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Frederick the Great, discussion post 6
...I think we need another one (seriously, you guys, this is THE BEST) and I'd better make it now before I disappear into the wilds of music performance.
(also, as of this week there are two Frederician fics in the yuletide archive and eeeeeeeeeee)
(huh, only one of them is actually tagged with Frederick the Great even though two with Maria Theresia and Wilhelmine, eeeeeee this is awesome I CAN'T WAIT)
Frederick the Great masterpost
(also, as of this week there are two Frederician fics in the yuletide archive and eeeeeeeeeee)
(huh, only one of them is actually tagged with Frederick the Great even though two with Maria Theresia and Wilhelmine, eeeeeee this is awesome I CAN'T WAIT)
Frederick the Great masterpost
Passionate Minds: Émilie and Voltaire
They send her to court to try to find a husband. She doesn't like the guys who keep hitting on her, so she finds a soldier and challenges him to a public duel. They fight with swords, not to kill. It's a draw. Now the men leave her alone. (#RoleModel)
She doesn't have a lot of money and not a lot of socially acceptable means of making money. But then she discovers gambling, and more specifically, card counting! (Émilie, ILUUUU!)
Then she immediately spends half her money on books. (Émilie, ILU EVEN MORE!)
She ends up married to a decent man who likes having an intelligent wife and is willing to let her do her own thing as long as he can have his own affairs on the side and they don't have to interact much.
Cut to Voltaire. A young François Arouet has gotten locked in the Bastille for mouthing off. Drama happens. He adopts the pen name Voltaire.
His dad has hated him all his life. (I wonder if he and Fritz ever commiserated over bad dads.) Like Wilhelmine, Voltaire works out his issues via art therapy, since he doesn't have the option of forcing his alter egos to marry.
"In all of world literature, the play that had most attracted young Arouet was Sophocles' Oedipus, with its hard-to-resist motif of a son murdering his father. For Arouet's own father had constantly disparaged him, calling him lazy and 'cursed by God.' When as a teenager Arouet had refused to go through the charade of law school that his father had tried forcing him into, he'd been threatened with exile to a miserable, malaria-ridden life on the plantations in the French West Indies. It didn't help that Arouet was probably illegitimate, and that his father had furiously taxed him with this fault as well."
(I can see wanting to cheat on this guy, Mme. Arouet.)
His Oedipus is a big hit. He even gets Dad to attend. Dad, who apparently has as much ability to read between the lines as Lehndorff, is seen madly applauding.
The nobleman who got him locked in the Bastille gives him a gold watch and an annual subsidy. Quote from the book: "Though when Orléans personally told him of the annuity, Voltaire replied that although he thanked the regent for helping to pay for his food, in the future he would prefer to take care of his lodgings himself."
Voltaire has fun in Paris for a while, exchanges repartee with a nobleman, gets imprisoned in the Bastille again, then kicked out of France, because since when is freedom of speech a thing in 18th century France? He goes to England, learns to speak English partly by sitting in the theater at Drury Lane listening to Shakespeare while reading a copy of the play and mouthing the words to himself.
He discovers that England is awesome! Because it's liberal! Wow, it's so much better than France. Watch them not have a bloody revolution half a century from now. (Tangential quote I couldn't resist passing on: "He discovered strange, meat-avoiding beings called “vegetarians,” who compounded their oddity by going for long brisk walks for their health.")
He learns a lot, and his stay shapes his political thinking. But then he gets homesick. After a couple years, things calm down enough that he's able to go back to Paris.
Meanwhile, Émilie is discovering that the reason other women are so vapid and gossipy is because society doesn't allow them the education to become anything else. (Something Fritz seems to have also figured out, not that it changed his misogyny one bit.)
She has a couple kids with her husband, and an affair with a nobleman. It's fun, but she wants more emotional depth. They stay friendly exes.
Voltaire discovers he can get rich by outsmarting the government, buying up large numbers of bonds at a deeply discounted price from wealthy people, then getting the government to redeem these bonds at full price. Success! Now he's rich and doesn't need a patron. Life is good. But lonely.
Then Émilie and Voltaire are introduced by mutual friends. Love at first sight. Sex and poetry and science and philosophy. But then they break up (it seems to have been a tumultuous relationship). She has an affair with Maupertuis.
Then she gets back together with Voltaire, because she can't give him up any more than Fritz will be able to in future years.
A warrant for Voltaire's arrest (lettre de cachet) is out. Émilie helps him escape to the border, where one of her exes is stationed, as the French make war on the Austrians in the War of the Polish Succession. Voltaire gets to hang out in camp, wanders a little too far afield, gets taken for a spy. He narrowly escapes getting executed on the spot.
Hilariously, I checked the dates when I saw Eugene of Savoy's name, and sure enough, it's Philippsburg in summer 1734, which means while Voltaire is wandering around the French camp as a noncombatant, Crown Prince Fritz is a combatant over on the Austrian side. They must have figured this out in later years.
Anyway, Émilie is annoyed with Voltaire for almost getting himself killed.Voltaire doesn't care, he busy with his latest project: using his giant fortune to rebuild a falling-down chateau that belongs to Émilie's husband's family. This is Cirey, where Voltaire and Émilie will later spend most of their time, do famous research, and people from all over Europe (including Algarotti, Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Book) will come to visit them.
Émilie is in Paris, trying to hook up with Maupertuis again, but while he's down for sex, he won't treat her as an intellectual equal, and she can't stand that. So she goes back to Voltaire.
Once Émilie shows up at Cirey, she's on board with the renovation project, but has completely different architectural ideas, and takes over the design. Go Émilie.
Then they move in. Science happens! They do a commentary on the Bible, they study Newton, they get a telescope and study the night skies.
Then there's another arrest order out for Voltaire. (You'll see a lot of recurring themes in this story, much as there are recurring themes in the Fritz/Voltaire story.)
Voltaire flees incognito to the Low Countries. He's worse than Fritz at incognito! He "manage[s] to hold out for almost a whole day" under a false identity, before letting everyone know who he really is. By the time he gets to Brussels, they're staging one of his plays in his honor.
Émilie is annoyed.
But then Voltaire comes back, and she missed him, so she forgives him. More science happens! Voltaire takes up corresponding with some crown prince in Prussia. "He's the literal best!" he tells Émilie. "Hope of the nations! Messiah! Our Lord and Savior!"
Émilie: *is not convinced*
"He wants me to come visit him at Rheinsberg. Can I can I can I?"
"HIS DAD IS STILL KING YOU IDIOT."
Oh. Right. "Okay, but later! After he becomes the Best King Ever (TM)."
"I'll cross that bridge when I come to it."
As I recounted in another comment, when Fritz sends Keyserlingk on a supposedly social visit, Émilie locks away the most incriminating play, and Keyserlingk leaves disappointed.
Émilie is my hero.
Meanwhile, the Academy of Sciences is offering a prize for the best submission. Voltaire decides to enter. Émilie will help.
But partway through the project, she's all, "Oh, I'm such a weak woman, all this experimental science is too physically taxing, where are my smelling salts?" So a very Voltaire lets her retire to her room early every night. Where she sits at her desk late into the night, coming up with a much better submission, because she can already tell Voltaire is not a scientist.
Émilie, can I commission, like, a monumental marble statue for you or something? I might nominate you for YT next year. Maybe in addition to Frederician 18th century, we can have a fandom for 18th century Enlightenment thinkers, get Émilie and Voltaire and Algarotti in there.
Anyway, Émilie can't do experimental science, because Voltaire will know something is up if she sets up a giant lab. So she does theoretical science. And by thinking about optics, she manages to come up with a better submission than Voltaire with all his experimental equipment. He makes a number of amateur mistakes, seeing as how he is, you know, an amateur.
But she's a woman, so they both place the same in the competition. Neither gets first prize, because the French Academy is all Cartesian and Voltaire and Émilie are Newtonians (this is also a problem Algarotti, who you may remember was the first person in Italy to reproduce Newton's optical experiments, had in France, which is partly why he didn't want to settle down there).
After the burn of getting outshone by Émilie working alone at night with no equipment, Voltaire decides to take a break from physics and go back to writing, which he's much better at.
Then FW dies! Émilie can't keep Voltaire fully away from Fritz, but she does her best. We know the Fritz/Voltaire story much better than this ridiculous author does, so I'll skip over that part.
Voltaire and Émilie have another breakup. Émilie has a bit of a breakdown, starts losing money when she gambles, binge eats, stops doing science. :-(
Voltaire realizes he needs an actual ally at court, so gets one of his acquaintances, Jeanne Poisson, into the King's bed. The idea is that being so lowborn, she won't have a noble family to protect her, so she'll be totally dependent on Voltaire and the other guy who helped put her there.
It...doesn't work out like that. Madame de Pompadour can take care of herself, thank you very much.
Oh, I discovered a while back that Louis XV was in fact present in person at Fontenoy. I didn't have details, but I figured it wasn't anything to write home about. Turns out his first battle is like Fritz's, but more so, because he doesn't really do anything in the first place. Nor does he treat it as part of the learning curve. (Not that I'm all in favor of Fritz's wars, but I respect his personal courage, skill, and determination, even if his reasons for going to war are not cool.)
Émilie is pulling herself together and going back to science and philosophy. Voltaire is having an affair with his niece. Things are not going as well at court as he'd hoped when he helped bring young Jeanne to the King's attention.
They decide to try again. But when Émilie is gambling at court, the tables are rigged, and she loses a fortune. Voltaire opens his big mouth, accuses the nobles of cheating, and they have to flee. Émilie goes to Paris, where she figures out how to make a large amount of money by making the taxation system work in her favor. She manages to get all her debts either paid off or forgiven, in, like, a month.
Meanwhile, Voltaire is hiding from arrest (yes, again) at a friend's country house. He gets one dark room, curtains always closed so one can tell he's living there, and no visitors, just one servant. It's hell.
Until he starts writing. Then he gets so absorbed in what he's doing that he doesn't want to leave. But Émilie shows up, they have fun again, life is good, for a while. But things are still tense, and they're trying to make it work. They decide traveling will be good for the relationship.
They go hang out at the court of Stanislaus, deposed king of Poland (remember the War of the Polish Succession that Voltaire and Fritz were briefly involved in) and father of Marie Leszczyńska, queen of France.
The gossipy sensationalism begins!
It turns out Stanislaus has a mistress named Catherine. His priest does not approve of this. Especially since said priest is a Jesuit, and Catherine hates Jesuits. Father Joseph decides that, while no mistress would be ideal, Stanislaus has made it's clear not happening, so any mistress would be better than this mistress.
"Émilie is famous! And pretty enough. If I invite her to court, Stanislaus is sure to ditch Catherine for her!" goes Father Joseph's rather bizarre logic.
Émilie: Lol wut. He's 71. I'm with Voltaire. Catherine, though, you seem cool.
Émilie and Catherine: *become BFFs*
Stanislaus: *is relieved not to have to satisfy two mistresses at his age* (<-- Seriously, this is what the author says.)
However, Voltaire and Émilie are on the outs again. She starts having an affair with a rather younger and better looking man at Stanislaus' court, who used to be Catherine's lover. Stanislaus approves. Things are good for a while. She finds a love letter from her new lover to Catherine. Voltaire catches Émilie and her new lover having sex. Émilie knows he has a lover in Paris (but doesn't guess it's his niece). Drama and explosions ensue.
Things start falling apart between her and her new lover. She goes back to Voltaire, but now she's pregnant, and it's not his. He's not super happy. She's convinced she's going to die in childbirth. She does, age 42. </3
"How convenient, I mean sad," says Fritz, who is an asshole where Émilie is concerned. (Fritz, I'm warning you, Heinrich's on his own, like the rest of your family, but I have finally found the one person on whose behalf I will fight you.) Within months, Voltaire is at his court, either having run out of excuses to stay away, if you believe a Fritz biographer, or if you believe this biographer, without Émilie to protect him from himself.
RIP, Émilie.
Re: Passionate Minds: Émilie and Voltaire
Card counting - I know autistic geniuses in movies do this, but I've often wondered whether it would really work in rl - though if Émilie could do it apparantly so? Ada, Countess Lovelace, she who developes the first programming in the 18th century, daughter of Byron tried - and failed miserably.
In all of world literature, the play that had most attracted young Arouet was Sophocles' Oedipus, with its hard-to-resist motif of a son murdering his father.
On the one hand, I can see your point, biographer - and btw this also explains why Voltaire would think Semiramis, featuring a wife-kills-husband backstory and a son-kills-mother present day story, would be a great subject to celebrate the birth of Louis XVI with - , but on the other, my inner nitpicker would like to point out that Sophocles' Oedipus is probably the last oedipal hero in all of Greek tragedy and legend. I mean, the guy goes out of his way not to kill his father and marry his mother. When an oracle tells him he will do this, he runs away, never to see the people he believes to be his parents again. (They never told him he was adopted.) He has zero idea the man he killed in an argument was his bio dad. And it happens in the play's backstory anyway. Where's the emotional satisfaction and catharsis in that?
So, if Maupertuis was only up for sex but not for an intellectual relationship, what was the attraction? Annoying Voltaire? He was that good in the sack?
What became of Émilie's submission once the competition was over, i.e. was it ever adapted and taught later?
Émilie's Fritz scepticism: realistic estimation of royals, or of Voltaire?
Re: Passionate Minds: Émilie and Voltaire
But my understanding is that card counting is very much a real thing, it just doesn't work like it's portrayed in the movies. The real thing doesn't require any savant-like abilities, just having a strategy and sticking to it. *Coming up* with the strategy might require Émilie-level intelligence, but following it doesn't. The MIT Blackjack Team was very much a real group that ran for years and made money off casinos, even if the movie based on it was not an accurate portrayal.
So I absolutely believe Émilie made some money off a bunch of French nobles this way.
So, if Maupertuis was only up for sex but not for an intellectual relationship, what was the attraction?
Oh, he was up for an intellectual *relationship*, just not an equal partnership. He was willing to talk science with her in private, but he wouldn't let her accompany him to the old boys' clubs he went to, that sort of thing.
What became of Émilie's submission once the competition was over, i.e. was it ever adapted and taught later?
Good question. I haven't been able to find any evidence that it was (which doesn't meant it wasn't), just that it took seventy years before anyone performed the experiments she proposed in it. It earned her a lot of personal fame, but I'm not sure how immediately influential it was. As noted, there was the problem that the Academy was still dominated by Cartesians. (Scientific influence also generally takes at least a generation, which is cynically but perhaps accurately described as: the people who learned one thing have to die off so the next generation can be more open to the ideas that were proposed in the past.)
Much more influential was her opus magnum: her translation and commentary of Newton's Principia. 300 years later, it's still the definitive French translation, because she did such a good job and it's such a difficult text. I didn't mention that in this write-up because I thought we had discussed it already--ah, yes, I mentioned it in an aside here.
Émilie's Fritz scepticism: realistic estimation of royals, or of Voltaire?
Can't tell from the information I have, but I'd like to propose a third possibility: she treated Fritz the same way she'd treat any romantic rival who was trying to take Voltaire away from her.
It's also worth remembering that Fritz did not treat her the way he treated Voltaire, so she's naturally going to have a different perspective on him. Voltaire had stars in his eyes because Fritz wrote to him first, metaphorically kissing his feet, and Voltaire *wanted* to believe he'd be able to influence a great monarch into implementing all the ideas he wanted to see put into practice. Émilie knew that was never going to be a possibility for her. So she had every reason not to trust Fritz.
Re: Passionate Minds: Émilie and Voltaire
Re: Passionate Minds: Émilie and Voltaire
To be fair to PM, it has some citations in the footnotes, but not nearly enough, and also, even after I'd picked up on the "Voltaire as romantic hero" one-sided presentation, I got to something I knew something about (Fritz) and I was like..."Oh, wow, are you this wrong about everything in this book?"
So a second book on the subject would be a most welcome contribution.
Safe travels!