To wit: did he think he would be getting someone like Suhm, personality wise?
Interesting question. It had occurred to me before that while Fritz's ideal partner probably had Suhm's personality and Voltaire's brain, there might be something mutually exclusive in what he wanted out of each of them, in that Voltaire's viciousness was a feature rather than a bug, or at least a feature/bug. Can you get a diplomatic satirist at the Voltaire level, who's easy to live with but savages his enemies for fun and profit? Maybe, but even if you find this unicorn, you have to be perfectly agreed on who the enemies are to avoid a falling out.
Now, did Fritz delude himself into thinking this was what he was getting? Well, it's extremely easy to believe, at some level, that because you're right about everything, all right-thinking people agree with you. (My wife always said she had to give up Facebook, because it was the place where she learned all the worst political beliefs of all the people she thought she liked.)
So did Fritz think Voltaire was only going to savage the people Fritz wanted savaged? Quite likely. Was that ever statistically likely? Not really. Would Suhm have been able to live with Fritz longer than Voltaire? Probably. Would Fritz have retained a lifelong addiction if Suhm had decided he'd had enough and left? I really doubt it.
, it makes "ping" in my mind: west as in Straßburg via Bayreuth? That trip? The very one where young AW is also present the entire time?
Yep! For those just joining, around August 1740, right after Fritz becomes king, these things happen.
He travels west to inspect Prussian domains near the French and Dutch borders.
He takes Algarotti and 18-yo AW with him, along with a bunch of other people.
They visit Wilhelmine in Bayreuth. Like everyone in the world except Lehndorff, she's quite taken (but not hopelessly smitten) with Algarotti.
Fritz decides to go to France. Incognito! He forges a passport and takes AW, Algarotti, and a Prussian nobleman across the border into Strasbourg. Fritz gets recognized by a Prussian deserter almost immediately. A farce ensues in which he and his companions deny that he's the Prussian King, until finally they can't any more. Fritz is very upset and disappointed.
Their false passports are detected, and they spend the night in custody, something Fritz pretends never happened but AW reports. (Fritz will later pretend AW was never present on this trip at all, after the Fritz/AW falling out in 1757/1758.)
Stung by this misadventure, and also possibly because he gets hit by a bout of malaria at this time, Fritz cancels the trip to Paris, which he never does get to visit. (Heinrich does, after Fritz's death.)
Fritz goes to Cleves, which is a Prussian holding, and meets Voltaire for the first time in person there, while in the grip of a malarial fever. (Voltaire reports a meet-cute where his first encounter with Fritz consisted of visiting his sickbed and taking his pulse.)
While in Cleves, Fritz prioritizes getting a small principality back, that of Herstall, to which he has a legitimate claim (more than Silesia), so that he's been king for like two months and is already throwing his weight around and showing the "don't fuck with me" side of his personality. According to Voltaire's memoirs, this, not the Silesian invasion, is when he starts to have his first inklings that publishing the Anti-Machiavel while the military occupation of Herstall is in progress might not be the world's best idea.
did Fritz and Algarotti have a spectator kink? Because I doubt Fritz paid for another carriage for his younger brother.
Spectator, hell. You think Algarotti wasn't one of Voltaire's sources for the manuscript on how to succeed at Fritz's court? Katte was starting a family collection back in the 1720s!
More seriously, I never said they had sex *in the carriage* in my write-up; that was iberiandoctor's addition, to which I jokingly went "sure!" Historically, no, what my sources say is they rode in the carriage together, there was caressing and carrying on. I'm using that as (admittedly weak and circumstantial) evidence that Algarotti scored sometime in 1739 or 1740, and my headcanon is only once or twice, before Fritz decided that if Algarotti couldn't get him to enjoy sex with men enough for it to be worth it, no one could.
I honestly think Fritz would have had a spectator squick. He was big on privacy and apparently physically modest (probably self-conscious and possibly body image issues).
I also don't think it was in the carriage because carriage rides were super uncomfortable, with all the jolting, and with Fritz's health problems, I doubt he would have been physically comfortable enough to relax and have sex. I the entire carriage ride was Fritz talking and Algarotti occasionally getting a word in edgewise. And everyone else listening.
How many people do you think per carriage, btw? I've got a record of 2 royals and 2 nobles on this trip, plus assorted servants.
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Re: Toppings of all types, continued
Date: 2020-01-17 04:56 pm (UTC)Interesting question. It had occurred to me before that while Fritz's ideal partner probably had Suhm's personality and Voltaire's brain, there might be something mutually exclusive in what he wanted out of each of them, in that Voltaire's viciousness was a feature rather than a bug, or at least a feature/bug. Can you get a diplomatic satirist at the Voltaire level, who's easy to live with but savages his enemies for fun and profit? Maybe, but even if you find this unicorn, you have to be perfectly agreed on who the enemies are to avoid a falling out.
Now, did Fritz delude himself into thinking this was what he was getting? Well, it's extremely easy to believe, at some level, that because you're right about everything, all right-thinking people agree with you. (My wife always said she had to give up Facebook, because it was the place where she learned all the worst political beliefs of all the people she thought she liked.)
So did Fritz think Voltaire was only going to savage the people Fritz wanted savaged? Quite likely. Was that ever statistically likely? Not really. Would Suhm have been able to live with Fritz longer than Voltaire? Probably. Would Fritz have retained a lifelong addiction if Suhm had decided he'd had enough and left? I really doubt it.
, it makes "ping" in my mind: west as in Straßburg via Bayreuth? That trip? The very one where young AW is also present the entire time?
Yep! For those just joining, around August 1740, right after Fritz becomes king, these things happen.
He travels west to inspect Prussian domains near the French and Dutch borders.
He takes Algarotti and 18-yo AW with him, along with a bunch of other people.
They visit Wilhelmine in Bayreuth. Like everyone in the world except Lehndorff, she's quite taken (but not hopelessly smitten) with Algarotti.
Fritz decides to go to France. Incognito! He forges a passport and takes AW, Algarotti, and a Prussian nobleman across the border into Strasbourg. Fritz gets recognized by a Prussian deserter almost immediately. A farce ensues in which he and his companions deny that he's the Prussian King, until finally they can't any more. Fritz is very upset and disappointed.
Their false passports are detected, and they spend the night in custody, something Fritz pretends never happened but AW reports. (Fritz will later pretend AW was never present on this trip at all, after the Fritz/AW falling out in 1757/1758.)
Stung by this misadventure, and also possibly because he gets hit by a bout of malaria at this time, Fritz cancels the trip to Paris, which he never does get to visit. (Heinrich does, after Fritz's death.)
Fritz goes to Cleves, which is a Prussian holding, and meets Voltaire for the first time in person there, while in the grip of a malarial fever. (Voltaire reports a meet-cute where his first encounter with Fritz consisted of visiting his sickbed and taking his pulse.)
While in Cleves, Fritz prioritizes getting a small principality back, that of Herstall, to which he has a legitimate claim (more than Silesia), so that he's been king for like two months and is already throwing his weight around and showing the "don't fuck with me" side of his personality. According to Voltaire's memoirs, this, not the Silesian invasion, is when he starts to have his first inklings that publishing the Anti-Machiavel while the military occupation of Herstall is in progress might not be the world's best idea.
did Fritz and Algarotti have a spectator kink? Because I doubt Fritz paid for another carriage for his younger brother.
Spectator, hell. You think Algarotti wasn't one of Voltaire's sources for the manuscript on how to succeed at Fritz's court? Katte was starting a family collection back in the 1720s!
More seriously, I never said they had sex *in the carriage* in my write-up; that was
I honestly think Fritz would have had a spectator squick. He was big on privacy and apparently physically modest (probably self-conscious and possibly body image issues).
I also don't think it was in the carriage because carriage rides were super uncomfortable, with all the jolting, and with Fritz's health problems, I doubt he would have been physically comfortable enough to relax and have sex. I the entire carriage ride was Fritz talking and Algarotti occasionally getting a word in edgewise. And everyone else listening.
How many people do you think per carriage, btw? I've got a record of 2 royals and 2 nobles on this trip, plus assorted servants.