Carrying over replies to comment on the last post:
"Three whores of Europe": you know, I've never seen a direct citation for this one. It gets quoted in every single 20th century biography that I've read, but without the addendum of "as such and such reports". (Same, btw, with MT's "evil man from Potsdam" - that also gets quoted as a saying of hers about Fritz without "see letter x" or "memoirs y" because it's so often used that it's taken for granted. (Meanwhile, the "but does this hero who has won himself such praise etc..." sentence I let her use in the Yuletide story are from a letter to Joseph the Rational fanboy"; *pats self on back for using actual sourced quote*) All this being said, Fritz' subject and contemporary Lehndorff, when the war is going badly for Prussia, does have an entry where he doesn't quote "three whores" but says that maybe the King shouldn't have insulted all the female leaders of Europe.
The letters to Heinrich, to Voltaire and to Wilhelmine have Fritz casting himself as Orpheus, peacefully minding his own business, and MT, Elizabeth & the Marquise de Pompadour as tihe maenads who after him to tear him apart. There's also the famous description "the league of petticoats" which again I don't think I've ever seen being given with a direct citation. Barbara Stollinger quotes a couple of direct MT directed insults and she's good with citation, but my copy of her MT biography is in Munich, and I'm in Bamberg, so I can't look it up.
"Women smelling bad": depressingly, this seems to have been a historic gay men's trope about women? Because Philippe d'Orleans and his favourites used that one, too. Now how anyone could smell anything in Versailles, between all the bodily waste necessitating the court moving every few months and all the perfumes used is beyond me anyway.
More seriously, in a lifetime of hypocrisy, there is little that Fritz was more hypocritical about than money. If you ask me, he's trying to compensate for a deprived childhood. Anyone trying to take money that could be his is a trigger that emotionally puts him back in a place where he has to live without books and music and adequate food. I think his obsession with good food, what he described as "disorderly cravings, like a pregnant woman," and his apparent inability to keep from bolting it (even when he had no trouble skipping meals or living on tight rations) stems from the same source.
*nods* Agreed. And I think the way he both withheld from and showered his siblings at different times with money also plays into this. (Btw, since McDonogh is wondering: yes, he paid Amalie's debts.) Money isn't just money. Money is power, control and affection. Not always as point blank as as when he sends some and tells Heinrich to get rid of Kaphengst, but the subtext is often there. And of course, he keeps sending food to them, too. (Even to EC in their fruit exchanges.)
But the fact that it remained so deniable, and the fact that he spent that much time denying it, and the fact that people like Heinrich or Algarotti leave us in no doubt about their sexual activity, and the fact that there are so few candidates and he spent relatively little time with them (even Fredersdorf and he are frequently separated after 1740), and the fact that Trenck absolutely would have talked...it kind of makes me think he'd figured out that he liked the idea of sex better than the act.
I mean, his contemporaries seem to have been in little to no doubt in terms of orientation, even those who were not particularly close to him. It's not just Liechtenstein with the Alexander seal and Manteuffel with the "Seckendorff, read up on Hadrian if you want to understand Junior!" tip, but courtiers like Lehndorff who report matter of factly that Glasow's original in with Fritz were his good looks, and also says of Fredersdorf that "a very pretty face aided him and was the beginning of his fortune". But Voltaire's story about morning fooling around with the pages and cavaliers between breakfeast and work aside, I can't recall a contemporary claiming that he/she knew without the shadow of a doubt that Fritz had actually had sex with any of them. (Though correct me if I'm missing good examples, and if Blanning reports otherwise.)
Thièbault making FW the author if the Fritz/MT marriage idea demonstrating he had zilch idea about FW's hardcore Calvinism:
Yup. He also didn't live at a strictly Calvinist court, and Fritz was pretty chill about religion (I mean, he badmouthed Catholics, but we all know he was willing to pretend to be a Protestant for the sake of winning his wars), so why not FW? I mean, if Voltaire can have FW present at the execution...
Quite. I mean, don't get me wrong: if there had been a way for FW to get a Hohenzollern son of his on the throne of the HRE without religious conversion (or, even better, an Archduchess go Protestant), I do think he'd have jumped on it, which was my justification for making him that tiny but key bit more ambitious in the first MT-Fritz encounter. But the Prussian kings being Protestants was really a key part of their image. Remember, as late as the mid 1750s Fritz asks Wihelmine to make a stop at Geneva on her way back from Italy to squash the rumors that she and the Margrave were converting to Catholicism (that's when she promises to "make my salamaleikums"). Allowing Jesuits in his kingdom was one thing, but having members of his family go Catholic would have been damaging Fritz' standing as the hero of the Protestant faith and he knew it. (Especially since that business wiht the Stuarts must have been on every Protestant's mind in this regard, and that, too, started with first family members converting.
Serious question: does Lehndorff normally comment on the attractiveness of random courtiers and officers whose death he reports?
Not in the death reports, but he does mention attractiveness (or lack of same) when he draws one of his pen portraits. Both for the men and the women. And independent from whether he personally likes them. (For disliked but still described as attractive, see, Glasow, Heinrich's various no-good boyfriends, Ferdinand's wife, and Elisabeth the first wife of FW2, who even after she's shown herself to be MESSALINA to his beloved Crown Prince Jr. rarely gets mentioned without a remark of how pretty she is. See, for example, that entry about spotting her in her exile in Stettin and how she can carry off her extravagant fashion but everyone imitating her just looks stupid.)
This said, he mentions Peter being good looking in both the first entry on him (when Peter is still alive) and in the death entry, in combination of praising him in other regards as well, and that's certainly not standard. (Heinrich's various boyfriends gt a "good looking BUT...." type of description, not "so nice, and brave, and also good looking" the way Peter did.
In regards to how reliable Lehndorff calling someone good looking is, given the "beautiful as an angel" about Heinrich - well, to be fair, he says that specifically about Heinrich in his riding pants, so maybe what he found beautiful on that occasion wasn't Heinrich's face. Ahem. (Having more regular eating habits than Fritz, Heinrich kept his trim figure and in his older years erred more on the thin side than on the plumb side.) Otherwise, Lehndorff's Heinrich crush doesn't voice itself in praising his looks but his charm, intelligence, reading (out loud), and of course Lehndorff during the 7 Years War is delighted to now add "being a great general and looking out for civilians and pows" to his "why I love Heinrich" eloges.
Wilhelmine's memoirs: She should also sue the Boston editor guy who bowdlerized her memoirs and cut out the Dresden episode, oh and also her dad getting punched. Come on. Who *doesn't* want to read about FW getting punched? It's the most cathartic thing in the world after you've gotten through volume 1.
Indeed. The way she introduces this episode also cracks me up: "These memoirs really are all gloom and doom, I realize. So, here's a comic relief episode: how Dad got punched! (Describes it.) I return to my narrative."
OMG, Catt, you fucking liar! Look at this, guys.
*Looks* Tsk. My explanation would be that either Fritz woke him up on another occasion and he merges the two stories, or he changes the story as part of the effort of making himself look better, as the ultimate Fritz Wrangler, endlessly patient and enduring.
I'm not familiar with the primary sources for the anti-MT quotes, either. The only thing I can say is that they're not in Catt. The only MT mention I remember from the Catt memoirs is the backhanded compliment of MT that doubles as slut-shaming everyone *else*, whereas the diary version is a straightforward, if unenthusiastic, giving his best enemy her due. [ETA: there's at least one other MT mention, but it's wholly sympathetic. Though it does contain the line, "She is my enemy, it's true," which is massively hypocritical IF Fritz said it, given his "I was never her enemy" eulogy. What's the source on that, anyway?
ETA 2: The "Queen's and my obstinacy make many people unhappy" passage is also in the memoirs. I had forgotten/missed that when I ran into it in the diary.]
Now, we may dig them up and find they are also unreliable! But so far, undermining Catt doesn't undermine the rest of the quotes. Especially, as selenak points out, with Lehndorff saying he insulted all the female rulers.
The only quote I have a vague and unreliable memory of seeing recently in French is the one about the fight for Silesia going on for so long because it's easier to make brave men than nasty women give in. Maybe a letter to Wilhelmine? I'm not sure. Anyway, that's why it was so nice to see him equate his and MT's strength of will in the diary, instead of that double standard.
*nods* Agreed. And I think the way he both withheld from and showered his siblings at different times with money also plays into this.
Absolutely, one thousand percent.
And of course, he keeps sending food to them, too. (Even to EC in their fruit exchanges.)
Oh, right, I remembered Wilhelmine's pineapple and Heinrich's fruit but not EC's fruit exchange. (Poor, forgotten EC, lol.) Fritz and FW also exchange food during the 30s, though, am I remembering right? And of course, the memorable salmon to FS.
Also, it occurs to me, when Fritz is released from house arrest to Küstrin to a regiment in Ruppin where he's freer, granted, but his movements are still extremely constrained and he's not free to live his best life, what's pretty much the first thing he starts doing? Growing fruit and obsessing over it. And when he moves to Rheinsberg a few years later, as much as he loves it, he complains that he can't get the same fruit to grow.
I mean, his contemporaries seem to have been in little to no doubt in terms of orientation, even those who were not particularly close to him.
Oh, I have zero doubts about *orientation*. Fritz was gay, no two ways about it. (I've pretty much rejected the bi possibility that I was skeptical about but willing to entertain a few months ago.) Falls in love with men, attracted to good-looking men and wants to have them around. How sexually active, though, is my only question.
(Though correct me if I'm missing good examples, and if Blanning reports otherwise.)
Will do!
Allowing Jesuits in his kingdom was one thing
And long before that, commissioning St. Hedwig's, the Catholic church in Berlin. Oh, wow, Wikipedia tells me two things I didn't know. Though construction began in the 1740s, as I recalled, it wasn't completed until 1773, which is the exact time the Jesuits are arriving in droves. Two, it was the first Catholic church built in Prussia after the Reformation. Wow, Fritz is definitely making a public statement here.
given the "beautiful as an angel" about Heinrich - well, to be fair, he says that specifically about Heinrich in his riding pants, so maybe what he found beautiful on that occasion wasn't Heinrich's face.
True! I didn't get the impression he was looking anywhere above the waist on that occasion. :P
"Up here, Lehndorff. My eyes are up here!"
(Having more regular eating habits than Fritz, Heinrich kept his trim figure and in his older years erred more on the thin side than on the plumb side.)
True. Fritz was plump, I believe, 1731-1756, and then, once the Seven Years' War started, lost weight to the point where Catt comments on the difference between 1755 and early 1758 (and I believe it, even though it's in the memoirs, because of evidence from Fritz's correspondence that he was skipping dinner during the war, and also just common sense), and then I don't think I see any descriptions of him as plump until his death, when his mask looks very, very gaunt. As do many artistic depictions, insofar as they can be trusted (but a number of them do show him plump in the 30s and 40s).
Indeed. The way she introduces this episode also cracks me up: "These memoirs really are all gloom and doom, I realize. So, here's a comic relief episode: how Dad got punched! (Describes it.) I return to my narrative."
That's hilarious! Page 264 in volume 1 in the library, if you want to delight yourself by rereading the passage, cahn, as I did.
*Looks* Tsk. My explanation would be that either Fritz woke him up on another occasion and he merges the two stories, or he changes the story as part of the effort of making himself look better, as the ultimate Fritz Wrangler, endlessly patient and enduring.
Both of those make sense. Vanity, all is vanity (in both senses of the word when it comes to Catt).
Actual ultimate Fritz Wrangler, endlessly patient and enduring, was too self-effacing to leave us his memoirs. Sadly. But that's what fanfic is for!
Hey, selenak, guess what? Long ago, you listed "Apostolisches Rabenaas" as one of Fritz's insults toward MT. Well, "carogne apostolique", translated "apostolic hag" by the English memoir translator, is from Catt--memoirs, not diary.
That's not to say it's not used somewhere else, especially since it's Fritz talking about the Pompadour to MT letter he's just composed and listing the three main actors. I've never read it; I imagine there's a copy of it extant somewhere?
None of this is an excuse for MacDonogh, btw, who takes Catt's memoirs at face value.
Anyway, this is my list of MT mentions so far in Catt:
- carogne apostolique [not in diary]
- On this occasion, he drew me a very fine portrait of the Queen-Empress, of her abilities, her courage, her beneficence, her generosity and her spotless virtue. "She is my enemy, it is true. She does me a great deal of harm; but I must do her the justice she deserves. Princesses like her are seldom seen." [Don't remember it from diary, doesn't mean it's not there in some form.]
- "The Queen's and my obstinacy make many people unhappy" [In diary.]
- "In spite of all the harm she has done me [!!!], I must acknowledge that this princess is very respectable on the score of her morals, which are pure. There are very few women who are her equals in this respect. Most of them are strumpets, and the queen abhors strumpets, whom she is very careful to have shut up in prison, especially when she suspects them of being after her beloved spouse. She is very industrious, and has abilities in more than one direction. I cannot deny her this justice." [Diary version: "It must be admitted that the Queen of Hungary has talents, that she is capable, that she applies herself; we cannot refuse her this justice."]
I'm starting to think the most important thing you can do as a Fritz researcher is go through Catt's memoirs and figure out everything that isn't supported by external evidence, so you can throw it out, or at least heavily qualify it with "lying liar who lies."
That's not to say it's not used somewhere else, especially since it's Fritz talking about the Pompadour to MT letter he's just composed and listing the three main actors. I've never read it; I imagine there's a copy of it extant somewhere?
At a guess, it could be among the ouevres postumes in Trier.
Also, thank you for this compare and contrast! „Carogne Apostolique“ I‘ll grant Catt as likely to hail from Fritz and not from him, if only because Catt doesn‘t strike me as the type to create invectives. And „for all the harm she has done me“ sounds just so very Fritzian that I’ll concede it as likely, too. (And entirely in the spirit of his „I‘m Orpheus, MT, Pompadour and Elizabeth are the maenads tearing me apart“ in the letters.) Otoh, boo, hiss, Catt, for adding all the slut shaming of everyone else and to change it from a praise of capability and talent to a praise of morals to the third quote. Lying (Calvinist) liar who lies indeed.
Ha, I'm not going to concede "carogne apostolique" yet, even if selenak has :P If it's not in Catt's diaries... Could it have been someone else, not Fritz, who said it?
Catt being Catt, it could have been one of Heinrich's boyfriends, for all we know. :P Or an epithet going around camp. Just like Karl and Emil could be two random soldiers, we'll never know.
The problem with Catt is that you start having to be agnostic in the absence of external evidence.
But you're no longer compelled to have "carogne apostolique" in your headcanon, it's true!
I just discovered (thanks to Blanning, whom I've started rereading), that there is a "Rev. and supplemented ed. of German translation of French original" of Catt's diary, translated by Paul Hartig, 1986. Because it was published in 1986, I can't get it online, but you might be able to find it in a library, if you want something better the clumsy Google translate version I produced, and also there might be interesting commentary.
Especially since that business wiht the Stuarts must have been on every Protestant's mind in this regard, and that, too, started with first family members converting.
maybe the King shouldn't have insulted all the female leaders of Europe.
LOL, right! OK, I'm willing to give Fritz that one, then :)
*sigh* Someday that MT biography translation will be done and I can read it...
Heinrich's various no-good boyfriends
Aww, Lehndorff! "They're the worst! But very pretty. But what does Heinrich see in them??"
The way she introduces this episode also cracks me up: "These memoirs really are all gloom and doom, I realize. So, here's a comic relief episode: how Dad got punched! (Describes it.) I return to my narrative."
OMG. That's totally hilarious! (And thank you mildred for the page reference so I could read it in all its glory.) I also love how she's like "Dad was not a 'man of gallantry,'" hee.
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Various
"Three whores of Europe": you know, I've never seen a direct citation for this one. It gets quoted in every single 20th century biography that I've read, but without the addendum of "as such and such reports". (Same, btw, with MT's "evil man from Potsdam" - that also gets quoted as a saying of hers about Fritz without "see letter x" or "memoirs y" because it's so often used that it's taken for granted. (Meanwhile, the "but does this hero who has won himself such praise etc..." sentence I let her use in the Yuletide story are from a letter to Joseph the Rational fanboy"; *pats self on back for using actual sourced quote*) All this being said, Fritz' subject and contemporary Lehndorff, when the war is going badly for Prussia, does have an entry where he doesn't quote "three whores" but says that maybe the King shouldn't have insulted all the female leaders of Europe.
The letters to Heinrich, to Voltaire and to Wilhelmine have Fritz casting himself as Orpheus, peacefully minding his own business, and MT, Elizabeth & the Marquise de Pompadour as tihe maenads who after him to tear him apart. There's also the famous description "the league of petticoats" which again I don't think I've ever seen being given with a direct citation. Barbara Stollinger quotes a couple of direct MT directed insults and she's good with citation, but my copy of her MT biography is in Munich, and I'm in Bamberg, so I can't look it up.
"Women smelling bad": depressingly, this seems to have been a historic gay men's trope about women? Because Philippe d'Orleans and his favourites used that one, too. Now how anyone could smell anything in Versailles, between all the bodily waste necessitating the court moving every few months and all the perfumes used is beyond me anyway.
More seriously, in a lifetime of hypocrisy, there is little that Fritz was more hypocritical about than money. If you ask me, he's trying to compensate for a deprived childhood. Anyone trying to take money that could be his is a trigger that emotionally puts him back in a place where he has to live without books and music and adequate food.
I think his obsession with good food, what he described as "disorderly cravings, like a pregnant woman," and his apparent inability to keep from bolting it (even when he had no trouble skipping meals or living on tight rations) stems from the same source.
*nods* Agreed. And I think the way he both withheld from and showered his siblings at different times with money also plays into this. (Btw, since McDonogh is wondering: yes, he paid Amalie's debts.) Money isn't just money. Money is power, control and affection. Not always as point blank as as when he sends some and tells Heinrich to get rid of Kaphengst, but the subtext is often there. And of course, he keeps sending food to them, too. (Even to EC in their fruit exchanges.)
But the fact that it remained so deniable, and the fact that he spent that much time denying it, and the fact that people like Heinrich or Algarotti leave us in no doubt about their sexual activity, and the fact that there are so few candidates and he spent relatively little time with them (even Fredersdorf and he are frequently separated after 1740), and the fact that Trenck absolutely would have talked...it kind of makes me think he'd figured out that he liked the idea of sex better than the act.
I mean, his contemporaries seem to have been in little to no doubt in terms of orientation, even those who were not particularly close to him. It's not just Liechtenstein with the Alexander seal and Manteuffel with the "Seckendorff, read up on Hadrian if you want to understand Junior!" tip, but courtiers like Lehndorff who report matter of factly that Glasow's original in with Fritz were his good looks, and also says of Fredersdorf that "a very pretty face aided him and was the beginning of his fortune". But Voltaire's story about morning fooling around with the pages and cavaliers between breakfeast and work aside, I can't recall a contemporary claiming that he/she knew without the shadow of a doubt that Fritz had actually had sex with any of them. (Though correct me if I'm missing good examples, and if Blanning reports otherwise.)
Thièbault making FW the author if the Fritz/MT marriage idea demonstrating he had zilch idea about FW's hardcore Calvinism:
Yup. He also didn't live at a strictly Calvinist court, and Fritz was pretty chill about religion (I mean, he badmouthed Catholics, but we all know he was willing to pretend to be a Protestant for the sake of winning his wars), so why not FW? I mean, if Voltaire can have FW present at the execution...
Quite. I mean, don't get me wrong: if there had been a way for FW to get a Hohenzollern son of his on the throne of the HRE without religious conversion (or, even better, an Archduchess go Protestant), I do think he'd have jumped on it, which was my justification for making him that tiny but key bit more ambitious in the first MT-Fritz encounter. But the Prussian kings being Protestants was really a key part of their image. Remember, as late as the mid 1750s Fritz asks Wihelmine to make a stop at Geneva on her way back from Italy to squash the rumors that she and the Margrave were converting to Catholicism (that's when she promises to "make my salamaleikums"). Allowing Jesuits in his kingdom was one thing, but having members of his family go Catholic would have been damaging Fritz' standing as the hero of the Protestant faith and he knew it. (Especially since that business wiht the Stuarts must have been on every Protestant's mind in this regard, and that, too, started with first family members converting.
Serious question: does Lehndorff normally comment on the attractiveness of random courtiers and officers whose death he reports?
Not in the death reports, but he does mention attractiveness (or lack of same) when he draws one of his pen portraits. Both for the men and the women. And independent from whether he personally likes them. (For disliked but still described as attractive, see, Glasow, Heinrich's various no-good boyfriends, Ferdinand's wife, and Elisabeth the first wife of FW2, who even after she's shown herself to be MESSALINA to his beloved Crown Prince Jr. rarely gets mentioned without a remark of how pretty she is. See, for example, that entry about spotting her in her exile in Stettin and how she can carry off her extravagant fashion but everyone imitating her just looks stupid.)
This said, he mentions Peter being good looking in both the first entry on him (when Peter is still alive) and in the death entry, in combination of praising him in other regards as well, and that's certainly not standard. (Heinrich's various boyfriends gt a "good looking BUT...." type of description, not "so nice, and brave, and also good looking" the way Peter did.
In regards to how reliable Lehndorff calling someone good looking is, given the "beautiful as an angel" about Heinrich - well, to be fair, he says that specifically about Heinrich in his riding pants, so maybe what he found beautiful on that occasion wasn't Heinrich's face. Ahem. (Having more regular eating habits than Fritz, Heinrich kept his trim figure and in his older years erred more on the thin side than on the plumb side.) Otherwise, Lehndorff's Heinrich crush doesn't voice itself in praising his looks but his charm, intelligence, reading (out loud), and of course Lehndorff during the 7 Years War is delighted to now add "being a great general and looking out for civilians and pows" to his "why I love Heinrich" eloges.
Wilhelmine's memoirs: She should also sue the Boston editor guy who bowdlerized her memoirs and cut out the Dresden episode, oh and also her dad getting punched. Come on. Who *doesn't* want to read about FW getting punched? It's the most cathartic thing in the world after you've gotten through volume 1.
Indeed. The way she introduces this episode also cracks me up: "These memoirs really are all gloom and doom, I realize. So, here's a comic relief episode: how Dad got punched! (Describes it.) I return to my narrative."
OMG, Catt, you fucking liar! Look at this, guys.
*Looks* Tsk. My explanation would be that either Fritz woke him up on another occasion and he merges the two stories, or he changes the story as part of the effort of making himself look better, as the ultimate Fritz Wrangler, endlessly patient and enduring.
Re: Various
ETA 2: The "Queen's and my obstinacy make many people unhappy" passage is also in the memoirs. I had forgotten/missed that when I ran into it in the diary.]
Now, we may dig them up and find they are also unreliable! But so far, undermining Catt doesn't undermine the rest of the quotes. Especially, as
The only quote I have a vague and unreliable memory of seeing recently in French is the one about the fight for Silesia going on for so long because it's easier to make brave men than nasty women give in. Maybe a letter to Wilhelmine? I'm not sure. Anyway, that's why it was so nice to see him equate his and MT's strength of will in the diary, instead of that double standard.
*nods* Agreed. And I think the way he both withheld from and showered his siblings at different times with money also plays into this.
Absolutely, one thousand percent.
And of course, he keeps sending food to them, too. (Even to EC in their fruit exchanges.)
Oh, right, I remembered Wilhelmine's pineapple and Heinrich's fruit but not EC's fruit exchange. (Poor, forgotten EC, lol.) Fritz and FW also exchange food during the 30s, though, am I remembering right? And of course, the memorable salmon to FS.
Also, it occurs to me, when Fritz is released from house arrest to Küstrin to a regiment in Ruppin where he's freer, granted, but his movements are still extremely constrained and he's not free to live his best life, what's pretty much the first thing he starts doing? Growing fruit and obsessing over it. And when he moves to Rheinsberg a few years later, as much as he loves it, he complains that he can't get the same fruit to grow.
I mean, his contemporaries seem to have been in little to no doubt in terms of orientation, even those who were not particularly close to him.
Oh, I have zero doubts about *orientation*. Fritz was gay, no two ways about it. (I've pretty much rejected the bi possibility that I was skeptical about but willing to entertain a few months ago.) Falls in love with men, attracted to good-looking men and wants to have them around. How sexually active, though, is my only question.
(Though correct me if I'm missing good examples, and if Blanning reports otherwise.)
Will do!
Allowing Jesuits in his kingdom was one thing
And long before that, commissioning St. Hedwig's, the Catholic church in Berlin. Oh, wow, Wikipedia tells me two things I didn't know. Though construction began in the 1740s, as I recalled, it wasn't completed until 1773, which is the exact time the Jesuits are arriving in droves. Two, it was the first Catholic church built in Prussia after the Reformation. Wow, Fritz is definitely making a public statement here.
given the "beautiful as an angel" about Heinrich - well, to be fair, he says that specifically about Heinrich in his riding pants, so maybe what he found beautiful on that occasion wasn't Heinrich's face.
True! I didn't get the impression he was looking anywhere above the waist on that occasion. :P
"Up here, Lehndorff. My eyes are up here!"
(Having more regular eating habits than Fritz, Heinrich kept his trim figure and in his older years erred more on the thin side than on the plumb side.)
True. Fritz was plump, I believe, 1731-1756, and then, once the Seven Years' War started, lost weight to the point where Catt comments on the difference between 1755 and early 1758 (and I believe it, even though it's in the memoirs, because of evidence from Fritz's correspondence that he was skipping dinner during the war, and also just common sense), and then I don't think I see any descriptions of him as plump until his death, when his mask looks very, very gaunt. As do many artistic depictions, insofar as they can be trusted (but a number of them do show him plump in the 30s and 40s).
Indeed. The way she introduces this episode also cracks me up: "These memoirs really are all gloom and doom, I realize. So, here's a comic relief episode: how Dad got punched! (Describes it.) I return to my narrative."
That's hilarious! Page 264 in volume 1 in the library, if you want to delight yourself by rereading the passage,
*Looks* Tsk. My explanation would be that either Fritz woke him up on another occasion and he merges the two stories, or he changes the story as part of the effort of making himself look better, as the ultimate Fritz Wrangler, endlessly patient and enduring.
Both of those make sense. Vanity, all is vanity (in both senses of the word when it comes to Catt).
Actual ultimate Fritz Wrangler, endlessly patient and enduring, was too self-effacing to leave us his memoirs. Sadly. But that's what fanfic is for!
Catt on MT
That's not to say it's not used somewhere else, especially since it's Fritz talking about the Pompadour to MT letter he's just composed and listing the three main actors. I've never read it; I imagine there's a copy of it extant somewhere?
None of this is an excuse for MacDonogh, btw, who takes Catt's memoirs at face value.
Anyway, this is my list of MT mentions so far in Catt:
- carogne apostolique [not in diary]
- On this occasion, he drew me a very fine portrait of the Queen-Empress, of her abilities, her courage, her beneficence, her generosity and her spotless virtue. "She is my enemy, it is true. She does me a great deal of harm; but I must do her the justice she deserves. Princesses like her are seldom seen." [Don't remember it from diary, doesn't mean it's not there in some form.]
- "The Queen's and my obstinacy make many people unhappy" [In diary.]
- "In spite of all the harm she has done me [!!!], I must acknowledge that this princess is very respectable on the score of her morals, which are pure. There are very few women who are her equals in this respect. Most of them are strumpets, and the queen abhors strumpets, whom she is very careful to have shut up in prison, especially when she suspects them of being after her beloved spouse. She is very industrious, and has abilities in more than one direction. I cannot deny her this justice." [Diary version: "It must be admitted that the Queen of Hungary has talents, that she is capable, that she applies herself; we cannot refuse her this justice."]
I'm starting to think the most important thing you can do as a Fritz researcher is go through Catt's memoirs and figure out everything that isn't supported by external evidence, so you can throw it out, or at least heavily qualify it with "lying liar who lies."
Re: Catt on MT
At a guess, it could be among the ouevres postumes in Trier.
Also, thank you for this compare and contrast! „Carogne Apostolique“ I‘ll grant Catt as likely to hail from Fritz and not from him, if only because Catt doesn‘t strike me as the type to create invectives. And „for all the harm she has done me“ sounds just so very Fritzian that I’ll concede it as likely, too. (And entirely in the spirit of his „I‘m Orpheus, MT, Pompadour and Elizabeth are the maenads tearing me apart“ in the letters.) Otoh, boo, hiss, Catt, for adding all the slut shaming of everyone else and to change it from a praise of capability and talent to a praise of morals to the third quote. Lying (Calvinist) liar who lies indeed.
Re: Catt on MT
Re: Catt on MT
The problem with Catt is that you start having to be agnostic in the absence of external evidence.
But you're no longer compelled to have "carogne apostolique" in your headcanon, it's true!
Re: Various
Especially since that business wiht the Stuarts must have been on every Protestant's mind in this regard, and that, too, started with first family members converting.
I meant to add that this is an excellent point!
Re: Various
LOL, right! OK, I'm willing to give Fritz that one, then :)
*sigh* Someday that MT biography translation will be done and I can read it...
Heinrich's various no-good boyfriends
Aww, Lehndorff! "They're the worst! But very pretty. But what does Heinrich see in them??"
The way she introduces this episode also cracks me up: "These memoirs really are all gloom and doom, I realize. So, here's a comic relief episode: how Dad got punched! (Describes it.) I return to my narrative."
OMG. That's totally hilarious! (And thank you mildred for the page reference so I could read it in all its glory.) I also love how she's like "Dad was not a 'man of gallantry,'" hee.