cahn | Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 17

cahn

...we're still going, now with added German reading group :P :D

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From:

selenak

Replying here to Mildred'd comment in the old post.

I guess when everyone likes you, you give people the benefit of the doubt

Yes. And I agree with Ziebura laying it out in the introduction: FW favouris little AW => everyone at court, wanting an in with the King, is nice to kid AW => AW developes sunny view of human nature and readiness to help others => AW continues to be liked by (almost) everyone beyond FW's death.

Mind you, it didn't have to happen this way; there are enough examples of favourite royal children who end up resented by (almost) everyone else in the family and/or turn into spoiled brats.

Maria Christina (MT's favourite): *raises hands*
Marie Antoinette: No kidding. You're so not staying in my palace on your unasked for Paris visit.

Fritz: When my siblings marry into HRE principalities, that makes them part of Prussia and subject to me, right? That's how it works? I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

Charlotte's husband, the Duke of Brunswick: We should form a club of fellow sufferers.
Fritz of Bayreuth: That would mean being in a club with the godwawful Schwedt guy. No thanks.
Sophie's husband, the Schwedt cousin: I may be universally loathed, but at least my choices of mistress don't result in a big family crisis.

But...is there any documentary evidence that FW told her he'd let Fritz out if she married? Or that it did indeed influence his decision?

The problem is that unlike Fritz, Wilhelmine lived in the same palace with FW through most of that year, if under close guard. So there was no need for royal orders, either directly or indirectly (i.e. via Grumbkow giving advice) to come in letters. And Seckendorff the Younger, who'd been likely to report something like this in his secret journal because presumably Grumbkow would have told him, wasn't there yet.

Meanwhile, Guy Dickens the English Envoy gets his intel on the status quo within the royal family mostly via SD's chaplain, i.e. via SD, and of course on what FW says in public. This gives us, as far as I can recall, such gems like FW asking the pastors whether a father can force his daughter to marry his choice of husband and being told no, and also the somewhat SD-humanizing fact she asks brother George to propose in his son's name to Wilhelmine in November or December 1730 with the argument that being the fiancee of the Prince of Wales will give Wilhelmine some protection from her father. But I'd have to look those reports up again to check whether in 1731 there's a rumor about FW making a "if you marry Bayreuth Friedrich, Fritz gets out of Küstrin" deal with his daughter; right now I don't think so.

Otoh: there's actually a Fritz letter to Wilhelmine from Küstrin saying "if they tell you your marriage would make things better for me, don't believe it", so if Fritz in Küstrin refutes that, he must have heard about it (from Wilhelmine?), or must have correctly worked out how his Dad's mind works. (Otoh I can see Wilhelmine in the spring of 1731 thinking he's being noble and that's why he denies it would make things better.)

There's also the fact Fritz was produced at Wilhelmine's wedding, if rather late into same. To me this looks like FW assuaging his conscience, because he now can tell himself he didn't lie to his daughter, he kept his promise, literally; Fritz was released at her wedding. (He hadn't promised Fritz wouldn't have to go back.)

OMG, Fritz is withholding money from Sonsine now? I like Sonsine! *frowny face*

Sonsine dying in sadness that both Fritz and SD are angry with her over the Marwitz/Burghaus marriage - (

cahn, because Marwitz (female) was her niece) - is such a depressing detail. (Doubly so since Wilhelmine's frantic letters to Fritz from that era do emphasize Sonsine had nothing to do with this.) For all that we usually talk about Fritz' shared qualities with FW, that's his SD-shared quality for petty grudges right then and there. (Especially since I think in both cases - Fritz and SD - this is about punishing Wilhelmine, not for anything they think Sonsine has or hasn't condoned. They knew Wilhelmine loved her.)

Ulrike's marriage: did remain happy as far as I know. To quote wiki on her husband: The King was regarded as dependent on others, a weak ruler, and lacking of any talents. However, he was allegedly a good husband, a caring father, and a gentle master to his servants. His favourite pastime was to make snuffboxes, which he allegedly spent a great deal of time doing. His hospitality and friendliness were witnessed by many who deeply mourned him at his death.

Fake jewelry: You translated correctly. Presumably last year when I read all these books at top speed and then did the write up, I misremembered that it were parts of Ulrike's, not her brother-in-law's jewels that turned out to be fake.

From:

cahn

mildred_of_midgard

Wretchedly tired today, only a page or so of German. Alternatively, I generously gave

cahn a day of not falling further behind. ;)

In lieu of German, have Macaulay. Collecting, copy-pasting, and formatting all my favorite quotes was suitably mindless work for my current state.

In 1842, Macaulay was working on his History of England, a monumental five-volume work that he would publish it a few years later. In the process of researching English history, he apparently ran across enough Fritz to become fascinated and decided he needed to write a short bio to get Fritz out of his system. To his editor, he wrote:

[Fritz's] personal character, manners, studies, literary associates; his quarrel with Voltaire, his friendship for Maupertuis, and his own unhappy métromanie will be will be very slightly, if at all alluded to in a History of England. Yet in order to write the History of England, it will be necessary to turn over all the Memoirs, and the writings of Frederic, connected with us, as he was, in a most important war.

This despite the fact that his history as published doesn't even overlap with Fritz's lifetime. Fritz is just that fascinating! (He really is. :P)

So Macaulay put together a 100-page bio that got reprinted a lot in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It stops with the end of the Seven Years' War, meaning Macaulay explicitly did what many people tacitly do, ignore the second 23 years of a 46-year reign. Carlyle's bio manages 20 books about the first 23 years (1740-1763) and 1 book about the second 23 (1763-1786).

The copy I obtained from Google Books, published in 1882, has a description of the second half of the reign supplied by someone with less amazing prose and wit than Macaulay. When Macaulay's essay comes to an end and the book continues, the editor puts in a footnote:

The reader will not need to be reminded that the narrative of Macaulay ends here. The descent from the sunny uplands of his style is sudden and painful, but there is no help for it. Herr Kohlrausch goes on honestly enough, and we must let him finish the story or go without it altogether. Patience; it will soon be over, and as a sugar-plum for good children, we promise you near the close a gorgeous picture of the great king in his old age, by Carlyle.

I cannot say I disagree: the post-Seven Years' War material by Herr Kohlrausch is unremarkable. But I give you, in a series of thematically grouped subthreads, Macaulay's most quotable moments. I wouldn't read this for facts or opinions, but you can tell this is the author of the Lays of Ancient Rome: very ringing and memorable prose, often quoted by modern biographers (even if only to disagree with the sentiments expressed).

Oh, apparently Macaulay called Carlyle's style gibberish when he started reading Carlyle's multi-volume Fritz bio in 1858, and I agree wholeheartedly. Humorously quotable in small excerpts; I've never managed to penetrate it as a work.

Oh, one very important thing to keep in mind from this, apart from Macaulay's political opinions: he was a nineteenth century British minister, and his biases are way showing.

But on to the entertaining parts!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Macaulay is not an FW fan! To the point where the editor of my 1882 volume feels the need to add a footnote saying Macaulay is being unduly harsh. Macaulay apparently had some Daddy issues himself, according to an article I read that argued that while Carlyle's tastes and opinions occasionally overlap with FW's more than Fritz's and it shows (something I had noticed), Macaulay was the freethinking son of a pious father and might have identified with Fritz's struggles.

Frederick was succeeded by his son, Frederick William, a prince who must be allowed to have possessed some talents for administration, but whose character was disfigured by the most odious vices, and whose eccentricities were such as had never been seen out of a mad-house.

He hated infidels, Papists, and metaphysicians, and did not very well understand in what they differed from each other. The business of life, according to him, was to drill and to be drilled. The recreations suited to a prince were to sit in a cloud of tobacco smoke, to sip Swedish beer between the puffs of the pipe, to play backgammon for three halfpence a rubber, to kill wild hogs, and to shoot partridges by the thousand.

The history of [Fritz's] boyhood is painfully interesting. Oliver Twist in the parish work-house, Smike at Dotheboys Hall, were petted children when compared with this wretched heir-apparent of a crown.

FW putting an end to Fritz's Latin education:

Up went the king's cane, away ran the terrified instructor, and Frederick's classical studies ended forever. He now and then affected to quote Latin sentences, and produced such exquisite Ciceronian phrases as these: "Stante pede morire"—"De gustibus non est disputandus"— "Tot verbas tot spondera."

The second two of those are ungrammatical attempts to render Latin sayings. The first one I didn't recognize, but Googling seems to indicate that it's a translation into Latin of a saying that's found in various Germanic languages. So possibly, if it's not apocryphal, something Fritz knew from German.

The love that dare not speak its name:

Things became worse when the Prince-Royal attained that time of life at which the great revolution in the human mind and body takes place [i.e. adolescence].- He was guilty of some youthful indiscretions, which no good and wise parent would regard with severity. At a later period he was accused, truly or falsely, of vices from which History averts her eyes and which even satire blushes to name—vices such that, to borrow the energetic language of Lord-Keeper Coventry, "the depraved nature of man, which of itself carrieth man to all other sin, abhorreth them." But the offenses of his youth were not characterized by any peculiar turpitude. They excited, however. transports of rage in the king, who hated all faults except those to which he was him self inclined, and who conceived that he made ample atonement to Heaven for his brutality, by holding the softer passions in detestation.

The king suspected that his son was inclined to be a heretic of some sort or other, whether Calvinist or Atheist, his majesty did not very well know. The ordinary malignity of Frederick William was bad enough. He now thought malignity a part of his duty as a Christian man, and all the conscience that he had stimulated his hatred.

Once his father knocked him down, dragged him along the floor to a window, and was with difficulty prevented from strangling him with the cord of the curtain. The queen, for the crime of not wishing to see her son murdered, was subjected to the grossest indignities.

The prince was an officer in the army; his flight was therefore desertion, and, in the moral code of Frederick William, desertion was the highest of all crimes. "Desertion," says this royal theologian in one of his half-crazy letters, "is from hell."

[Fritz] remained, however, long a prisoner; but he was not on that account to be pitied. He found in his jailors a tenderness which he had never found in his father; his table was not sumptuous, but he had wholesome food in sufficient quantity to appease hunger; he could read the Henriade without being kicked, and play on his flute without having it broken over his head.

From:

cahn - Date: 2020-09-07 04:13 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

The prince wrote to his idol in the style of a worshiper, and Voltaire replied with exquisite grace and address. A correspondence followed, which may be studied with advantage by those who wish to become proficients in the ignoble art of flattery.

No man ever paid compliments better than Voltaire...It was only from his hand that so much sugar could be swallowed without making the swallower sick.

After Fritz betrays his allies by concluding a separate peace during the First Silesian War; France sends Voltaire to spy on him and try to get him back to fighting for them:

The court of Versailles, in this peril, looked to Frederick for help. He had been guilty of two great treasons, perhaps he might be induced to commit a third.

Voltaire was selected for the mission. He eagerly undertook the task ; for, while his literary fame filled all Europe, he was troubled with a childish craving for political distinction. He was vain, and not without reason, of his address, and of his insinuating eloquence; and he flattered himself that he possessed boundless influence over the King of Prussia. The truth was that he knew, as yet, only one corner of Frederick's character. He was well acquainted with all the petty vanities and affectations of the poetaster; but was not aware that these foibles were united with all the talents and vices which lead to success in active life; and that the unlucky versifier who bored him with reams of middling Alexandrians, was the most vigilant, suspicious, and severe of politicians.

The negotiation was of an extraordinary description. Nothing can be conceived more whimsical than the conferences which took place between the first literary man and the first practical man of the age, whom a strange weak ness had induced to exchange their parts. The great poet would talk of nothing but treaties and guaran ties, and the great king of nothing but metaphors and rhymes. On one occasion Voltaire put into his Majesty's hand a paper on the state of Europe, and received it back with verses scrawled on the margin. In secret they both laughed at. each other. Voltaire did not spare the king's poems ; and the king has left on record his opinion of Voltaire's diplomacy. "He had no credentials," says Frederick, "and the whole mission was a joke, a mere farce."

Voltaire about to move to Prussia:

Potsdam was, in truth, what it was called by one of its most illustrious inmates, the Palace of Alcina. At the first glance it seemed to be a delightful spot, where every intellectual and physical enjoyment awaited the happy adventurer. It was in vain that a long succession of favorites who had entered that abode with delight and hope, and who, after a short term of delusive happiness, had been doomed to expiate their folly by years of wretchedness and degradation, raised their voices to warn the aspirant who ap proached the charmed threshold...We have no hesitation in saying that the poorest author of that time in London, sleeping on a bulk, dining in a cellar, with a cravat of paper, and a skewer for a shirt-pin, was a happier man than any of the literary inmates of Frederick's court.

But of all who entered the enchanted garden in the inebriation of delight, and quitted it in agonies of rage and shame, the most remarkable was Voltaire.

Fritz and Voltaire are squabbling about the terms of Voltaire's employment:

It seemed that the negotiation would be broken off; but Frederick, with great dexterity, affected indifference, and seemed inclined to transfer his idolatry to Baculard d'Arnaud. His Majesty even wrote some bad verses, of which the sense was, that Voltaire was a setting sun, and that Arnaud was rising. Good-natured friends soon carried the lines to Voltaire. He was in his bed. He jumped out in his shirt, danced about the room with rage, and sent for his passport and his post-horses. It was not difficult to foresee the end of a connection which had such a beginning.

The honeymoon doesn't last long:

This eccentric friendship was fast cooling. Never had there met two persons so exquisitely fitted to plague each other...

Both were angry, and a war began, in which Frederick stooped to the part of Harpagon, and Voltaire to that of Scapin. It is humiliating to relate that the great warrior and statesman gave orders that his guest's allowance of sugar and chocolate should be curtailed. It is, if possible, a still more humiliating fact that Voltaire indemnified himself by pocketing the wax candles in the royal antechamber.

Harpagon and Scapin are title characters in Molière plays: a miser and a schemer.

D'Arnaud and D'Argens, Guichard and La Metrie, might, for the sake of a morsel of bread, be willing to bear the in solence of a master; but Voltaire was of another order. He knew that he was a potentate as well as Frederick; that his European reputation, and his incomparable power of covering whatever he hated with ridicule, made him an object of dread even to the leaders of armies and the rulers of nations. In truth, of all the intellectual weapons which have ever been wielded by man, the most terrible was the mockery of Voltaire. Bigots and tyrants, who had never been moved by the wailing and cursing of millions, turned pale at his name.

We cannot pause to recount how often that rare talent was exercised against rivals worthy of esteem —how often it was used to crush and torture enemies worthy only of silent disdain—how often it was perverted to the more noxious purpose of destroying the last solace of earthly misery and the last restraint on earthly power. Neither can we pause to tell hew often it was used to vindicate justice, humanity, and toleration— the principles of sound philosophy, the principles of free government. This is not the place for a full character of Voltaire.

After Voltaire gets involved in fraudulent transactions and tries swindling a banker:

The king was delighted at having such an opportunity to humble his guest; and bitter reproaches and complaints were exchanged. Voltaire, too, was soon at war with the other men of letters who surrounded the king; and this irritated Frederick, who, however, had himself chiefly to blame. for, from that love of tormenting which was in him a ruling passion, he perpetually lavished extravagant praises on small men and bad books, merely in order that he might enjoy the mortification and rage which on such occasions Voltaire took no pains to conceal. His Majesty, however, soon had reason to regret the pains which he had taken to kindle jealousy among the members of his household. The whole palace was in a ferment with literary intrigues and cabals.

The big breakup in full swing:

Voltaire had in his keeping a volume of the king's poetry and forgot to return it. This was, we believe, merely one of the oversights which men setting out upon a journey often commit. That Voltaire could have meditated plagiarism is quite incredible. He would not, we are confident, for the half of Frederick's kingdom have consented to father Frederick's verses. The king, however, who rated his own writings much above their value, and who was inclined to see all Voltaire's actions in the worst light, was enraged to think that his favor ite compositions were in the hands of an enemy as thievish as a daw and as mischievous as a monkey.

Macaulay doesn't seem to be familiar with the explanation that Fritz was afraid that other leading Europeans would find out he had written such things about them.

Macaulay's verdict on the Frankfurt episode:

It is absurd to say that this outrage is not to be attributed to the king. Was anybody punished for it? Was anybody called in question for it? Was it not consistent with Frederick's character? Was it not of a piece with his conduct on other similar occasions? Is it not notorious that he repeatedly gave private directions to his officers to pillage and demolish the houses of persons against whom he had a grudge—charging them at the same time to take their measure in such a way that his name might not be compromised? He acted thus towards Count Buhl in the Seven Years' War. Why should we believe that he would have been more scrupulous with regard to Voltaire?

Fritz and Voltaire start corresponding again during the Seven Years' War:

We do not know any collection of letters which throw so much light on the darkest and most intricate parts of human nature as the correspondence of these strange beings after they bald exchanged forgiveness. Both felt that the quarrel had lowered them in the public estimation. They admired each other. They stood in need of each other. The great king wished to be handed down to posterity by the great writer. The great writer felt himself exalted by the homage of the great king. Yet the wounds which they had inflicted on each other were too deep to be effaced, or even perfectly healed. Not only did the scars remain ; the sore places often festered and bled afresh.

The letters consisted for the most part of compliments, thanks, offers of service, assurances of attachment. But if anything brought back to Frederick's recollection the cunning and mischievous pranks by which Voltaire had provoked him, some expression of contempt and displeasure broke forth in the midst of his eulogy. It was much worse when anything recalled to the mind of Voltaire the outrages which he and his kinswoman had suffered at Frankfort.

[Insert sample Fritz/Voltaire exchange of mutual vitriol here.]

An explosion of this kind, it might be supposed, would necessarily put an end to all amicable communication. But it was not so. After every out break of ill-humor this extraordinary pair became more loving than before, and exchanged compliments and assurances of mutual regard with a wonderful air of sincerity.

The English ambassador, Mitchell, who knew that the King of Prussia was constantly writing to Voltaire with the greatest freedom on the most important subjects, was amazed to hear His Majesty designate this highly-favored correspondent as a bad-hearted fellow, the greatest rascal on the face of the earth. And the language which the poet held about the king was not much more respectful.

Macaulay thinks Selena should write that Yuletide AU where Voltaire saves Fritz:

It would probably have puzzled Voltaire himself to say what was his real feeling towards Frederick. It was compounded of all sentiments, from enmity to friendship, and from scorn to admiration; and the proportions in which these elements were mixed changed every moment. The old patriarch resem bled the spoiled child who screams, stamps, cuffs, laughs, kisses, and cuddles within one quarter of an hour. His resentment was not extinguished; yet he was not without sympathy for his old friend. As a Frenchman, he wished success to the arms of his country. As a philosopher, he was anxious for the stability of a throne on which a philosopher sat. He longed both to save and to humble Frederick. There was one way, and only one, in which all his conflicting feelings could at once be gratified. If Frederick were preserved by the interference of France, if it were known that for that interference he was indebted to the mediation of Voltaire, this would indeed be delicious revenge; this would indeed be to heap coals of fire on that haughty head.

Re: Macaulay - Voltaire

From:

selenak - Date: 2020-09-03 10:41 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: Macaulay - Voltaire

From:

cahn - Date: 2020-09-05 04:52 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: Macaulay - Voltaire

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selenak - Date: 2020-09-05 08:03 am (UTC) - Expand

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cahn - Date: 2020-09-05 05:13 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: Macaulay - MT

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Re: Macaulay - MT

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selenak - Date: 2020-09-05 10:55 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

The Keith brothers:

Alone of all his companions, they appear never to have had reason to complain of his demeanor to wards them. Some of those who knew the palace best pronounced that the Lord Marischal was the only human being whom Frederick ever really loved.

The Marquis D'Argens:

His was one of that abject class of minds which are superstitious with out being religious. Hating Christianity with a rancor which made him incapable of rational inquiry, unable to see in the harmony and beauty of the universe the traces of divine power and wisdom, he was the slave of dreams and omens—would not sit down to the table with thirteen in company, turned pale if the salt fell towards him, begged his guests not to cross their knives and forks on their plates, and would not for the world commence a journey on Friday. His health was a subject of constant anxiety to him. Whenever his head ached or his pulse beat quick, his dastardly fears and effeminate precautions were the jest of all Berlin. All this suited the king's purpose admirably. He wanted somebody by whom he might be amused, and whom he might despise. When he wished to pass half an hour in easy, polished conversation, D'Argens was an excellent companion; when he wanted to vent his spleen and contempt, D'Argens was an excellent butt.

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2020-09-04 03:48 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

cahn

See, this is why I'm loving the apocryphal story about Elisabeth's reaction to a similar Fritz command so much. (And am without pity for George Keith, if it was him who brought the command.)

Sorry, I'm lost -- remind me?

Yeah. :/ Unfortunately, unlike (parts of) his bad condolence letters, I don't think the part that [personal profile] cahn reacted to was just lack of emotional intelligence: I suspect this one was very deliberate.

Yes, I think it must have been deliberate; the condolence letters do read to me like someone who was just thinking of himself rather than others, but Fritz wasn't emotionally stupid, and there is no way he could have missed how this was going to come off to AW. WOW.

The one fascinating exception I can think of is Richelieu...

Most other men (and a few women) of power, though, seem to have suffered from that syndrome described in Robert Graves' "I, Claudius", where successive emperors are absolutely on board with appointing someone they know to be worse as their successor because it'll make them look better in the eyes of posterity instead of them being outshone.

Wow, this is really interesting! Both that it's such a common problem and that Richelieu was the exception (which I didn't know). We're nominating him for Yuletide, right? Do you have any thoughts on why he was an exception?

Also I need to read I, Claudius again. I read it in... high school or college? A really long time ago, and have forgotten everything about it.

Re: Replies from last post

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2020-09-04 03:41 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

selenak

Quick excerpt from the Lord Hervey biography, because Hervey met Franz Stephan when FS was on his grand tour (which, remember, took him as far as England where he joined a Free Mason Lodge):

Hervey carefully and dispassionately observed him. 'a pretty figure of a man', he reported to Stephen (Stephen Fox, Hervey's lover), tho low and rather thick, ill made & worse dressed. He wears his own hair, has a very handsome face, like the King of France, but a more sensible, more lively & more good natured countenance. He seems very easy & very well bred.'(...)
Hervey's first favourable impression was strengthened: the more he saw the Duke the more he liked him. 'He is very well bred, with more nicety, more ease and more more constant presence of Mind than any Body I ever met & has the most beautiful, most sweet & most sensible Countenance I ever beheld.'

ETA: Good lord, more Franzl fanboying. Bear in mind that Hervey at this poinst is a) married and producing kids, b) having an affair with great love of his life Stephen Fox, and c) hanging out with Fritz of Wales and writing to him letters signed "your Hephaistion".

The day before leaving, (Franz Stephan) walked in Kensington Gardens in the morning with the Queen and her suite (including Hervey) until it began to rain. They all returned to St. James at full gallop in open chaises, wet to the skin and bespattered with mud like stage-coached postillons. On 8 December he boarded his yacht at Greenwich, 'regretting and regretted'. Hervey, who too easily observed the flaws of everyone he met, could find none in this paragon: he still thought him handsome, cheerful, sensible, well bred and obliging: 'Never any Body had the good Fortune of pleasing to universally.' The Duke's departure, he told Lord Bateman, had 'put the town in universal mourning: it is the Fashion for the Women to cry.' He was not exaggarating, for he had evidence close at hand. 'The Duke of Lorraine has carried the hearts of all our fine ladies away with him', Lady Stratford wrote (more than two weeks later); 'Lady Hervey has cried every day since his departure and says she can't enjoy anybody's company now that agreeable creature is gone.

Edited Date: 2020-09-05 03:21 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Lol! Exclusivity is overrated. :P

So Lord Hervey and Lady Hervey were fans of FS, huh?

Re: Franzl: Hot or not? The Lord Hervey Take

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selenak - Date: 2020-09-06 05:26 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Franzl: Hot or not? The Lord Hervey Take

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mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2020-09-06 10:03 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

When we last saw our heroine, this is what

selenak had dug up:

A sister wouldn't have been Fräulein von Pannewitz, though, but Fräulein von Jasmund (Johanna's maiden name). Checking Ziebura again, I find the footnote says it was Anna Helene von Pannwitz, i.e. the sister of Johanna's husband, Katte's commander, who was SD's lady-in-waiting until 1736 and then married Rittmeister Christoph von Schöning. Googling that name, I found wiki only has Christoph von Schöning fils, son of Christoph von Schöning pére without an wiki entry of his own, and born in 1737, which would fit, except the mother of 1737!Christoph is named as Marie Eleonore von Bergen, not Anna Helene von Pannwitz. Googling Anna Helen von Pann(e)witz directly brought me nothing, though you may have more luck. Anyway, I must have overlooked that footnote the first time around.

This is what I found:

Anna Helene doesn't have a Wikipedia entry of her own, but both genealogical sites and Wikipedia agree on her birth, marriage, and death dates: 1707-1790 (m. 1736). Now, we've found from our Katte research that genealogies and Wikipedia can be wrong, but this is what we've got so far. And 1707 as a birth date for someone FW was lusting after makes more sense to me than 1702: she'd have been ~25/26 at the time of the punching.

Anna Helene's husband, per genealogical sites and Wikipedia, was Hans Christoph von Schöning, whose father Hans Ehrenreich is notable enough to get a Wikipedia entry of his own.

In it, I find that Fräulein von Pannewitz's mother-in-law was a Marwitz by birth.

Her husband's cousin Hans Adam von Schöning was a field marshal and the grandfather of Frau Luise Eleanore von Wreech, who was the object of Fritz's youthful affections, possibly impregnated by him (though I don't believe it), and mother of Heinrich's chamberlain Ludwig, whom Lehndorff liked so much.

From:

cahn

Go Royal Detective! :D

Re: Fräulein von Pannewitz

From:

selenak - Date: 2020-09-07 08:27 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

selenak

So, imagine my surprise when both the Lady Mary and the Lord Hervey biography mentioned that not content with the two of them flinging themselves at Algarotti, Algarotti was also taking up with... Well, here are the quotes:

It was not long, then , before (Algarotti) reached London — in March 1739.
At first he visited Andrew Mitchell, a young man who had left Scotland to make his fortune in England , a member of the Royal Society , who had recently been called to the Bar. Algarotti stayed only a short time with him in his chambers in the Middle Temple, then moved to Hervey's apartment in St. James's Palace

And then, later, when he's contemplating a third English sojourn:

From Hamburg he also advised Andrew Mitchell of his expected return to England . Instead of trying to relate every thing he has heard and seen on his recent travels, he prefers to wait until they can sup together in London, he writes, 'where you will certainly be the tastiest dish for me (le meilleur plat pour moi] ... If the wind continues as it is, I hope to embrace you in 4 or 5 days. Farewell, my dear friend ; love me and believe until
death , F.A.'

Well! Now neither "Andrew" nor "Mitchell" are rare names. But the thing is, Andrew Mitchell the later envoy according to the brief biographical sketch of his younger years in Bisset's edition of his papers did have the following career: studies law in Scotland, marries young, wife Barbara dies young, Andrew makes the Grand Tour to Italy, returns but to London to take the bar there (necessary since otherwise he'd been just qualified for Scotland, I remember this from Boswell who had to do it twice, too). We next hear from him in Bisset's summary when he's being considered to run as MP for Aberdeen years later. That leaves just enough time for getting it on with Algarotti in the late 30s and early 40s.

Maybe there were two Andrew Mitchells from Scotland studying law in London during that time. But if not: one wonders whether Algarotti as a subject was ever mentioned with Fritz, and if so, whether Bisset edited this out, because I don't recall the man ever being mentioned in what I've read...

From:

mildred_of_midgard

mildred_of_midgard

* Wow, Louise actually bitter about someone (Mina). Totally understandable, of course, but considering all the *other* people she had every right to be bitter about, it comes as a surprise to see her actually doing it for once.

A little later on: Lehndorff reports on how Mina gets to sit on the throne during the performance, while Louise isn't even invited to the ball at her own house and has to eat elsewhere...okay, I have a pretty high tolerance for people not choosing to spend more time than they have to with their arranged-marriage spouses, but I draw the line at people not getting to eat in their own houses!

* Google translate: I'm pretty sure Wilhelmine is saying "I don't see why there's so much to complain about re Mina," not, "I don't see why Mina has so much to complain about."

* Wilhelmine: She's beautiful and well-behaved, and Heinrich gets his own household and freedom of movement, what more does he want?

Well...

* The dinner to celebrate Amalie becoming abbess, with a Biblically themed menu: clever! I would like to see the complete list of what they came up with for all 20 courses.

* I know this came up in the Heinrich bio, but the WTFery was spelled out in more gory detail here: you're a noble/royal, you're expected to spend a certain amount on conspicuous consumption if you attend court, you don't get any meaningful income from attending court, and Fritz will get mad if you get into debt from living beyond your means, if you leave court and move back to your estate or if you ask for a raise so you can live within your means.

WTF! This system is terrible!

* There was a special military review camp at Spandau September 1-12 in 1753, which was kept more secret and more strictly regulated than most reviews. Foreigners couldn't get in at all, and Prussians only with a pass for a limited number of days.

This date immediately jumped out at me because--Peter Keith! In "Lovers", I was deliberately conflating the following:

Autumn 1750: Jonas Hanway, English traveler and author, reports that he gets a box from Fritz, containing a lot of money and a letter to his mother-in-law.

September 1753: Lehndorff reports that Fritz is being unusually generous to all the officers, and that Peter Keith got money and an invitation to join Fritz "at the camp."

Some non-primary source I've forgotten: describes Peter as Fritz's ADC.

Now, I've often wondered whether "the camp" was Spandau or Silesia, and whether 19th century biographers might be confusing Lt. Col. Peter Keith with the *other* Lt. Col. Keith who was Fritz's ADC according to sources I find more reliable. But for fiction I went with: 1750 to get the reconciliation as early as possible, an invitation to be Fritz's ADC temporarily so they could have close contact, and Silesia just because I knew slightly more about the exercises there than at Spandau.

But now I know what was up with that "invitation to join His Majesty at camp"--it was the invitation-only special semi-secret camp at Spandau that week! Which means Peter got to go for the last couple days.

Also, Ziebura says Fritz was in a good mood and approved of how things went, which is consistent with Lehndorff saying he was being unusually generous to the officers. And judging by the letters, this seems to be the occasion on which, when it was all over and had gone well, AW used military terminology to describe putting the soup on the "left wing" of the table.

This all makes even more sense if it was an unusual event with more riding on it and more unfamiliar rules than on the usual annual military exercises: the relief of pent-up tension emerges from Heinrich's and AW's letters. When you think about nothing but wings and centers for a long time, naturally you start seeing your table in those terms!

Also, AW celebrates because he gets 5,000 talers from Fritz on this occasion. Per Lehndorff, Peter also got 5,000 talers.

Fritz must really have been in a good mood. :)

Oh, and I forgot to mention, I went to check on that fanvid I made of Fritz's movements, and sure enough, he appears in Spandau on September 1 and Berlin/Potsdam on September 14. This is cool!

Edited Date: 2020-09-06 11:09 pm (UTC)

From:

cahn

Wow, Louise actually bitter about someone (Mina). Totally understandable, of course, but considering all the *other* people she had every right to be bitter about, it comes as a surprise to see her actually doing it for once.

I thought this too!

* Google translate: I'm pretty sure Wilhelmine is saying "I don't see why there's so much to complain about re Mina," not, "I don't see why Mina has so much to complain about."

Ah, thank you! I was especially confused because I was pretty sure I had seen this elsewhere with the translation you give, but my German isn't good enough to make that out.

Wilhelmine: She's beautiful and well-behaved, and Heinrich gets his own household and freedom of movement, what more does he want?

Well...

Yeah, I imagine part of this is the gender dichotomy. I mean, to Wilhelmine that must sound pretty good! :(

WTF! This system is terrible!

Agreed!

Re: AW readthrough - early 1750s

From:

selenak - Date: 2020-09-07 07:27 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: AW readthrough - early 1750s

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2020-09-07 02:10 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

* Lol, Heinrich and AW are beginning their roleplay, planning how the next war is going to break out, and their casus belli goes like this: "The English king/Elector of Hanover has been mortally insulted by Fritz at the Reichstag in Regensburg! War!"

Lol forever.

Ah, I was wondering what year Fritz sent Jacobite George Keith to Versailles as ambassador: 1751. Yep.

Well, Heinrich, you were nearly spot on, and it's understandably hard to choose from the sheer number of major European rulers that Fritz has insulted which one(s) will end up going to war over it. :P

* Ah, so Heinrich play-invades Saxony because the success of the war hinges on swift action. This does suggest that in the AU without Fritz the scapegoater as his boss, Heinrich fills a vacuum left by Fritz, spends less time avoiding battles, and more time seeking them out. Maybe not as mindlessly as Fritz, but more aggressively than we see him in the historical Seven Years' War.

* Oh, man, they open the finished work with a foreword reading, "In order to *really* do a realistic roleplay, we would have had to know a lot more than we do about the political and military situation HINT HINT FRITZ." :P

Loved that.

From:

selenak

it's understandably hard to choose from the sheer number of major European rulers that Fritz has insulted which one(s) will end up going to war over it. :P

Indeed. I mean, other than MT, who is always a given at this point. But the choice among others is so rich!

Agreed on what Heinrich play-invading Saxony says about his instincts and likely behavior in a Fritz-free environment. Though he would argue he was just trying to convincingly impersonate Fritz on that occasion. :)

Re: the timing - don't forget this was also when Charles Hanbury Williams was, or every recently had been Ambassador, aka the one English envoy who loathed Fritz and vice versa.

Re: AW readthrough - Heinrich & AW roleplay

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2020-09-07 02:24 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

38 pages! I'm not caught up on comments, but I managed to get some reading done.

Beginning of chapter 7, AW has returned to Berlin and gone to Oranienburg.

So Ziebura says at the beginning of chapter 6 that Kaunitz even managed to convince MT to write a flattering letter to Madame de Pompadour. So she did write her directly, she just didn't call her "cousin" or "sister" or whatever Fritz's propaganda made it out to be? I want to make sure I have my facts straight.

I remain behind on comments, but I couldn't go to bed without asking that. ;)

From:

From:

cahn - Date: 2020-09-12 04:53 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

selenak

Overall: Isabel Grundy's biography of Lady Mary - which, as the daughter of a Duke married to someone of lower rank, was her title - is very informative, if also dense and sometimes exhausting to go through. Grundy admirably points out whenever she has to go into speculation, as already indicated in her foreword:

The most obvious facts about her, when examined , prove ambiguous or slippery. She eloped like a quintessential romantic heroine — but with a man she did not love. She respected him; she knew he would be hard to live with; she had broken off her relationship with him a dozen times. She was in love with a different man, someone who was already lost to her for reasons as unknown as himself.
Her face was ruined by smallpox — but within a few years it was de rigueur again for those meeting her to comment on her beauty, as if either her looks had somehow repaired themselves or those around her found it unthinkable that she should not be beautiful.
The period when Pope was her worshipper is not directly visible, but only refracted through the letters he wrote when she was safely distant and expected to remain so for the foreseeable future. The true causes why his worship turned to rancour are still mysterious, and unlikely ever to be fully explained. Fuller understanding could probably emerge not from hunting a particular moment or particular event, but only from clearer and bolder thinking about the working out of gender issues. We have made some progress in capacity to detect the hostility already immanent in the adoration. No reader today will find in Pope's letters to Lady Mary on her travels a transparent wish to please . He constructs her as a beautiful body - implicitly a nude body — while she is busy constructing herself as doing and seeing and writing. She was still constructing herself this way years later, when he was painting her as a monster.
Pope's final, full-blown, gendered hatred is extraordinary, yet it is also typical. As a highly visible, assertive, unconforming woman Lady Mary was a lightning rod for misogynist anxiety and anger. In the almost half a century from her elopement to the British expatriate campaign against her when she was an old lady in Venice, she seldom ceased to attract opprobrium.

Something Grundy also does is pointing out Lady Mary's own flaws and prejudices; for example, one of her enduring enemies, Griselda Murray, became her enemy after Lady Mary wrote a mocking poem about what was either a rape attempt or a covered up blackmail attempt, but either way, Griselda Murray was justifiably furious and never forgave her. And she points out the source problem: in Lady Mary's life time, she published only anonymously, and the majority of her poems and pamphlets were circulated in hand written copies among the aristocrats and literati. Which makes it difficult to say which ones were hers (save for some where we have a printed anthology copy where there are in her handwriting remarks like "this one is mine" or "I admit it"), or there's a manuscript. (And even then: copying something you like in your handwriting was also a thing for her circle back then.) The one manuscript she meant for publicaton were the "Embassy Letters". Which weren't, actually, the rl letters she wrote when she was in Turkey. They were based mostly on her diary entries at the same and some of her actual letters; for publication, she edited them to a form where no letter repeats information the previous has (as would have been inevitable in rl) and edited out any too personal info re: her and the recipients. This manuscript she left with a Dutch publisher on her journey back to England from Italy when she had breast cancer and knew she would die soon, with the strict instructions that it was only to be published after her death. All of this due to the social taboo that female aristocrats did not publish (and certainly not for monetary gain).

Her diaries, sadly, are lost to us safe for a few fragments. She left them to her daughter, Lady Bute (wife of Lord Bute the PM who ended the subsidies to Fritz and thus gained his unending hostility), who kept them until her own old age and according to her daughter Louisa often read them - Louisa was only permitted to read some excerpts, which she admired very much and tried to recreate from memory later - , but in the end shortly before her own death, she burned them. And this wasn't the only autodafé; when Lord Hervey's son returned the letters Lady Mary had written to his father during those last months of her life to her, she sadly told him they were a remarkable testimony of how much a man and a woman who never were lovers could care for each other as friends, and how his father was the best friend she ever had, whom she could tell everything to - and promptly burned them as well. (By contrast, a great many of Hervey's letters to Lady Mary thankfully survive since she kept and didn't burn them.) See, this is why we're lucky Mrs. Fredersdorf didn't return (most of) Fritz' letters to him!

And then there's the usual historical difficulty of everyone having the same names. There are three guys called Edward Wortley Montagu of relevance; Grundy tries to help by calling Lady Mary's husband Wortley, her son Edward, and the cousin "Montagu". Otoh, she also calls Lady Mary "Lady Mary" only when talking of her as a society person but when talking of her as an author, calls her "Montagu" as well. This is not helping!

With all these caveats: it's still a remarkable story that unfolds, if often frustrating, and I'm glad to have read it. Our heroine is a spirited book-loving girl of a rich aristocratic father, who in addition to getting the standard education for aristocratic females teaches herself what she can by passionate reading. She and her female friends joke about marital prospects being a "heaven" (marrying the one you love), "hell" (unloved parents choice, often old) and "limbo" (compromise, sensible but blah). Lady Mary ends up with a "limbo" in order to avoid her father's "hell". Originally, she'd been friends with her future husband's sister, and they wrote each other giggly letters. Then Wortley took over (we know this because the next few letters his sister wrote exist in his hand writing first) though without revealing himself. Then the sister died, and he did approach Mary directly. Cue awkwardness, various failed attempts at romance and parental negotiations (he wasn't yet rich, though he would become so later in life), and eventually she eloped with him not out of love but in order to avoid a worse prospect.

At least, though, we have a lot of primary data about her marriage and how it came to be. Most of her romantic life is based on speculation. Gossip gave her a lot of affairs, but the letters don't exist, and given how utterly she fell for Algarotti in her middle age and opened her heart then, Grundy thinks she might not have had affairs at all earlier (though flirtations, sure). She also, being a modern biographer, states that of course men aren't the only options. She had some intense friendships with women. One of them was with Maria Skerret, who was first the mistress of Robert Walpole the long term PM and then, after the death of his first wife, his second wife. (Very very unusual, this; mistresses getting married, I mean.) Horace Walpole the writer was the son of wife No.1, very much resented Stepmom and hated Lady Mary as her bff, which ensured she'd be vilified by one of the two main memoirists of the era (the other being Hervey, who adored her). She - Lady Mary - also copied one of Hervey's "Lesbian" poems for her collection, and one of her "Embassy Letters" became sensational because it describes a visit to a Turkish bath, celebrating the unabashed and relaxed nudity of the Turkish women. So Grundy thinks "maybe", but points out we don't have more than that, and again, there's the Algarotti case for how Lady Mary behaved when she was unquestioningly in love.

She quickly moved in not just fashionable but literary circles and gained the reputation of a wit, as well as a lot of colorful friends. She was one of the few people who managed to get along with Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (yes, the very one from The Favourite, now in disgrace; also Winston's ancestress) and with Sarah's daughter, both of whom were famous for argueing with almost everyone (including each other). Incidentally, when Grundy establishes the Georgian background as Queen Anne dies and Georg Ludwig von Hannover becomes George I. of England, things get very Anglosaxon, as in her explanation to her readers what an "Elector" was: "He had the right to vote for the Austrian Emperor in Vienna." I suppose technically that's one way to describe it, but really, being Elector in the HRE had once been a crucial thing in the Middle Ages, and it was still important enough to be a bargaining tool in the 18th century. Also: not the Austrian Emperor. The Emperor, who is an Austrian at this point, but he was reigning Archduke of Austria and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation. Who was crowned in Frankfurt, not Vienna, for that reason.

Both Grundy and Halsband repeat without qualifying the English aristocratic dig that George I., speaking little to no English when he ascended to the throne, was something of a blockhead. Now, an intellectual he wasn't, but as a typical high-ranking continental aristocrat of his time and the son of the very clever Sophie of Hannover and brother of Sophie Charlotte, he was bilingual in German and French, and good in Italian and Latin, with some Dutch. Meanwhile, Grundy without noting the irony states that Wortley was hoping to get the King's favour because among the four gentlemen working in the Treasury (the ministry, that is), he was the only one able to speak French. (And no other foreign language.) (It didn't work, because George I. wasn't interested in the Treasury.) Halsband, writing in the 1970s, still makes the mistake Horowitz mocks in his book, repeating the contemporary assumption that George arrives with two German mistresses (Katte's sort of aunt Melusine von Schulenburg and Sophia Charlotte (yes, another one) von Kielmansegg), while Grundy is more up to date and knows Kielmansegg was, in fact, George's illegitimate half sister, daughter of his father Ernst August, which the British aristos with their lack of German and evidently none too fluent French did not get. This Anglocentric world view continues; these biographies (of Lady Mary and Lord Hervey, respectively) are the first ones I've seen the Diplomatic Revolution described as England's daring and revolutionary decision to ally with Prussia instead of Austria. Bless.

Back to Lady Mary, earning a reputation as a wit with literary gifts and at this stage adored by Alexander Pope. Because his later hate of her was so fateful, there's a lot of Pope in the book. When he enters the tale, Grundy points out he himself was someone who rose against the odds: Not only was he excluded , as a Catholic, from full civil rights; he suffered a serious disability. Pott's disease (tuberculosis of the bone) had stopped his growth at about four foot six , and he was gradually and inexorably becoming more hump-backed. Side-effects included severely impaired sight, almost constant headache, muscle pains, and respiratory troubles. These he faced not merely with courage but with gallantry and
panache; but the years 1715-16 were among his healthiest . (....) Hampered in or barred from most of
the usual social expressions of his masculinity, he was now, in his twenties, eager to declare himself intensely and outrageously attracted by witty women, while his chosen ideal of femininity was one of muted and attentive docility.

Another fateful event of those years was that Lady Mary's sister Frances was married off to a future Jacobite, Lord Mar, likely because her father wasn't sure the Hannovers could carry the day and wanted to have a foot in both camps. This turned out to be a be a disaster for poor Frances, because her husband, at least as described by Grundy, proved to be an utter bastard. He first led the first Jacobite rebellion more out of spite than belief, than turned turncoat and sold out his comrades. She spent most of the subsequent years in exile in France (and we have Mary's letters to her and many of hers to Mary), and ended up going from depression to nervous breakdown to complete mental collapse. Cue ugly family quarrel about who got to have custody of Frances.

But back to earlier times. After not really getting anywhere in government, Wortley worked for an embassy post and got one. Not too long before their departure, Lady Mary contracted the small pox, which ravaged her. She maintained a scarred face and scars all over her body, and her eyelashes never grew back, which made her previously praised "very fine eyes" looking very intense. Now, the portraits painted of her after this show no more scars than the portraits painted before, when she had the reputation of a beauty. This seems to have been the usual policy (you don't see any small pox scars on Mozart portraits, either, or on Katte's, for that matter) for painters, but as Grundy points out, it's noticeable that the compliments for Lady Mary's beauty continue after an interlude of about a year as if the small pox never happened. She did use makeup, but still. Charm and allure of personality or the victory of trope over reality?

Once she was healthy, she, her husband and their kid sum took off to Turkey, the long way around. This meant they visited a lot of European countries and met a lot of people before ever getting to Turkey. Including Prince Eugene at his prime, fresh from his most famous victory over the Turks, giving travel advice (he told them to wait for the spring, when the Danube would have thawed), and Mt's parents in Vienna:

The high point of Lady Mary's visit, described early in the Vienna Embassy Letters, was reception at court. The requisite costume was not only formal but ‘ more monstrous and contrary to all common sense and reason than tis possible for you to imagine ' . She addressed her embassy account of it to sister Frances (her chosen recipient for almost all her
accounts of exotic clothes),and did her level best to realize it for her mind's eye . The headdress had a foundation ‘ about a yard high ', covered in both false and natural hair, ‘ it being a particular beauty to have their heads too large to go into a moderate Tub ... Their whalebonepetticoats out-do ours by several yards Circumference and cover some Acres of Ground . You may easily suppose how much this extrordinary Dresse sets off and improves the natural Uglyness with which God Allmighty has been pleas'd to endow them all generally.'
Despite this robust resistance to Viennese fashion , Lady Mary was thoroughly charmed with the empress, Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick Wolfenbüttel: with her beauty, her sweetness, her favour to her English visitor, her pregnancy, and later by her grief at the death of her previous child, five months old, long desired, and male. (Lady Mary did not hesitate to blame his death on bad management, saying he was ‘kill’d by ... weaning him in the beginning of the Winter'.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Yay, a write-up! Thank you so much! Seriously, I feel so spoiled having a reader. :D

is very informative, if also dense and sometimes exhausting to go through.

This was the impression I had from reviews, which was why I said you were welcome to skim anything that wasn't engrossing.

or those around her found it unthinkable that she should not be beautiful.

Yeah, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say I've seen this happen too many times: that in many circumstances, a woman has to be described as beautiful whether she is or not, which is not unlike my experience that people will say you look "just like" a close family member that you look absolutely nothing like.

So many people can't cope with a woman who isn't beautiful that they will rewrite reality as insistently as they have to.

No reader today will find in Pope's letters to Lady Mary on her travels a transparent wish to please . He constructs her as a beautiful body - implicitly a nude body — while she is busy constructing herself as doing and seeing and writing. She was still constructing herself this way years later, when he was painting her as a monster.

Good for Grundy for picking up on this!

Something Grundy also does is pointing out Lady Mary's own flaws and prejudices

Also good for her!

Which makes it difficult to say which ones were hers

Ooh, that is interesting and I didn't know that. That's very good to know.

Her diaries, sadly, are lost to us safe for a few fragments.

ARGH! They sound like they would have been so great!

Both Grundy and Halsband repeat without qualifying the English aristocratic dig that George I., speaking little to no English when he ascended to the throne, was something of a blockhead. Now, an intellectual he wasn't, but as a typical high-ranking continental aristocrat of his time and the son of the very clever Sophie of Hannover and brother of Sophie Charlotte, he was bilingual in German and French, and good in Italian and Latin, with some Dutch. Meanwhile, Grundy without noting the irony states that Wortley was hoping to get the King's favour because among the four gentlemen working in the Treasury (the ministry, that is), he was the only one able to speak French. (And no other foreign language.)

Ahahahaha, Anglophones. Stand-up comedian Eddie Izzard has a great skit where an Englishman goes on holiday abroad, encounters people who don't speak English, and goes, "You just don’t try, do you?! Here all day speaking Afghan."

This Anglocentric world view continues; these biographies (of Lady Mary and Lord Hervey, respectively) are the first ones I've seen the Diplomatic Revolution described as England's daring and revolutionary decision to ally with Prussia instead of Austria. Bless.

LOL! Andrew Mitchell, fearless leader of the revolution! Kaunitz who?

He first led the first Jacobite rebellion more out of spite than belief, than turned turncoat and sold out his comrades.

Oooh. I did not remember this (wrong rebellion, admittedly--I never did the '15 in depth). Wikipedia, citing something from the public domain a gazillion years ago, says "not proven." I wonder if there's a consensus now.

he spent most of the subsequent years in exile in France (and we have Mary's letters to her and many of hers to Mary), and ended up going from depression to nervous breakdown to complete mental collapse.

Ooof. Everything is so terrible, especially for women. :/

The requisite costume was not only formal but ‘ more monstrous and contrary to all common sense and reason than tis possible for you to imagine '.

Lol. And this is why MT was like, "if I'm not posing for a portrait and it's not a formal occasion, I'm wearing normal person clothes I can go walking in," amirite?

Their whalebonepetticoats out-do ours by several yards Circumference and cover some Acres of Ground . You may easily suppose how much this extrordinary Dresse sets off and improves the natural Uglyness with which God Allmighty has been pleas'd to endow them all generally.'

Ha! The sarcasm, it burns.

Re: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (I)

From:

selenak - Date: 2020-09-09 10:02 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (I)

From:

cahn - Date: 2020-09-10 04:10 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (I)

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2020-09-15 01:27 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

selenak

Lady Mary in general was no fan of anything old fashioned on the continent, but she admired more modern stuff, like the use of china on stoves which she witnessed in Dresden, and hoped she'd have the chance to use it back home. During the obligatory stop at Hannover - where George I. was in residence - she made much of little Fritz of Wales, then a nine years old kid who impressed her with his "sprightliness and understanding". Once the Wortley Montagus have reached Serbia, Lady Mary shows a very unusual reaction for the era to being shown Eugene's last great battlefield against the Turks:

The last topic Lady Mary found for her pen in Christian Europe was the battlefield of Peterwardein, scene of Eugene’s ‘ last great Victory ' , when the Turkish cavalry fled towards Belgrade, leaving perhaps 30,000 janizaries to be slaughtered and some impaled or decapitated . An English officer wrote, 'We took no more than twenty prisoners because our men wanted their blood and massacred them all . ' All this had happened almost as the Wortley Montagus left England. ' No attempt was made to bury the dead ' ; they must have been badly decomposed, though now , with snow lying on the ground, they no longer stank. Lady Mary's first response was emotional shock and outrage — sharpened , no doubt, by her personal acquaintance with the victor, who had been fresh from this triumph when she met him . But these painful feelings quickly modulated into intellectual analysis of the human systems which permit struggle and slaughter for the sake of small spots of earth , even while fertile tracts lie unoccupied.
"The marks of that Glorious bloody day are yet recent, the field being strew'd with the Skulls and Carcases of unbury'd Men, Horses and Camels. I could not look without horror on such numbers of mangled humane bodys, and reflect on the Injustice of War, that makes murder not only necessary but meritorious."
The entrenched acceptance of such a harmful custom , she thought, plainly proved ' the irrationality of Mankind (whatever fine claims we pretend to Reason) ' . In her Embassy Letters she addressed this impassioned argument to Pope.

What shows up here gets more of a theme when Lady Mary actually arrives in Turkey; she very much rejected the contemporary view of the Turks (and Muslims in general) as inferior or barbaric. Whether it was the comfort of sofas ("I shall never endure a chair again") or the baths:

The women's beauty delighted her: the ‘shineingly white ' skins, with no ornament but ‘their Beautiful Hair divided into many tresses hanging on their shoulders' . The good order, good humour, and friendliness of the naked assembly — the freedom from 'surprize or impertinent Curiosity ', immodest gestures, disdainfull smiles or satyric whispers '-—impressed
her even more . So did the egalitarianism ( you could hardly tell the great lady from her slave) . As usual,Lady Mary was alert to what was and what was not different. The female body was the standard of beauty in her own culture; the Turkish women's grace and charm were what she might have expected ( though their freedom from smallpox scarring, and from the red marks left by tight lacing, were unfamiliar). It was like an artist's fantasy, and Lady Mary ‘had wickedness enough to wish secretly ' that her friend Jervas might have been there invisible to represent it on canvas. But to find unadorned ,
unimproved femininity free from lewdness or narcissism or rivalry: this was a most happy denial of what her own culture had led her to expect. From now on she had two separate models of the admirable in Turkish culture: the male library and this ‘ Women's coffee house'.

She learned Turkish, and during her time there tried to learn as much as she could about local literature and music, too. The most lasting legacy of her time in Turkey was the inoculation performed on her son Edward, though, which when she had it repeated on her daughter - who was born in Turkey - years later when they were back in England started the big fight for inoculation there. Very importantly to Lady Mary, the Turkish style of inoculation differed from what European doctors later tried first - which included enormous bloodletting and big amounds of infected matter transfer instead of a "small prick" done in Turkey.

For all her openess to another culture, though, Lady Mary, and Grundy doesn't hide this, was utterly typical of her time when it came to a) slavery and b) racism against black people. Whom she saw very differently to how she saw Turks and Arabs; imagine all the usual vile slanders and prejudices, and yes, she said and wrote them. (Including even speculation that surely there miust have been some "cross breeding" with animals.) This sadly isn't a paradox when compared to her admiration for Turkish culture; I remember reading the memoirs of Emily Huete, born Salmé bin Osman, a Sansibar princess, which include a whole rant on how slavery is right because "negroes" are just that inferior and only happy when employed in service etc etc etc; this from a woman who herself endured a lot of anti-Arab prejudice when living in Europe.

Wortley when being called back to England just about had it with civil service; he want private, and became a coal magnate in the north of England. Lady Mary remained in London, became bff with Hervey, conducted her inoculation campaign... and then the feud with Pope started. Grundy doesn't think the story about her rejecting a direct pass is true because she doesn't think Pope would have made himself vulnerable like that. But whether or not it happened, Pope, who in his letters to her during her time abroad had built her up and up and up in his imagination, could not cope with the real deal, and started to attack her. After that "poxed by her love, and pillored by her hate" quip, she had enough, and enlisted Hervey (also attacked by Pope as "Sporus", an allusion to the dancer Nero had castrated and then dressed up as a woman he could marry); together, they wrote a counter satire on Pope, which was just as vicious, and then the literary feud began in earnest. Unlike Fritz/Voltaire, this one isn't funny, because with Fritz and Voltaire, you think they both could take it (and deserved it). Pope - again, the poet of the age - really cut loose, no holds bared, and threw everything at "the furious Sappho" (i.e. Lady Mary) he could think of, from sexual license and STD (of course) to financial greed (he accused her of starving her by then mentally ill sister so she could enjoy their father's money, which was completely untrue) to being physically repellent and dirty. This proved so effective a portrait that young Horace Walpole, a Pope fan and predisposed to dislike Mary anyway (due to her friendship with his stepmother), later when he met her in Italy described her in terms identical to Pope's without (and only very late in life admitting that well, okay, all that "dirt" talk was maybe a bit of an exaggaration), with some additional horror of the middle aged (by then) female body because he'd heard (or claimed he did) that she'd gotten her menses so strongly that she bled into the inn where she was passing through and had to pay the innkeeper for a new linnen. That she at age 51 still menstruated was to him the epitome of monstrosity. He also couldn't believe she still danced and called it utterly shameless and again repellent; a woman of 50 going through physical activity that made her sweat was disgusting, and so forth.

There's a lot of inner English politics in the book as well - Lady Mary was a Whig and friends with some key Whigs, Hervey included, after all - and I thought all the manouevres and counter manouevres were somewhat more lucidly explained in the Hervey biography. Then Algarotti arrives, and the two biographies work very well as completing each other. He couldn't have shown up at a worse time in terms of Lady Mary being extremely vulnerable. She was becoming exhausted with all the literary pilloring and the struggle about her sister Frances. Her son Edward (who was Algarotti's age) had turned out to be an increasingly rotten character, a scoundrel of the unfun kind and a cheat. Her daughter, with whom she had gotten along very well when said daughter was still a child, and would get on very well again once she was married and a mother herself, was now a teenager in love butting heads with Mom. And presto, here's this young, charming, dazzling Italian. She must have thought this was finally a break, something new and good in her life. And for the first time - if there were previous times before - she threw caution in the wind and allowed herself to utterly and completely fall for someone, not holding anything back. :(

From:

From:

cahn - Date: 2020-09-15 04:58 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

selenak

Well, we know what happened. Grundy's description of Fritz showing up in Algarotti's life works as an amusing antidote (she notes Algarotti must have thought he hit the jackpot - a princely patron who was young, smart, charismatic and sexually compatible! - and with some Schadenfreude reports how that turned out). Lady Mary herself never met Fritz, but she did tease Algarotti about him when they were resuming relations in their final years, during the 7 Years War in the later 1750s:

The balance of power had shifted between them . Lady Mary was no longer emotionally nor Algarotti financially grasping. She was a self confessed old woman, and he a scholar- critic in his early forties, retired from
public life . Their minds still struck sparks. (...)n She told him that Graeme was piqued at having laid siege for months to a
citadel (herself ) which Algarotti had once taken by storm in a fortnight. On the other hand she freely mentioned her age. She had turned soft and sentimental, she said , and was recklessly squandering her short remaining
time when she enjoyed the pleasures of Carnival . As before, she sought to charm him by her wit. The earliest of these
letters , written at the end of 1756, showed off by imitating Homer (as she put it) in combining different dialects : that is , in her case , by shifting from English into Italian and thence into French. It also flattered him and sniped at his former ‘ Roial Patron ' by exalting the wisdom of retirement and attacking the destructive , even demonic, pleasures of the military hero. She sounded and resounded this anti -war motif, playing it both for strong feeling and for airy paradox. She suggested that killing innocent beasts for sport is more culpable than killing human beings who mostly deserve no better. The butcher-hero thus becomes the hunted animals avenger, less guilty than meat- eaters like herself. She blended her Enlightenment
reformism with impish play.

The story of Lady Mary's years in Italy (and some in France) have their drama quite apart of the Algarotti epilogue; one of the local gangsters named Palazzi managed to first trick, then threaten her (to the point where she wasn't allowed to go anywhere without his "protection") , helping himself to a considerable part of her money, until she finally managed to get free and rid of him. (He later ended up imprisoned and executed for murder; this really could have ended lethally.) But on the bright side, she still was a fascinated traveller and explorer of other societies, and a voracious reader, who was very glad when her daughter kept sending her new books from England (which she always reviewed and wrote comments on). As mentioned, relations with her daughter became very well again; by contrast, her son - who showed up once or twice in the hope to get some money - went from bad to worse. The war stories worried her from afar; she had retained her atypical dislike of war, was a stranger to Fritzmania and didn't think England should stay involved. When she returned just as the war was ending, as mentioned, she left her "Embassy Letters" manuscript with a Dutch printer en route, figuring, probably correctly, that if she brought it to England her family would not let it get published, or at least not the way she wanted. As it was, it turned into a bestseller - an international one; Heinrich read it in Prussia and recced it to Fritz, remember - , and awoke an appetite for more letters and writings of hers. But that was after she had died, with her daughter and grandchildren, her husband (with whom she'd kept in contact throughout their lives) having died already at that point. An edition of her work beyond the Embassy letters was published in 1803, but by then, the climate had been changing, and not in a way friendly to controversial women. Grundy just gives a quick epilogue, covering the publication history of Lady Mary's works, which is a telling difference of emphasis to Halsband's epilogue for Lord Hervey with its "where are they now?" story. Hervey was a hobby poet, a courtier and a memoirist, and his biographer put the main emphasis on his life; Grundy always tries to balance Montagu the writer with Lady Mary the person, and makes the case that it's as a writer she has become immortal.

Useful for Enlightenment crossovers: like Hervey, Lady Mary met and befriended Voltaire when he was in England. (Neither of them was uncritical of Voltaire as a writer, but they kept up good relations from a distance, and Voltaire wrote a glowing review for the French papers when the Embassy Letters got published.) Depressingly, she didn't meet (that we know of) Émilie - her travels didn't coincide - but that's where fiction could come in. Incidentally, while Halsband in the 70s knows so little of Émilie that he thinks Voltaire was the only one writing about Newton and that Émilie was "catty" to Algarotti the second time he visited because his work about Newton was a rival to Voltaire's, Grundy knows just a little more and thinks Émilie was annoyed that Algarotti didn't dedicate his "Newton for Dummies" to her. Neither mentions Émilie's own work on Newton, or Émilie's work in general. Anglocentrism to the end.

However: Lady Mary and Wilhelmine were in Italy at the same time! And they definitely could have met. (If they have, I don't recall it from the letters posted at the travel letters website, but I could easily have missed it - I haven't read every single one. If they haven't, well, maybe they kept it secret for Reasons!)

Edited Date: 2020-09-07 06:00 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Grundy's description of Fritz showing up in Algarotti's life works as an amusing antidote (she notes Algarotti must have thought he hit the jackpot - a princely patron who was young, smart, charismatic and sexually compatible! - and with some Schadenfreude reports how that turned out).

Lolsob.

she did tease Algarotti about him when they were resuming relations in their final years, during the 7 Years War in the later 1750s:

I saw that when I was reading their letters, and I wondered if that was aimed at Fritz, or if I was just reading too much into it! Good to know.

one of the local gangsters named Palazzi managed to first trick, then threaten her (to the point where she wasn't allowed to go anywhere without his "protection") , helping himself to a considerable part of her money, until she finally managed to get free and rid of him. (He later ended up imprisoned and executed for murder; this really could have ended lethally.)

Yikes! I thought I saw something along these lines when I was scanning it, but I didn't stop to read the episode, because I knew you'd be on it. :)

Grundy always tries to balance Montagu the writer with Lady Mary the person, and makes the case that it's as a writer she has become immortal.

*nod* That's what I'd gathered from the reviews.

Useful for Enlightenment crossovers: like Hervey, Lady Mary met and befriended Voltaire when he was in England.

18th century: *everyone* walks into a bar and either knows everyone or knows someone who knows/is related to/has slept with them.

Incidentally, while Halsband in the 70s knows so little of Émilie that he thinks Voltaire was the only one writing about Newton and that Émilie was "catty" to Algarotti the second time he visited because his work about Newton was a rival to Voltaire's

Sigh. Well, to be fair, in 1736, Émilie and Voltaire were collaborating on a volume about Newton, for which she did the research and walked him through the technical parts, while he did the writing. When it was published, he was listed as the author, with an indication in the foreword/whatever that she was really a co-author. It was published in 1738, and Algarotti's book in 1737, so I can see why it would be seen as Voltaire's and the two books would be seen as rivals (and this is ringing a bell).

Ah, yes, from the Algarotti dissertation:

The success the Newtonianismo achieved in comparison to Voltaire‘s 1738 Éléments de la philosophie de Neuton caused the latter to turn on Algarotti and seek to discredit his book through his correspondence.

Whereas Émilie's magnum opus on Newton wasn't started until after Algarotti's visit (my sources are all agreeing on approximately 1744-1746), and wasn't finished until her death and published until the 1750s.

But if you're writing about her, Voltaire, Algarotti, and their work on Newton, you should still mention it!

Also, Algarotti's second visit to Cirey was in 1736, when both books were still in draft form, and there was no rivalry or disappointment yet. So that can't have been the cause of her being unhappy with him that year.

Grundy knows just a little more and thinks Émilie was annoyed that Algarotti didn't dedicate his "Newton for Dummies" to her.

The Algarotti dissertation, Bodanis, and Zinsser all agree that she was upset that he didn't dedicate it to her. Dissertation writer cites a letter from Émilie to Algarotti; Zinsser cites several letters to Algarotti and Maupertuis. Bodanis cites a letter in which she's pleased that Voltaire *did* dedicate his work to her a year later.

There's also some controversy over the portrayal of the Marquise in Algarotti's work. She's a thinly veiled allusion to Émilie, but it's apparently been argued that she's less intelligent and therefore arguably an insult to the real person. The Algarotti dissertation author has counterargued that the fictional Marquise is perfectly intelligent if you read closely, just not yet informed about Newtonianism.

But Zinsser reports that Émilie was offended because of the fictional Marquise's personality, and the constant references to love and eroticism in the text, which seem to have felt as condescending and irritating to her as they would to me. Though coming from Algarotti, who totally would have written an erotic ode to the lone eagle filled with double entendres... :P

Hm. Just noticed this:
Algarotti author: Voltaire trashed Algarotti's book because he was jealous of its success!
Émilie author: Voltaire trashed Algarotti's book because he was defending Émilie's honor!

Émilie: I'm defending my honor by writing a better book than both of you put together.

Neither mentions Émilie's own work on Newton, or Émilie's work in general. Anglocentrism to the end.

That's the really unforgivable part! Even Algarotti dissertation writer describes her work with appropriate praise.

Lady Mary and Wilhelmine were in Italy at the same time! And they definitely could have met. (If they have, I don't recall it from the letters posted at the travel letters website, but I could easily have missed it - I haven't read every single one. If they haven't, well, maybe they kept it secret for Reasons!

Ooh! Could be.

Hmm. The complete Lady Mary letters, edited and published by Halsband, are apparently available in 3 volumes for $80, which is cheaper than the $150 I had previously been finding.

I'm still tempted, but I should probably hold off for now. Unless other people are *extremely* interested. :P

Anyway, thank you very much for the write-up! You're the best of all possible readers!

Re: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (III)

From:

selenak - Date: 2020-09-09 09:22 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (III)

From:

cahn - Date: 2020-09-10 04:54 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

* Oh, man, AW starts to feel a little better, and laments how his strong constitution is binding his soul to his body. Knowing how this is going to end... :-((((

* FRITZ. THOSE LETTERS.

* Es ist bewundernswert, wie es dem Prinzen aus Rücksicht au seine Verwandten und Freunde gelang, sie über sein körperliches und seelisches Elend zu täuschen.

Google translates "bewundernswert" as "admirable." Is it "admirable," or would "impressive" or "remarkable" or something like that be better? Because "admirable" to me means, "This was the right thing to do," whereas "impressive" or "remarkable" would mean, "Doing this highlighted many of AW's good qualities."

Because while you certainly have the right not to tell people about your health, I would take issue with saying that doing it to protect them is necessarily admirable, even if it's impressive. Like maybe Lehndorff would have liked to get there in time to say goodbye.

Now, if AW didn't tell people because he didn't want nonstop pressure to see doctors and he didn't want to deal with everyone else's emotions, *that* I could get behind. I've read too many accounts by terminally ill or potentially terminally ill people about how they were expected to perform emotional labor for everyone else at the absolute nadir of their own mental health. AW is definitely making a very unpopular decision here, and I could see him not wanting to defend it against all comers.

* "Egerer Brunnen" -- this is mineral water from Eger?

* The opium they gave AW to slow the bleeding probably caused his death to be more painful than it would have been. See, this is why on the one hand, the stress from the Fritz situation probably weakened AW's immune system in addition to his will to live, and thereby his chances of survival, but on the other, refusing to see doctors, as much as it might have been caused by a death wish, might actually not have hurt his chances that much.

Ugh. Everything sucks so much.

*

cahn, what Google translates as "blow flow", Schlagfluss, is a stroke.

* OMG, I didn't realize Lehndorff arrived the same day AW died, but too late. :-(

Then he drives the first nail into the coffin. :'-(((

"No, you don't die from pain. I am proof of that."

</33 POOR LEHNDORFF

* WOW, Google, this may be the best mistranslation ever, even surpassing the "cheap warehouse in rubbish soaps" or "Cape Stallion":

When AW in his will is decreeing that Louise doesn't get to take (zu sich nehmen) the kids...Google translates this as, "She shouldn't eat my daughter."

Not that that phrase doesn't mean that, but major context fail, Google. On the other hand, that's one way to translate the will so that AW looks like the good guy!

AW: really just misunderstood this whole time. :P

More seriously, I know children belonged to their fathers, legally, for a super long time, but "She shouldn't take my daughter" is just one of those ugh moments.

* "But if she does go and live in my house in Berlin, against my will, instead of in that place FW would have liked out in the middle of nowhere, the kids should live elsewhere." AW! This is why

cahn wanted to read about your horrible undeserved treatment before reading about your wife's horrible undeserved treatment.

* Continuing with this theme: Apparently it wasn't customary for women to take part in the burial of their husbands.

I mean, it keeps you from having to fake grief in cases like this, but what about those actually happy marriages? Was this just for royal funerals, military funerals, or what? Because Ariane will be at Peter's funeral, FIGHT ME. :P

I want to believe FW2 invited EC to Fritz's funeral just because. :P

* Fritz kept his word to be a second father to the kids! Wilhelmine and Henricus Minor are proof of that!

FW2: *crickets*

Fritz: Do you by chance know what "father" means in this family?

* Louise getting to see her mother for the first time in ages alleviates her grief over the loss of her husband. Either she's really an angel, or the word we're looking for here is "stress."

* And EC gets to see her husband's palace for the first time. The Potsdam City Palace? Because I thought 1760 was when she saw Sanssouci ~~and MT's portrait~~ for the first time, per Lehndorff's oft-quoted comment.

* Alas, poor Karl Emil, we hardly knew ye.

And, that's it for me. I finished AW! Sons and Wives next. Reading group continues to be the best!

From:

selenak

I'd translate "bewunderswert" in this specific context as "remarkable" as well, though in other circumstances as admirable.

"Egerer Brunnen" -- this is mineral water from Eger?

Yes. Same as Cothenius prescribes for Heinrich later.

AW! This is why [personal profile] cahn wanted to read about your horrible undeserved treatment before reading about your wife's horrible undeserved treatment.

You can imagine I had a strange sense of deja vue when I got the the end of the Hervey biography. His political career is in tatters, his relationship with Stephen Fox ditto, his bff Lady Mary is in Italy; Hervey is majorly depressed, and writing famously bitchy secret memoirs evidently is not enough to vent, because (oh, Lord Bristol is his father, who outlived Hervey):

A week later he decided to draw up his will.Not strong enough to write , he dictated it, and then read it over twice to correct the spelling. Most of its provisions were conventional enough : his eldest son to be sole heir and executor, annuities to all his children , dowries of £ 5,000 for his eldest unmarried daughter, Mary , and £ 4,000 each to the two other girls, annuities to his housekeeper and to his valet. But the bequest to his wife was astonishing: she could have only what he was obliged to leave her by the terms of their marriage contract, and nothing more ; and while she could dispose of some things at her death , she must give security for all the money, silver , and jewels , and bequeath them to one of her
children born during wedlock .

The same day that he dictated and corrected his will he wrote a brief letter (evidently in his own hand) addressed to Mrs.
Strangways Horner. 'Dear Madam ,' it runs, 'If you have a mind to shew any Regard to my Memory fullfill this my last Request & take my Daughter Miss Mary Hervey to live with You. She is very well disposed & will continue so living with one of your excellent Principles & real honest worth . I love and honour You. Adieu .'He gave the letter to his daughter with instructions that she deliver it to Mrs. Horner after his death . That event was not far off . By mid-July he was dangerously ill, and on 5 August he died . His father showed his love for him even at the burial a week later in the Ickworth church , for instead of a woollen shroud to clothe the corpse, as the law required , Lord Bristol chose another cloth (probably linen ) and paid a fine of £ s. The only other member of the Hervey family who enjoyed this
posthumous luxury was Lord Bristol bimself. (...)

His will was the chief topic of conversation in London , particularly its provisions for Lady Hervey. No one knew why he had
treated her in such a way; and it was said that he had refused to see her for many weeks before he died . Because of her modest jointure - only £ 300 a year — she would have to live with Lord Bristol, no great hardship since they were devoted to each other . Then, after the will had been read , early in September Mrs. Horner was startled by a visit from Mary Hervey with a letter from her late father. When Mrs. Horner overcame her surprise she sent a copy of the letter to Lady Hervey, assuring her that she was an ‘utter Stranger to the Purport ' before she was informed of it by Miss Hervey, and that for many reasons she could not comply with its request. Lady Hervey displayed impeccable tact in thanking
Mrs. Horner for her considerate letter : 'I am not surpriz'd at any proof of Esteem given you by My Dear late Lord ,knowing the great Friendship he had for you, Madam ; and I am as little so at the very right Manner in which you have acted on this Occasion .'
Lady Hervey remained the most considerate of wives.

Keep in mind Lady Hervey, formerly Maria "Molly" Lepel, had not been an arranged marriage, she'd been Hervey's choice, a love match. She also had done all a wife of their time was expected to; befriended his friends, supported him through think and thin; she even, during an earlier crisis in his relationship with Stephen Fox, had invited Stephen for the summer to their country seat, then discreetly withdrew and went elsewhere so they could be alone together and work it out. And if she in turn ever cheated on Hervey, no one ever knew. And yet.

"When feeling miserable, there's always your wife to punch down to" seems to be an 18th century maxim. Ugh.

EC and Sanssouci: the Lehndorff entry and EC's first and only visit were in 1757, actually, during the first court evacuation from Berlin. The relevant Lehndorff's diary entry is dated 23. October 1757, if you want to look it up in your copy. So not quite a year before AW's death. Though of course the court did evacuate in 1758 as well, just not with a stop in Sanssouci.

Edited Date: 2020-09-08 07:01 am (UTC)

Re: AW readthrough - the final year

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2020-09-08 09:13 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: AW readthrough - the final year

From:

cahn - Date: 2020-09-12 05:14 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: AW readthrough - the final year

From:

cahn - Date: 2020-09-12 05:01 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Just the highlights, since we're not doing a readalong.

* William of Orange (

cahn: William III of England, of William-and-Mary) wanted to take Tiny Terror FW (okay, 12-yo FW) home and adopt him as his heir and future king of England?!

That would have solved at least one of SD's problems! (Assuming the Hanoverian cousin marriage would still have been on.)

Also, FW and Fritz as constitutional monarchs: now there's a mental image to ponder.

* FW beats up cousin George when he's 12/13 and George is 17/18. Shortly after F1's coronation.

* That "I die happy, because I leave behind a worthy son and successor" line, coupled with Voltaire's, "So, Fritz, did he finally appreciate you before he died" and Fritz's long not-answering-the-question reply, plus that "I'm fighting a four-front war, Dad, are you proud of me yet? Yes? Oh, thank god. Shit, I'm waking up, I should have known that was too good to be true," dream twenty years later...

Well done, son. Just say it to yourself, Fritz, and move on. He's not worthy. :(

* Ziebura continues to take the Catt memoirs at face value. We should send her a copy of Koser with the flowers!

Oh, I didn't do any Wives today, but I exceeded my 20-page quota with Sons. It counts!

From:

From:

cahn - Date: 2020-09-12 05:38 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I've read up through Fritz becoming king and EC getting the shock of her life.

* When picking out a bride, Heinrich decides on the sister who can best deal with disappointments and humiliation?? Wow, this was not in the Heinrich bio that I recall. It must have been one of those things she turned up after she discovered her fave was a little more problematic than she'd originally realized. I wish I had a citation for that--do you know,

selenak? Maybe it'll come later, in her section.

* She thinks Heinrich may have tried and failed to sleep with Mina on their wedding night, and that contributed to his embarrassment around her afterward.

From:

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2020-09-15 03:37 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

selenak

This biography was published in 1974, less than a decade after homosexuality between consenting adults got legal in Britain, and sometimes, you can tell, in that Halsband gives the impression that previous accounts of Hervey either attacked him as a gay or bisexual man or defended him as a straight man, but that defending him as a bi man whose two most passionate love affairs were with men is new. He uses a lot of primary sources re: Hervey's private life - i.e. letters - , and knows his way around Georgian England; a bit less so in the rest of Europe. I already mentioned elsewhere that Émilie simply shows up as Voltaire's mistress and helpmeet, not as a scientist, and that he he repeats the Horowitz-mocked mistake of relying exclusively on English sources re: the Hannover family relationships, hence George I's illegitimate sister showing up as his mistress. We're also assured that Sophie of Hannover wanted to be Queen of England all her life and missed it barely. Having read the Sophie Charlotte biography by Barbara Beuys which is actually more a Sophie of Hannover biography: not so much. Not least because Sophie was in fact older than Queen Anne and didn't expect to outlive her. Besides, she really wasn't keen of having to move to England in her old age. She had ruled Hannover far more than her husband, the eternally holidaying in Venice Ernst August had done, and Sophie Charlotte was her favourite child; visiting her and having SC visit Hannover was easy, but not so much if she'd been in England. She would have to count on not being back in what had been her home for decades within her life time, and for what? Getting crowned on an island where it rained all the time and where she didn't know anybody because Cousin Anne hadn't wanted any of the Hannovers to set foot on the island as long as she was still alive, then live with her old age rheumatism in those droughty palaces instead in the nice modern one that had been built by her when young? Yeah, no. She was pleased that the claim went down her line and that her son would end up as King, sure. But it's just so very Anglosaxon to iimagine that every would regard becoming Queen of England as the best thing ever.

(Mind you: the Brits of the era did, of course, agree, and that was one reason why they were so upset that Georges 1 and 2 in their turn kept going back to Hannover for part of the year during their respective reigns.)

The reliance on English sources becomes mingled with subject partisanship when it comes to the two family soap operas of this biography, neither of which features a Hohenzollern. Because our hero Jack Hervey, who incidentally started his life as a younger son (his older brothers then died in adulthood, making him Lord Hervey, but he himself died before his father, which is why Dad is Lord Bristol and Hervey is not) , spent his first two decades as the favourite child of both his parents - but when he married, his mother, Lady Bristol, inexplicably (for our biographer Halsband) takes against him and spends the next years until her death not just as the mother-in-law but the mother from hell, going from critisizing her son's wife to critisizing him as well to outright reviling him and bitching whenever he and the wife bring the kids to spend some time at the family seat. (Halsband admits this might be connected to Lady Bristol having 17 children, some of which were still children when Hervey started to produce his own.) This maternal dislike is presented as vile and unreasonable and in no way justified by the biographer.

Meanwhile, the other family soap is of course that of House Hanover. Where Queen Caroline also goes from critiquing to outright loathing Fritz of Wales (unlike in the Bristol-Hervey case, she's here following the example of her husband), cursing him at every opportunity and considering capable of anything, from trying to foist a bought baby on the succession to tying to poison her. In this case, however, Halsband presents this as entirely understandable and justified. When Caroline tells Hervey - according to Hervey - she wishes he was her son and that his horrid mother had Fritz of Wales instead, Halsband goes: HARD SAME. At no point does he mention that Fritz of Wales' enstrangement from his parents might have had something to do with the fact he hadn't seen either of them for fourteen years when at last called to England after George I's death, or that they made it blatantly obvious they would prefer Billy the future Butcher Cumberland as next king. The blatant contradiction between Caroline on the one hand complaining about Fritz of Wales fucking around and on the other telling stories he was impotent is not pointed out. When Fritz of Wales finally marries (the reason why he's not married already is not mentioned anywhere in the biography - the only Hohenzollern mentioned is Fritz of Prussia, and solely in the Algarotti context), and his parents don't like their daughter-in-law, with Caroline considering Augusta as woefully uneducated and not refined enough for a future queen (where have I heard this before?), this is again presented as entirely rational. Unlike Lady Bristol's bitching about Molly Lepel. And at no point does our biographer wonder whether the bad ending of Hervey's three years relationship with Fritz of Wales, as well as his own mother's attitude towards him, might play into how he chooses to remember his conversations with Queen Caroline (who is the only British Royal he likes in his memoirs) when writing down said memoirs in the last few years of his life.

Partisanship thus established, I still thought this was a very readable biography, doing a good job explaining all the inner English political machinations and literary feuds that take up much of Hervey's life and giving a good impression of Hervey's personality and those around him. It's also defensive against centuries of both satire and moral censure. A good example of Halsband's attitude is the opening sentence and its footnote. Opening sentence:

This world consists of men, women, and Herveys', a remark by his friend Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, indicates
Lord Hervey's uniqueness, his complex and enigmatic character.*
* A variant of the phrase by Horace Walpole is more limited and more provocative - that there were three sexes : men, women, and Herveys.

John "Jack" Hervey starts out as a clever but sickly child, as opposed to his healthy siblings, which accounts for some of the parental doting, which is also a great contrast to how things later developed with his mother (though Dad remained doting): His feeble health made his parents dote on him all the more. When Hervey (père) had to be at Newmarket he asked his wife not to let ‘pretty Jack forgett his affectionate papa'. Solicitously she moved into the nursery to be near him at night when he was not sleeping well. She reported to Hervey one day their son called for his dear Papa; he cryd and would not be quiet in the morning till they carried him into your dressing-room , and then he went directly to your closet door, knocking and calling upon you to let him in '.

It was Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (again, from The Favourite, who got Hervey Senior the peerage that made him Lord Bristol, and the Herveys were loyal whigs thereafter, committing themselves to Team Hannover in the succession early on (Lord Bristol bought a golden medallion of Sophie of Hannover, and gifted Georg Ludwig with a racehorse, that kind of thing). Young Jack had the traditional upper class upbringing, complete with public school (Westminster) . Now, as mentioned elsewhere, when George I. arrived in England he had no Queen, so the all courtly appointments for ladies of the nobility had to limit themselves to his daughter-in-law, Caroline, and Lady Bristol managed to become a lady of the bedchamber, thus starting the Herveys/Hannovers family association. Small detail that cracked me up; when when of Caroline's German ladies in waiting said to the new English ones that should held up their heads, stand straights and held out their breasts instead of looking downwards all the time, she got the disdainfull reply: We show our Quality by our Birth and Titles, Madam , and not by sticking out our Bosoms".

("Brust raus, Bauch rein" was even said in my childhood. It's a thing! But not in England.)

While the Hannover soap starts (remember, George I and future G2 hated each other just like G2 and Fritz of Wales later would), which means rival courts, young Jack goes on the Grand Tour, and, being a good future courtier, after months in Paris does a stop in Hannover where he takes the time to meet and make much of little Fritz (not yet of Wales, because future G2 was G of Wales). As does Lady Mary, who is there at the same time, remember, en route to Turkey. Kid Hannover Fritz gets a way better press from Hervey and Halsband than later Fritz of Wales, for: The princeling, nine years old when Hervey met him ,was an agreeable-looking boy, with the light blond hair of his mother. He was surprisingly quick and polite in conversation , and seemed to have an abundance of wit and good sense far beyond his years. Hervey had been sent to Hanover simply to ingratiate himself with the Prince . As his father put it: 'when you see and are sure ye
foundation in Prince Frederick’s favour ... is laid as indelibly as you know I woud have it, and I know you are capable of contriveing, you may think of returning homewards.'

Jack actually wanted to go to Italy next, but Dad insisted he should come home, and Dad was paying, so home he went, and fell in love with Maria "Molly" Lepel, a maid of honor: She evidently charmed everyone at court, where she bore the nickname of Schatz ( treasure), a sign that the German contingent thought well of her too. (Molly's father had come to England as part of George of Denmark's entourage - he had been Queen Anne's husband - and remained there after his master's death. He was, in fact, a cousin to Lepel the Küstrin commander.) Why do we know it was a love match? Because neither of his parents approved, though Dad came around (while noting he'd have preferred Jack to marry someone rich, like the daughter of the Duke of Rutland). At first, Hervey was very honeymoon-minded, as the eyerolling testimony of his friend Lady Mary in a letter to her sister Frances testifies, where she talks of the 'ardent affection that Mrs. Hervey and her dear spouse took to me. They visited me twice or thrice a day , and were perpetually cooing in my rooms.

Molly gets pregnant, produces a first child, and Jack makes the acquaintance of one William Pulteney, up and coming politician in the Whig party. This is a a fateful event because eventually Jack will have to decide between Pulteney and rival up and coming political star Robert Walpole, and will go for Walpole. Which Pulteney takes very badly indeed; there's a duel ahead. But first Jack has to go into politics for real because older brother Carr has lost the Hervey parliamentary seat, and Jack needs to win it back. Which he does. Meanwhile, Carr invests in the ruinous "South Sea Bubble" (financial speculation desaster of the era), ends up broke, and dies young. Which makes Jack Lord Hervey.

The honeymoon period with his wife was over. She was still considered a beauty, and it was noted she didn't take a lover (unlike him); Charles Hanbury Williams (future envoy and Fritz disliker) said that she was incapable of love; her ' total, real indifference to mankind has hindered her ever having a lover'. But, says Halsband: this is too worldly, too Chesterfieldian, an explanation for her not taking a lover. Instead , it proves her consistency ofcharacter; since she had
married Hervey for love she remained faithful to him .

Meanwhile, Hervey had met one young Henry Fox. And fell for him. Henry liked Hervey a lot but "charmingly rebuffed him" as a lover, which was lucky for Hervey, because then he met Henry's brother Stephen and really fell for him. Stephen Fox turned out to be his most enduring male relationship, and he was certainly, unabashedly, passionately in love. (He remained friends with Henry as well, though, until his relationships with both Foxes fell apart in the last few years of his life.) What Halsband quotes from the letters also show how a gay relationship between two upper class men (both MPs) develops:

But he reveals himself as more than an epistolary virtuoso in his letters to Stephen .
“ For my own Part,' he later confessed to him , “my Mind never goes naked but in your territorys. 'I won't tell you,' he continues in his letter of 1 June ), “how I feel every time I goe through St. James's Street because I don't love writing unintelligibly ; & the more faithful the description was, the farther one of your temper way of thinking would be from comprehending what it meant. I might as well talk to a blind man of Colours, an Atheist of Devotion , or an Eunuch of f-." And then , teasing Stephen more directly : “ That regret for the Loss of any body one loves & likes is a sort of Sensation you have merit enough to teach , tho ' I believe you'll never have merit enough to learn it.' His intent was obviously to encourage Stephen to deny that accusation ; and, as can be judged by the rapid progress of their friendship , Stephen was willing both to love and to like.

This then turns into: “I must see you soon ," he impatiently writes (on 15 November ); 'I can't live without You ;
Choice, tast [e], Habit, prejudice , Inclination , Reason & every thing that either does or ought to influence one's thoughts or one's actions makesmine center in & depend on You. Adieu , le plus aimable & le plus aimé qu'il y est au monde.'

Since Hervey is still sickly -one reason why he becomes a vegetarian and swears by milk - he uses this to go on another continental tour, this time to Italy, but not alone: Stephen went with him. (Molly remained at home with an increasing amount of kids and the mother-in-law from hell.) En route back from Italy, Hervey renews his friendship with Voltaire (whom he'd met earlier when Voltaire had been in England); this includes showing Voltaire his poetry and asking his opinion of it. (I sense a theme.) Coming back to England, things get even better for Hervey, because G1 has died, and not only does Hervey become now Queen Caroline's Chamberlain but he also is asked by her to keep an eye on Fritz of Wales, summoned to England at last. Fritz of Wales takes to Hervey like a duck to water; but Horowitz was wronging Hervey when saying Hervey put his relationship with Stephen on hold for that, because he continues to write beautiful love letters to Stephen. He just writers letters to Fritz of Wales signed "your Hephaistion" as well. (And Fritz of Wales writes "'My Dear Hervey , I reciev'd Sunday evening your Letter from Salisbury, & am mighty sensible that fatigue at one Side, & pleasures, Balls , and fine Ladys at another side did not make you forget Orestes, the warm Orestes, to his Dear Pilades.') (Not bad English for a guy who until recently spent his entire life in Hannover, btw.)

Edited Date: 2020-09-11 06:28 pm (UTC)

From:

From:

selenak - Date: 2020-09-14 02:45 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

selenak

And that's when the Walpole versus Pulteney choice happens. Pulteney doesn't take it well. He actually slanders Hervey in print: But you seem , pretty Sir, Pulteney now writes, 'to take the Word Corruption in a limited Sense and confine it to the Corrupter-- Give me Leave to illustrate This by a parallel Case – There is a certain , unnatural, reigning Vice (indecent and almost shocking to mention) . It is well known that there must be two Parties in this Crime; the Pathick and the Agent; both equally guilty. Ineed not explain These any farther.' In other words,having called Hervey a hermaphrodite the eighteenth -century term for homosexual — Pulteney now , by innuendo, accuses him of homosexual practices.

This is serious. Not least because yes, it takes two parties, and Hervey is hanging out with the Prince of Wales. And homosexuality at least according to the law is still a crime punishable by the death penalty. So ignoring and doing nothing is not an option if he wants to keep his office with the Queen. So he challenges Pulteney to a duel - with swords, not pistols - and they go through with it, which ends in a stalmate where both parties are injured and declare themselves satisfied. However, Pulteney is not yet done, because now Hervey gets satirized as someone who doesn't have the guts for a manly killing. This, presumably, is another reason why he's so touchy when Fritz of Wales, simultanously called impotent by his parents (according to Horowitz, Halsband doesn't point this out), starts an affair with Hervey's mistress (whom he had in addition to everyone else), Miss Vane. Cue illegitimate kid, Hervey mortally insulted, and the Fritz of Wales relationship ended. Fritz of Wales is now the worst, and Hervey completely sympathizes with Queen Caroline on this account.

The relationship with Stephen Fox, otoh, remains solid until Stephen needs to do something about his finances, about a decade after he and Hervey have cemented their relationship by going to Italy together. Stephen gets married to a thirteen years old heiress. Unlike poor Barbara Mitchell, this child bride doesn't give birth until more than a decade later, so let's hope the marriage wasn't consumated until then, either. But this marriage does start the point where Hervey and Stephen become more friends than lovers. Otoh, Hervey's friendship with Lady Mary intensifies, not least because they both gets attacked by Alexander Pope and team up with a counter satire (see Lady Mary's biography).

Incidentally, as an example of Hervey's style as a poet:
For Courts are only larger Familys,
The Growth of each , few Truths, & many Lyes;
Likeyou we lounge, & feast , & play, & chatter;
In private Satirize , in Publick flatter .

When Hervey isn't getting cursed by his mother, he's comiserating with Queen Caroline about her cursed son or exchanging quips with Lady Mary. And then there's Voltaire:

Hervey's friendship for Voltaire the man did not prevent him from criticizing Voltaire the writer. When he read the
tragedy Zaire (early in 1733) and sent a copy to Henry Fox , he was certain that like himself Fox would "have some Compassion for a silly Christian [heroine) as well as the greatest regard, Esteem , & Affection for a noble, good, tender & charming Mahometan' who through a tragic misunderstanding kills her. He was irritated , though, by Voltaire's dedication of the play to Edward Falkener, English merchant. In France it was regarded as scandalous because it was addressed not only to a commoner but to a foreign one at that . Hervey told Henry Fox that he thought it "bad, false, & impertinent ... by a superficial Frenchman to an Englishman , & the Dedicator pretends to be better acquainted with our Country,
our Manners, our Laws, & even our Language than the Dedicatee'.
What could have aroused such a violentopinion ? In the dedicatory epistle , after praising the high rank and regard the mercantile class enjoyed in England, Voltaire continues : 'I know very well that this profession is despised by our petits-maîtres ; but you also know that our petits -maîtres and yours are the most ridiculous species that proudly crawl on the face of the earth '. This , rather than the general remarks about French and English theatre, could have been offensive to one who was certainly closer to being a petit-maître than a man of commerce.

No kidding. Voltaire: never fails to piss people off. However, he writes rec letters for visiting Italians, and lo, Algarotti enters the scene. Love triangle ensues. Hervey's side of it is far less self assured than one would think, having read through Lady Mary's letters.

' In any case,' he assures him , 'if you stay or if you go, do not forget me, my dear, for I will never forget you
all my life ... you are too clear-sighted to have any need of instruction in things less obvious than the affection I feel for you , & I will not say more than you know , but much less than I feel, when I assure you simply that at present the thing in the world that I wish most for is to be able to keep you in England for the rest of your life, with the same advantage & pleasure to you that I would find here myself. (...)

To celebrate Algarotti's last evening in London he invited him to supper, but Algarotti declined because (he said ) he had promised to sup with Martin Folkes. But Àlgarotti lied , perhaps to spare his friend any pangs of jealousy . He spent his last evening in London with Lady Mary . After Algarotti's departure Hervey suffered so keenly that his friends complained ofhis moodiness, and he frankly admitted the cause . He was annoyed besides that Algarotti had lied about the supper on the eve of his departure. For Lady Mary now boasted to everybody , Hervey reports to him , that she had been like
Caesar in her conquest - which was, he adds, an insult to Algarotti's mcmory . Instead of resenting Algarotti's duplicity he
resented Lady Mary's having benefited by it. Her physical charms were far inferior to her intellectual ones, he reminds him . 'How fortunate you are then to be gone ! The absence that brings sadness to every other Lover will fulfill your Happiness, for she will speak to your Eyes & not appea rbefore them ; she will not destroy with her countenance the impression she will make by her mind . “But I am speaking too much of her ,' he checks himself,‘now I must say a word about myself. I cannot say anything, however, on this Subject but what you already know , that is to say that I love you with all my Heart, & I beg you never to forget the affection Ihave for you ,nor to let the affection you have for me grow weaker.'
Yet how differently Lady Mary regarded herself !-- not as conquering Caesar but as Dido abandoned by her wandering Aeneas.
“ I am a thousand times more to be pitied than the sad Dido, and I have a thousand more reasons to kill myself ', she tells Algarotti in her second letter soon after his departure . (...)

What could have been Algarotti's thoughts upon receiving such effusions from his two English admirers ? He did not have to
send letters to keep the flames of their love ablaze. A fortnight after his departure Hervey still missed him so painfully that he mourned his great loss to Henry Fox, hardly disguising his emotions, while staying at Kensington ' in this House ( triste Sejour) & generally seeing or thinking of the same thing . Adieu . I write like a Fool, think like a Fool, talk like a Fool, act like a Fool, & have every thing of a Fool but the Content of one.'
(...)
The passion that Hervey and Lady Mary felt for Algarotti aroused in them very different feelings towards each other ,
jealousy on his part , helplessness on hers .He boasted to her that Algarotti had written to him from Francc, while she had not heard from him two weeks later, although he had promised to write from Calais. 'How unhappy I am ! she exclaims to him (in her fourth letter), and what a stroke of Mercy a stroke of Lightning would be at this moment!' More calmly, she tells him thatshe will see Lord Hervey , who should have had news of him .
When she tried several times to arrange an appointment with Hervey he cruelly evaded her, until by accident hemet her at Lady Stafford's , where she extracted from him a promise to meet her in two days' time. Although he again tricd to put her off, on the appointed evening she appcared (with a little ugly singer as chaperone ), and stayed until one in the morning. 'While she was with me,' Hervey tells Algarotti, "she tried thousands of different ways to make me talk of you, & I would not even mention your name. At the same time she told me a thousand deliberate lies & a thousand accidental truths ; & instead of finding out several things without saying anything, as she intended , she told me all without learning anything.' Nor does he forget to reassure Algarotti that however ridiculous and unstable Lady Mary is ( she was as drunk before as wine can make one, & you have added Gin ”), he himself is unswerving in his devotion . 'Adieu . Preserve me in your esteem . I love you too much ,my dear, not to strive all my life to deserve you.'
How much more generous, in this instance, was Lady Mary in telling Algarotti of that same evening :when she had sent word to Lord Hervey that she wished to speak to him , 'You may believe (with his politeness) I saw him soon after, and then I was in allmost as much difficulty to draw from him what I had a mind to know ; that is, whither you were arriv'd safe at Paris ?' Hervey told her 'that after so much neglect as I had shewn him he could not fancy I would honnour him with a message, except I had some thing to demand of him that I thought of importance to myselfe , and very generously made me all sort of offers of Services and assurances of obeying my commands, reasonable or unreasonable '

It is really a relief when Hervey gets a grip on himself again. Helped, no doubt, by Algarotti visiting England after Lady Mary had gone to Italy to reunite with him, but Hervey - still agog about Algarotti - now is kind and without unbecoming Schadenfreude in his letters. However: FW dies, Fritz writes, and Algarotti leaves so quickly that half his luggage has to be sent after him. Hervey won't see him again.

He also loses his royal patron, Queen Caroline, in the aftermath of Fritz of Wales producing his first legitimate offspring (remember the saga of the birth at St. James to avoid his parents being present?). Hervey is not yet out of a job; grieving G2 even makes him the Lord Privy Seal, which is a major promotion. But this doesn't last forever, for Robert Walpole finally is ousted as PM, and that means a reshuffling of the entire cabinet. G2, to his credit, tries to sweeten Hervey's departure first by offering him some nice retirement honors. Hervey wants to remain Lord Privy Seal. (That was Thomas Cromwell's title in Henry VIII's day!) After various attempts at persuasion, G2 gets angry, argument ensues, and Hervey is fired without retirement honors. Writing secret trashy tell all memoirs is only so much help, especially since his relationships first with Henry and then Stephen Fox fall apart as well, and his physical health, never great, goes to ruin entirely. The relationship with Lady Mary, post initial Algarotti triangle, remains good, but she's far away (currently in Avignon), and letters take so long. Hervey dies in bitterness, but not before dictating his last will (see earlier comment). Our biographer points out his memoirs are still the best, and then gives us an "where are they now?" culminating with the Lady Mary letter to Algarotti and the comforting idea of Hervey's version of paradise.

In conclusion: Lehndorff had far less personal drama, but I think he had the better life, for all the unfilfilled ambition. But Hervey is certainly story worthy, and also quite quotable.

From:

selenak

The rules post is up.

So: Who nominates whom for a) Frederician RPF, and b) European Enlightenment?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

If I sign up, I'm requesting Katte, Keith, Suhm, and Fredersdorf (and specifying it's an OR request, though I'm still concerned some potential Katte writer won't check my letter and thus won't match), so I might as well nominate them.

Especially now that I've been bribed with Keith/Algarotti, I'm thinking about signing up, so I need to keep my other two fandom nomination slots open for Cryptonomicon and 3rd century RPF, so no Enlightenment nominations from me (though I will probably request Algarotti and Émilie as an OR request).