cahn | Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 17

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

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From:

selenak

No architecture, no gardening, and very little politics, that might do the trick.:)

From:

selenak

Well, AW/Sophie at this point was old news, and presumably superceded by other gossip (such as AW/Mina). And Sophie hadn't been blatantly prefered by everyone else in the royal family to Louise as well, as Mina had, so there was no reason to resent her because of that. If anything, Sophie - whose husband was something of a gambler and whose marriage supposedly wasn't that stellar - could have had some resentment at Louise for existing (since presumably otherwise AW mighth have married her), but according to the badly edited version of her diaries translated into English, she did not. (As no one resented Louise.)

ETA: Zimperliese: I'm curious - does google translate this as "carpentry guy" again?

Edited Date: 2020-09-12 03:08 pm (UTC)

From:

selenak

~~And then he talked about Suhm to Georgi the handsome hussar.~~ Oh, I think it's way more plausible that they've met and at the very least liked each other - Suhm and Algarotti, that is - than that Heinrich and Algarotti had a one night stand, and I've adopted this speculation of yours, as you know. :)

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:

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:

mildred_of_midgard

* Ziebura presents at face value Wilhelmine's claim that Fritz, present at her wedding, was "free, free because she had submitted to the King's will."

But last I checked, he was still at Küstrin under house arrest for three more months. Chronologically this was immediately after he agreed to marry EC, and everyone says it was to get a longer leash from FW, but I admit I'm blanking on a primary source for cause and effect. Could it have been that he would have gone to Ruppin anyway, and what EC got him was permission to pick out an estate (Rheinsberg) and have it restored and move in with her 4 years later?

* Fritz is cold to Wilhelmine at the wedding because "his father's trust was more important to him than his sister's happiness." In her memoirs, she would accuse him many years later of not appreciating her sacrifices.

No mention of:
- At least parts of the memoirs being written during their falling out.
- Her memoirs and their letters showing more affection through the 1730s after that first day.
- Grumbkow's BOUNDARIES letter.
- Fritz's letter telling her *not* to marry to get him out of prison.
- Any particularly good reason why the opinion of your abusive father and absolute monarch in the country in which you live might be validly more urgent than the happiness of your living far away and totally powerless and unwilling to execute you in any case sister.

Give Fritz a hard time for how he treated his siblings after 1740, by all means, but for god's sake, cut him some slack for trying to navigate a difficult situation on his first day out of prison/house arrest.

* In the early 1730s, FW learned to value Fritz's intelligence and capability, and Fritz learned to respect his father. Oh, and he stopped having to worry that Fritz was going to ruin everything after his death.

Was this the Koser take on things? I forget who it was who was all, "And after that regrettable 1730 year, our two great monarchs learned to see eye-to-eye again, thank god!"

More accurately, I would say they learned to have seriously mixed feelings during the 1730s. Between Fritz still being worried about being cut out of the succession until--was it as late as 1739?, the remark passed on by AW that FW expects him to run everything into the ground with palaces and mistresses but he's too old to change, and Fritz's frequently expressed hopes that FW dies...the "worthy successor" and "there stands one who will avenge me" remarks are only part of the picture.

*

cahn, since you recently finished AW, it's worth knowing that Ziebura read an article after publishing that book and switched her diagnosis of AW's death from meningitis to porphyria. Aka the hereditary disease that scholars think FW, Fritz, and Friederike Luise (among others?) may have had, and that the Hanovers may also have had (most notably mad King George III!).

From:

selenak

FW and Fritz post Küstrin learning to appreciate each other: It‘s the Preuss, Koser and traditional Prussian historians take. Deconstructionists like Jürgen Luh by contrast do quote the „Dad: still not dead, argh“ letters, but they do so as part of the „Fritz the calculating machine who could not have lost against his father anyway“ interpretation.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Read up through the first evacuation to Magdeburg, where EC is getting to visit Sanssouci.

selenak, you've now been to Sanssouci more times than EC. (I've been the same number of times, but am going to remedy that, I swear.)

OTOH, you've now been to Katte's grave more often than Fritz! (Also going to remedy that.)

As further German practice, I also did a couple pages of Wilhelmine's memoirs, but it's a little harder going than Sons was. Though I feel like it's still within my range, and I will try to keep at it.

From:

cahn

Bisset, of course, claimed that he never remarried because he didn't get over his dead wife (and dead baby who died with her), and at the time I had no reason to doubt it.

IDK, what you've told us about his dead wife and baby were sort of horrifying enough that I can see that putting one off het sex for life, especially if one happens to be bisexual and, well, have Algarotti as an option... though I suppose that's not quite the same as "didn't get over his dead wife," which, uh, clearly it sounds like he did :P

...and I feel even more entitled of having included your Algarotti/Heinrich speculation in My Brother Narcissus. Clearly, Algarotti absolutely would have if he could have.

Clearly!

From:

cahn

I run cygwin or git bash, so unix scripts ought to work for me modulo weird interface problems because windows sometimes doesn't play well with things that try to emulate unix ~~because it is better~~

From:

cahn

The thing is, I can't read on my computer -- I have to read on my e-reader anyway. (A combo of limited computer time due to body limitations and limited time sitting down because of kids -- am usually reading while running around the house.) So I'm used to paging back and forth anyway, though to be honest it's usually only a page or two, so yeah, these really long paragraphs are probably going to be annoying.

From:

cahn

* "Without envy, but with bitterness, Wilhelm watched his brother's star rise, while his own fell inexorably." Wow. :/

THIS.

From:

cahn

She does, and I'm mostly thinking they were wrong, too, but that's with hindsight and the knowledge of AW's death. If you, like Heinrich and Ferdinand, assume AW will survive to be King one day and has at least the security that Fritz can't change the succession without petitioning the Emperor to do so, and if you assume that even if AW submits, Fritz will just repeat this kind of behavior ad infinitum (with AW and others), then it looks differently. Like you said, it was a lose-lose situation.

Yeah. It's not at all clear to me that it looks like the wrong move at the time, it's all lose-lose :(

From:

cahn

Wow I am SO BEHIND HERE. Maybe I can catch up on comments by the end of the weekend...

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

Ah, thank you! I figured it had to be something like that, but there are so many random things it could have been :P

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

THIS

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.

LOL, see, that one I was like "...bwuh? I know what that word means!" I didn't realize it was an idiom that Google was helpfully putting in! LOL, yes.

But yes, also an ugh moment :(((((

From:

cahn

WHAT
WHY Lord Hervey????

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

Apparently! :(

From:

cahn

Andrew Mitchell: at eighteen (meaning when Barbara is fourteen) gets widowed himself as his fourteen years old bride dies in childbirth.

Andrew Mitchell: Has no known heterosexual activity after that experience as far as anyone knows.

I agree with mildred: YIKES

who Lehndorff is - "The Queen's Chamberlain, the Prussian Lord Hervey, though without that lord's malice or style".

I don't know whether to laugh, agree or protest. I mean, yes, they had the same office - technically. And they both left posterity detailed records of the courtly goings on. But Queen Caroline had actual political influence on George II, and Hervey having influence with her was a major factor in Robert Walpole staying PM as long as he did. Hervey also had actual interactions with George II. Conversely, yes, Lehndorff didn't have malice, but style? *looks at icon*

Heh, yes! Well, I guess we can agree that Lehndorff didn't have Lord Hervey's style, anyway! (And he would NEVER EVER leave his children to SOME OTHER RANDOM WOMAN. JUST SAYING.)

From:

cahn

HAHAHAHA okay, fine, I must admit that I do find this endearing :) LOLOLOL!

From:

cahn

LOLOLOLOL SO AWESOME

okay, I guess I don't need the fic now, this really does sum it up so hilariously

(though I would still not say no to it)

Do you realise one would then have to compose fake Algarotti odes to MT and Fritz respectively? To quote from? In overblown 18th century style?

I mean, it's not a con for me, not being the writer :D

From:

cahn

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

HA! Salon is the BEST.

Lol, you wrote this three days ago, and I'm just now getting to it. I have hopes of getting caught up, though!

From:

cahn

Old Fritz vs George Washington?

*blinks*
WOULD READ. Just saying!

(...how... would that work? What would happen???? Now I need to know!)

From:

cahn

OK, I need to go to bed so this is my last comment for tonight, but:

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.

I had the same reaction! Though I also didn't realize before reading this that he had any choice whatsoever -- I guess I assumed Fritz had made the whole choice. I could also imagine him picking the sister who was in fact the most charming, figuring he might as well get the one who was going to be the least obnoxious to be around.

From:

selenak

Like I said, unless I've forgotten a direct quote, I took this as Ziebura's personal interpretation of the situation, especially given how life turned out for either sister, rather than a stated intention of Heinrich's.

Mina's sister: Caroline, married AnhaltSophie's younger brother Friedrich August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst a year after Mina had married Heinrich (i.e. they married in 1753). Was terrorized by her mother-in-law Johanna and ill treated by her husband. When the 7 Years War started, Anhalt-Zerbst declared neutrality. Fritz said "I don't think so". Johanna was currently hosting the Marquis de Freigne who was indeed supposed to find out via her (who, remember, was the mother of future Catherine the Great) whether Russia was on board with the anti Prussia coalition. This was Fritz' official reason to send Major von Kleist to occupy the country. Johanna fled to Paris, Friedrich August to a couple of exile locations, and poor Caroline died in misery and I think childbed in 1759. Lehndorff does mention the Anhalt-Zerbst situation a couple of times, including that "the young princess" i.e. Caroline, got constantly tyrannized by "the old princess" i.e. Johanna and abused by her husband. He might have heared about it from Mina, who visited her sister a couple of times, and got visited by her, and up to Caroline's death (i.e. 1759) certainly would have considered herself as the more fortunate.

Friedrich August didn't bother to come back after the 7 Years War but mostly lived in Basel, Switzerland. He ruled his country via ministers who thoroughly exploited it, and to get some additional cash sold his regiments to the Brits in the American War of Independence. (Which several German princes did, including Carl Eugen, remember, I told you when we had one of our earliest Schiller conversations.) He also married again. Worthy of note: he wasn't welcome in Russia. From what I recall from my hasty browsing through the memoirs, Catherine's feelings for her brother were less than warm.

From:

selenak

Indeed Lehndorff would not, though to be precise, Mrs. Strangeways-Horner wasn't some random woman. She was in fact the mother of Stephen Fox' child bride, and also the lover of Henry Fox. So basically Hervey did something quite similar to AW, who wanted his kids given to Mina, because choosing Mrs. Strangeways-Horner is as good as saying "I want my daughter to be raised with the Foxes".

(Doesn't make it less punching down to share the misery via one's last will.)

Here's a picture of Hervey:

Now of course we don't have Lehndorff's wives diaries, so we don't know what kind of husband he was from their pov, and one should not idealize him. But he postponed his long hoped for journey abroad - after Fritz had given him permission - when his first wife was ill and went with her to a spa instead and stayed with her till she died; this at a point when his continued career frustration had anything but lessened (the later 1760s) and would soon reach a boiling point. So, I consider it safe to say: Lehndorff wasn't the type to punch down at his wife in misery.

From:

selenak

Well, I can't see any version of Fritz, even one hemmed in by being a constitutional monarch, reacting to the colonies declaring independence by saying "of course, be happy, my children".
More like "is this an Austrian conspiracy? Prime Minister, you do your ruling here, I'm off with the next ship, heading my overseas army".

Of course, if the British army went through first FW and then Fritz in the last half century before that, it's quite differently drilled and formed anyway. Not to mention that the Rebels might not get any help from Steuben at all if not Cousin George but Fritz is King of Britain. Unless... well, as it is Heinrich sympathized with the Americans even before they won. (Lehndorff notes down he has a conversation at Rheinsberg about the American goings-on where Heinrich is totally on the side of the Americans. Now, given Heinrich's Francophilia and less than enamored view of Britain in general in rl, added to which are Heinrich's issues with having lived with a control freak on the throne for the last decades, this is not surprising. And yes, he might have felt differently if he'd been raised as the son of and brother of a King of England, even if King of England!FW definitely would still have spent part of his time in Brandenburg. But...

...if in this AU the rebels were really smart, and Steuben still has the same sympathies, they'd invite Heinrich to team up with them from the get go. And while Heinrich wouldn't go for a civil war in his brother's kingdom, overseas colonies are a different matter. So who knows, this war might have seen not just Old Fritz versus George Washington but also Fritz vs Heinrich...