As for Darget, Voltaire could or could not have invented him being annoyed by the "Palladion", but the thing is: Darget was an avid correspondant with Heinrich and (while he lived) AW. Usually people who hung out with Fritz' brothers a lot had at the very least a not completely positive view of Fritz. So who knows, maybe there was some mutual iritation when he left, over the marriage and the Palladion respectively.
I just got to Darget in the AW bio, and apparently he married the sister of Heinrich's secretary (didn't Catt marry the sister of AW's secretary?), and then she died shortly thereafter, and that was when he quit his job and went back to France. Fritz and his brothers and everyone were upset and tried to get him to come back, or at least write from France, which he was too depressed to do.
Maybe he's depressed just because of his wife, maybe his non-dream boss before that had something to do with it, it's not clear.
But I didn't realize that after he left, AW, Heinrich, and Ferdinand ended up in correspondence with Diderot and/or ghostwriter Grimm, because Darget was too depressed to report on the literary scene in Paris. So he recommended a guy that Prades thought was mediocre (I admit I've never heard of him), and Prades was like, "No, Diderot's way better for the same price!")
Oh, random interesting thing that Google did:
Wilhelm lobte Darget gegenuber Guerton's eleganten Stil und bestellte sich gleich ein Buch, das dieser empfohlen hatte.
Google actually decided to try to figure out who "dieser" referred to, and substitute a proper name for the pronoun in the translation, and it came up with: "and immediately ordered a book that Darget had recommended." From context, I would think that Guerton had done the recommending, but I'm impressed that Google was sophisticated enough to even try.
Btw, for a while now I've had a Kindle sample of a Diderot bio on my phone, but the odds of me getting to it any time soon are minimal, so I haven't actually bought it yet. One day, maybe I'll be a royal co-reader.
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Re: Macaulay - Fritzian friends and family
Date: 2020-09-06 11:22 pm (UTC)I just got to Darget in the AW bio, and apparently he married the sister of Heinrich's secretary (didn't Catt marry the sister of AW's secretary?), and then she died shortly thereafter, and that was when he quit his job and went back to France. Fritz and his brothers and everyone were upset and tried to get him to come back, or at least write from France, which he was too depressed to do.
Maybe he's depressed just because of his wife, maybe his non-dream boss before that had something to do with it, it's not clear.
But I didn't realize that after he left, AW, Heinrich, and Ferdinand ended up in correspondence with Diderot and/or ghostwriter Grimm, because Darget was too depressed to report on the literary scene in Paris. So he recommended a guy that Prades thought was mediocre (I admit I've never heard of him), and Prades was like, "No, Diderot's way better for the same price!")
Oh, random interesting thing that Google did:
Wilhelm lobte Darget gegenuber Guerton's eleganten Stil und bestellte sich gleich ein Buch, das dieser empfohlen hatte.
Google actually decided to try to figure out who "dieser" referred to, and substitute a proper name for the pronoun in the translation, and it came up with: "and immediately ordered a book that Darget had recommended." From context, I would think that Guerton had done the recommending, but I'm impressed that Google was sophisticated enough to even try.
Btw, for a while now I've had a Kindle sample of a Diderot bio on my phone, but the odds of me getting to it any time soon are minimal, so I haven't actually bought it yet. One day, maybe I'll be a royal co-reader.