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. Living with Fritz and why you don't want to do it:
His vanity, as well as his malignity, found gratification in the vexation and confusion of those who smarted under his caustic jests. Yet in truth his success on these occasions belonged quite as much to the king as to the wit...How to deal with him was the most puzzling of questions. To appear constrained in his presence was to disobey his commands and to spoil his amusement. Yet if his associates were enticed by his graciousness to indulge in the familiarity of a cordial intimacy, he was certain to make them repent of their presumption by some cruel humilia tion. To resent his affronts was perilous: yet not to resent them was to deserve and to invite them.
It is, indeed, difficult to conceive how anything short of the rage of hunger should have induced men to bear the misery of being the associates of the Great King. It was no lucrative post...
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 approached 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.
Yes, I requoted the palace of Alcina passage, because it fit both there and here. Wilhelmine dies:
From the portraits which we have of her, by her own hand, and by the hands of the most discerning of her contemporaries, we should pronounce her to have been coarse, indelicate, and a good hater, but not destitute of kind and generous feelings. Her mind, naturally strong and observant, had been highly cultivated; and she was, and deserved to be, Frederick's favorite sister. He felt the loss as much as it was in his iron nature to feel the loss of any thing but a province or a battle.
the Lord Marischal was the only human being whom Frederick ever really loved.
I can see why you might think that if you're living in the 1770s or 1780s and have only casual contact with Fritz, but otherwise...
Hating Christianity with a rancor which made him incapable of rational inquiry
Casanova: Excuse me. I am decidedly not an atheist, and I remember several fascinating and amiable discussions with the gentleman in question when I visited him in France.
Does Macauly provide any examples of Fritz having contempt for D'Argens? Because I really did not have the impression going by anything I've read so far.
coarse, indelicate, and a good hater, but not destitute of kind and generous feelings
As Victorian assessments go, that's very fair in a very Victorian way. I bet Macauly read the unbowlderized edition of the Memoirs complete with fistula conversations. Though if Wilhelmine is coarse, one shudders to think what he'd have made of women like Aphra Behn who wrote erotic poetry, some of which includes jokes about impotence...
He felt the loss as much as it was in his iron nature to feel the loss of any thing but a province or a battle.
I take it Macauly hadn't yet read Henri de Catt and Fritz crying over lines of Racine?
I can see why you might think that if you're living in the 1770s or 1780s and have only casual contact with Fritz, but otherwise...
Fredersdorf is Sir Not Appearing in this bio! Fritz is his own treasurer from day 1.
He was his own treasurer, his own commander-in-chief, his own intendant of public works; his own minister for trade and justice, for home affairs and foreign affairs; his own master of the horse, steward and chamberlain.
Voltaire: My quip was funnier. As usual.
Does Macauly provide any examples of Fritz having contempt for D'Argens? Because I really did not have the impression going by anything I've read so far
I did, but from MacDonogh and Blanning. Mind you, even without them, Macaulay is right that it seems to be difficult to be close to Fritz and not ever get mocked (this is where Marischal as the only one he ever loved comes in), so I would have believed it anyway. As we've discussed, Fritz and Wilhelmine grew up using mockery in self-defense, and Fritz continued using it for the rest of his life.
More specifically from MacDonogh and Blanning, Fritz does seem to give d'Argens a hard time about his foibles; like Algarotti, d'Argens flees, claiming bad health; Fritz doesn't want to let him go and they have a kind of bad breakup; d'Argens dies in a warmer climate and Fritz commissions a monument for him. I need to find this monument and see if Fritz's name is really big on it. :P
MacDonogh:
D’Argens was as much loved as anyone after 1745, but he was the constant butt of Frederick’s mockery for his slowness, sleepiness or hypochondria, which might have exceeded Frederick’s own: ‘Voltaire is less fertile for malice, or Maupertuis for worry, a brothel is the poorer for cunts …, and the churches for idiotic sermons, compared to your tally of new-found maladies’, he wrote to him in 1752.
MacDonogh immediately follows this with an anecdote I've shared before, from your guy Boswell:
Boswell, who met d’Argens just after the Seven Years War, confirmed the sickly nature of the marquis: ‘He is a miserable being, for he is a hypochondriac and terrified of death. He had worn a flannel under-waistcoat four years and durst not take it off for fear of catching a cold …’ The king, however, convinced him to shed the garment: ‘The marquis agreed to quit his waistcoat. But it had so fixed itself upon him that pieces of skin came away with it.’
Oh, not related to Fritz, but Hanbury-Williams and Chesterfield:
Voltaire, La Mettrie, d’Argens, d’Arnaud, Algarotti, Maupertuis, Pöllnitz and Darget, these men formed the new Tafelrunde of Sanssouci. Hanbury-Williams called them the ‘nine he-muses of the German Parnassus’. His master in London, Lord Chesterfield, thought them a rum lot: Algarotti was a ‘consumate coxcomb’, and d’Argens ‘below mediocrity’.
Yes, that's 8; no, I don't know who the 9th is.
Fritz to Darget:
Our set has gone to seed; the madman is in Switzerland, the Italian has left without leaving a forwarding address, Maupertuis is at death’s door, and d’Argens has hurt his little finger, which means carrying his arm in a sling, as if he’d been injured at [the Battle of] Philippsburg by cannon shot.
After d'Argens heads to Provence in the mid-1760s (this is shortly after the war ends, cahn), for his health, he and Fritz keep in touch by letter.
The taunts [from Fritz] were often cruel. When [d'Argens] made slow progress towards Aix: ‘I think the Colossus of Rhodes would be easier to move than you are.’ In another letter the king accused his friend of being the real ‘beast of Gevaudan’, a wolf that was then savaging sheep in the south of France. Frederick repeated this assertion to d’Alembert: ‘You will see that it is the marquis in his cloak that people have taken for a monster. They say that it eats children and is very nimble, jumping from branch to branch, [but] that doesn’t sound like him, if the monster slept, it couldn’t be anyone else.’
Then d'Argens, after 2 more years in Prussia, decides he needs to go back to Provence again for his health. Fritz calls him ungrateful but lets him go. Then he dies in 1771, and Fritz comes up with a touching epitaph when writing to Voltaire:
Poor d’Argens has stopped talking, thinking and writing. He is my quartermaster, and he has gone to find me lodgings in the land of hollow dreams, where we will probably all be meeting up.
Blanning on d'Argens:
the friends Frederick drove away by his exploitative behavior: Algarotti, who left in 1742, returned in 1747 and departed again in 1753; Darget, who left in 1752; and d’Argens, who left in 1765, had to return in 1766 to escape more persecution in France, and left finally in 1768. Frederick’s venomous parting shot to d’Argens was: “You have reinforced the opinion I have always held that princes are only in this world to create ingrates.”
So, Fritz probably did give him a hard time in Potsdam, but much of the evidence seems to come from the time period when d'Argens was trying to leave. Like Algarotti, I suspect a combination of legitimate health issues and "not your dream boss."
Now, this leads me to an interesting tangent: Fritz obviously doesn't like people leaving him. But right before talking about how Fritz freaked out at d'Argens leaving, MacDonogh sets out to refute the claim that Fritz was upset about his marriage:
Some have maintained that Frederick could not bear the sight of Babet Cochois [d'Argens' wife]. Thiébault says that the marquis married secretly during the Seven Years War, and that Lord Marischal had to play a trick to get Frederick to recognise her when they crossed the park at Sanssouci together after the war had ended: ‘Who is that woman?’ The marquise d’Argens.’ ‘What!’ the king allegedly replied. ‘Has the marquis married?’ According to the story, Marischal was obliged to tell Frederick that it had happened several years before, but that he had not thought to bother him with such ‘trifles’.
This is clearly untrue. For a start the marriage took place in 1749, legitimising a daughter, who had been made earlier. That was seven years before the Seven Years War and Frederick must have known Babet for some time as part of the French theatre troupe and as the sister to the famous La Cochois. During the war he told the marquis to bring her to Leipzig,
So far, so good. Then...
and Catt records Frederick uttering quite sympathetically on the subject: she was a ‘delicious wife for the marquis, she is filled to the brim with wit and knowledge, talents and attentions for him, you meet few women as educated as her …’
Well...maybe? I would need to check the diary.
Anyway, if Fritz really did tell d'Argens to bring her to Leipzig, and Casanova says there was a portrait of the Cochois sister in Fritz's room, maybe he was okay with the marriage.
Which leads me to wonder, what evidence do we have that Fritz was opposed to his friends getting married? Now, obviously he didn't like romantic rivals, but who does? and that was independent of whether they were married.
Maybe there's something to the "I'm marrying a nurse!" excuse that both Fredersdorf and Seydlitz used, though Fredersdorf really was very sick, and Seydlitz may have known he had syphilis already. Hard to say. Fredersdorf at least was in the position of having to make sure Fritz didn't think he had a romantic rival, which most of Fritz's friends wouldn't have been.
Blanning claims Catt and Darget both also discovered Fritz was displeased when you got married, but I have no direct evidence, and since he also cites Fredersdorf and d'Argens as examples, I'm skeptical. We do know Fritz was playing Cyrano for Catt of his own volition (certainly not Catt's!), but maybe that was because Fritz liked flirting but not getting married?
Anyway, I'm not sure where he stood on that issue.
Oh, the d'Argens monument, which surprised me. I think what Fritz did, based on the letter to Algarotti, was write a surprisingly non-micromanagy letter to the person who informed him of the death that they should build a big monument and send him the bill. He actually seems to have left the details up to them! Unless there was a follow-up to the Algarotti letter that's not in Trier, all he says is, build a marble stone on his tomb and inscribe it with
HIC JACET OVIDII AEMULUS ET NEUTONI DISCIPULUS
which, as we know, got realized as,
ALGAROTTO OVIDII AEMULO NEWTONI DISCIPULO FREDERICUS MAGNUS
possibly not at Fritz's request!
So I guess that's how d'Argens, noted skeptic, ended up with a giant angel on his tomb, commissioned by a skeptic.
As Victorian assessments go, that's very fair in a very Victorian way.
That's what I was thinking.
I bet Macauly read the unbowlderized edition of the Memoirs complete with fistula conversations.
Ha! You're probably right.
I take it Macauly hadn't yet read Henri de Catt and Fritz crying over lines of Racine?
Presumably not, since Koser wouldn't publish Catt for another 40 years. I don't know if I'm remembering correctly that you said Preuss had pre-publication access, but Macaulay can't have.
I figured Macaulay must have edited Fredersdorf out of Fritz' life, but this particular list is not a little ridiculous. For starters, where's the totally unsuspected of any erotic attachment Eichel? Where's Podewils, recipient of Fritz' "Be like MT in the first Silesian War, have courage!" letter?
Yes, that's 8; no, I don't know who the 9th is.
Fritz himself?
So, Fritz probably did give him a hard time in Potsdam, but much of the evidence seems to come from the time period when d'Argens was trying to leave.
*nods* I checked the Trier website with its big D'Argens subsection again, and it says that when Fritz summoned D'Argens to him in the 7 Years War (the second time, not the early visit to Dresden), he explicitly said in the letter that Madame d'Argens could come as well. Which she did. So whether or not Fritz had been okay with the marriage when it happened, at this point not only was he okay with it, but the former Barbe Cochois was so much in favor that she was that rarity, a female person he (at least implicitly) wanted to see. I'm also reminded of the fact this lady wrote EC a condolence letter after Fritz' death, and EC wrote a very nice letter back, without any snobbery against former ballerinas. All of which points to her having been an acknowledged part D'Argens' life at the Prussian court(s). Since she really did co write some of his later books with him and had learned Greek (which Fritz never did), she must have been very clever, and so maybe she was one of his "honorary men" exceptions.
Monument: the Trier website says it was partially destroyed in the French Revolution, so presumably the angel is all what's left. So maybe there was an inscription with Fritz' name in giant letters.
but maybe that was because Fritz liked flirting but not getting married?
Could be. The short story author who totally wasted her "ghosts Fritz and MT meet" premise on a "ghosts MT and Fritz talk via ghost Catt, whom MT tells to call her Resi" execution also had Fritz displeased about the marriage, so maybe this is mentioned somewhere - Thiebault? 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.
Contemporary evidence for Fritz not liking people to get married (err, other than the obvious, i.e. Barbarina and Gertrud Elisabeth Schmeling Mara): the anecdote book published shortly after Fritz' death, the one which has the tale about the later life husar committing suicide and Fritz kicking (some) servants, also mentions the staff attending him at Sanssouci was strictly forbidden to marry.
Oh, could be. I was thinking of him as Apollo, since he liked to make that equation. :P But yes, you might be right.
Monument: the Trier website says it was partially destroyed in the French Revolution, so presumably the angel is all what's left. So maybe there was an inscription with Fritz' name in giant letters.
Ooh, that makes sense. :P All I found was that the church survived 1945 but the monument itself is now in a museum.
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.
That would make a lot of sense, especially since he didn't stay all that long.
so maybe this is mentioned somewhere - Thiebault?
Maybe, though I don't consider Thiebault a primary source for much. :P
(err, other than the obvious, i.e. Barbarina and Gertrud Elisabeth Schmeling Mara)
also mentions the staff attending him at Sanssouci was strictly forbidden to marry.
Contemporary source of unknown reliability, then. *nod*
(Though, you know, with the standards we've been holding Fritzian historiography to, and the extent to which we have our previously held beliefs turned upside down regularly, I sometimes wonder how anyone does ancient history at all!)
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.
Google actually decided to try to figure out who "dieser" referred to
That's one ambitious algorithm. Though I agree, to me it reads as Guerton having done the recommending.
didn't Catt marry the sister of AW's secretary?
Not quite. He married the sister-in-law of AW's secretary (i.e. Hainchelin and Catt married sisters), who, btw, was also Hainchelin's cousin. Because family marriage is not just for royals!
Diderot is one of those Enlightenment figures who shows up in everyone's biographies; I've read one his essays, but definitely not what he's most famous for, the dictionary.
As Victorian assessments go, that's very fair in a very Victorian way. I bet Macauly read the unbowlderized edition of the Memoirs complete with fistula conversations. Though if Wilhelmine is coarse, one shudders to think what he'd have made of women like Aphra Behn who wrote erotic poetry, some of which includes jokes about impotence...
Huh! I was ready to go up in arms for my girl Wilhelmine, but I guess I can see what you mean.
but Wilhelmine also thought the fistula conversation was indelicate!
It all sounded familiar to me because when an (abriviated) version of Wilhelmine's memoirs was published for the first time in the early 19th century, the initial reaction was to describe it as an anti Prussian forgery, not just because such horrible things would not happen in a royal family but no princess and delicate lady would describe them. It's not just the fistula scene - it's everything, and the fact she's writing to critically about her parents. A lady of finer feeling does not do that in the 19th century (according to 19th century taste).
Macaulay is in luck MT's letters weren't published yet. The ones to her favourite lady in waiting contain discussions of her menses. He'd have gotten the vapours.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Macaulay - Fritzian friends and family
Date: 2020-09-03 02:32 am (UTC)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.
Living with Fritz and why you don't want to do it:
His vanity, as well as his malignity, found gratification in the vexation and confusion of those who smarted under his caustic jests. Yet in truth his success on these occasions belonged quite as much to the king as to the wit...How to deal with him was the most puzzling of questions. To appear constrained in his presence was to disobey his commands and to spoil his amusement. Yet if his associates were enticed by his graciousness to indulge in the familiarity of a cordial intimacy, he was certain to make them repent of their presumption by some cruel humilia tion. To resent his affronts was perilous: yet not to resent them was to deserve and to invite them.
It is, indeed, difficult to conceive how anything short of the rage of hunger should have induced men to bear the misery of being the associates of the Great King. It was no lucrative post...
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 approached 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.
Yes, I requoted the palace of Alcina passage, because it fit both there and here.
Wilhelmine dies:
From the portraits which we have of her, by her own hand, and by the hands of the most discerning of her contemporaries, we should pronounce her to have been coarse, indelicate, and a good hater, but not destitute of kind and generous feelings. Her mind, naturally strong and observant, had been highly cultivated; and she was, and deserved to be, Frederick's favorite sister. He felt the loss as much as it was in his iron nature to feel the loss of any thing but a province or a battle.
Re: Macaulay - Fritzian friends and family
Date: 2020-09-03 11:01 am (UTC)I can see why you might think that if you're living in the 1770s or 1780s and have only casual contact with Fritz, but otherwise...
Hating Christianity with a rancor which made him incapable of rational inquiry
Casanova: Excuse me. I am decidedly not an atheist, and I remember several fascinating and amiable discussions with the gentleman in question when I visited him in France.
Does Macauly provide any examples of Fritz having contempt for D'Argens? Because I really did not have the impression going by anything I've read so far.
coarse, indelicate, and a good hater, but not destitute of kind and generous feelings
As Victorian assessments go, that's very fair in a very Victorian way. I bet Macauly read the unbowlderized edition of the Memoirs complete with fistula conversations. Though if Wilhelmine is coarse, one shudders to think what he'd have made of women like Aphra Behn who wrote erotic poetry, some of which includes jokes about impotence...
He felt the loss as much as it was in his iron nature to feel the loss of any thing but a province or a battle.
I take it Macauly hadn't yet read Henri de Catt and Fritz crying over lines of Racine?
Re: Macaulay - Fritzian friends and family
Date: 2020-09-04 12:49 am (UTC)Fredersdorf is Sir Not Appearing in this bio! Fritz is his own treasurer from day 1.
He was his own treasurer, his own commander-in-chief, his own intendant of public works; his own minister for trade and justice, for home affairs and foreign affairs; his own master of the horse, steward and chamberlain.
Voltaire: My quip was funnier. As usual.
Does Macauly provide any examples of Fritz having contempt for D'Argens? Because I really did not have the impression going by anything I've read so far
I did, but from MacDonogh and Blanning. Mind you, even without them, Macaulay is right that it seems to be difficult to be close to Fritz and not ever get mocked (this is where Marischal as the only one he ever loved comes in), so I would have believed it anyway. As we've discussed, Fritz and Wilhelmine grew up using mockery in self-defense, and Fritz continued using it for the rest of his life.
More specifically from MacDonogh and Blanning, Fritz does seem to give d'Argens a hard time about his foibles; like Algarotti, d'Argens flees, claiming bad health; Fritz doesn't want to let him go and they have a kind of bad breakup; d'Argens dies in a warmer climate and Fritz commissions a monument for him. I need to find this monument and see if Fritz's name is really big on it. :P
MacDonogh:
D’Argens was as much loved as anyone after 1745, but he was the constant butt of Frederick’s mockery for his slowness, sleepiness or hypochondria, which might have exceeded Frederick’s own: ‘Voltaire is less fertile for malice, or Maupertuis for worry, a brothel is the poorer for cunts …, and the churches for idiotic sermons, compared to your tally of new-found maladies’, he wrote to him in 1752.
MacDonogh immediately follows this with an anecdote I've shared before, from your guy Boswell:
Boswell, who met d’Argens just after the Seven Years War, confirmed the sickly nature of the marquis: ‘He is a miserable being, for he is a hypochondriac and terrified of death. He had worn a flannel under-waistcoat four years and durst not take it off for fear of catching a cold …’ The king, however, convinced him to shed the garment: ‘The marquis agreed to quit his waistcoat. But it had so fixed itself upon him that pieces of skin came away with it.’
Oh, not related to Fritz, but Hanbury-Williams and Chesterfield:
Voltaire, La Mettrie, d’Argens, d’Arnaud, Algarotti, Maupertuis, Pöllnitz and Darget, these men formed the new Tafelrunde of Sanssouci. Hanbury-Williams called them the ‘nine he-muses of the German Parnassus’. His master in London, Lord Chesterfield, thought them a rum lot: Algarotti was a ‘consumate coxcomb’, and d’Argens ‘below mediocrity’.
Yes, that's 8; no, I don't know who the 9th is.
Fritz to Darget:
Our set has gone to seed; the madman is in Switzerland, the Italian has left without leaving a forwarding address, Maupertuis is at death’s door, and d’Argens has hurt his little finger, which means carrying his arm in a sling, as if he’d been injured at [the Battle of] Philippsburg by cannon shot.
After d'Argens heads to Provence in the mid-1760s (this is shortly after the war ends,
The taunts [from Fritz] were often cruel. When [d'Argens] made slow progress towards Aix: ‘I think the Colossus of Rhodes would be easier to move than you are.’ In another letter the king accused his friend of being the real ‘beast of Gevaudan’, a wolf that was then savaging sheep in the south of France. Frederick repeated this assertion to d’Alembert: ‘You will see that it is the marquis in his cloak that people have taken for a monster. They say that it eats children and is very nimble, jumping from branch to branch, [but] that doesn’t sound like him, if the monster slept, it couldn’t be anyone else.’
Then d'Argens, after 2 more years in Prussia, decides he needs to go back to Provence again for his health. Fritz calls him ungrateful but lets him go. Then he dies in 1771, and Fritz comes up with a touching epitaph when writing to Voltaire:
Poor d’Argens has stopped talking, thinking and writing. He is my quartermaster, and he has gone to find me lodgings in the land of hollow dreams, where we will probably all be meeting up.
Blanning on d'Argens:
the friends Frederick drove away by his exploitative behavior: Algarotti, who left in 1742, returned in 1747 and departed again in 1753; Darget, who left in 1752; and d’Argens, who left in 1765, had to return in 1766 to escape more persecution in France, and left finally in 1768. Frederick’s venomous parting shot to d’Argens was: “You have reinforced the opinion I have always held that princes are only in this world to create ingrates.”
So, Fritz probably did give him a hard time in Potsdam, but much of the evidence seems to come from the time period when d'Argens was trying to leave. Like Algarotti, I suspect a combination of legitimate health issues and "not your dream boss."
Now, this leads me to an interesting tangent: Fritz obviously doesn't like people leaving him. But right before talking about how Fritz freaked out at d'Argens leaving, MacDonogh sets out to refute the claim that Fritz was upset about his marriage:
Some have maintained that Frederick could not bear the sight of Babet Cochois [d'Argens' wife]. Thiébault says that the marquis married secretly during the Seven Years War, and that Lord Marischal had to play a trick to get Frederick to recognise her when they crossed the park at Sanssouci together after the war had ended: ‘Who is that woman?’ The marquise d’Argens.’ ‘What!’ the king allegedly replied. ‘Has the marquis married?’ According to the story, Marischal was obliged to tell Frederick that it had happened several years before, but that he had not thought to bother him with such ‘trifles’.
This is clearly untrue. For a start the marriage took place in 1749, legitimising a daughter, who had been made earlier. That was seven years before the Seven Years War and Frederick must have known Babet for some time as part of the French theatre troupe and as the sister to the famous La Cochois. During the war he told the marquis to bring her to Leipzig,
So far, so good. Then...
and Catt records Frederick uttering quite sympathetically on the subject: she was a ‘delicious wife for the marquis, she is filled to the brim with wit and knowledge, talents and attentions for him, you meet few women as educated as her …’
Well...maybe? I would need to check the diary.
Anyway, if Fritz really did tell d'Argens to bring her to Leipzig, and Casanova says there was a portrait of the Cochois sister in Fritz's room, maybe he was okay with the marriage.
Which leads me to wonder, what evidence do we have that Fritz was opposed to his friends getting married? Now, obviously he didn't like romantic rivals, but who does? and that was independent of whether they were married.
Maybe there's something to the "I'm marrying a nurse!" excuse that both Fredersdorf and Seydlitz used, though Fredersdorf really was very sick, and Seydlitz may have known he had syphilis already. Hard to say. Fredersdorf at least was in the position of having to make sure Fritz didn't think he had a romantic rival, which most of Fritz's friends wouldn't have been.
Blanning claims Catt and Darget both also discovered Fritz was displeased when you got married, but I have no direct evidence, and since he also cites Fredersdorf and d'Argens as examples, I'm skeptical. We do know Fritz was playing Cyrano for Catt of his own volition (certainly not Catt's!), but maybe that was because Fritz liked flirting but not getting married?
Anyway, I'm not sure where he stood on that issue.
Oh, the d'Argens monument, which surprised me. I think what Fritz did, based on the letter to Algarotti, was write a surprisingly non-micromanagy letter to the person who informed him of the death that they should build a big monument and send him the bill. He actually seems to have left the details up to them! Unless there was a follow-up to the Algarotti letter that's not in Trier, all he says is, build a marble stone on his tomb and inscribe it with
HIC JACET OVIDII AEMULUS ET NEUTONI DISCIPULUS
which, as we know, got realized as,
ALGAROTTO OVIDII AEMULO NEWTONI DISCIPULO FREDERICUS MAGNUS
possibly not at Fritz's request!
So I guess that's how d'Argens, noted skeptic, ended up with a giant angel on his tomb, commissioned by a skeptic.
As Victorian assessments go, that's very fair in a very Victorian way.
That's what I was thinking.
I bet Macauly read the unbowlderized edition of the Memoirs complete with fistula conversations.
Ha! You're probably right.
I take it Macauly hadn't yet read Henri de Catt and Fritz crying over lines of Racine?
Presumably not, since Koser wouldn't publish Catt for another 40 years. I don't know if I'm remembering correctly that you said Preuss had pre-publication access, but Macaulay can't have.
Re: Macaulay - Fritzian friends and family
Date: 2020-09-05 11:50 am (UTC)Yes, that's 8; no, I don't know who the 9th is.
Fritz himself?
So, Fritz probably did give him a hard time in Potsdam, but much of the evidence seems to come from the time period when d'Argens was trying to leave.
*nods* I checked the Trier website with its big D'Argens subsection again, and it says that when Fritz summoned D'Argens to him in the 7 Years War (the second time, not the early visit to Dresden), he explicitly said in the letter that Madame d'Argens could come as well. Which she did. So whether or not Fritz had been okay with the marriage when it happened, at this point not only was he okay with it, but the former Barbe Cochois was so much in favor that she was that rarity, a female person he (at least implicitly) wanted to see. I'm also reminded of the fact this lady wrote EC a condolence letter after Fritz' death, and EC wrote a very nice letter back, without any snobbery against former ballerinas. All of which points to her having been an acknowledged part D'Argens' life at the Prussian court(s). Since she really did co write some of his later books with him and had learned Greek (which Fritz never did), she must have been very clever, and so maybe she was one of his "honorary men" exceptions.
Monument: the Trier website says it was partially destroyed in the French Revolution, so presumably the angel is all what's left. So maybe there was an inscription with Fritz' name in giant letters.
but maybe that was because Fritz liked flirting but not getting married?
Could be. The short story author who totally wasted her "ghosts Fritz and MT meet" premise on a "ghosts MT and Fritz talk via ghost Catt, whom MT tells to call her Resi" execution also had Fritz displeased about the marriage, so maybe this is mentioned somewhere - Thiebault? 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.
Contemporary evidence for Fritz not liking people to get married (err, other than the obvious, i.e. Barbarina and Gertrud Elisabeth Schmeling Mara): the anecdote book published shortly after Fritz' death, the one which has the tale about the later life husar committing suicide and Fritz kicking (some) servants, also mentions the staff attending him at Sanssouci was strictly forbidden to marry.
Re: Macaulay - Fritzian friends and family
Date: 2020-09-05 10:02 pm (UTC)Fritz himself?
Oh, could be. I was thinking of him as Apollo, since he liked to make that equation. :P But yes, you might be right.
Monument: the Trier website says it was partially destroyed in the French Revolution, so presumably the angel is all what's left. So maybe there was an inscription with Fritz' name in giant letters.
Ooh, that makes sense. :P All I found was that the church survived 1945 but the monument itself is now in a museum.
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.
That would make a lot of sense, especially since he didn't stay all that long.
so maybe this is mentioned somewhere - Thiebault?
Maybe, though I don't consider Thiebault a primary source for much. :P
(err, other than the obvious, i.e. Barbarina and Gertrud Elisabeth Schmeling Mara)
Well...double standards for women all the way!
also mentions the staff attending him at Sanssouci was strictly forbidden to marry.
Contemporary source of unknown reliability, then. *nod*
(Though, you know, with the standards we've been holding Fritzian historiography to, and the extent to which we have our previously held beliefs turned upside down regularly, I sometimes wonder how anyone does ancient history at all!)
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.
Re: Macaulay - Fritzian friends and family
Date: 2020-09-07 07:05 am (UTC)That's one ambitious algorithm. Though I agree, to me it reads as Guerton having done the recommending.
didn't Catt marry the sister of AW's secretary?
Not quite. He married the sister-in-law of AW's secretary (i.e. Hainchelin and Catt married sisters), who, btw, was also Hainchelin's cousin. Because family marriage is not just for royals!
Diderot is one of those Enlightenment figures who shows up in everyone's biographies; I've read one his essays, but definitely not what he's most famous for, the dictionary.
Re: Macaulay - Fritzian friends and family
Date: 2020-09-05 05:21 am (UTC)Huh! I was ready to go up in arms for my girl Wilhelmine, but I guess I can see what you mean.
but Wilhelmine also thought the fistula conversation was indelicate!Re: Macaulay - Fritzian friends and family
Date: 2020-09-05 08:00 am (UTC)Macaulay is in luck MT's letters weren't published yet. The ones to her favourite lady in waiting contain discussions of her menses. He'd have gotten the vapours.