No kidding. Anne Vane, the lady who was first Hervey's and than Fritz' of Wales' mistress, gets a lot of bad (satiric) press in her time and even from Halsband some authorial condescension and hostility. Check it out:
Could she have been so repulsive as Lord Egmont describes her -a fat and ill-shaped dwarf,with nothing good to recommend her, neither sense nor wit ? She was, besides, probably marked by smallpox. The Prince's passion for women was wittily analysed by Horace Walpole : "like the rest of his race, beauty was not a necessary ingredient. Miss ( Vane], whom he had debauched without loving , and who had been debauched without loving him so well as either Lord Harrington or Lord Hervey , who both pretended to her first favours, had no other charms than of being a Maid of Honour, who was willing to cease to be so upon the first opportunity . However much others may have disapproved or sneered, the Prince was proud of his battered conquest, and commanded his courtiers to treat her with respect when they visited her. Hervey innocently maintained his precious friendship with the Prince through the autumn (1731), either through spirited letters from Redlinch or in his company , until it took a new , dramatic turn . He fretted for a whole week ( in mid-December ) before confiding in Stephen : ' that Fool the Prince plagues my Heart out. He is as false too as he [is ] silly , & appears every thing he is not by turns, but wise ; yet the Mask of common -sense, if he knew how to get it , would disguise him more than any other; he could put on nothing so unnatural, nothing so unlike.' Unfortunately Hervey could not be more explicit, 'for Paper is as great a Blab as a human Creature'. So intense was his indignation that he revealed to his father that he had been deceived and betrayed by a friend whom hereally loved - though he worded it so cautiously, in fear ofpost-office prying, that his father remained uncertain who that friend was . He could be more explicit with Stephen because they used a cipher for the Prince's name; and on Christmas Day, with feelings far from charitable, he raged again : 'I have almost every Day fresh Instances of the Falschood as well as the Folly of [the Prince], & since it is impossible to correct the first, wherever it is so natural, I am not very solicitous as you may imagine to rectify the Errors of the Last.'
Now keep in mind that the same Hervey who rages here about Miss Vane and the Prince betraying him with each other is a) a married man whose wife is pregnant as well and will give birth only a month after Miss Vane does, and b) also still having his grand affair with Stephen, whose jealousy he had to soothe just a few months before Fritz of Wales starts his affair with Miss Vane:
But in an unguardedmoment, or with a miscalculated confession, he told Stephen that he wished he could love the Prince as well as he loved Stephen. How Stephen reacted can be inferred from Hervey's distraught apology, sent only ten minutes after he had read his reply : 'The Tears you speak of are at this Distance so infectious that I hardly see the Words I write.' He reassures him, in themost abject terms, of his unalterable love. In wishing to love the Prince so well he had ' ly'd egregiously; I am as incapable of wishing to love any Body else so well, as I am of wishing to love You less. God forbid any Mortal should ever have the power over me you have, or that you should ever have less. ... Adieu ,if Iwas to fill a thousand Reams of paper it would be only aiming in different phrases & still imperfectly to tell you the same thing, & assure you that since I first knew you I have been without repenting & still am & ever shall be undividedly & indisolubly Yours.' Stephen could hardly have hoped for a more reassuring declaration. The lovers ' misunderstanding ended a few days later, when Hervey pronounced an end to it: 'you offended imprudently, I resented it extravagantly ; you repented agreably, I forgave you willingly , & the whole has concluded ... my satisfaction ... Absent or present, sleeping or waking, sick or well, in Crouds or alone, You are generally upermost in my Thoughts; the Cause of every uneasyness I suffer at present & the Object of & hope of pleasure I form for the future.' His emotion was so strong it overflowed in a long, philosophical poem he sent to Stephen from Hampton Court, regretting his life spent in the ‘glare of courts, and luxury of state ', wasting precious hours away from his beloved friend.
In conclusion, Hervey, it looks like you were with Fritz of Wales mostly for career reasons, and had no problem sleeping with three different people at the same time (your wife, Miss Vane and Stephen), so crying "betrayal!" when Fritz of Wales has sex with Miss Vane is really another case of spectacular double standard. Of course, a key document is missing, for:
The full story of Hervey's friendship and enmity with the Prince of Wales is probably lost forever. His private memoirs of the court of George II (...) contain a frank and full account of his association with the various members of the Royal Family from the King's accession in 1727 to the Queen's death ten years later. When the autograph manuscript and a copy of it passed on to Hervey's grandson, the first Marquess of Bristol, he tore out and destroyed a long section — from May 1730 to the late summer of 1732 , the precise period of Hervey's intimacy and quarrel with the Prince of Wales . His motive must have been to protect George III's father as well as his own grandfather. The fact that he allowed other scandalous revelations (Miss Vane as Hervey's mistress, for example ) to remain in the copy of thememoirs is evidence that what he read and destroyed for the years 1730 to 1732 he regarded as far too shocking to remain among his family papers in either the autograph or the copy.
And of course, the whole episode gets extra soapy when Queen Caroline uses it as an excuse to spread the impotence or infertility rumors about her son, or, as Halsband, remember, is firmly team Queen and Hervey here, puts it:
At the time of the Prince's marriage a few years later the Queen begged Hervey to tell her whether her son was even capable of having a child . As for those of little Vane,* you know , my dear Lord,' she insisted , 'I have a thousand times told you that I was always sure they were yours ; and if I wanted further proof of their being so, your son William whom you so reluctantly brought to me this summer would have convinced me of it, because if he had been twin -brother to little Fitzfrederick , he could not have been more like him .' On another occasion the Queen insisted that the Prince was so solicitous of fathering a child by Miss Vane that he had asked Hervey to perform the necessary service for him ; and although Hervey swore a thousand times that it was not true , the Queen refused to believe him . It is a question that can have no absolute answer, certainly not two centuries later ; but the paternity may be awarded to the Prince for one decisive reason : he himself was convinced of it.
One could also add: he had no problem getting his wife Augusta pregnant, several times. And Miss Vane had another child by him before the liason ended; at this point Hervey was no longer an option. Neither it nor Little Fitzfrederick, alas, did outlive their childhood. Now keep in mind here that in the AU where the English Marriage Project succeeds and both Fritz and Wilhelmine marry their Hannover cousins, Wilhelmine is the one ending up with Fritz of Wales, and hence with a mother-in-law who keeps insisting any kids resulting from this union can't be his so her son Billy the Butcher might become King after all...
Fritz of Wales: *casts himself as Orestes, his erastes as Pylades* Fritz of Prussia: *casts himself as Pylades, his erastes as Orestes* Fritz of Wales: *has a messy love triangle* Gustav of Sweden: *has a hot threesome*
Fritz of Wales: just not as original as his cousins.
The full story of Hervey's friendship and enmity with the Prince of Wales is probably lost forever...he tore out and destroyed a long section — from May 1730 to the late summer of 1732 , the precise period of Hervey's intimacy and quarrel with the Prince of Wales.
The timing is especially inconvenient, because if our Fritz successfully escapes to England, this is precisely the period in which I need to know exactly what was happening!
Which reminds me. Hervey's memoirs, do you want them in the library?
in the AU where the English Marriage Project succeeds and both Fritz and Wilhelmine marry their Hannover cousins, Wilhelmine is the one ending up with Fritz of Wales, and hence with a mother-in-law who keeps insisting any kids resulting from this union can't be his so her son Billy the Butcher might become King after all...
Oh, boy. Yeah, I can see Wilhelmine and SD taking that one lying down. Even Fritz!
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Lord Hervey (II)
Date: 2020-09-14 02:43 pm (UTC)No kidding. Anne Vane, the lady who was first Hervey's and than Fritz' of Wales' mistress, gets a lot of bad (satiric) press in her time and even from Halsband some authorial condescension and hostility. Check it out:
Could she have been so repulsive as Lord Egmont describes her -a fat and ill-shaped dwarf,with nothing good to recommend her, neither sense nor wit ? She was, besides, probably marked by smallpox. The Prince's passion for women was wittily analysed by Horace Walpole : "like the rest of his race, beauty was not a necessary ingredient. Miss ( Vane], whom he had debauched without loving , and who had been debauched without loving him so well as either Lord Harrington or Lord Hervey , who both pretended to her first favours, had no other charms than of being a Maid of Honour, who was willing to cease to be so upon the first opportunity .
However much others may have disapproved or sneered, the Prince was proud of his battered conquest, and commanded his courtiers to treat her with respect when they visited her.
Hervey innocently maintained his precious friendship with the Prince through the autumn (1731), either through spirited letters from Redlinch or in his company , until it took a new , dramatic turn . He fretted for a whole week ( in mid-December ) before confiding in Stephen : ' that Fool the Prince plagues my Heart out. He is as false too as he [is ] silly , & appears every thing he is not by turns, but wise ; yet the Mask of common -sense, if he knew how to get it , would disguise him more than any other; he could put on nothing so unnatural, nothing so unlike.' Unfortunately Hervey could not be more explicit, 'for Paper is as great a Blab as a human Creature'. So intense was his indignation that he revealed to his father that he had been deceived and betrayed by a friend whom hereally loved - though he worded it so cautiously, in fear ofpost-office prying, that his father remained uncertain who that friend was .
He could be more explicit with Stephen because they used a cipher for the Prince's name; and on Christmas Day, with feelings far from charitable, he raged again : 'I have almost every Day fresh Instances of the Falschood as well as the Folly of [the Prince], & since it is impossible to correct the first, wherever it is so natural, I am not very solicitous as you may imagine to rectify the Errors of the Last.'
Now keep in mind that the same Hervey who rages here about Miss Vane and the Prince betraying him with each other is a) a married man whose wife is pregnant as well and will give birth only a month after Miss Vane does, and b) also still having his grand affair with Stephen, whose jealousy he had to soothe just a few months before Fritz of Wales starts his affair with Miss Vane:
But in an unguardedmoment, or with a miscalculated confession, he told Stephen that he wished he could love the Prince as well as he loved Stephen. How Stephen reacted can be inferred from Hervey's distraught apology, sent only ten minutes after he had read his reply : 'The Tears you speak of are at this Distance so infectious that I hardly see the Words I write.' He reassures him, in themost abject terms, of his unalterable love. In wishing to love the Prince so well he had ' ly'd egregiously; I am as incapable of wishing to love any Body else so well, as I am of wishing to love You less. God forbid any Mortal should ever have the power over me you have, or that you should ever have less. ... Adieu ,if Iwas to fill a thousand Reams of paper it would be only aiming in different phrases & still imperfectly to tell you the same thing, & assure you that since I first knew you I have been without repenting & still am & ever shall be undividedly & indisolubly Yours.' Stephen could hardly have hoped for a more reassuring declaration.
The lovers ' misunderstanding ended a few days later, when Hervey pronounced an end to it: 'you offended imprudently, I resented it extravagantly ; you repented agreably, I forgave you willingly , & the whole has concluded ... my satisfaction ... Absent or present, sleeping or waking, sick or well, in Crouds or alone, You are generally upermost in my Thoughts; the Cause of every uneasyness I suffer at present & the Object of & hope of pleasure I form for the future.' His emotion was so strong it overflowed in a long, philosophical poem he sent to Stephen from Hampton Court, regretting his life spent in the
‘glare of courts, and luxury of state ', wasting precious hours away from his beloved friend.
In conclusion, Hervey, it looks like you were with Fritz of Wales mostly for career reasons, and had no problem sleeping with three different people at the same time (your wife, Miss Vane and Stephen), so crying "betrayal!" when Fritz of Wales has sex with Miss Vane is really another case of spectacular double standard. Of course, a key document is missing, for:
The full story of Hervey's friendship and enmity with the Prince of Wales is probably lost forever. His private memoirs of the court of George II (...) contain a frank and full account of his association with the various members of the Royal Family from the King's accession in 1727 to the Queen's death ten years later. When the autograph manuscript and a copy of it passed on to Hervey's grandson, the first Marquess of Bristol, he tore out and destroyed a long section — from May 1730 to the late summer of 1732 , the precise period of Hervey's intimacy and quarrel with the Prince of Wales . His motive must have been to protect George III's father as well as his own grandfather. The fact that he allowed other scandalous revelations (Miss Vane as Hervey's mistress, for example ) to remain in the copy of thememoirs is evidence that what he read and destroyed for the years 1730 to 1732 he regarded as far too shocking to remain among his family papers in either the autograph or the copy.
And of course, the whole episode gets extra soapy when Queen Caroline uses it as an excuse to spread the impotence or infertility rumors about her son, or, as Halsband, remember, is firmly team Queen and Hervey here, puts it:
At the time of the Prince's marriage a few years later the Queen begged Hervey to tell her whether her son was even capable of having a child . As for those of little Vane,* you know , my dear Lord,' she insisted , 'I have a thousand times told you that I was always sure they were yours ; and if I wanted further proof of their being so, your son William whom you so reluctantly brought to me this summer would have convinced me of it, because if he had been twin -brother to little Fitzfrederick , he could not have been more like him .' On another occasion the Queen insisted that the Prince was so solicitous of fathering a child by Miss Vane that he had asked Hervey to perform the necessary service for him ; and although Hervey swore a thousand times that it was not true , the Queen refused to believe him . It is a question that can have no absolute answer, certainly not two centuries later ; but the paternity may be awarded to the Prince for one decisive reason : he himself was convinced of it.
One could also add: he had no problem getting his wife Augusta pregnant, several times. And Miss Vane had another child by him before the liason ended; at this point Hervey was no longer an option. Neither it nor Little Fitzfrederick, alas, did outlive their childhood. Now keep in mind here that in the AU where the English Marriage Project succeeds and both Fritz and Wilhelmine marry their Hannover cousins, Wilhelmine is the one ending up with Fritz of Wales, and hence with a mother-in-law who keeps insisting any kids resulting from this union can't be his so her son Billy the Butcher might become King after all...
Re: Lord Hervey (II)
Date: 2020-09-15 01:19 am (UTC)Fritz of Wales: *casts himself as Orestes, his erastes as Pylades*
Fritz of Prussia: *casts himself as Pylades, his erastes as Orestes*
Fritz of Wales: *has a messy love triangle*
Gustav of Sweden: *has a hot threesome*
Fritz of Wales: just not as original as his cousins.
The full story of Hervey's friendship and enmity with the Prince of Wales is probably lost forever...he tore out and destroyed a long section — from May 1730 to the late summer of 1732 , the precise period of Hervey's intimacy and quarrel with the Prince of Wales.
The timing is especially inconvenient, because if our Fritz successfully escapes to England, this is precisely the period in which I need to know exactly what was happening!
Which reminds me. Hervey's memoirs, do you want them in the library?
in the AU where the English Marriage Project succeeds and both Fritz and Wilhelmine marry their Hannover cousins, Wilhelmine is the one ending up with Fritz of Wales, and hence with a mother-in-law who keeps insisting any kids resulting from this union can't be his so her son Billy the Butcher might become King after all...
Oh, boy. Yeah, I can see Wilhelmine and SD taking that one lying down. Even Fritz!