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Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 18
...apparently reading group is the way to get lots of comments quickly?
I was delighted and surprised to get more Hervey :D Though I hope you can sleep better!
Mildred, if you do get around to writing Fritz in G2's presence, imagine how the Hannover and Germany praise goes down then. :)
Lol, this would be awesome. Write this and I will bring popcorn :D
Alas, she then goes to Bath to enjoy the spa and dies. Little Fitzfrederick also dies with just a week distance. Hervey grudgingly admits Fritz of Wales seemed more distressed about this than anyone had thought him capable of being.
Sad as this is for Vane, I have to admit I laughed. Oh Hervey.
And you thought Voltaire was bitchy about Fritz and Fredersdorf.
lololol wow! I see that malicious gossip columnists have nothing on Hervey!
so there were some few who thought, or, I rather believe, affected to think, that this commerce between Lady Archibald Hamilton and the Prince was merely platonic, though stronger symptoms of an affaire faite never appeared on any pair than were to be seen between this couple.
So... was she actually his mistress?
Lord Delaware, if the King chose him to prevent the Prince's having any jealousy of his future bride's affections being purloined on the way by him who was sent to attend her to England, was the properest man his Majesty could have pitched upon
Man this guy does have a spiteful and hilarious way of phrasing things!
Lord Hervey was very ill with her : she had first used him ill, to flatter her brother, which of course had made him not use her very well ; and the preference on every occasion he gave her sister, the Princess Caroline, completed their mutual dislike.
Ha. The sympathies of this passage are definitely on the side of this "Lord Hervey" character :P I wouldn't trust his take on her either :P
Mildred, if you do get around to writing Fritz in G2's presence, imagine how the Hannover and Germany praise goes down then. :)
Lol, this would be awesome. Write this and I will bring popcorn :D
Alas, she then goes to Bath to enjoy the spa and dies. Little Fitzfrederick also dies with just a week distance. Hervey grudgingly admits Fritz of Wales seemed more distressed about this than anyone had thought him capable of being.
Sad as this is for Vane, I have to admit I laughed. Oh Hervey.
And you thought Voltaire was bitchy about Fritz and Fredersdorf.
lololol wow! I see that malicious gossip columnists have nothing on Hervey!
so there were some few who thought, or, I rather believe, affected to think, that this commerce between Lady Archibald Hamilton and the Prince was merely platonic, though stronger symptoms of an affaire faite never appeared on any pair than were to be seen between this couple.
So... was she actually his mistress?
Lord Delaware, if the King chose him to prevent the Prince's having any jealousy of his future bride's affections being purloined on the way by him who was sent to attend her to England, was the properest man his Majesty could have pitched upon
Man this guy does have a spiteful and hilarious way of phrasing things!
Lord Hervey was very ill with her : she had first used him ill, to flatter her brother, which of course had made him not use her very well ; and the preference on every occasion he gave her sister, the Princess Caroline, completed their mutual dislike.
Ha. The sympathies of this passage are definitely on the side of this "Lord Hervey" character :P I wouldn't trust his take on her either :P
Yes, I loved that she finished it like that <3 and I thought of your take on her when I read that.
"and thus we have a schisma" said Lehndorff.
Hee. (Also, seeing a quote from him after reading all this malicious stuff from Hervey is so refreshing!)
Remember, the Hohenzollern were Calvinists, not Lutherans, though the majority of their subjects were Lutherans, and so were the Braunschweig in-laws.
Ah! I had forgotten, thank you. This is one of those things I really should have remembered, given all the predestination and all -- although I guess part of this is that I tend to conflate "saved by God alone" with "predestination," despite valiant efforts by my spouse's (Lutheran) church members to inform me that this is Not Right :)
Also, now that I'm finally commenting on this part: HEINRICH. UGH. YOU ARE THE WORST. Well, it's good to get the problematic part of my problematic fave. I guess.
Oh no, wait, Fritz is also THE WORST:
The king invited them, but not his wife, to Potsdam and to the Turkish tent, where he had refreshments served to the ladies who wanted to watch the military parades in Berlin.
So let me get this straight... he invited his wife's sister but not him?? Good thing Louise was an angel :P
"and thus we have a schisma" said Lehndorff.
Hee. (Also, seeing a quote from him after reading all this malicious stuff from Hervey is so refreshing!)
Remember, the Hohenzollern were Calvinists, not Lutherans, though the majority of their subjects were Lutherans, and so were the Braunschweig in-laws.
Ah! I had forgotten, thank you. This is one of those things I really should have remembered, given all the predestination and all -- although I guess part of this is that I tend to conflate "saved by God alone" with "predestination," despite valiant efforts by my spouse's (Lutheran) church members to inform me that this is Not Right :)
Also, now that I'm finally commenting on this part: HEINRICH. UGH. YOU ARE THE WORST. Well, it's good to get the problematic part of my problematic fave. I guess.
Oh no, wait, Fritz is also THE WORST:
The king invited them, but not his wife, to Potsdam and to the Turkish tent, where he had refreshments served to the ladies who wanted to watch the military parades in Berlin.
So let me get this straight... he invited his wife's sister but not him?? Good thing Louise was an angel :P
Edited 2020-09-20 05:14 (UTC)
Lady Archibald Hamilton, first name Jane: Wiki says she was his mistress, though Wiki appears to have Hervey as a source on this. However, wiki also tells me she was the mother of none other than Sir William Hamilton, later to first shock everyone by marrying Emma and then by being in a menage a trois with her and Nelson. Perhaps Sir William learned unconventional attitudes towards domestic arrangements from his parents?
Man this guy does have a spiteful and hilarious way of phrasing things!
Doesn't he just? Which is why I find it, in retrospect, really remarkable Franz Stephan got praised as he did by the super critical Hervey when visiting Britain. (I mean, Hervey's also extremely complimentary about the Fox brothers and Algarotti, but he was in love with each of these at different times, and wasn't, as far as anyone knows, in love with Franz Stephan.)
Man this guy does have a spiteful and hilarious way of phrasing things!
Doesn't he just? Which is why I find it, in retrospect, really remarkable Franz Stephan got praised as he did by the super critical Hervey when visiting Britain. (I mean, Hervey's also extremely complimentary about the Fox brothers and Algarotti, but he was in love with each of these at different times, and wasn't, as far as anyone knows, in love with Franz Stephan.)
So I'm speculating that Hervey thinks Madame d'Elitz is actually the daughter of Melusine's sister and *not* the daughter of G1 and Melusine, otherwise we'd be hearing a lot more about supposed incest? Or could that be the product of grandson + editor bowdlerization?
While the later isn't impossible, my money is on the former, and futhermore, that it's another case of English nobles mistaking the Hannover royals treating their illegitimate kin as family members meaning said kin are mistresses. Given the precedent of Sophia von Kielmannsegg/Lady Darlington, that makes sense. Besides, Hervey mentions being bored to tears and tuning out whenever G2, who loved talking genealogy - it was a hobby of his - started on who was related to whom. Thus, Hervey might have missed the mention that this lady was in fact G2's half sister, if, that is, G2 bothered to mention it.
Also, thank you so much on another superb job, Royal Librarian and Genealogist! And so it's still true that Peter Keith was saved in Amsterdam by the husband of Katte's sort of cousin and possible deflowerer. Saved in more sense than one, because the essay you so kindly allowed me to read contains some great info on the years 1730 - 1732, among them that in 1730, there was a big scandal and trial against hundreds of gay men which made international waves.
While the later isn't impossible, my money is on the former, and futhermore, that it's another case of English nobles mistaking the Hannover royals treating their illegitimate kin as family members meaning said kin are mistresses. Given the precedent of Sophia von Kielmannsegg/Lady Darlington, that makes sense. Besides, Hervey mentions being bored to tears and tuning out whenever G2, who loved talking genealogy - it was a hobby of his - started on who was related to whom. Thus, Hervey might have missed the mention that this lady was in fact G2's half sister, if, that is, G2 bothered to mention it.
Also, thank you so much on another superb job, Royal Librarian and Genealogist! And so it's still true that Peter Keith was saved in Amsterdam by the husband of Katte's sort of cousin and possible deflowerer. Saved in more sense than one, because the essay you so kindly allowed me to read contains some great info on the years 1730 - 1732, among them that in 1730, there was a big scandal and trial against hundreds of gay men which made international waves.
Continuing with my readthrough...
* Suhm cameo! FW is going to Saxony, Fritz is sad because he's not invited, Wilhelmine tells Suhm, Suhm tells Augustus the Strong, and Augustus obligingly invites Fritz, and FW lets him come. And then the whole insane Dresden interlude ensues.
Wilhelmine says she knew Suhm "very well" and he was very friendly to her brother. <3
* I was right about Wilhelmine attributing her brother's interest inpeople who were not her to the lack of governor's influence: immediately before Peter Keith is introduced, she says, "Dad was whaling on Fritz more than usual, nobody dared to talk to him, his governors didn't dare to follow him around and regulate his behavior, so he led a very dissolute life, with Page Keith as his pander."
Fritz is in disgrace with his father and therefore the people appointed by FW to make him behave don't dare speak to him to make him behave?? Much more likely: Keyserlingk was like, "Wow, this kid's life sucks. I think I'll look the other way while he explores his sexuality. Then someday I'll be on the top 6 list of most loved, and he'll cut my daughter some slack while she has sexual adventures after my death."
Wow, she doesn't like his boyfriends.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cahn, just as a reminder:
[Fritz] entirely abandoned himself to debaucheries. One of the pages of the king, named Keith, was the pandar of his vices. This young man had found means to insinuate himself so much, that the prince was passionately fond of him, and gave him his entire confidence. I knew nothing of his irregularities, but I had noticed some familiarities which he had with this page, and I often reproached him about it; representing to him that such manners were unsuitable to his rank. But he excused himself, saying that as the young man reported to him all that passed, he was induced to treat him kindly; particularly as the information he conveyed to him, saved him from many vexations.
Classist, homophobic, or both? I mean, I know it's a cover for "Don't leeeeave meeeee!", but given that she can't say that in so many words, how would Fritz have perceived it?
Also, lol at Peter as pander. I mean, I'm sure if Fritz wanted to meet with Doris or Orzelska-in-disguise, Peter would help! But yeah, things are going to be interesting when it's Fritz, Wilhelmine, Katte, and Keith in exile in France together. I bet she'll write an opera. :P
* Wilhelmine on Fritz of Wales, the love rat:
A man who has mistresses, becomes attached to them, and to that degree his love for his true spouse diminishes.
This is so telling: love is a zero sum game, Fritz can't have boyfriends or love his wife, her husband definitely can't have mistresses, and she is *not* down for polyamory. She's in the majority, even today, obviously! But that possessiveness is very IC.
* Herr von Knyphausen cameo! Assuming it's the same guy, and since he seems to be hobnobbing with foreign envoys, I think it is...we know him as 1) the go-between for Fritz and French Count Rottembourg, since Rottembourg and Fritz had to pretend not to be interested in each other while they spied on FW and tried to arrange a coup, and 2) Peter's future father-in-law. Although he will die 10 years before Peter and Ariane get married, and it's
Ugh, German wiki tells me that in addition to having been envoy to places like France, Spain, Russia, and Denmark back in the day, he was also president of the Brandenburg-African company, aka the Prussian slave trade, until F1 dissolved it. Bad Knyphausen.
* FW threatening to lock Wilhelmine up with the guy he's trying to get her to marry, the Duke of Weißenfels, and says that after that, she'll be only too glad to marry him. Is that a rape threat or just a loss of reputation threat?
* According to Wilhelmine, Jean-Charles de Folard, who Wikipedia tells me was a famous military theorist, did a detailed description of the Zeithain camp. I would very much like to get my hands on that, since I really want a detailed description beyond what I've been able to find online so far. (Reason: fix-it fic opens with Fritz and Katte at the camp, where they make their escape from.)
* Remember the rats at Küstrin story, where Fritz tells Wilhelmine that ghosts are mostly rats?
Wilhelmine recounts a similar episode, where she and SD were hanging out and heard some horrible shrieking sound in a nearby corridor, but every time they went to investigate, there was nothing there. SD told her to mark the date, and it turned not only to be the same day that Fritz got arrested for trying to escape while on a road trip with FW, but the same corridor on which FW and SD had their first encounter when an angry FW returned.
Wilhelmine: "I believe there was a natural cause."
She never figured out what it was, but she evidently agrees with Fritz on the supernatural.
* Wilhelmine is corresponding with an imprisoned Fritz secretly, but can't bring herself to burn the letters, so she has them sent to safety. This means she might actually have had access to them all when writing the memoirs. She does claim to be copying some verbatim, but I'd always assumed most of them got burned. Guess not!
* Wilhelmine: repeatedly mentions that she got married for Fritz, and later will complain that he wasn't grateful. Does not mention, at least as far as I've read, and I've gotten to the Berlin revue in May, that Fritz wrote her a letter telling her not to, i.e. that he was willing to sacrifice himself for *her*.
* Suhm cameo! FW is going to Saxony, Fritz is sad because he's not invited, Wilhelmine tells Suhm, Suhm tells Augustus the Strong, and Augustus obligingly invites Fritz, and FW lets him come. And then the whole insane Dresden interlude ensues.
Wilhelmine says she knew Suhm "very well" and he was very friendly to her brother. <3
* I was right about Wilhelmine attributing her brother's interest in
Fritz is in disgrace with his father and therefore the people appointed by FW to make him behave don't dare speak to him to make him behave?? Much more likely: Keyserlingk was like, "Wow, this kid's life sucks. I think I'll look the other way while he explores his sexuality. Then someday I'll be on the top 6 list of most loved, and he'll cut my daughter some slack while she has sexual adventures after my death."
Wow, she doesn't like his boyfriends.
cahn, just as a reminder:[Fritz] entirely abandoned himself to debaucheries. One of the pages of the king, named Keith, was the pandar of his vices. This young man had found means to insinuate himself so much, that the prince was passionately fond of him, and gave him his entire confidence. I knew nothing of his irregularities, but I had noticed some familiarities which he had with this page, and I often reproached him about it; representing to him that such manners were unsuitable to his rank. But he excused himself, saying that as the young man reported to him all that passed, he was induced to treat him kindly; particularly as the information he conveyed to him, saved him from many vexations.
Classist, homophobic, or both? I mean, I know it's a cover for "Don't leeeeave meeeee!", but given that she can't say that in so many words, how would Fritz have perceived it?
Also, lol at Peter as pander. I mean, I'm sure if Fritz wanted to meet with Doris or Orzelska-in-disguise, Peter would help! But yeah, things are going to be interesting when it's Fritz, Wilhelmine, Katte, and Keith in exile in France together. I bet she'll write an opera. :P
* Wilhelmine on Fritz of Wales, the love rat:
A man who has mistresses, becomes attached to them, and to that degree his love for his true spouse diminishes.
This is so telling: love is a zero sum game, Fritz can't have boyfriends or love his wife, her husband definitely can't have mistresses, and she is *not* down for polyamory. She's in the majority, even today, obviously! But that possessiveness is very IC.
* Herr von Knyphausen cameo! Assuming it's the same guy, and since he seems to be hobnobbing with foreign envoys, I think it is...we know him as 1) the go-between for Fritz and French Count Rottembourg, since Rottembourg and Fritz had to pretend not to be interested in each other while they spied on FW and tried to arrange a coup, and 2) Peter's future father-in-law. Although he will die 10 years before Peter and Ariane get married, and it's
Ugh, German wiki tells me that in addition to having been envoy to places like France, Spain, Russia, and Denmark back in the day, he was also president of the Brandenburg-African company, aka the Prussian slave trade, until F1 dissolved it. Bad Knyphausen.
* FW threatening to lock Wilhelmine up with the guy he's trying to get her to marry, the Duke of Weißenfels, and says that after that, she'll be only too glad to marry him. Is that a rape threat or just a loss of reputation threat?
* According to Wilhelmine, Jean-Charles de Folard, who Wikipedia tells me was a famous military theorist, did a detailed description of the Zeithain camp. I would very much like to get my hands on that, since I really want a detailed description beyond what I've been able to find online so far. (Reason: fix-it fic opens with Fritz and Katte at the camp, where they make their escape from.)
* Remember the rats at Küstrin story, where Fritz tells Wilhelmine that ghosts are mostly rats?
Wilhelmine recounts a similar episode, where she and SD were hanging out and heard some horrible shrieking sound in a nearby corridor, but every time they went to investigate, there was nothing there. SD told her to mark the date, and it turned not only to be the same day that Fritz got arrested for trying to escape while on a road trip with FW, but the same corridor on which FW and SD had their first encounter when an angry FW returned.
Wilhelmine: "I believe there was a natural cause."
She never figured out what it was, but she evidently agrees with Fritz on the supernatural.
* Wilhelmine is corresponding with an imprisoned Fritz secretly, but can't bring herself to burn the letters, so she has them sent to safety. This means she might actually have had access to them all when writing the memoirs. She does claim to be copying some verbatim, but I'd always assumed most of them got burned. Guess not!
* Wilhelmine: repeatedly mentions that she got married for Fritz, and later will complain that he wasn't grateful. Does not mention, at least as far as I've read, and I've gotten to the Berlin revue in May, that Fritz wrote her a letter telling her not to, i.e. that he was willing to sacrifice himself for *her*.
Re: Chesterfields, Schulenburgs, and Kattes, oh my!
mildred_of_midgard
2020-09-20 05:02 pm (UTC)(link)
another case of English nobles mistaking the Hannover royals treating their illegitimate kin as family members meaning said kin are mistresses
Ah, yes, that does make sense. I think we've solved this mystery! (Pending further evidence, as always.)
Hervey mentions being bored to tears and tuning out whenever G2, who loved talking genealogy - it was a hobby of his - started on who was related to whom.
Lololol, yep, I bet that'd do it.
And so it's still true that Peter Keith was saved in Amsterdam by the husband of Katte's sort of cousin and possible deflowerer.
Future husband, but yes. I'd thought it was only unreliable Wilhelmine and unreliable son of Keith who mentioned Chesterfield by name, but I checked Kloosterhuis yesterday, and it's also in the Mylius write-up that Keith was admitted to Chesterfield's house for asylum, and Mylius cites his sources, so I'm taking it as true. Though from the report, it kind of looks like Chesterfield wasn't directly involved?
Ob nun gleich der nachgeschickte Königlich Preußische Obrist du Moulin und der preußische Envoyé alle Mühe angewendet, seiner habhafft zu werden, auch von denen committirten Räthen von Holland eine Ordre an den Cammer-Bewaerder erhalten gehabt, denselben arretiren zu lassen, so ist es doch umsonst gewesen, indem nach des Cammer-Bewaerders Rapport vom 15. August 1730 und anderen habenden Nachrichten schon Tages zuvor gegen Abend der von Kait mit dem Cammer[-Diener] des Generallieutenants Baron von Keppel, so ehmahls alß Envoyé in Berlin gewesen, aus dem Quartier ,Zu 3 Schwalben‘ genant weggegangen, nachdem kurtz vorher seine Hardes nach des Haußknechts Rapport in des Großbritannischen Ambassadeurs Mylords Graffen von Chesterfields Hauß getragen und an obbesagten Cammerdiener abgegeben worden.
Im Haag hat dieser von Kait sich sehr bemühet, einen Comte d’Halberville auszufragen, hat sich auch unter dem Nahmen eines Graffen von Sparr an-
fangs bey den obbesagten Generallieutenant Baron von Keppel anmelden laßen, jedoch derselbe ihn nicht gekant. Weil aber deßelben Cammerdiener nicht wißen wollen, wohin der von Kait gekommen sey, und in Abwesenheit des Graffen von Chesterfields der Secretarius sich gegen den Preußischen Envoyé und erwehnten Obristen entschuldiget, daß ihn nicht zustehe, einige Recherches zu thun und über die Domestiquen sich dergleichen Autoritaet anzumaßen, so ist im Haag seine Persohn weiter aufzusuchen umsonst gewesen. Es hat auch der desertirte von Kait sich nicht mehr lange aufgehalten, sondern sich weggemacht, und ist den 18ten August früh in Gesellschaft des Haus- [und] Hof-Meisters von besagtem Graffen und nebst noch 2 Persohnen zu Schevelingen mit einer Kutsche angekommen, und nachdem er von denenselben an ein dazu gemiethetes Pinco oder Fischer-Schiff begleitet worden, ist er ohnerachtet der Wind sehr contrair gewesen, daß auch andere Schiffe in die Maas zurückgetrieben worden, dennoch in aller Eyl ab- und nach Engelland übergegangen.
My take on this:
Mylius: "FW, please believe us, your guys tried REALLY HARD to capture that Peter, but to no avail. Here's why.
"According to the report I have in hand, written on 15. August 1730, Peter had shown up at Chesterfield's house the day before, toward evening, together with the chamberlain of Baron von Keppel [Mildred: this guy, I think] who formerly had been envoy in Berlin [Mildred: I'm assuming that's where Peter knew him from].
"Now, Peter had been asking all around the Hague after Fritz's pseudonym, and initially introduced himself under his own, but von Keppel [Mildred: apparently a British courtier with ties to the Netherlands] didn't know him under that name [Mildred: and presumably wouldn't admit him until he gave his real name].
"Then the Prussians showed up the next day, and Keppel's chamberlain was like, 'Sorry, Chesterfield isn't here atm, Peter who? I can't help you, no authority to investigate this on my own or tell Chesterfield's staff what to do, plz go away.' So our Prussian guys had to give up as they got totally stonewalled by the British.
"Then three days later, Peter was taken to the coast by Chesterfield's staff, and set sail in all haste to England, even though it was so stormy that other ships were being driven back to the Meuse.
"Sorry, Your Majesty! Points for effort?"
nachdem kurtz vorher seine Hardes nach des Haußknechts Rapport
Google and I are stumped on "Hardes." All I can find is "old clothes, rags" in Norman. Help?
the essay you so kindly allowed me to read contains some great info on the years 1730 - 1732, among them that in 1730, there was a big scandal and trial against hundreds of gay men which made international waves.
Ooh, I can't wait for the write-up on this one! I've been thinking that we should dig a little more into the history of homosexuality during our period, only I have to learn German before I can start reading new things. So yay for you reading new things and telling us about them! The free, made-to-order education never fails to astound me. All hail Royal Reader!
Ah, yes, that does make sense. I think we've solved this mystery! (Pending further evidence, as always.)
Hervey mentions being bored to tears and tuning out whenever G2, who loved talking genealogy - it was a hobby of his - started on who was related to whom.
Lololol, yep, I bet that'd do it.
And so it's still true that Peter Keith was saved in Amsterdam by the husband of Katte's sort of cousin and possible deflowerer.
Future husband, but yes. I'd thought it was only unreliable Wilhelmine and unreliable son of Keith who mentioned Chesterfield by name, but I checked Kloosterhuis yesterday, and it's also in the Mylius write-up that Keith was admitted to Chesterfield's house for asylum, and Mylius cites his sources, so I'm taking it as true. Though from the report, it kind of looks like Chesterfield wasn't directly involved?
Ob nun gleich der nachgeschickte Königlich Preußische Obrist du Moulin und der preußische Envoyé alle Mühe angewendet, seiner habhafft zu werden, auch von denen committirten Räthen von Holland eine Ordre an den Cammer-Bewaerder erhalten gehabt, denselben arretiren zu lassen, so ist es doch umsonst gewesen, indem nach des Cammer-Bewaerders Rapport vom 15. August 1730 und anderen habenden Nachrichten schon Tages zuvor gegen Abend der von Kait mit dem Cammer[-Diener] des Generallieutenants Baron von Keppel, so ehmahls alß Envoyé in Berlin gewesen, aus dem Quartier ,Zu 3 Schwalben‘ genant weggegangen, nachdem kurtz vorher seine Hardes nach des Haußknechts Rapport in des Großbritannischen Ambassadeurs Mylords Graffen von Chesterfields Hauß getragen und an obbesagten Cammerdiener abgegeben worden.
Im Haag hat dieser von Kait sich sehr bemühet, einen Comte d’Halberville auszufragen, hat sich auch unter dem Nahmen eines Graffen von Sparr an-
fangs bey den obbesagten Generallieutenant Baron von Keppel anmelden laßen, jedoch derselbe ihn nicht gekant. Weil aber deßelben Cammerdiener nicht wißen wollen, wohin der von Kait gekommen sey, und in Abwesenheit des Graffen von Chesterfields der Secretarius sich gegen den Preußischen Envoyé und erwehnten Obristen entschuldiget, daß ihn nicht zustehe, einige Recherches zu thun und über die Domestiquen sich dergleichen Autoritaet anzumaßen, so ist im Haag seine Persohn weiter aufzusuchen umsonst gewesen. Es hat auch der desertirte von Kait sich nicht mehr lange aufgehalten, sondern sich weggemacht, und ist den 18ten August früh in Gesellschaft des Haus- [und] Hof-Meisters von besagtem Graffen und nebst noch 2 Persohnen zu Schevelingen mit einer Kutsche angekommen, und nachdem er von denenselben an ein dazu gemiethetes Pinco oder Fischer-Schiff begleitet worden, ist er ohnerachtet der Wind sehr contrair gewesen, daß auch andere Schiffe in die Maas zurückgetrieben worden, dennoch in aller Eyl ab- und nach Engelland übergegangen.
My take on this:
Mylius: "FW, please believe us, your guys tried REALLY HARD to capture that Peter, but to no avail. Here's why.
"According to the report I have in hand, written on 15. August 1730, Peter had shown up at Chesterfield's house the day before, toward evening, together with the chamberlain of Baron von Keppel [Mildred: this guy, I think] who formerly had been envoy in Berlin [Mildred: I'm assuming that's where Peter knew him from].
"Now, Peter had been asking all around the Hague after Fritz's pseudonym, and initially introduced himself under his own, but von Keppel [Mildred: apparently a British courtier with ties to the Netherlands] didn't know him under that name [Mildred: and presumably wouldn't admit him until he gave his real name].
"Then the Prussians showed up the next day, and Keppel's chamberlain was like, 'Sorry, Chesterfield isn't here atm, Peter who? I can't help you, no authority to investigate this on my own or tell Chesterfield's staff what to do, plz go away.' So our Prussian guys had to give up as they got totally stonewalled by the British.
"Then three days later, Peter was taken to the coast by Chesterfield's staff, and set sail in all haste to England, even though it was so stormy that other ships were being driven back to the Meuse.
"Sorry, Your Majesty! Points for effort?"
nachdem kurtz vorher seine Hardes nach des Haußknechts Rapport
Google and I are stumped on "Hardes." All I can find is "old clothes, rags" in Norman. Help?
the essay you so kindly allowed me to read contains some great info on the years 1730 - 1732, among them that in 1730, there was a big scandal and trial against hundreds of gay men which made international waves.
Ooh, I can't wait for the write-up on this one! I've been thinking that we should dig a little more into the history of homosexuality during our period, only I have to learn German before I can start reading new things. So yay for you reading new things and telling us about them! The free, made-to-order education never fails to astound me. All hail Royal Reader!
I was wondering if it was the same Archibald Hamilton! Good to know.
Perhaps Sir William learned unconventional attitudes towards domestic arrangements from his parents?
Perhaps!
Which is why I find it, in retrospect, really remarkable Franz Stephan got praised as he did by the super critical Hervey when visiting Britain.
MT: My husband is the *best*.
Perhaps Sir William learned unconventional attitudes towards domestic arrangements from his parents?
Perhaps!
Which is why I find it, in retrospect, really remarkable Franz Stephan got praised as he did by the super critical Hervey when visiting Britain.
MT: My husband is the *best*.
Re: No Pity for the Wives readthrough (cont) - post Seven Years' War
mildred_of_midgard
2020-09-20 07:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you for the write-up of the (current) evidence for and against the Ferdinand rumors.
Well, Fritz as a star (making the others planets or comets?) is a far more flattering imagery than Fritz as an iron chain shackling involuntary laborers!
But is it more accurate, asks Heinrich. :P
Well, Fritz as a star (making the others planets or comets?) is a far more flattering imagery than Fritz as an iron chain shackling involuntary laborers!
But is it more accurate, asks Heinrich. :P
Seine Hardes - Rokoko German strikes again. I have to guess from context and can't think of an appropriate newer German or French word - Rokoko German having a lot of those - but how about: "...after just a short while earlier, his luggage had been transported to the above named house of the Ambassador of Great Britain, Mylord Earl of Chesterfield, and had been delivered to the earlier named valet; this according to the report of the house servant."
(A Hausknecht is far lower ranking than a Kammerdiener, if you're wondering, but you don't have a different word for "Knecht" and "Diener" in English, do you?)
It's a highly useful essay, and the authors are good enough to make it clear what data they have, and where their speculation starts. They're also really good at establishing context.
(A Hausknecht is far lower ranking than a Kammerdiener, if you're wondering, but you don't have a different word for "Knecht" and "Diener" in English, do you?)
It's a highly useful essay, and the authors are good enough to make it clear what data they have, and where their speculation starts. They're also really good at establishing context.
Re: Chesterfields, Schulenburgs, and Kattes, oh my!
mildred_of_midgard
2020-09-20 07:44 pm (UTC)(link)
Seine Hardes - Rokoko German strikes again.
Yeah, I could tell that none of my Google hits for this word postdated 1900, so I figured it was an old-fashioned one. Thanks for taking your best stab at it!
(A Hausknecht is far lower ranking than a Kammerdiener, if you're wondering, but you don't have a different word for "Knecht" and "Diener" in English, do you?)
I had figured as much, but as for English translations...I'm sure thanks to 19th century English country houses, we could convey the hierarchical difference, but I'm not sure exactly how. Valet/chamberlain is pretty high-ranking in English, and as for Hausknecht...google tells me that "house boy" has a different meaning today, although "house boy" and "hall boy" were both used for low-ranking English servants, as was "page". "Footman" is more easily recognized today, though I don't know if it would be the appropriate equivalent of Hausknecht.
It's a highly useful essay, and the authors are good enough to make it clear what data they have, and where their speculation starts. They're also really good at establishing context.
Wonderful! Largely because of the paywall, we haven't been reading many recent essays, as opposed to books, in our salon, but I do have JSTOR access myself if you ever want anything from there, and Royal Patron has broader access, though with more of a delay.
ETA: Just from reading the footnote to the first page, I see: This paper springs from a joint project on John, Lord Hervey, which the authors intend will lead in due course to a new edition of his 'Memoirs' and correspondence.
Nice! Because we need one.
Hmm. Though this article was published in 2009, the new edition doesn't seem to be out yet, though Smith's web page says, "I continue to pursue an interest in eighteenth-century court culture through work on a new edition of Lord Hervey’s Memoirs of the Reign of King George II, co-edited with Stephen Taylor." No idea how recently her page was updated, though.
ETA2: Peter Keith was saved in Amsterdam
Just a nitpick: The Hague. That was Fritz's destination, that's where Chesterfield and the other envoys lived, and that's where the government is based even today, even though Amsterdam is the capital. Wikipedia tells me:
In 1806, when the Kingdom of Holland was a puppet state of the First French Empire, the settlement was granted city rights by Louis Bonaparte. After the Napoleonic Wars, modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands were combined in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands to form a buffer against France. As a compromise, Brussels and Amsterdam alternated as capital every two years, with the government remaining in The Hague. After the separation of Belgium in 1830, Amsterdam remained the capital of the Netherlands, while the government was situated in The Hague.
TFW your capital changes every two years, I guess.
Yeah, I could tell that none of my Google hits for this word postdated 1900, so I figured it was an old-fashioned one. Thanks for taking your best stab at it!
(A Hausknecht is far lower ranking than a Kammerdiener, if you're wondering, but you don't have a different word for "Knecht" and "Diener" in English, do you?)
I had figured as much, but as for English translations...I'm sure thanks to 19th century English country houses, we could convey the hierarchical difference, but I'm not sure exactly how. Valet/chamberlain is pretty high-ranking in English, and as for Hausknecht...google tells me that "house boy" has a different meaning today, although "house boy" and "hall boy" were both used for low-ranking English servants, as was "page". "Footman" is more easily recognized today, though I don't know if it would be the appropriate equivalent of Hausknecht.
It's a highly useful essay, and the authors are good enough to make it clear what data they have, and where their speculation starts. They're also really good at establishing context.
Wonderful! Largely because of the paywall, we haven't been reading many recent essays, as opposed to books, in our salon, but I do have JSTOR access myself if you ever want anything from there, and Royal Patron has broader access, though with more of a delay.
ETA: Just from reading the footnote to the first page, I see: This paper springs from a joint project on John, Lord Hervey, which the authors intend will lead in due course to a new edition of his 'Memoirs' and correspondence.
Nice! Because we need one.
Hmm. Though this article was published in 2009, the new edition doesn't seem to be out yet, though Smith's web page says, "I continue to pursue an interest in eighteenth-century court culture through work on a new edition of Lord Hervey’s Memoirs of the Reign of King George II, co-edited with Stephen Taylor." No idea how recently her page was updated, though.
ETA2: Peter Keith was saved in Amsterdam
Just a nitpick: The Hague. That was Fritz's destination, that's where Chesterfield and the other envoys lived, and that's where the government is based even today, even though Amsterdam is the capital. Wikipedia tells me:
In 1806, when the Kingdom of Holland was a puppet state of the First French Empire, the settlement was granted city rights by Louis Bonaparte. After the Napoleonic Wars, modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands were combined in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands to form a buffer against France. As a compromise, Brussels and Amsterdam alternated as capital every two years, with the government remaining in The Hague. After the separation of Belgium in 1830, Amsterdam remained the capital of the Netherlands, while the government was situated in The Hague.
TFW your capital changes every two years, I guess.
Edited 2020-09-20 20:13 (UTC)
I also thank you for the evidence writeup! Yet again Lehndorff is a treasure :D (I get the sense from your comments that a nontrivial part of his utility -- besides that he's so readable and engaging -- is that he really isn't someone that people feel the need to impress, I imagine particularly later on, so it's possible to take his observations at face value rather than worry too much about whether there are other factors at play.
Though I suppose the flip side to that is that in many ways he's not super self-aware so one has to filter through that, e.g. MESSALINA :) But that's better, I suppose, than having to filter through whether he's making up stories about his exes :P )
Though I suppose the flip side to that is that in many ways he's not super self-aware so one has to filter through that, e.g. MESSALINA :) But that's better, I suppose, than having to filter through whether he's making up stories about his exes :P )
I had almost finished them the last time, but here are a few more quotes. The big climax of the memoirs and their finale are Queen Caroline's death and the immediate aftermath. Hervey ends his memoirs there, and like the essay says, for all that their title refers to the reign of George II, they should really be titled "reign of Caroline", for she is the central character in his narrative. She died a terrible death: Since her last pregnancy, Caroline had suffered from an umbilical hernia, or a hole in her belly, and couldn’t bear to have anything tight around her middle. Nor could she bear to have anyone know about such an embarrassing disorder, and she always kept on her shift when being undressed by her ladies. Finally, in 1737, a bit of her bowel popped out through that hole, and she could not disguise the fact that she was seriously ill. Her doctors should have pushed that loop of bowel back inside and hoped that the hole would heal, but instead they made a terrible error. They cut it off. Now Caroline’s digestive system was destroyed, and she took ten days to die. Incidentally, I had to look up the medical details, because our Victorian editor childes Hervey for providing them (about a lady! and a Queen!) and proudly announces he protects us readers from them as much as he can. What's still there is all the surrounding drama, which took place shortly after Fritz of Wales had that big break with his parents due to way his first legitimate daughter was born. When he heard about the Queen's state of health, he tried to see her, but no dice. Hervey of course thinks he was probably popping the champagne in anticipation and faking all filial feelings. FoW's parents heartily agree, as mentioned in my write-up of the Halsband biography. Here's a passage from shortly before Caroline's illness is discovered:
Lord Hervey took occasion upon this subject, among many other things, to say, he did not believe there ever was a father and a son so thoroughly unlike in every particular as the King and the Prince, and enumerated several points in which they differed, as little to the advantage of the Prince as to the dispraise or displeasure of the King. The King said he had really thought so himself a thousand times, and had often asked the Queen if the beast was his son. Lord Hervey said that question must be to very little purpose, for to be sure the Queen would never own it if he was not. The King said the first child generally was the husband's, "and therefore," says he, "I fancy he is what in German we call a Weckselbalch; (Hervey's spelling; it's actually "Wechselbalg") I do not know," continued he, " if you have a word for it in English : it is not what you call a foundling, but a child put in a cradle instead of another."
" That is a changeling," replied Lord Hervey. The King was extremely pleased with this translation, and said, " I wish you could prove him a changeling in the German sense of the word as easily as anybody can prove him so in the other ;—though the Queen was a great while before her maternal affection would give him up for a fool, and yet I told her so before he had been acting as if he had not common sense."
Lord Hervey said the Queen had often last year done the honours of his Royal Highness's understanding to him, and was very loth to give it quite up, but that of late he had not perceived she had any hope left of disguising it. "My dear Lord," replied the Queen, ' " I will give it you under my hand, if you are in any fear of my relapsing, that my dear first-born is the greatest ass and the greatest liar, and the greatest canaille, and the greatest beast in the whole world, and I that I most heartily wish he was out of it."
And so on, and so forth. Now, you may recall G2 had had a terrible relationship with his own father, G1, so FoW and/or his advisors get the idea to publish some letters between G1 and future G2 when G2 was Prince of Wales, with the implication: Hypocrite much? Considering most of said letters were burned by Caroline when G2 became King, the Royals think that Fritz must have gotten those letters from the Duchess of Kendal. (Aka Aunt Melusine to Katte, mistress of G1.) Otoh, Hervey thinks Fritz must have a spy in the palace, because the letters published are just those three not burned. In any event, he thinks they just demonstrate that G1 was a way harsher father, since he temporarily took G2's children from him during their biggest argument, while G2 generously declared he wouldn't do that to FoW.
During Caroline's ten days of dying, Hervey and the Royals, minus Fritz and Augusta who aren't allowed access, spend most at the time in Caroline's bed room or next door. This temporarly makes Hervey soften on the King, but not so much is second least favourite Hannover offspring, Emily/Amalia, quondam intended for Fritz of Prussia. An illustration in the following scene (re: storm - G2 and Emily are referencing G2 during his most recent return from Hannover being caught in a tempest across the channel):
One night whilst the Queen was ill, as (G2) was sitting in his nightgown and nightcap in a great chair, with his legs upon a stool, and nobody in the room with him but the Princess Emily, who lay upon a couch, and Lord Hervey, who sat by the fire, he talked in this strain of his own courage in the storm and his illness, till the Princess Emily, as Lord Hervey thought, fell fast asleep, whilst Lord Hervey, as tired as he was of the present conversation and this last week's watching, was left alone to act civil auditor and adroit courtier, to applaud what he heard, and every now and then to ask such proper questions as led the King into giving some more particular detail of his own magnanimity. The King, turning towards Princess Emily, and seeing her eyes shut, cried, "Poor good child! her duty, affection, and attendance on her mother have quite exhausted her spirits." And soon after he went into the Queen's room. As soon as his back was turned. Princess Emily started up, and said, " Is he gone ? How tiresome he is!"
Lord Hervey, who had no mind to trust her Royal Highness with his singing her father's praises in duetto with her, replied only, " I thought your Royal Highness had been asleep." " No," said the Princess Emily ; " I only shut my eyes that I might not join in the ennuyant conversation, and wish I could have shut my ears too. In the first place, I am sick to death of hearing of his great courage every day of my life ; in the next place, one thinks now of Mama, and not of him. Who cares for his old storm ? I believe, too, it is a great lie, and that he was as much afraid as I should have been, for all what he says now ; and as to his not being afraid when he was ill, I know that is a lie, for I saw him, and I heard all his sighs and his groans, when he was in no more danger than I am at this moment. He was talking, too, for ever of dying, and that he was sure he should not recover." All this, considering the kind things she had heard the King say the minute before, when he imagined her asleep. Lord Hervey thought a pretty extraordinary return for her to make for that paternal goodness, or would have thought it so in anybody but her ; and looked upon this openness to him, whom she did not love, yet less to be accounted for, unless he could have imagined it was to draw him in to echo her, and then to relate what he said as if he had said it unaccompanied.
Whilst she was going on with the panegyric on theKing which I have related, the King returned, upon which she began to rub her eyes as if she had that instant raised her head from her pillows, and said, "I have really slept very heartily. How long had Papa been out of the room ?" The King, who had very little or rather no suspicion in his composition, took these appearances for realities, and said, " It is time for us all to take a little rest. We will all go to bed, for by staying here we do the poor Queen no good, and ourselves hurt." And so dismissing Lord Hervey, they all retired.
You already know the famous "Marry again after my death"/ "No, I will have mistresses!" exchange in French between Caroline and G2, for which Hervey is the source. G2 was truly distraught upon her death, and mistresses or not, remained so. Caroline's coffin and later his own are of the kind where you can draw one of the walls back once both are laid next to each other; he wanted their dust to mingle. (Caroline died in 1737; G2 in 1761). Grieving Caroline together makes him bond with Hervey (enough so Hervey ends up being appointed Lord Privy Seal), and thus Hervey gets treated to G2's reflections on his German relations. Which brings us back to our main points of interest again. A reminder: G2's mother was Sophia Dorothea the older, locked up for 30 years for her affair with (probably murdered) Count Königsmarck, and dying in prison. The "Reminscences" are by Horace Walpole, son of Sir Robert Walpole and the other great bitchy memoirist of the Georgian era:
The King often said, and to many people at this time, that not only he and his family should have a great loss in the Queen's death, but the whole nation: and would instance occasions where he owned her good sense and good temper had kept his passions within
bounds which they would otherwise have broken. And during this retirement (in which he was infinitely more talkative than I ever knew him at any other time of his whole life) he discoursed so constantly and so openly of himself, that if anybody had had a mind to write the memoirs of his life from his cradle to the present moment, the Princesses and Lord Hervey could have furnished them with materials of all the occurrences, transactions, and anecdotes, military, civil, amorous, foreign, and domestic, that could be comprehended in such a work, from his own lips : excepting what related to his mother, whom on no occasion I ever heard him mention, not even inadvertently or indirectly, any more than if such a person had never had a being. (*)
*Footnote by Victorian editor Croker: This is remarkable, and seems hardly reconcilable with the strong opinion of her innocence and the affectionate regard for her person attributed to him in the Reminiscences. "The second George loved his mother as much as he hated his father ; and purposed, it was said, if she had survived, to have brought her over and declared her Queen-Dowager. Lady Suffolk told me her surprise on going to the new Queen the morning after George I.'s death, at seeing hung up in the Queen's dressrng-room the whole-length of a lady in royal robes, and in the bed-chamber a half-length of the same person, which Lady Suffolk had never seen before." They were of his mother, which the Prince had till then kept concealed.
And now for the Prussians. G2's aunt was Sophie Charlotte, not just mother of FW but foster mother of Caroline, praised as not just one of the most beautiful but definitely one of the best educated and smartest women of her time, which is why I find this statement, err, interesting:
Of his aunt, the Queen of Prussia, too he spoke well, who, by what I heard from others, and particularly the Queen, was a very vain, good-for-nothing woman.
Et tu, Caroline? You owe your education to her, among other things. I feel let down. G2's sister is of course Sophia Dorothea the younger, wife of FW, and on her, grieving G2 apparantly had this to say in 1737:
For his sister, the present Queen of Prussia, he had the contempt she deserved, and a hatred she did not deserve.
WTF? For both Hervey and G2. Hervey having zilch interest in the Prussians per se, and dying when Fritz is still busy conquering Silesia, I don't see how he'd have any motive to make this up. But see: Hervey never met SD. He visited Hannover only once, as a young man on his Grand Tour (when he first encountered nine years old Fritz of Wales), and I don't think she was visiting Hannover as well on that occasion. Prussia, he didn't visit at all. So what is this estimation - that SD deserved contempt but not hate - based on? Perhaps all that begging for the English marriages struck him as pathetic, even if he didn't care enough to note it down, but that's the only thing I can think of.
(Now of course SD with her own treatment of her children provides enough reasons to dislike her, but Hervey seems to know nothing about this.)
As to why G2 should have contempt and hate for his sister: search me. It's not like she was madly in love with FW and rejecting her family of birth, au contraire. I'm almost starting to come around to Fritz' pov on Hannover versus Hohenzollern, but luckily your Ziebura read through reminds me this would be wrong. The rest of the Prussian pasage:
What he thought and said of the King of Prussia was much the same as what the King of Prussia thought and said of him ; that he was a proud, brutal, tyrannical, wrong-headed, impracticable fellow, who loved nobody and would use everybody ill that was in his power. How far these two Kings were in the right in this point, or how little they were so in every other, is not my business here to determine.
Meaning: peas in a pod. Again, based on all this, my speculation re: G2 pleading with the other European monarchs for Fritz' life is that it was mostly because if he didn't get to kill his son, FW certainly wouldn't. And speaking of murder: if Fritz and Wilhelmine had made those marriages, do want to place any bets on when things would have gotten violent? (Provided most circumstances stay the same.) Would Fritz of Prussia have had the fatal relationship and fallout with Hervey instead of Fritz of Wales? Would Caroline and G2 have accused Wilhelmine, too, of faking her pregnancy because their oldest surely can't sire a child? Would Fritz of Prussia have killed Fritz of Wales for taking Wilhelmine in labor for a one and a half hour drive because he didn't want his parents to be present at the birth? Place your bets!
Lord Hervey took occasion upon this subject, among many other things, to say, he did not believe there ever was a father and a son so thoroughly unlike in every particular as the King and the Prince, and enumerated several points in which they differed, as little to the advantage of the Prince as to the dispraise or displeasure of the King. The King said he had really thought so himself a thousand times, and had often asked the Queen if the beast was his son. Lord Hervey said that question must be to very little purpose, for to be sure the Queen would never own it if he was not. The King said the first child generally was the husband's, "and therefore," says he, "I fancy he is what in German we call a Weckselbalch; (Hervey's spelling; it's actually "Wechselbalg") I do not know," continued he, " if you have a word for it in English : it is not what you call a foundling, but a child put in a cradle instead of another."
" That is a changeling," replied Lord Hervey. The King was extremely pleased with this translation, and said, " I wish you could prove him a changeling in the German sense of the word as easily as anybody can prove him so in the other ;—though the Queen was a great while before her maternal affection would give him up for a fool, and yet I told her so before he had been acting as if he had not common sense."
Lord Hervey said the Queen had often last year done the honours of his Royal Highness's understanding to him, and was very loth to give it quite up, but that of late he had not perceived she had any hope left of disguising it. "My dear Lord," replied the Queen, ' " I will give it you under my hand, if you are in any fear of my relapsing, that my dear first-born is the greatest ass and the greatest liar, and the greatest canaille, and the greatest beast in the whole world, and I that I most heartily wish he was out of it."
And so on, and so forth. Now, you may recall G2 had had a terrible relationship with his own father, G1, so FoW and/or his advisors get the idea to publish some letters between G1 and future G2 when G2 was Prince of Wales, with the implication: Hypocrite much? Considering most of said letters were burned by Caroline when G2 became King, the Royals think that Fritz must have gotten those letters from the Duchess of Kendal. (Aka Aunt Melusine to Katte, mistress of G1.) Otoh, Hervey thinks Fritz must have a spy in the palace, because the letters published are just those three not burned. In any event, he thinks they just demonstrate that G1 was a way harsher father, since he temporarily took G2's children from him during their biggest argument, while G2 generously declared he wouldn't do that to FoW.
During Caroline's ten days of dying, Hervey and the Royals, minus Fritz and Augusta who aren't allowed access, spend most at the time in Caroline's bed room or next door. This temporarly makes Hervey soften on the King, but not so much is second least favourite Hannover offspring, Emily/Amalia, quondam intended for Fritz of Prussia. An illustration in the following scene (re: storm - G2 and Emily are referencing G2 during his most recent return from Hannover being caught in a tempest across the channel):
One night whilst the Queen was ill, as (G2) was sitting in his nightgown and nightcap in a great chair, with his legs upon a stool, and nobody in the room with him but the Princess Emily, who lay upon a couch, and Lord Hervey, who sat by the fire, he talked in this strain of his own courage in the storm and his illness, till the Princess Emily, as Lord Hervey thought, fell fast asleep, whilst Lord Hervey, as tired as he was of the present conversation and this last week's watching, was left alone to act civil auditor and adroit courtier, to applaud what he heard, and every now and then to ask such proper questions as led the King into giving some more particular detail of his own magnanimity. The King, turning towards Princess Emily, and seeing her eyes shut, cried, "Poor good child! her duty, affection, and attendance on her mother have quite exhausted her spirits." And soon after he went into the Queen's room. As soon as his back was turned. Princess Emily started up, and said, " Is he gone ? How tiresome he is!"
Lord Hervey, who had no mind to trust her Royal Highness with his singing her father's praises in duetto with her, replied only, " I thought your Royal Highness had been asleep." " No," said the Princess Emily ; " I only shut my eyes that I might not join in the ennuyant conversation, and wish I could have shut my ears too. In the first place, I am sick to death of hearing of his great courage every day of my life ; in the next place, one thinks now of Mama, and not of him. Who cares for his old storm ? I believe, too, it is a great lie, and that he was as much afraid as I should have been, for all what he says now ; and as to his not being afraid when he was ill, I know that is a lie, for I saw him, and I heard all his sighs and his groans, when he was in no more danger than I am at this moment. He was talking, too, for ever of dying, and that he was sure he should not recover." All this, considering the kind things she had heard the King say the minute before, when he imagined her asleep. Lord Hervey thought a pretty extraordinary return for her to make for that paternal goodness, or would have thought it so in anybody but her ; and looked upon this openness to him, whom she did not love, yet less to be accounted for, unless he could have imagined it was to draw him in to echo her, and then to relate what he said as if he had said it unaccompanied.
Whilst she was going on with the panegyric on theKing which I have related, the King returned, upon which she began to rub her eyes as if she had that instant raised her head from her pillows, and said, "I have really slept very heartily. How long had Papa been out of the room ?" The King, who had very little or rather no suspicion in his composition, took these appearances for realities, and said, " It is time for us all to take a little rest. We will all go to bed, for by staying here we do the poor Queen no good, and ourselves hurt." And so dismissing Lord Hervey, they all retired.
You already know the famous "Marry again after my death"/ "No, I will have mistresses!" exchange in French between Caroline and G2, for which Hervey is the source. G2 was truly distraught upon her death, and mistresses or not, remained so. Caroline's coffin and later his own are of the kind where you can draw one of the walls back once both are laid next to each other; he wanted their dust to mingle. (Caroline died in 1737; G2 in 1761). Grieving Caroline together makes him bond with Hervey (enough so Hervey ends up being appointed Lord Privy Seal), and thus Hervey gets treated to G2's reflections on his German relations. Which brings us back to our main points of interest again. A reminder: G2's mother was Sophia Dorothea the older, locked up for 30 years for her affair with (probably murdered) Count Königsmarck, and dying in prison. The "Reminscences" are by Horace Walpole, son of Sir Robert Walpole and the other great bitchy memoirist of the Georgian era:
The King often said, and to many people at this time, that not only he and his family should have a great loss in the Queen's death, but the whole nation: and would instance occasions where he owned her good sense and good temper had kept his passions within
bounds which they would otherwise have broken. And during this retirement (in which he was infinitely more talkative than I ever knew him at any other time of his whole life) he discoursed so constantly and so openly of himself, that if anybody had had a mind to write the memoirs of his life from his cradle to the present moment, the Princesses and Lord Hervey could have furnished them with materials of all the occurrences, transactions, and anecdotes, military, civil, amorous, foreign, and domestic, that could be comprehended in such a work, from his own lips : excepting what related to his mother, whom on no occasion I ever heard him mention, not even inadvertently or indirectly, any more than if such a person had never had a being. (*)
*Footnote by Victorian editor Croker: This is remarkable, and seems hardly reconcilable with the strong opinion of her innocence and the affectionate regard for her person attributed to him in the Reminiscences. "The second George loved his mother as much as he hated his father ; and purposed, it was said, if she had survived, to have brought her over and declared her Queen-Dowager. Lady Suffolk told me her surprise on going to the new Queen the morning after George I.'s death, at seeing hung up in the Queen's dressrng-room the whole-length of a lady in royal robes, and in the bed-chamber a half-length of the same person, which Lady Suffolk had never seen before." They were of his mother, which the Prince had till then kept concealed.
And now for the Prussians. G2's aunt was Sophie Charlotte, not just mother of FW but foster mother of Caroline, praised as not just one of the most beautiful but definitely one of the best educated and smartest women of her time, which is why I find this statement, err, interesting:
Of his aunt, the Queen of Prussia, too he spoke well, who, by what I heard from others, and particularly the Queen, was a very vain, good-for-nothing woman.
Et tu, Caroline? You owe your education to her, among other things. I feel let down. G2's sister is of course Sophia Dorothea the younger, wife of FW, and on her, grieving G2 apparantly had this to say in 1737:
For his sister, the present Queen of Prussia, he had the contempt she deserved, and a hatred she did not deserve.
WTF? For both Hervey and G2. Hervey having zilch interest in the Prussians per se, and dying when Fritz is still busy conquering Silesia, I don't see how he'd have any motive to make this up. But see: Hervey never met SD. He visited Hannover only once, as a young man on his Grand Tour (when he first encountered nine years old Fritz of Wales), and I don't think she was visiting Hannover as well on that occasion. Prussia, he didn't visit at all. So what is this estimation - that SD deserved contempt but not hate - based on? Perhaps all that begging for the English marriages struck him as pathetic, even if he didn't care enough to note it down, but that's the only thing I can think of.
(Now of course SD with her own treatment of her children provides enough reasons to dislike her, but Hervey seems to know nothing about this.)
As to why G2 should have contempt and hate for his sister: search me. It's not like she was madly in love with FW and rejecting her family of birth, au contraire. I'm almost starting to come around to Fritz' pov on Hannover versus Hohenzollern, but luckily your Ziebura read through reminds me this would be wrong. The rest of the Prussian pasage:
What he thought and said of the King of Prussia was much the same as what the King of Prussia thought and said of him ; that he was a proud, brutal, tyrannical, wrong-headed, impracticable fellow, who loved nobody and would use everybody ill that was in his power. How far these two Kings were in the right in this point, or how little they were so in every other, is not my business here to determine.
Meaning: peas in a pod. Again, based on all this, my speculation re: G2 pleading with the other European monarchs for Fritz' life is that it was mostly because if he didn't get to kill his son, FW certainly wouldn't. And speaking of murder: if Fritz and Wilhelmine had made those marriages, do want to place any bets on when things would have gotten violent? (Provided most circumstances stay the same.) Would Fritz of Prussia have had the fatal relationship and fallout with Hervey instead of Fritz of Wales? Would Caroline and G2 have accused Wilhelmine, too, of faking her pregnancy because their oldest surely can't sire a child? Would Fritz of Prussia have killed Fritz of Wales for taking Wilhelmine in labor for a one and a half hour drive because he didn't want his parents to be present at the birth? Place your bets!
Re: Hervey's Memoirs: King Lear's Family has nothing on this
mildred_of_midgard
2020-09-22 01:06 am (UTC)(link)
I'm on vacation, she says. I won't be able to do write-ups, she says. :D
Seriously, you are the best, and this is very in-character of you.
Her doctors should have pushed that loop of bowel back inside and hoped that the hole would heal, but instead they made a terrible error. They cut it off. Now Caroline’s digestive system was destroyed, and she took ten days to die.
Oooh nooooo! That sounds like the *worst*. Did they know it was a bowel? 'Cause this would make sense if they thought it was some random growth.
our Victorian editor childes Hervey for providing them (about a lady! and a Queen!) and proudly announces he protects us readers from them as much as he can.
*sigh*
I am really looking forward to Smith and Taylor's new and improved post-Victorian edition.
Considering most of said letters were burned by Caroline when G2 became King, the Royals think that Fritz must have gotten those letters from the Duchess of Kendal. (Aka Aunt Melusine to Katte, mistress of G1.) Otoh, Hervey thinks Fritz must have a spy in the palace, because the letters published are just those three not burned.
Hmmm. Reading between the lines, does this mean Melusine (lover of G1 and possibly therefore not a fan of G2?) and Fritz of Wales were on good terms?
G1 was a way harsher father, since he temporarily took G2's children from him during their biggest argument, while G2 generously declared he wouldn't do that to FoW.
Fritz of Prussia: And I'm with you on that! My younger siblings don't know how good they have it.
the famous "Marry again after my death"/ "No, I will have mistresses!" exchange in French between Caroline and G2, for which Hervey is the source
Hervey is the British Lehndorff counterpart in another way: our source for all these anecdotes we know!
The "Reminscences" are by Horace Walpole, son of Sir Robert Walpole and the other great bitchy memoirist of the Georgian era:
Which you will not be surprised to find in the library. They're so incredibly short the editor feels the need to apologize and flesh them out with a supplement of collected letters in order to make it long enough to be a short book instead of a long essay.
Et tu, Caroline? You owe your education to her, among other things. I feel let down.
But where would this family be without everyone bitching at everybody else?
So what is this estimation - that SD deserved contempt but not hate - based on? Perhaps all that begging for the English marriages struck him as pathetic, even if he didn't care enough to note it down, but that's the only thing I can think of.
The only thing I can think of is Wilhelmine's description of her that she gives the appearance of having more intellectual and artistic depth than she actually has, but 1) given that she's a queen, I'm not sure that more is expected of her? 2) I'm not sure how much Hervey would care about that. It is the sort of thing he could have picked up with out meeting her, though.
As to why G2 should have contempt and hate for his sister: search me.
I feel like with siblings, you don't necessarily need a reason? Sometimes someone just rubs you the wrong way, and with family, it's harder to resort to indifference. Actually, biologist Robert Sapolsky, who studies baboons in the wild, says that there are interpersonal (interbaboonal?) interactions that strike fellow baboons as weird--unless it's between two family members, and then they shrug it off.
I mean, clearly there's *some* kind of reason, and we may come across it, but it doesn't necessarily have to have been significant enough to be obvious to outsiders.
(Provided most circumstances stay the same.) Would Fritz of Prussia have had the fatal relationship and fallout with Hervey instead of Fritz of Wales?
Hmm. If we assume Fritz of Prussia stays in England until FW dies in 1740, instead of Amelia going to Prussia or both of them going to Hannover (maybe a successful esape to England?), then maybe. Only they fight over Algarotti instead of Anne Vane. :P
Algarotti: Guys, there's plenty of me to go around!
Would Caroline and G2 have accused Wilhelmine, too, of faking her pregnancy because their oldest surely can't sire a child?
Would Caroline and G2 have accused Wilhelmine and Fritz of Prussia of incest? It would have explained so much: how Wilhelmine got pregnant, why Fritz was present at the birth, why Fritz carried on the paternal tradition of beating up your first cousin rather than allow Wilhelmine to be moved... (Fritz of Prussia may not be much physically, but I say killer instinct and motivation count for a lot. Look at FW!)
Actually, let's assume Fritz of Prussia, living at close range with his sister's husband, doesn't really get along with Fritz of Wales. Let's further assume that G2 (plus Parliament, I guess) would have had to be pretty strongly pro-Fritz-of-Prussia to let a double marriage happen with Fritz living at the English court. (Husbands don't usually join their wives, especially when they are the heir to a throne. I have to assume successful escape, unless you have a better scenario.)
Also, G2 hates FW, something that Fritz can get behind.
So, G2-Fritz of Prussia alliance? [ETA: Until FW is dead and Fritz doesn't need him anymore, obviously.] This might affect the Wilhelmine treatment. Particularly when Fritz of Prussia beats up Fritz of Wales and father-in-law G2 slaps him on the back and says, "Attaboy." :P
Ah, the eternal soap opera!
Seriously, you are the best, and this is very in-character of you.
Her doctors should have pushed that loop of bowel back inside and hoped that the hole would heal, but instead they made a terrible error. They cut it off. Now Caroline’s digestive system was destroyed, and she took ten days to die.
Oooh nooooo! That sounds like the *worst*. Did they know it was a bowel? 'Cause this would make sense if they thought it was some random growth.
our Victorian editor childes Hervey for providing them (about a lady! and a Queen!) and proudly announces he protects us readers from them as much as he can.
*sigh*
I am really looking forward to Smith and Taylor's new and improved post-Victorian edition.
Considering most of said letters were burned by Caroline when G2 became King, the Royals think that Fritz must have gotten those letters from the Duchess of Kendal. (Aka Aunt Melusine to Katte, mistress of G1.) Otoh, Hervey thinks Fritz must have a spy in the palace, because the letters published are just those three not burned.
Hmmm. Reading between the lines, does this mean Melusine (lover of G1 and possibly therefore not a fan of G2?) and Fritz of Wales were on good terms?
G1 was a way harsher father, since he temporarily took G2's children from him during their biggest argument, while G2 generously declared he wouldn't do that to FoW.
Fritz of Prussia: And I'm with you on that! My younger siblings don't know how good they have it.
the famous "Marry again after my death"/ "No, I will have mistresses!" exchange in French between Caroline and G2, for which Hervey is the source
Hervey is the British Lehndorff counterpart in another way: our source for all these anecdotes we know!
The "Reminscences" are by Horace Walpole, son of Sir Robert Walpole and the other great bitchy memoirist of the Georgian era:
Which you will not be surprised to find in the library. They're so incredibly short the editor feels the need to apologize and flesh them out with a supplement of collected letters in order to make it long enough to be a short book instead of a long essay.
Et tu, Caroline? You owe your education to her, among other things. I feel let down.
But where would this family be without everyone bitching at everybody else?
So what is this estimation - that SD deserved contempt but not hate - based on? Perhaps all that begging for the English marriages struck him as pathetic, even if he didn't care enough to note it down, but that's the only thing I can think of.
The only thing I can think of is Wilhelmine's description of her that she gives the appearance of having more intellectual and artistic depth than she actually has, but 1) given that she's a queen, I'm not sure that more is expected of her? 2) I'm not sure how much Hervey would care about that. It is the sort of thing he could have picked up with out meeting her, though.
As to why G2 should have contempt and hate for his sister: search me.
I feel like with siblings, you don't necessarily need a reason? Sometimes someone just rubs you the wrong way, and with family, it's harder to resort to indifference. Actually, biologist Robert Sapolsky, who studies baboons in the wild, says that there are interpersonal (interbaboonal?) interactions that strike fellow baboons as weird--unless it's between two family members, and then they shrug it off.
I mean, clearly there's *some* kind of reason, and we may come across it, but it doesn't necessarily have to have been significant enough to be obvious to outsiders.
(Provided most circumstances stay the same.) Would Fritz of Prussia have had the fatal relationship and fallout with Hervey instead of Fritz of Wales?
Hmm. If we assume Fritz of Prussia stays in England until FW dies in 1740, instead of Amelia going to Prussia or both of them going to Hannover (maybe a successful esape to England?), then maybe. Only they fight over Algarotti instead of Anne Vane. :P
Algarotti: Guys, there's plenty of me to go around!
Would Caroline and G2 have accused Wilhelmine, too, of faking her pregnancy because their oldest surely can't sire a child?
Would Caroline and G2 have accused Wilhelmine and Fritz of Prussia of incest? It would have explained so much: how Wilhelmine got pregnant, why Fritz was present at the birth, why Fritz carried on the paternal tradition of beating up your first cousin rather than allow Wilhelmine to be moved... (Fritz of Prussia may not be much physically, but I say killer instinct and motivation count for a lot. Look at FW!)
Actually, let's assume Fritz of Prussia, living at close range with his sister's husband, doesn't really get along with Fritz of Wales. Let's further assume that G2 (plus Parliament, I guess) would have had to be pretty strongly pro-Fritz-of-Prussia to let a double marriage happen with Fritz living at the English court. (Husbands don't usually join their wives, especially when they are the heir to a throne. I have to assume successful escape, unless you have a better scenario.)
Also, G2 hates FW, something that Fritz can get behind.
So, G2-Fritz of Prussia alliance? [ETA: Until FW is dead and Fritz doesn't need him anymore, obviously.] This might affect the Wilhelmine treatment. Particularly when Fritz of Prussia beats up Fritz of Wales and father-in-law G2 slaps him on the back and says, "Attaboy." :P
Ah, the eternal soap opera!
Edited 2020-09-22 01:44 (UTC)
Re: No Pity for the Wives readthrough (cont) - Everyone dies off
mildred_of_midgard
2020-09-22 02:26 am (UTC)(link)
I'm a couple pages from the end, will finish reading before bed. Writing up what I have now while I'm at the computer.
* Heinrich started behaving a bit better toward Mina immediately after Fritz died? Of course he did. She's no longer a reminder of Fritz's ongoing power and abuse, but past power and abuse, which is slightly less painful.
Sigh.
THERAPY FOR EVERYONE, BUT ESPECIALLY MINA RN
Fritz, I guess you get therapy by death, like you always wanted. "When I am there, I will be sans souci."
:(
Oh, lol atselenak's I'm almost starting to come around to Fritz' pov on Hannover versus Hohenzollern, but luckily your Ziebura read through reminds me this would be wrong.
I laughed really hard at that, in a facepalmy kind of way.
* Zomg, and no sooner does Mina start getting to participate in society again than her health takes a nosedive and prevents her? I knew she'd lost her sight and hearing at the end of her life, but Parkinson's (probably) too?! Parkinson's is the worst. :/
* And FW2 is now siccing people Mina doesn't like on her staff? For ten plus years?? THERAPY.
* On a lighter note, I love the image of EC being *shocked* at the scandalous newfangled waltz and averting her eyes. Kids these days. :P
ETA: Aaand, we're done.
Heinrich: *looks forward to Mina's death for 48 years*
Mina: *outlives him by 6 years* Ha!
Which made me realize that, yep, that marriage lasted 50 years. Fritz/EC, 53. As I said about my grandparents' 61-year unhappy and abusive marriage: what a waste. :/ Divorce for everyone!
Also, yeah, things that didn't make it into the Heinrich bio.
* Heinrich started behaving a bit better toward Mina immediately after Fritz died? Of course he did. She's no longer a reminder of Fritz's ongoing power and abuse, but past power and abuse, which is slightly less painful.
Sigh.
THERAPY FOR EVERYONE, BUT ESPECIALLY MINA RN
Fritz, I guess you get therapy by death, like you always wanted. "When I am there, I will be sans souci."
:(
Oh, lol at
selenak's I'm almost starting to come around to Fritz' pov on Hannover versus Hohenzollern, but luckily your Ziebura read through reminds me this would be wrong.I laughed really hard at that, in a facepalmy kind of way.
* Zomg, and no sooner does Mina start getting to participate in society again than her health takes a nosedive and prevents her? I knew she'd lost her sight and hearing at the end of her life, but Parkinson's (probably) too?! Parkinson's is the worst. :/
* And FW2 is now siccing people Mina doesn't like on her staff? For ten plus years?? THERAPY.
* On a lighter note, I love the image of EC being *shocked* at the scandalous newfangled waltz and averting her eyes. Kids these days. :P
ETA: Aaand, we're done.
Heinrich: *looks forward to Mina's death for 48 years*
Mina: *outlives him by 6 years* Ha!
Which made me realize that, yep, that marriage lasted 50 years. Fritz/EC, 53. As I said about my grandparents' 61-year unhappy and abusive marriage: what a waste. :/ Divorce for everyone!
Also, yeah, things that didn't make it into the Heinrich bio.
Edited 2020-09-22 03:30 (UTC)
Her doctors should have pushed that loop of bowel back inside and hoped that the hole would heal, but instead they made a terrible error. They cut it off. Now Caroline’s digestive system was destroyed, and she took ten days to die.
EEK. Ow ow ow. That... is not a way I'd like to die. (I mean, I suppose there aren't really good ways to die, but this seems like a particularly bad one.) Exhibit seventeen thousand or so on Why I Am Glad I Don't Live Then.
Wikipedia: "Over the next few days she was bled, purged, and operated on, without anaesthetic, but there was no improvement in her condition." Uh-huh.
"My dear Lord," replied the Queen, ' " I will give it you under my hand, if you are in any fear of my relapsing, that my dear first-born is the greatest ass and the greatest liar, and the greatest canaille, and the greatest beast in the whole world, and I that I most heartily wish he was out of it."
Maaaaan :( IDK, someone here is really awful. Not sure whether it's Hervey or Caroline or both, but... yeah.
In the first place, I am sick to death of hearing of his great courage every day of my life ; in the next place, one thinks now of Mama, and not of him.
Ahahahaha this... makes me like Princess Emily more rather than less :P I vote this Princess Emily and Princess Amalie of Prussia should get together!
I'm almost starting to come around to Fritz' pov on Hannover versus Hohenzollern, but luckily your Ziebura read through reminds me this would be wrong.
LOL
What he thought and said of the King of Prussia was much the same as what the King of Prussia thought and said of him ; that he was a proud, brutal, tyrannical, wrong-headed, impracticable fellow, who loved nobody and would use everybody ill that was in his power. How far these two Kings were in the right in this point, or how little they were so in every other, is not my business here to determine.
HAHAHAHA okay, Hervey, you get points for this, this is hilarious.
EEK. Ow ow ow. That... is not a way I'd like to die. (I mean, I suppose there aren't really good ways to die, but this seems like a particularly bad one.) Exhibit seventeen thousand or so on Why I Am Glad I Don't Live Then.
Wikipedia: "Over the next few days she was bled, purged, and operated on, without anaesthetic, but there was no improvement in her condition." Uh-huh.
"My dear Lord," replied the Queen, ' " I will give it you under my hand, if you are in any fear of my relapsing, that my dear first-born is the greatest ass and the greatest liar, and the greatest canaille, and the greatest beast in the whole world, and I that I most heartily wish he was out of it."
Maaaaan :( IDK, someone here is really awful. Not sure whether it's Hervey or Caroline or both, but... yeah.
In the first place, I am sick to death of hearing of his great courage every day of my life ; in the next place, one thinks now of Mama, and not of him.
Ahahahaha this... makes me like Princess Emily more rather than less :P I vote this Princess Emily and Princess Amalie of Prussia should get together!
I'm almost starting to come around to Fritz' pov on Hannover versus Hohenzollern, but luckily your Ziebura read through reminds me this would be wrong.
LOL
What he thought and said of the King of Prussia was much the same as what the King of Prussia thought and said of him ; that he was a proud, brutal, tyrannical, wrong-headed, impracticable fellow, who loved nobody and would use everybody ill that was in his power. How far these two Kings were in the right in this point, or how little they were so in every other, is not my business here to determine.
HAHAHAHA okay, Hervey, you get points for this, this is hilarious.
I'm on vacation, she says. I won't be able to do write-ups, she says. :D
Seriously, you are the best, and this is very in-character of you.
THIS :DDDDD
Hervey is the British Lehndorff counterpart in another way: our source for all these anecdotes we know!
:D
Only they fight over Algarotti instead of Anne Vane. :P
Ha! I... cannot argue with this.
So, G2-Fritz of Prussia alliance? [ETA: Until FW is dead and Fritz doesn't need him anymore, obviously.] This might affect the Wilhelmine treatment. Particularly when Fritz of Prussia beats up Fritz of Wales and father-in-law G2 slaps him on the back and says, "Attaboy." :P
*facepalm* This would totally happen, wouldn't it.
Seriously, you are the best, and this is very in-character of you.
THIS :DDDDD
Hervey is the British Lehndorff counterpart in another way: our source for all these anecdotes we know!
:D
Only they fight over Algarotti instead of Anne Vane. :P
Ha! I... cannot argue with this.
So, G2-Fritz of Prussia alliance? [ETA: Until FW is dead and Fritz doesn't need him anymore, obviously.] This might affect the Wilhelmine treatment. Particularly when Fritz of Prussia beats up Fritz of Wales and father-in-law G2 slaps him on the back and says, "Attaboy." :P
*facepalm* This would totally happen, wouldn't it.
I've nominated!
Hans Hermann von Katte
Peter Karl Christoph von Keith
Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf
August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia (1722-1758)
Hans Hermann von Katte
Peter Karl Christoph von Keith
Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf
August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia (1722-1758)
Re: Hervey's Memoirs: King Lear's Family has nothing on this
mildred_of_midgard
2020-09-22 02:11 pm (UTC)(link)
Particularly when Fritz of Prussia beats up Fritz of Wales and father-in-law G2 slaps him on the back and says, "Attaboy." :P
*facepalm* This would totally happen, wouldn't it.
I don't know if it *would* have, but I definitely like imagining it.
"My sister is not getting in a carriage while she's in labor, FIGHT ME."
Also, Fritz *would* be present at the birth.
Seriously, you are the best, and this is very in-character of you.
THIS :DDDDD
I was putting the Palladion write-up in Rheinsberg last night, and I noticed it was written in late April, a couple days after the "real life is taking over, can't perform Royal Reader duties." My reply to the write-up opened with, "I should have guessed that 'don't have time for Royal Reader duties' would amount to "still reading and reporting faster than we can keep up with." ;)" and your reply was "I know, I can't keep up! :)".
:D
We're so spoiled. <3
*facepalm* This would totally happen, wouldn't it.
I don't know if it *would* have, but I definitely like imagining it.
"My sister is not getting in a carriage while she's in labor, FIGHT ME."
Also, Fritz *would* be present at the birth.
Seriously, you are the best, and this is very in-character of you.
THIS :DDDDD
I was putting the Palladion write-up in Rheinsberg last night, and I noticed it was written in late April, a couple days after the "real life is taking over, can't perform Royal Reader duties." My reply to the write-up opened with, "I should have guessed that 'don't have time for Royal Reader duties' would amount to "still reading and reporting faster than we can keep up with." ;)" and your reply was "I know, I can't keep up! :)".
:D
We're so spoiled. <3
* cahn, having finished Wives and as part of my quest to follow in the footsteps of the great selenak, I'm getting ready to run Oster's Wilhelmine bio through the translator. Are you going to be doing it with me?
If so, I can make the paragraphs shorter with maybe half an hour of not-especially-tedious work, and I'm happy to do it if it helps your German practice. If not, I'll just translate it as-is, and I won't bother uploading the interleaved file (though I will generate one just in case you want it someday--the algorithm already generates it, so no extra work, yay automation).
* With the help of some Google-fu, Lady Mary's complete letters can be acquired at the present time for $67, including shipping: $54 for volumes 1 and 2, sold as a set, and $13 for volume 3. For 3 thick volumes, that's not a bad deal.
We could cross-reference with Wilhelmine's Italy travels and figure out when and where they could have met, and what they were up to around that time!
I'm up for contributing $40 and doing the scanning and uploading, if either of you are in a position to contribute the remaining $27, either individually or in combination. Otherwise, we can wait forselenak to see if she can get library copies when she's back in Munich next month.
Booooooooks. :D
cahn, having finished Wives and as part of my quest to follow in the footsteps of the great selenak, I'm getting ready to run Oster's Wilhelmine bio through the translator. Are you going to be doing it with me? If so, I can make the paragraphs shorter with maybe half an hour of not-especially-tedious work, and I'm happy to do it if it helps your German practice. If not, I'll just translate it as-is, and I won't bother uploading the interleaved file (though I will generate one just in case you want it someday--the algorithm already generates it, so no extra work, yay automation).
* With the help of some Google-fu, Lady Mary's complete letters can be acquired at the present time for $67, including shipping: $54 for volumes 1 and 2, sold as a set, and $13 for volume 3. For 3 thick volumes, that's not a bad deal.
We could cross-reference with Wilhelmine's Italy travels and figure out when and where they could have met, and what they were up to around that time!
I'm up for contributing $40 and doing the scanning and uploading, if either of you are in a position to contribute the remaining $27, either individually or in combination. Otherwise, we can wait for
selenak to see if she can get library copies when she's back in Munich next month.Booooooooks. :D
Just so everyone knows :)
I haven't even made a draft of the promo post(s)! *facepalm* I'll see whether I can get around to that tonight... I'll try to nominate tonight as well but it might be later on in the week, though I'll of course comment once I've made my nominations, here and at the nomination coordination post.
I haven't even made a draft of the promo post(s)! *facepalm* I'll see whether I can get around to that tonight... I'll try to nominate tonight as well but it might be later on in the week, though I'll of course comment once I've made my nominations, here and at the nomination coordination post.
Sure, I'll read it with you! I think with the caveat that I'm not necessarily going to be up for writing detailed comments (I WILL finish commenting on Wives, though) but I think I can commit to keeping up with your reading in English and responding to your comments :)
Interleaved would be great because I think it really does help even when I just look at it sporadically, although I am temporarily abandoning attempts to even quasi-seriously try to read anything right now and just doubling down on Duolingo, as I'm realizing I need a baseline syntax and vocab that I don't have yet. (I am, however, reading Le Petit Prince very slowly in French, but that's another story.)
I can contribute the remaining $27, though I will reserve the right to ask for a translation favor in return :) (I don't have one right now, but I'm sure I will at some point :P )
Interleaved would be great because I think it really does help even when I just look at it sporadically, although I am temporarily abandoning attempts to even quasi-seriously try to read anything right now and just doubling down on Duolingo, as I'm realizing I need a baseline syntax and vocab that I don't have yet. (I am, however, reading Le Petit Prince very slowly in French, but that's another story.)
I can contribute the remaining $27, though I will reserve the right to ask for a translation favor in return :) (I don't have one right now, but I'm sure I will at some point :P )
Edited 2020-09-22 16:42 (UTC)
Sure, I'll read it with you!
Yay! Tbh, I might not be up for detailed comments either, especially as my reading speeds up and Yuletide starts to happen.
Would shorter paragraphs help? I won't count that as your translation favor, or only a small percentage of it. ;)
I can contribute the remaining $27, though I will reserve the right to ask for a translation favor in return :) (I don't have one right now, but I'm sure I will at some point :P )
Also yay! Translation favors for books is the best barter system. :D ETA: Plus of course the reading and summarizing of said books!
Daughter of ETA: Books have been ordered!
Yay! Tbh, I might not be up for detailed comments either, especially as my reading speeds up and Yuletide starts to happen.
Would shorter paragraphs help? I won't count that as your translation favor, or only a small percentage of it. ;)
I can contribute the remaining $27, though I will reserve the right to ask for a translation favor in return :) (I don't have one right now, but I'm sure I will at some point :P )
Also yay! Translation favors for books is the best barter system. :D ETA: Plus of course the reading and summarizing of said books!
Daughter of ETA: Books have been ordered!
Edited 2020-09-22 16:55 (UTC)
Hooray! I've nominated Fritz, Voltaire, MT and Lehndorff as agreed. Mind you, despite the fact I used the same tag I did last year for MT (to ensure she won't get mixed up with any other MTs of which there are alot), to wit, "Maria Theresia | Maria Theresa of Austria (Frederician RPF)", the sign up keeps throwing Maria Theresia (1767 - 1823) at me, which our MT decidedly is not. I never enter it, but when I review the sign up, it's there.
I also went ahead and nominated "18th Century CE European Enlightenment RPF" with Émilie, Pompadour, Hervey and Madame Denis;cahn, your turn!
I also went ahead and nominated "18th Century CE European Enlightenment RPF" with Émilie, Pompadour, Hervey and Madame Denis;
cahn, your turn!
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