Could she have been so repulsive as Lord Egmont describes her -a fat and ill-shaped dwarf,with nothing good to recommend her, neither sense nor wit ?
*sigh* Misogyny strikes again!
In wishing to love the Prince so well he had ' ly'd egregiously; I am as incapable of wishing to love any Body else so well, as I am of wishing to love You less. God forbid any Mortal should ever have the power over me you have, or that you should ever have less. ... Adieu ,if Iwas to fill a thousand Reams of paper it would be only aiming in different phrases & still imperfectly to tell you the same thing, & assure you that since I first knew you I have been without repenting & still am & ever shall be undividedly & indisolubly Yours.'
LOLOLOL. Man, my days of considering this a gigantic soap opera are certainly reaching a middle.
The fact that he allowed other scandalous revelations (Miss Vane as Hervey's mistress, for example ) to remain in the copy of thememoirs is evidence that what he read and destroyed for the years 1730 to 1732 he regarded as far too shocking to remain among his family papers in either the autograph or the copy.
! maybe it was a hot threesome ...I see that mildred has already had this thought!
The biography itself is very drily written, but it contains valuable info re: the Berlin Academy, how it was set up, where they met, how it worked, the inner feuds, alliances and power plays, so it's a valuable research tool if one wants, say, write about Algarotti and/or Peter Keith having academic interactions.
In short:
Maupertuis: is born the son of an ennobled son of a privateer (= licensed by law pirate) in Saint-Malo, Brittany. He'll use the corsair association and imagery to make a splash at first, and it will even be used in his obituary. Parisian Voltaire (not born to an ennobled father but adding the "de" to his name just because he can) uses Maupertuis being from Brittany later when bickeringly corresponding with Fritz, if you'll recall. (Parisian rat Voltaire vs Breton mastiff Maupertuis. Fritz, of course, is a lion.)
His career goes very well the larger art of his life, his books are well liked; some of which are anonymously published, too, btw. And like Algarotti and the book Algarotti modelled his Newton for Ladies on which the dissertation names and I forgot, Maupertuis writes a "explaining science to a sexy lady" book. He did explain maths to Émilie early on, and Terrel quotes lettes of hers from that first period of aquaintance where she seems into him both mathematically and personally, so Maupertuis, at least, did practice the pedagogic eros in rl as well; Terrel points out that this was when a lot of writers discovered that lo and behold, female readers are a market, and not just for novels and poetry.
Speaking of, Voltaire at first was into Maupertuis as well, and claimed him as a Newtonian before Maupertuis had actually fully joined the Newtonian side of the force. (Terrel says that contrary to earlier assumptions, he wasn't yet a Newtonian when he visited England.) There's no sign of mixed feelings on Voltaire's part until Maupertuis has that military misadventure of getting captured when with Fritz at Mollwitz and Voltaire can't resist making fun of him back home in Paris, see earlier comment. Maupertuis is less than thrilled about this, but on the surface relations remain sociable and harmonius until they're both in Berlin at the same time, though a mutual acquaintance already said when the news came that Voltaire had finally given in and was on his way to Potsdam that this might not be such a good idea, because of the two egos (of Voltaire and Maupertuis, not Voltaire and Fritz). Back in the Cirey days, though, all seemed reasonably well, and I'm amused that when Maupertuis is preparing his big expedition and invites Algarotti along, our otherwise dry author observes that she can't think of what Algarotti was supposed to contribute to the expedition, "except for his company", since he wasn't a geometer, a surveyor or a man of action who couldn't have helped with the hardcore travel parts. Ms Terrell, hot stuff Algarotti was clearly part of the intendended entertainment for the Lappland nights!
The Lappland expedition - to prove the Earth flattens on top - is a big success and makes Maupertuis into an international celebrity who is much sought after in Europe from this point onwards. He does get into the Academie in France, so it's not like Fritz was the without alternatives, but then they didn't offer to make him head of the Academie which is what Fritz offered for the Berlin Academie, plus everyone wrote glowingly about the new philosopher king, so off to Prussia Maupertuis went, and got bored, see Mildred's tale about how all the intellectuals were widdling their thumbs while Fritz was off conquering Silesia. Maupertuis was the only one who made the mistake of following him into the field and getting captured. Then, as detailed in the earlier comment, after a few days he was identified by Count Neipperg and got ever courtesy, including a round trip to Vienna and then back to Berlin. By which time Voltaire from France and Fritz from nearer by cracked jokes and Maupertuis just about had it and left Prussia again. (I have to say, his story about his reception at Vienna, which is partly in the main text and partly in a footnote, would have deserved some authorial scepticism from Terrel. I can buy FS gave him a golden watch to compensate him from the one stolen from him in the scuffle of him getting taken prisoner, but the supposed dialogue with MT about who's the most beautiful Queen of them all really defies belief.)
Maupertuis does eventually return and takes his place as head of the Academy, and that's when valuable research stuff happens in this biography.
Fritz: I want the Academy to be a true republic of intellectuals. I'm just one of its citizens here, and I want you to treat my contributions as you do any other. Also, forget about the old place where the Academy, such as it was, met in my father's day, used to me and about the places where you met while I was off making war, I'm telling you where I want you to meet, of course.
Maupertuis: ...Okay. Academy members, we will model this Academy and its interactions on the new modern state of Prussia. I'm Fritz, of course. You're everyone else.
German academy members: We feel discriminated against anyway because of Fritz and his French hangup. I mean, we're not even allowed to hand in papers in our own language or Latin without also adding a translation into French at our own expense. And now we're getting bossed around not just by the King but this French guy who doesn't talk German at all? Grrr. Argh.
Maupertuis: Wolff, want to come?
Wolff: No way. I'm staying in Halle. Teaching in German.
Maupertuis: I'm getting a sense of some German hostility here. Also, all Germans are foodies. Direct quote: “Experience teaches me that there is nothing so prejudicial to the progress ofthe sciences in Germany as giving them too much to eat and drink. There is no one who will not abandon Homer when he hears the dinner bell. " Clearly, some more calling for discipline on my part is the way to proceed. After all, I'm the Fritz here.
Maupertuis: on the bright side, becomes bff with Euler and makes a friend in Kästner who is his eyes and ears in the camp of the enemy, aka Halle, where Wolff resides.
Maupertuis: Also gets married to Fräulein von Borck, scion of one of the old Brandenburg families
Mary Terrel: shame we don't know anything about her other than she did her best for her husband's work and memory to florish after his death, so she must have been devoted to him.
Mary Terrel: clearly hasn't read Lehndorff's journals, where Madame Maupertuis shows up a couple of times, notably when Amalie gives her some jewelry so she can make the journey to her dying husband in the middle of the war.
Early Academy feuding not starring either Maupertuis or Voltaire: *happens*
Maupertuis: *staying above it all* Remember, members: Dignity! Always dignity!
Émilie: *dies*
Mary Terrel: And then Voltaire showed up. "Friedrich had tried to woo him with flattering letters and with lavish gifts for years."
Voltaire: Lavish what? He haggled about my travel expenses!
König: Earlier, the Academy had done a competition like the one in Paris, I made an entry, and I lost. This endeared Maupertuis to me enormously.
Gottsched (remember him?) and other German intellectuals: We think the Academy is a bunch of foreign elitist snobs and their cowed German lackeys. If it's supposed to make local culture florish, where's the local culture in it? And how's the President ever supposed to get a clue about if he still doesn't speak German?
Maupertuis: *writes treatise and the principle of least action*
König: *writes attack on the treatise, complete with Leipniiz quote and accusation that Maupertuis isn't just wrong on the larger point, he also uses stuff Leipniz already said*
Maupertuis: How dare he! Of course I, as President, can't reply to this outrage in person. Faithful subjects, I mean, academy members, pray deal with König.
Quote: The generally hostile treatment of the management of the Berlin Academy in the German press had primed Maupertuis to respond forcefully to König, a more accessible and more vulnerable target than Gottsched or anonymous journalists. Seeing his scientific accomplishments and his personal integrity called into question, Maupertuis took steps to demonstrate his power to silence " scoundrels" . (...) Maupertuis made a strategic decision to focus on the authenticity of the letter, suspecting König's vulnerability on this point. As he explained later to d'Alémbert, “ instead of disputing with him , I limited myself to pressing him to produce the original, regarding it anyway as quite a mark of approval to want to attribute the basis [ofmy principle ] to the great Leibniz.” If all went well, the disciplining of König might be turned into positive publicity for the principle of least action . The Academy formally demanded that König produce the letter which turned out to be a copy, and then initiated a search for the original in Hermann's papers in Switzerland. Maupertuis used his prerogative to make the dispute a matter of honor for his institution and for the king. (...) Publicly, Maupertuis limited his concern to the existence and authenticity of the letter ; privately , he hoped to expose his accuser as a charlatan ,“ to bury König in the mud as he deserves." (...) Euler bent to the task with a will,no doubtharboring his own hostility to the Wolffian professor who had defended monads to the Academy a few years before:When König could not produce the letter,Euler submiitted a report, concluding "that (König's ] cause is completely 'untenable and that this fragment was forged, either to wrong M.de Maupertuis; or to exaggerate bý a pious fraud the praises of the great Leibniz ." 86 The evidence for forgery was circumstantial, bur König had muddied his claims with so many improbable and unsubstantiated explanations that Euler stated his condemnation in the strongest possible terms. In April 1752, the Academy voted unanimously to approve Euler's report, although there was some private grumbling about the president's righthold on power, and bitterness about the impossibility of dissent. A footnote here provides the direct quote from a German academy member: Weil Maupertuis alle Gewaltin Händen hat,und man nicht sehr laut gegen ihn reden darf , so ist die Verbitterung im Geheim desto stärker, und dises thut der Academie grossen Schaden " (Sulzer to Künzli, April 1752, quoted in Harnack , Geschichte, 1 (1 ): 338 , n.2 ).
And only at this point, according to Terrel, Voltaire enters the struggle.
Voltaire: I actuallly have no idea whether Maupertuis is correct about the principle of least action without Émiilie explaining it to me, but I do know a bully when I see one, and also, I could think of a better president of the Academy, namely, me. Be that as it may: have a satiric pamphlet. Or several.
Maupertuis: But...? Academy members: OMG! Europe: *Popcorn*
Terrel: and from this point onwards, no one cared about the principle of least action, or Leipniz. Voltaire had turned it into a literary quarrel, and then Fritz intervened, and at this point König and Maupertuis could do little more than watch along with the rest.
Maupertuis: Surely, with the King himself defending me, I don't have to respond to these outrages. Everyone will see right is on my, that is, our side!
Everyone: No idea who's right, but Voltaire is funnier. Also, did Fritz just burn a book? Mr. Enlightened Monach? OMG!
Maupertuis: *can't even enjoy the Frankfurt drama, because now he's in bad health*
Maupertuis: Okay, two more years in Prussia, but in late 1755 I'm off to go to France before the benefit of my health. Can I have paid leave, your majesty? I promise to comeback.
Fritz: That' what Algarotti said. But okay, you've been through a lot.
Maupertuis: *meets Voltaire's sworn enemy Fréron, a journalist*
Maupertuis: *writes to Fritz* Sire, until now I've kept a dignified silence, but now I've met this Fréron guy who says he can bury Voltaire, and I'm just thinking, how about I give him a tell-all to show how noble you've behaved in all this, defending me, and how dastardly Voltaire?
Fritz: I don't think that's a good idea.
Maupertuis: Sorry, Fréron, you can't be my revenge ghost writer, but I can tell you some stuff about Voltaire THAT UNSPEAKABLE BASTARD which you can use in some other pamphlets.
1756: Arrives. With the Diplomatic Revolution.
Fréron: So, dear readers, my personal conclusion is that Maupertuis and Voltaire are both dirty traitors to France who should never allowed Fritz to lure them away from la patrie anyway. Wasn't France good enough for them anymore? Stay tuned for me attacking Voltaire on the Mademoiselle Corneille front soon.
Maupertuis: OMG. Fritz and France at war? What is my duty here? If I go back to Berlin now, I'm definitely a traitor. But Fritz has been good to me, that making fun of my Austrian captivity post Mollwitz bit aside.
Some French friends: You could resign from your office as President of the Academy at least.
Maupertuis: No. That's part of my income. Also it's a nice honor. And Fritz would take it personal as hell. What if he wins this war and I can't go back to Prussia? My wife is there! This was just supposed to be some months back home in Brittany to recover my health!
Euler: Dear M, don't worry, I'm running the Academy for you. Take as much time as you need. The war will be over soon, surely.
Maupertuis: *tries to be diplomatic, congratulating Fritz on his military successes and asking for save routes from France to Berlin, but never actually going*
Maupertuis: *dies*
French Academy of Science: Traitor. Academy Francaise: No, a man of lettres and esprit! Have some favourite works! And his style! He paints with so much warmth , with so much liveliness , thathe transports us to the very places he describes. One scales with him the summits ofHorrilakero; one follows him on the frozen waters of Tornea; one flies at his sideon the fragile sleds of the Laplander."
Academy in Berlin: Total hero: Saint Malo is a kind of republic of Argonauts ; M.de Maupertuis's compatriots ... bring back to their fatherland (patrie) çiçhes which they have often devoted to the defense and health of that same country in the most glorious manner.M.de Maupertuis was the Jason of a different class of Argonauts . The treasures, he sought in the world's extremities are themost precious of all that enrich the mind, and he shared them not only with his country (patrie ),but with the whole human race.
Euler: He was the best. But seeing as he's dead now, and I've been running the Academy de facto since he left, how about making me the next President, Sire?
Fritz: ...You're German.
Euler: Fuck you. I'm off to St. Petersburg as soon as the war is over.
Cahn: I'm very happy about a list of ideas! A document in the library, I guess? I feel like at Yuletide I've been like, "...what were those fic ideas I wanted again??" and I am sure there are several I'm just totally forgetting.
I was thinking about the possibility of putting the fic snippets on AO3 itself so that other people could read them :) (Oh come on, doesn't everyone want to read the outline of Fritz/Joseph marriagefic? OF COURSE THEY DO.) I was thinking maybe just one AO3 work, with each different snippet as a different chapter. Rheinsberg would work too, of course.
I'm for collecting all the prompts at a Rheinsberg post. Not sure about the round robin and fic snippets at the A03; for now, I'd rather see them also at Rheinsberg.
. She obviously doesn't remember for sure that they called Suhm Diablotin, and *everyone* has a devil nickname for Manteuffel, for obvious reasons.
On the other hand! Maybe Manteuffel was Diable, and his very short successor was Diablotin. That actually makes sense.
It does, and it's entirely possible that this was an early Suhm nickname before everyone got to know him better, and then Fritz named him Diaphenes for the reasons your beautiful story provides.
Lady Darlington aka Sophia von Kielmannsegg: speaking of putting the pieces together, her mother was the same Countess Platen wo played a role in bringing the Sophia Dorotha the older/Count Königsmarck affair out in the open and thus getting SD locked up for life and Königsmarck killed. No wonder SD was wary.
1) The library finally having hit the tipping point, I've now organized the files into a handful of folders. If anything isn't where it should be or you don't have access to it, let me know.
Fanworks are still at the top, but if we accumulate enough of them, they'll get a designated folder too. :)
2) his trashy tell all memoirs. Which, [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard, yes, I'd like to have in the library. I mean, sadly due to grandson censorship they're missing the vital years of 1730 to 1732, and thus can't tell us among other things how Uncle George first reacted when he heard what went down in Prussia with FW and Fritz, but maybe there are other useful quotes in them, and they do sound very entertaining.
Bowdlerized memoirs in the library, with obligatory 19th century editorial disclaimer that it was perfectly acceptable to be coarse then, so much so that he wishes he could have bowdlerized *more*, but the memoirs wouldn't make sense with entire passages suppressed, so he contented himself with some lacunae and rewriting. Sigh. Someone bring him his smelling salts.
If I find a more complete copy, I'll let you know, but for now, this is what we have. There appears to be a more modern (but still 1960s) edition, that's severely abridged down to less than 300 pages.
3) Lady Hervey's letters are also in the library, in the correspondence folder.
Also, any time you want anything, whether it be Lord Hervey's memoirs or an English or German translation of Voltaire on short notice, let me know, and I'll see what I can do! It's not like I hesitate to ask you to read things for us. ;)
4) And because I couldn't resist, also the memoirs of Princess Dashkova. We haven't talked about her, but she was Catherine's BFF, helped put her on the throne, headed the Russian academy of sciences, and seems generally cool. And in keeping with our Enlightenment theme!
This all sounds good to me too! (And yes, being editable by all three of us was why I thought a document would be a good choice for the prompts, which may change rapidly :D )
I'm happy for you to put snippets in Rheinsberg -- and yes, separate posts with tag sounds like a good idea :)
Having browsed through the first (bowlderized) volume of Hervey's memoirs: the man can coin a phrase, and is viciously hilarious. Alas for our purposes, he thinks G2's insistence of seeing himself as a German prince and being involved in German and continental politics is a waste of time at best and a danger to England at worst, involving the Brits in continental battles and always on the wrong side. (The Imperial one.) Hervey dies in the early 1740s, remember, so for him German = mostly the creaky old HRE and its politics. He hasn't got much time or attention for FW and Prussia, and of course the years 1730 - 32 are missing. But there is a bit on the G2 & FW relationship, and what there is is hilarious. (It also tells us that if Fritz had ever made it to England, he would have had the weirdest sense of deja vu...)
So, the FW passages:
To oppose the execution then of the Vienna Treaty made between the Emperor and Spain, France and England formed the Hanover Treaty, September 3, 1727, when the late King (i.e. G1) was at Hanover. As soon as this treaty was concluded, to which England, France, and Prussia were the original contracting parties, copies of it were sent to all the Courts and little States in Europe ; and whilst the Emperor and Spain were soliciting, on one hand, for accessions to their Treaty of Vienna, England and France were, on the other, strengthening, by as many powers as they could list, the alliance of Hanover. The defection of the King of Prussia from the latter was a sudden turn, and proceeded partly from a fear of his superior, the Emperor, and partly from a sullen, envious hatred he bore to his father-in-law, the King of England, who, from the time of his advancement to that crown, sank in his son-in-law's favour, just in the same proportion as he rose above him in grandeur. This was a great loss to the allies of Hanover, the King of Prussia having a standing force of 70,000 men. The forces of Spain were about 60,000, besides their naval power ; and the army of the Emperor in all, after the new levies, about 200,000. Muscovy was the only considerable power, besides Prussia, that acceded to the Treaty of Vienna ; for whilst the Czarina alone obliged herself, in case of a rupture, to furnish 30,000 men, the Electors of Bavaria, Cologne, and Treves, besides several other little German Princes that his Imperial Majesty had bullied, cajoled, or bought into his party, could muster no more than 27,000.
While Prince of Wales, future G2 had remained in Britain, but once he was G2, he irritated his English subjects by spending part of his time in Hannover, like his father had done: Whilst the King was at Hanover he had several little German disputes with his brother of Prussia, the particulars of which being about a few cart-loads of hay, a mill, and some soldiers improperly enlisted by the King of Prussia in the Hanoverian state, I do not think them worthy of being considered in detail ; and shall say nothing further about these squabbles than that, first or last, both of them contrived to be in the wrong. And as these two princes had some similar impracticabilities in their temper, so they were too much alike ever to agree, and from this time forward hated one another with equal imprudence, inveteracy, and openness. It was reported, and I believe not without foundation, that our Monarch on this occasion sent or would have sent a challenge of single combat to his Prussian Majesty; but whether it was carried and rejected, or whether the prayers and remonstrances of Lord Townshend prevented the gauntlet being actually thrown down, is a point which to me at least has never been cleared. There was another subject of dispute between the Kings of England and Prussia, which I forgot to enumerate, though it was the only one really of consequence, and that was with regard to the affairs of Mecklenburg. The short statement of their differences on this article was, whether the Prussian or Hanoverian troops (both ordered into Mecklenburg by a decree of the Aulic Council) should have the greatest share (under the pretence of keeping peace) in plundering the people and completing the ruin of that miserable duchy, already reduced to such a state of calamity by the tyrannical conduct of their most abominable, deposed, or rather suspended duke.
It's time for (another) War of the Polish Succession. As a reminder: France backs Louis XV's father-in-law, Stanilaus Lescyinski; Mt's Dad the Emperor backs August the Strong's son, future August III. FW is technically obliged to back both in his dual capacity of Elector of Brandenburg and King of Prussia. Then there's the battle of Philippsburg where no one does much but where Fritz, FW and old Prince Eugene are on one side and the Duc de Richelieu (and Voltaire as a tourist) on the other. G2 wants to join the war effort. His PM, Robert Walpole, and Hervey really really want Britain to stay out of hit. During these transactions abroad, the King was in the utmost anxiety at home. The battles of Bitonto and Parma, the surrender of Philipsburg, and the bad situation of the Emperor's affairs in every quarter, gave his Majesty the utmost solicitude to exert himself in the defence of the House of Austria, and to put some stop to the rapid triumphs of the House of Bourbon. For though the King was ready to allow all the personal faults of the Emperor, and was not without resentment for the treatment he himself had met with from the Court of Vienna, yet his hatred to the French was so strong, and his leaning to an Imperial cause so prevalent, that he could not help wishing to distress the one and support the other, in spite of all inferior, collateral, or personal considerations. In all occurrences he could not help remembering that, as Elector of Hanover, he was a part of the Empire, and the Emperor at the head of it ; and these prejudices, operating in every consideration where his interest as King of England ought only to have been weighed, gave his Minister, who consulted only the interest of England, perpetual difficulties to surmount, whenever he was persuading his Majesty to adhere solely to that. The King's love for armies, his contempt for civil affairs, and the great capacity he thought he possessed for military exploits, inclined him still with greater violence to be meddling, and warped him yet more to the side of war. He used almost daily and hourly, during the beginning of this summer, to be telling Sir Robert Walpole with what eagerness he glowed to pull the laurels from the brows of the French generals, to bind his own temples ; that it was with the sword alone he desired to keep the balance of Europe •, that war and action were his sole pleasures ; that age was coming fast upon him ; and that, if he lost the opportunity of this bustle, no other occasion possibly might offer in which he should be able to distinguish himself, or gather those glories which were now ready at his hand. He could not bear, he said, the thought of growing old in peace, and rusting in the cabinet, whilst other princes were busied in war and shining in the field; but what provoked him most of all, he confessed, was to reflect that, whilst he was only busied in treaties, letters, and despatches, his booby brother, the brutal and cowardly King of Prussia, should pass his time in camps, and in the midst of arms, neither desirous of the glory nor fit for the employment ; whilst he, who coveted the one and was trained for the other, was, for cold prudential reasons, debarred the pleasure of indulging his inclination, and deprived of the advantage of showing his abilities.
See what I mean about deja vu?
But the circumstance that gave Sir Robert Walpole the most trouble of all was that with regard to the war he found the Queen as unmanageable and opinionated as the King. There are local prejudices in all people's composition, imbibed from the place of their birth, the seat of their education, and the residence of their youth, that are hardly ever quite eradicated, and operate much stronger than those who are influenced by them are apt to imagine ; and the Queen, with all her good sense, was actuated by these prejudices in a degree nothing short of that in which they biased the King. Wherever the interest of Germany and the honour of the Empire were concerned, her thoughts and reasonings were often as German and Imperial as if England had been out of the question ; and there were few inconveniences and dangers to which she would not have exposed this country rather than give occasion to its being said that the Empire suffered affronts unretorted, and the House of Austria injuries unrevenged, whilst she, a German by birth, sat upon this throne an idle spectatress, able to assist and not willing to interpose.
More about Queen Caroline elsewhere. But Hervey's general attitude with its "why are they so German?" ness was widely shared among the British politicians and makes me think Heinrich wasn't wrong when in his RPG with AW when assuming Britain would not have been willing to go to total war for Hannover. Speaking of the family seat, G2 making another trip there is the occason of the last Prussia mention in volume 1, as his PM tries to argue him into not going. It's the mid 1730s:
Neither would it have been a very agreeable incident for the King of Great Britain, after a month's residence at Hanover, to be running back again through Westphalia to England with seventy thousand Prussians at his heels ; and yet, considering the terms he and the King of Prussia were upon at present, this might easily have happened, and was suggested by Sir Robert Walpole to deter his Majesty from this expedition ; but to their remonstrances his Majesty always answered, "Pooh!" and "Stuff!" or, " You think to get the better of me, but you shall not ;" and, in short, plainly showed that all efforts to divert him from this expedition would be fruitless.
You know what's nearly totally missing (unless it was in the censored by grandson passages)? The endless marriage negotiatioins for Fritz and Wilhelmine. There's one single aside about some there being some idea to marry Fritz of Wales to "a daughter of Prussia", and that's it. Otherwise, the entire rigmorale is of zero interest to Hervey.
If you're wondering: I know the English spell it "Hanover" with one n, but the town in Germany as well as the current noble family is spelled with two n over here, hence my usually spelling it with two. So, you may have gathered Hervey isn't much impressed, though he doesn't limit his not impressedness to the House of Hannover. Not knowing den einzigen König, he thinks the lot of them are rubbish:
For my own part, I have the conduct of princes in so little veneration, that I believe they act yet oftener without design than other people, and are insensibly drawn into both good and bad situations without knowing how they came there. (...) I think most of these political contenders for profit and power are, like Catiline and Caesar, actuated by the same principles of ambition and interest, and that as their success determines their characters, so accident determines their success. Had Csesar fallen in the plains of Pharsalia, like Catiline in those of Pistoia, they had both been remembered in the same manner; the different fortune of those battles is what alone constitutes the different characters of these two men, and makes the one always mentioned as the first and the other as the last of mankind.
Hervey on the coronation of G2 and Queen Caroline:
In October the ceremony of the Coronation was performed with all the pomp and magnificence that could be contrived ; the present King differing so much from the last, that all the pageantry and splendour, badges and trappings of royalty, were as pleasing to the son as they were irksome to the father. The dress of the Queen on this occasion was as fine as the accumulated riches of the City and suburbs could make it ; for besides her own jewels (which were a great number and very valuable) she had on her head and on her shoulders all the pearls she could borrow of the ladies of quality at one end of the town, and on her petticoat all the diamonds she could hire of the Jews and jewellers at the other; so that the appearance and the truth of her finery was a mixture of magnificence and meanness not unlike the eclat of royalty in many other particulars when it comes to be nicely examined and its sources traced to what money hires or flattery lends.
You may gather from this that contrary to what Halsband told me in his biography, Hervey writes critical stuff about Queen Caroline as well as about the rest of the family. This upsets Croker in the introduction, not least because Hervey also insists he loved the Queen and she loved him. Though our Victorian editor is most upset about what Hervey presumably didn't mean critically at all, to wit, Caroline a) despising her oldest son, and b) having no problem with her husband's mistresses. Speaking of whom, remember Lady Suffolk, who started out as Mrs. Howard and whom G2 took as an English mistress when he was still Prince of Wales when his Dad G1 upset people by bring a German mistress along? Whom G2 visited strictly by the hour and was more dutiful than affectionate towards as opposed to his wife? This is how Hervey introduces her:
She was civil to everybody, friendly to many, and unjust to none : in short, she had a good head and a good heart, but had to do with a man who was incapable of tasting the one or valuing the other.
Meanwhile, Queen Caroline: Her predominant passion was pride, and the darling pleasure of her soul was power; but she was forced to gratify the one and gain the other, as some people do health, by a strict and painful regime, which few besides herself could have had patience to support, or resolution to adhere to. She was at least seven or eight hours tute-a-tcte with the King every day, during which time she was generally saying what she did not think, assenting to what she did not believe, and praising what she did not approve ; for they were seldom of the same opinion, and he too fond of his own for her ever at first to dare to controvert it (" consilii quamvis egregii quod ipse non afferret, inimicus :"— " An enemy to any counsel, however excellent, which he himself had not suggested." — Tacitus) ;'' she used to give him her opinion as jugglers do a card, by changing it imperceptibly, and making him believe he held the same with that he first pitched upon. But that which made these tete-a-tetes seem heaviest was that he neither liked reading nor being read to (unless it was to sleep) : she was forced, like a spider, to spin out of her own bowels all the conversation with which the fly was taken. However, to all this she submitted for the sake of power, and for the reputation of having it ; for the vanity of being thought to possess what she desired was equal to the pleasure of the possession itself. But, either for the appearance or the reality, she knew it was absolutely necessary to have interest in her husband, as she was sensible that interest was the measure by which people would always judge of her power. Her every thought, word, and act therefore tended and was calculated to preserve her influence there ; to him she sacrificed her time, for him she mortified her inclination ; she looked, spake, and breathed but for him, like a weathercock to every capricious blast of his uncertain temper, and governed him (if such influence so gained can bear the name of government) by being as great a slave to him thus ruled, as any other wife could be to a man who ruled her. For all the tedious hours she spent then in watching him whilst he slept, or the heavier task of entertaining him whilst he was awake, her single consolation was in reflecting she had power, and that people in coffeehouses and ruelles were saying she governed this country, without knowing how dear the government of it cost her.
This was not how G2 saw it, of course: The King himself was so little sensible of this being his case, that one day enumerating the people who had governed this country in other reigns, he said Charles I. was governed by his wife ; Charles II. by his mistresses ; King James by his priests ; King William by his men—and Queen Anne by her women—favourites. His father, he added, had been by anybody that could get at him. And at the end of this compendious history of our great and wise monarchs, with a significant, satisfied, triumphant air, he turned about, smiling, to one of his auditors, and asked him—"And who do they say governs now?" Whether this is a true or a false story of the King, I know not, but it was currently reported and generally believed. The following verses will serve for a specimen of the strain in which the libels, satires, and lampoons of these days were omposed : — " You may strut, dapper George, but 't will all be in vain ; We know 'tis Queen Caroline, not you, that reign— You govern no more than Don Philip of Spain. Then if you would have us fall down and adore you, Lock up your fat spouse, as your dad did before you." '
And as for that love rat, Fritz of Wales:
The Prince's character at his first coming over, though little more respectable, seemed much more amiable than, upon his opening himself further and being better known, it turned out to be ; for though there appeared nothing in him to be admired, yet there seemed nothing in him to be hated—neither anything great nor anything vicious ; his behaviour was something that gained one's good wishes, though it gave one no esteem for him ; for his best qualities, whilst they prepossessed one the most in his favour, always gave one a degree of contempt for him at the same time ; his carriage, whilst it seemed engaging to those who did not examine it, appearing mean to those who did : for though his manners had the show of benevolence from a good deal of natural or habitual civility, yet his cajoling everybody, and almost in an equal degree, made those things which might have been thought favours, if more judiciously or sparingly bestowed, lose all their weight. He carried this affectation of general benevolence so far that he often condescended below the character of a Prince; and as people attributed this familiarity to popular, and not particular motives, so it only lessened their respect without increasing their good will, and instead of giving them good impressions of his humanity, only gave them ill ones of his sincerity. He was indeed as false as his capacity would allow him to be, and was more capable in that walk than in any other, never having the least hesitation, from principle or fear of future detection, in telling any lie that served his present purpose. He had a much weaker understanding, and, if possible, a more obstinate temper, than his father ; that is, more tenacious of opinions he had once formed, though less capable of ever forming right ones. Had he had one grain of merit at the bottom of his heart, one should have had compassion for him in the situation to which his miserable poor head soon reduced him ; for his case, in short, was this :—he had a father that abhorred him, a mother that despised him, sisters that betrayed him, a brother set up against him, and a set of servants that neglected him, and were neither of use, nor capable of being of use to him, nor desirous of being so.
There, there, Hervey. Celebrity break-ups are the worst, we know. Have a glass with Voltaire.
This is especially for cahn. The Princess Royal is the oldest daughter, Anne, married to William of Orange (not that one, another one). Like the rest of the family, see above, an enemy of her brother Fritz of Wales after he showed up as an adult:
Another judicious subject of his enmity was her supporting Handel, a German musician and composer (who had been her singing master, and was now undertaker of one of the operas), against several of the nobility who had a pique with Handel, and had set up another person to ruin him ; or, to speak more properly and exactly, the Prince, in the beginning of his enmity to his sister, set himself at the head of the other opera to irritate her, whose pride and passions were as strong as her brother's (although his understanding was so much weaker), and could brook contradiction, where she dared to resent it, as little as her father. What I have related may seem a trifle ; but though the cause was indeed such, the effects of it were no trifles. The King and Queen were as much in earnest upon this subject as their son and daughter, though they had the prudence to disguise it, or to endeavour to disguise it, a little more. They were both Handelists, and sat freezing constantly at his empty Haymarket Opera, whilst the Prince with all the chief of the nobility went as constantly to that of Lincoln's Inn Fields. The affair grew as serious as that of the Greens and the Blues under Justinian at Constantinople; an anti-Handelist was looked upon as an anticourtier ; and voting against the Court in Parliament was hardly a less remissible or more venial sin than speaking against Handel or going to the Lincoln's Inn Fields Opera. The Princess Royal said she expected in a little while to see half the House of Lords playing in the orchestra in their robes and coronets ; and the King—though he declared he took no other part in this affair than subscribing lOOO pound. a-year to Handel—often added at the same time that " he did not think setting oneself at the head of a faction of fiddlers a very honourable occupation for people of quality ; or the ruin of one poor fellow [Handel] so generous or so good-natured a scheme as to do much honour to the undertakers, whether they succeeded or not ; but the better they succeeded in it, the more he thought they would have reason to be ashamed of it." The Princess Royal quarrelled with the Lord Chamberlain for affecting his usual neutrality on this occasion, and spoke of Lord Delaware, who was one of the chief managers against Handel, with as much spleen as if he had been at the head of the Dutch faction who opposed the making her husband Stadtholder.'
A sleepless night (no reason: the hotel is lovely) makes for more Hervey, volume 2. To explain some of tihe following passages I have to point out Hervey, whenever he shows up in his own tale as an acting character, writes of himself in the third person, i.e. "Lord Hervey did this" or "then Lord Hervey said to the Queen", etc. A la Caesar in the Gallic Wars. Confusingly, though, he also writes in the first person - i.e. "I heard this from Sir Robert directly" or "I was present when the King said this" etc. I'm not sure whether he wanted his readers to believe a third party - an unnamed historian - was writing these memoirs; after all, he knew they wouldn't and couldn't be published within his own life time, and probably not for some time hereafter. Or maybe it was just a stylistic device, understood by readers of the time; I'm not sure, since none of the other 18th Century memoirs I've read so far employ it. (Certainly not Voltaire's. *g*)
Okay, onwards: G2 keeps irritating his English subjects with visiting Hannover, remember. On one such visit, his English mistress, Lady Sussex, gets married again despite being in her 40s. G2 hears about it from Caroline via letter, drags out his time in Hannover, and comes back with a German (!) mistress, Madame Waldmoden, the ultimate insult. This causes Lord Hervey to muse thusly:
Whilst the late King lived, everybody imagined this Prince loved England and hated Germany ; but from the time of his first journey, after he was King, to Hanover, people began to find, if they had not been deceived in their former opinion, at least they would be so in their xpectations; and that his thoughts, whatever they might have been, were no longer turned either with contempt or dislike to his Electoral dominions. But after this last journey Hanover had so completed the conquest of his affections, that there was nothing English ever commended in his presence that he did not always show, or pretend to show, was surpassed by something of the same kind in Germany. No English or even French cook could dress a dinner; no English confectioner set out a dessert ; no English player could act ; no English coachman could drive, or English jockey ride; nor were any English horses fit to be drove or fit to be ridden; no Englishman knew how to come into a room, nor any Englishwoman how to dress herself; nor were there any diversions in England, public or private ; nor any man or woman in England whose conversation was to be borne—the one, as he said, talking of nothing but their dull politics, and the others of nothing but their ugly clothes. Whereas at Hanover all these things were in the utmost perfection: the men were patterns of politeness, bravery, and gallantry; the women of beauty, wit, and entertainment; his troops there were the bravest in the world, his counsellors the wisest, his manufacturers the most ingenious, his subjects the happiest; and at Hanover, in short, plenty reigned, magnificence resided, arts flourished, diversions abounded, riches flowed, and everything was in the utmost perfection that contributes to make a prince great or a people blessed. (...)
In truth he hated the English, looked upon them all as king-killers and republicans, grudged them their riches as well as their liberty, thought them all overpaid, and said to Lady Sundon one day as she was waiting at dinner, just after he returned from Germany, that he was forced to distribute his favours here verydifferently from the manner in which he bestowed them at Hanover ; /that there he rewarded people for doing their duty and serving him well, but that here he was obliged to enrich people for being rascals, and buy them not to cut his throat.
The Queen did not always think in a different style of the English, though she kept her thoughts more to herself than the King, as being more prudent, more sensible, and more mistress of her passions ; yet even she could not entirely disguise these sentiments to the observation of those who were perpetually about her, and put her upon subjects that betrayed her into revealing them.
Hervey was a satirist, so I'm taking this a pinch of salt and the awareness that G2 believing some things were better in Hannover would already been taken as Britain bashing by most Brits, given their idea of England as the climax of civilisation. This said, I still find it amusing, and Mildred, if you do get around to writing Fritz in G2's presence, imagine how the Hannover and Germany praise goes down then. :)
Caroline, btw, never goes with G2 to Hannover; she stays because he always makes her regent in his absence. (Never Fritz of Wales.) Which she thoroughly enjoys. Hervey, ever ready to share scandal, can't report one more about Madame W. other than that he can't understand what G2 sees in her, so he turns towards another German lady in G2's entourage and claims one of "Aunt" Melusine's sisters has also been getting it on with not one, but two Georges and Fritz of Wales:
This Madame d'Elitz was a Schulemberg, sister to my Lady Chesterfield—a very handsome lady, though now a little in her decline, with a reat deal of wit, who had had a thousand lovers, and had been catched in bed with a man twenty years ago, and been divorced from her husband upon it. She was said to have been mistress to three generations of the Hanover family — the late King, the present, and the Prince of Wales before he came to England, which was one generation more than the Duchess of Valentinois " (mistress to Henry II.) could boast of in France. The present King had quitted Madame d'Elitz for Madame Walmoden, upon which a quarrel ensued between the two ladies, and the King thereupon had turned Madame d'Elitz out of the palace the year before; just therefore when the King set out for Hanover this year, Madame d'Elitz set out for England, where she now was with her aunt and sister, the Duchess of Kendal and Lady Chesterfield.
Note from our Victorian editor Croker: Hervey is wrong about Diane de Poitiers having slept with Francis I. of France as well as his son Henry II (the one married to Catherine de' Medici), that was slander, and he's probably slandering the third Schulenburg sister as well. He could be right. Anyway, how come we haven't heard of her before? ETA: Also: didn't Lord Chesterfield help Peter Keith leave Amsterdam hidden as part of his entourage? If Chesterfield was married to a Schulenburg sister, that means he's distantly related to the Kattes, thus also justifying imaginary descendant's name of Philip Stanhope in "Zeithain". Anyway: I propose someone should filk "The Schuyler Sisters" to "The Schulenburg Sisters" /ETA
Speaking of mistresses: G2 makes it known Fritz of Wales should finally tie the knot, and he's found an ideal bride while in Hannover: 17 years old Augusta von Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Queen Caroline adds he should ditch the girlfriend with the child she refuses to believe is her son's. Fritz of Wales, who is about to break up with Miss Vane anyway and according to Hervey has been eying another mistress, takes this parental news and commands well for a change and sends his flunky Lord Baltimore to Miss Vane, with a proposal that she should marry Lord Baltimore and get a pension, thus being cared for, but that it would be tactful to his future bride if she and Baltlimore were to travel abroad for a while. The kid, however, should stay here (and he swears he'll continue to take care of it). Miss Vane upon Hervey's advice and using Hervey as ghostwriter fires off an indignant letter that he's breaking her heart and no way will she leave the country her child is in and what kind of thrifty bastard is he anyway? The upshot of this is that the Lord Baltlimore marriage is off the table, Miss Vane gets a larger pension in her own name and doesn't have to leave the country. 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.
On to Lady Archibald Hamilton, according to Hervey the new mistress of the love rat. (Again, it's worth keeping in mind that the same Hervey who is writing all this managed to juggle his own wife, Miss Vane, Stephen Fox and Fritz of Wales.)
Lady Archibald Hamilton was not young, had never been very pretty, and had lost at least as much of that small share of beauty she once possessed as it is usual for women to do at five-and-thirty, after being the mother of ten children. Her husband, Lord Archibald Hamilton, was a Scotchman, uncle to the Duke of Hamilton, a Lord of the Admiralty, and of so quiet, so secure, and contented a temper, that he seemed cut out to play the passive character his wife and the Prince had graciously allotted him. His wife was cunning, and had just sense enough to make that cunning useful to her, when employed to work on such a husband as Lord Archibald Hamilton, and such a lover as the Prince of Wales ; and succeeded perfectly well in flattering the first into an opinion of her virtue, and the latter into an admiration of her beauty and understanding, which she facilitated by the much easier task of making the Prince believe she was entirely captivated by his. But as there always are some people who doubt of the most notorious intrigues, as well as others who make no doubt of what only themselves believe, 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. He saw her often at her own house, where he seemed as welcome to the master as the mistress ; he met her often, too, at her sister's; walked with her day after day for hours together tete-a-tete in a morning in St. James's Park ; and whenever she was at the drawing-room (which was pretty frequently), his behaviour was so remarkable that his nose and her ear were inseparable(...)
And you thought Voltaire was bitchy about Fritz and Fredersdorf. Lady Archibald Hamilton becomes lady-in-waiting to the new bride, Augusta. Augusta has gotten one of those long distance royal marriages where a substitute gets send and brings the bride home, to which Lord Delaware:
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 ; for, except his white staff and red riband, as Knight of the Bath, I know of nothing belonging to the long, lank, awkward person of Lord Delaware that could attract her eyes ; nor do I believe there could be found in any of the Goth or Yandal courts of Germany a more unpolished ambassador for such an occasion.
Augusta, poor girl, arrives in Britain and throws herself on the ground before the King and Queen, which wins them over for a few days at least. Hervey, however, is not impressed: She could speak not one word of English, and few of French; and when it was proposed the year before to her mother, when this match was resolved upon, that she should be taught one of these languages, her mother said it must be quite unnecessary, for the Hanover Family having been above twenty years on the throne, to be sure most people in England spoke German (and especially at Court) as often and as well as English. A conjecture so well founded that I believe there were not three natives in England that understood one word of it better than in the reign of Queen Anne.
Hervey, I think that says rather more about British nobility than it does about Augusta's Mom's assumptions.
The Princess was rather tall, and had health and youth enough in her face, joined to a very modest andgood-natured look, to make her countenance not disagreeable; but her person, from being very ill-made, a good deal awry, her arms long, and her motions awkward, had, in spite of all the finery of jewels and brocade, an ordinary air, which no trappings could cover or exalt.
Now if you think only women who have sex with Fritz of Wales are the objects of Hervey's scorn, you're mistaken. He's just as malicious about the woman who would have married Fritz of Prussia, to wit, Princess Amalie (as her mother calls her) or Emily (as Hervey calls her). The only princess Hervey likes is Princess Caroline, but as for Amalia/Emily/Amalie:
The Queen used to speak to Lord Hervey on this subject with as little reserve when the Princess Caroline was present, as when alone ; but never before the Princess Emily, who had managed her affairs so well, as to have lost entirely the confidence of her mother, without having obtained the friendship of her brother; by trying to make her court by turns to both, she had by turns betrayed both, and at last lost both. Princess Emily had much the least sense, except her brother, of the family, but had for two years much the prettiest person. She was lively, false, and a great liar ; did many ill offices to people, and no good ones; and, for want of prudence, said as many shocking she said disagreeable ones behind their backs. She had as many enemies as acquaintances, for nobody knew her without disliking her. 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. Princess Caroline had affability without meanness, dignity without pride, cheerfulness without levity, and . prudence without falsehood.
So much for the maybe Queen of Prussia. I should say here she sounds far more amiable in her wiki entry, which is the only other thing I've read about her. Who knows?
But for all that Hervey doesn't like G2, he drops the occasional oddly endearing anecdote as well, like the fox hunting dialogue. The Fritz of Wales bashing from him and everyone showing up in these memoirs, though, is absolutely relentless. Our Victorian editor just throws up his hands and says he has no idea just why both parents hated FoW so much even before he joined forces with the opposition and thus gave them cause, even before he arrived in England and was still a youngster in Hannover and according to visitors (including, btw, Hervey on his Grand Tour) an amiable, bright child with a lot of charm.
Now, Fritz of Wales' budget is much less than what his father G2 used to get when he'd been Fritz of Wales, and when this still doesn't change after marriage, he doesn't just keep asking his parents for more, no, he tries to get his budget heightened via parliament. This scheme doesn't work, partly Sir Robert Walpole and Hervey work against it. (Hervey asks for a peerage for Stephen Fox from Walpole given that Stephen did his best to cajole his parliamentary colleagues to side with the King, not the Prince, and for some thank you money for Henry Fox, who did the same.) Meanwhile, FW's rants against Fritz are completely matched by Queen Caroline's words about her son and his attempt to make common cause with MPs:
"My God," says the Queen, " popularity always makes me sick ; but Fritz's popularity makes me vomit. I hear that yesterday, on his side of the house, they talked of the King's being cast away with the same sang-froid as you would talk of a coach being overturned ; and that my good son strutted about as if he had been already King. Did you mind the air with which he came into my drawing-room in the morning, though he does not think fit to honour me with his presence or ennui me with his wife's of a night?"
Events come to a head when Augusta gets pregnant and Caroline tells everyone she thinks Augusta is faking it, and will substitute a bought baby, and then Fritz of Wales refuses to tell his parents when the birth is expected when G2 orders him and Augusta to Hampton Court, and when his wife gets into labor, insists on taking her to St. James. (Which however you look at it was an incredibly selfish jerk move - that drive with a woman in labor must have been hell - but of course Hervey doesn't think all the relentless hate from the rest of the family might have given Fritz of Wales the inspiration of not wanting his parents present at the kid's birth. As mentioned in my Horowitz write up , the baby is a sickly girl which, Caroline says, is the only reason why believes it's Augusta's baby after all. She's nice to Augusta when she visits but doesn't say a word to Fritz of Wales. The rupture between son and parents is now complete. Letters are exchanged. Some courtiers try to mediate, but: Lord Essex telling, and asking, at the same time, if he should call one of the Ministers, the Queen said, " For what? to give an answer to Fritz ? Does the King want a Minister to tell him what answer he likes to give to his son ? or to call a council for such a letter, like an aifair d'etat?"
In between everything else, an old plan gets revived - separating Hannover and Britain, with giving one to Caroline's and G2's fave William, future Billy the Butcher. Says our editor in a footnote: George I., in his enmity to George II., entertained some idea of separating the sovereignty of England and Hanover (Coxe^s Walpole, p. 132) ; and we find from Lord Chancellor King's ' Diary,' under the date of June, 1725, " a negotiation had been lately on foot in relation to the two young Princes, Frederick and William. The Prince (George II.) and his wife were for excluding Prince Frederick, but that after the King and the Prince he should be Elector of Hanover, and Prince William King of Great Britain ; but that the King said it would be unjust to do it without Prince Frederick's consent, who was now of an age to judge for himself, and so the matter now stood " (Campbell's ' Chancellors,' iv. 318). Sir Robert Walpole, who communicated this to the Chancellor, added that he had told George I. that " if he did not bring Prince Frederick over in his life-time, he would never set his foot on English ground." This early enmity of his parents to Frederick Lord Campbell cannot explain ; " but the Prince had his revenge by perpetually disturbing the government of his father till, in 1751, the joyful exclamation by George II was uttered, ' Fritz is dead!' "—ib.
Which Hervey, who died in the early 1740s, didn't live to see. (Nor Fritz of Wales as a father even his enemies couldn't bash; FoW raised his children - he had nine all in all - with English as their first language, he gave them all a bit of the garden in his estate they were to garden themselves as they wanted, which started a life long passion in future G2, "Farmer George", and he played with them and encouraged them with music.) What he did live to see where endless "We hate Fritz" parties with the other royals:
The Princess Caroline, who loved her mother and disliked her brother in equal and extreme degrees, was in much the same state of mind as the Queen ; her consideration and regard for her mother making her always adopt the Queen's opinions, as well as share her pleasures and her afflictions. They neither of them made much ceremony of wishing a hundred times a day that the Prince might drop down dead of an apoplexy— the Queen cursing the hour of his birth, and the Princess Caroline declaring she grudged him every hour he continued to breathe ; and reproaching Lord Hervey with his weakness for having ever loved him, and being fool enough to think that he had been ever beloved by him, as well as being so great a dupe as to believe the nauseous beast (those were her words) cared for anybody but his own nauseous self—that he loved anything but money—that he was not the greatest liar that ever spoke—and would not put one arm about anybody's neck to kiss them, and then stab' them with the other, if he could censored passageShe protested that from the time he had been here six months—so early had she found him out—she had never loved him better or thought better of him than at that moment.'
At this point it must have occurred to Hervey that future readers might doubt how reliable he is re: Fritz of Wales, so he does some self analysis about his motives, in the third person:
The truth is, if his temper was susceptible of provocation, he might, without being capable of feeling long provoked at the same circumstance, have continued long warm in his resentment against the Prince, since scarce a day passed without some new lie the Prince had made of him during the quarrel, as well as some virulent thing he now said of him, being reported to Lord Hervey by the Queen or the Princess Caroline, who both hated the Prince at this time to a degree which cannot be credited or conceived by people who did not hear the names they called him, the character they gave him, the curses they lavished upon him, and the fervour with which they both prayed every day for his death. It would be endless to endeavour to repeat all the lies Lord Hervey at this time heard the Prince had coined of him, but one or two of the most remarkable I will insert. The Prince told the Queen and all his sisters that Lord Hervey had told him everybody said his Royal Highness was known to have such a partiality for the Princess Eoyal, and to be so incapable of concealing anything from her, that nobody doubted (Note from Editor - lines stricken out in manuscript by grandson). Another was that Lord Hervey, from the moment he first came about him, had been always endeavouring to give him ill impressions of the Queen and all his sisters ; to blow him up against his father and a hundred times endeavoured to persuade him to make a party to move for his 100,000?. a-year in Parliament^ as well as brought offers to him from people in the Opposition, and made use of Miss Vane's interest to get them accepted. I do not relate these things as any justification of Lord Hervey's conduct at this time ; for if personal resentment, and a desire to vex and mortify the Prince,- had any share in his views and counsels at this juncture, I own he is not justifiable, as nothing can justify the meanness of a man of sense desiring, from a principle of revenge, to hurt those by whom he has been injured, further than self-preservation requires, or the silly received laws of mistaken customary honour enjoin: but take this particular (with regard to the Prince) out of Lord Hervey's character, and I believe it would be impossible to give another instance of the same sort of wrong to anybody in any part of his conduct ; though few people had more enemies, or had reason to be irritated against more people, if being abused is allowed to be a reason.
Yes, Hervey, I'm sure you were the milk of human kindness otherwise. Good grief.
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!
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 spent all my free time today reading German, after not reading much in the past few days. and got through the first 52 pages! That's up through "A conflict is looming." Definitely easier reading than the Wilhelmine memoirs. I'm thinking of reading this book first, then picking up volume 2 of the memoirs.
No comments tonight, as it's my bedtime, and also cahn could use some time to catch up. ;)
Good luck with the Enlightenment nominations, guys! Sorry I'm not more help, but, you know, German and sleep. #priorities But I'm following the developments and silently cheering you on.
Hanna Smith and Stephen Taylor: Hephaestion and Alexander: Lord Hervey, Frederick, Prince of Wales, and the Royal Favourite in England in the 1730s.
Which is an excellent, highly readable essay of about 30 pages succeeding in what sets out to do, put the Hervey/FoW relationship into context and drawing conclusion. The authors always make it clear when they're speculating, but also on what grounds they do so.
In terms of context for Favourites: generally speaking, in public consciousness there lived two types of Favourites. The Bad Favourite, obviously, bleeding the realm dry, which is why Princes should not have just one but should dispense their favour among several. (Only human affection doesn't always work that way.) And the Good Favourite, the Trusted Faithful Lieutenant, who is loyal to his lord (or lady) but also speaks truth to power when necessary. When Sarah Churchill re: her relationship with Queen Anne prides herself on her candor, she's also pointing towards this role model. In terms of antique role models, Hephaistion is the Good Favourite - "He, too, is Alexander", loyal but never expoitative, unafraid to talk back to Alexander when needed, which is emphasiized in the most popular Alexander biography read at the time, the Quintus Curtius Rufus one. Which is one of the association Hervey will go for when picking the name. At the same time, the homoerotic association the Alexander/Hephaistion relationship evoked was definitely there as well, especially for someone who was as well read in the classics as Hervey was.
The other important context the authors establish is that of the changing attitude towards same sex relationships. In Stuart times, the self proclaimed libertines included m/m and f/f in their erotic poetry, Rochester prominently. Same sex relationships were also used for slander, especially in a political context; again, see Sarah Churchill, when losing Anne's favour to Abigail Masham, causing scandalous poetry and pamphlets being written that accuse Abigail of a lesbian relationship with Anne. Still, there was a great deal of laissez faire in the nobility, and all the nobility clubs like the Kit Kat club which had a great deal of ribaldry and (het) sex objects swapping also had at the very least homoerotic jokes and phallocentric conversations through the 18th century in England, but as time went on, the attitudes changed. By the 1760s, a self proclaimed libertine and free thinker like John Wilkes isn't just aggressively heterosexual but aggressively attacking homoerotic relationships as decadent and coded into princely depravity and tyranny.
Hervey and his entourage were more old school, obviously. Now I had noticed Hervey in the later part of his memoirs mentioning our old aquaintance Charles Hanbury Williams as a young man, aka Poniatowski's future mentor, the Fritz-loathing future envoy. He was a part of Hervey's wider social circle, friends with both Fox brothers (i.e. Hervey's boyfriend Stephen and Stephen's brother Henry), and guess what:
Winnington and the Fox brothers were also close friends with Hanbury Williams, who, in February 1740, penned a series of verses on Winnington's abandonment of Horatio Townshend for Teddy Byng. The following July, Hanbury Williams wrote an ode to Horatio Townshend that was even more explicit: ' Come to my Breast, my Lovely Boy! Thou Source of Greek & Roman Joy! And let my Arms entwine 'ye; Behold my strong erected Tarse, Display your plump, & milk-white Arse, Young, blooming, Ligurine!
(Our authors note that Hanbury Williams and Henry Fox were also notorious womanizers and H-W wrote just as explicit het verses, so: bi, rather than gay.)
As noted in my previous Hervey write-ups, Hervey being attacked by Pulteney specifically for his sexual ambiguity is also a sign of this changing time, of homoeroticism put more and more into a negative satiric context, and othered. And that was if you were a protected by your status noble. Really news to me and very important for not just the British climate towards same sex relationships was this bit of information:
And what may have given their fears extra impetus was the growing climate of moral panic over sodomy, itself provoked by the sensational trials of around three hundred men and boys for sodomy which were taking place in many of the leading cities of the United Provinces from 1730 onwards.The Dutch sodomy trials had swiftly made their way into the British press. Such reports not only expressed their abhorrence of this 'abominable Vice' and described in detail how the 'detested Criminals' were executed by being partially strangled, 'burnt with Straw', and drowned." They also noted how the accused included those who had held important political office. As the London Evening Post commented in June 1730, 'all Ranks are infected to that Degree, that the Magistrates are almost at a Loss how to Extinguish this Infernal Heat', and cited by name two prominent Dutch politicians suspected of the crime. The Daily Journal went further and described the fury of the Amsterdam crowd when it became known that those who had been convicted of sodomy amongst 'the richer Sort of People' had been granted the privilege of a private execution. 'The Populace arising in Arms, and demanding publick Execution of the Rich as well as the Poor ... the Magistrates were obliged to send to the Hague ... to quell this Mob'.' Thus, when Pulteney wrote of how the 'unnatural, reigning Vice' of which he accused Hervey had 'of late, been severely punish'd in a neighbouring Nation', he was making both a highly emotive connection that his readers would have immediately understood-and suggesting, by implication, that Hervey deserved the same brutal punishment.
Yet another context in which the Hervey and Fritz of Wales relationship plays out is that of the Royal Family. Here our authors do us the immense service and point out the timing, and remind us of the dates:
1716: 20 years old Hervey, when on his Grand Tour, visits Hannover and as urged by his father take the trouble to make nice with 9 years old Fritz, in order to impress the future monarch.
December 1728: adult Fritz of Wales finally arrives in England following the death of G1 and the coronation of his father as G2. During this time, however, Hervey is on his second Europe journey, this one with Stephen Fox.
October 1729: Hervey returns to England.
May 1730: Hervey becomes appointed Vice Chamberlain
1731: Hervey's friendship with FoW peaks; this is where the two preserved letters from FoW to Hervey (all others were destroyed) are from. (Hervey's own original letters to FoW were also destroyed, - after Fritz of Wales died, Augusta supposedly burned most of his correspondance - but luckily Hervey kept copies of his outgoing mail, so we do have his letters to the prince in copy.)
Late autumn and winter of 1731: Hervey writes angry letters about FoW to boyfriend Stephen Fox and to Lord Bristol, Hervey's father. FoW's affair with Hervey's mistress Anne Vane becomes public; Hervey is replaced as FoW's advisor by Bubb Dodington (what a name!).
April of 1732: Hervey tries to blackmail and bully Anne Vane into getting the Prince to take him back as advisor, thereby allienating the Prince even further. The relationship is over for good.
You may have noticed from the dates that Hervey establishing himself as royal Chamberlain and as the confidant to Queen Caroline and Hervey's friendship with Fritz of Wales happen exactly at the same time. This wasn't clear to me before, and it's hugely important. Our authors speculate that Hervey might have had Buckingham in mind as a role model of a generation uniting Royal Favourite. (cahn, the Duke of Buckingham started out as the Favourite (and lover) to James I., befriended James' son Charles - future Charles I. - while Charles was still Prince of Wales, and thus later after James' death continued firmly as Charles' Favourite as well until his assassination.) An example for this is that Hervey's letters to FoW show that parts of them were meant to be shared with Queen Caroline and read out loud; she expected it. (Hervey marks the parts not for public consumption.) However, the Buckingham model was not one that could work with the Hannovers. Instead of getting closer to his estranged family, FoW drifted further away, and sharing a confidant with Mom was really not likely to be workable given this. What's more, Hervey in the Sir Robert Walpole vs Pulteney struggle had sided with Walpole, the PM, and again, given that Walpole of course was 100% behind G2 in terms of what budget and freedom the Prince of Wales should have, Fritz of Wales was starting to eye the parliamentary opposition.
When it comes to "why did Hervey respond to the breakup to badly?", the authors don't think it was about Anne Vane as such, because Hervey's set was fine with mistress sharing more often than not, and Hervey never comes across caring about Anne Vane for more than sex. (Especially when compared to the love letters he writes to Stephen Fox or Algarotti.) But being dumped for a man like Dodington, that's what hurt. Along with losing the prospect of being the next King's Favourite. But the authors don't think it was just all careerism on Hervey's part, not if he'd been even partly serious with picking Hephaistion as his role model. Hephaistion dumped by Alexander is unthinkable.
The question as to why Fritz of Wales dumped Hervey gets replied by taking all these various factors into account. Fritz of Wales wanted to establish his own identity outside the family he didn't get along with, and Hervey simultanously vying for Mom's favor and his own was an active negative rather than a positive here.
(BTW, re: the Hervey and Caroline relationship, the author says the relentless emphasis on Caroline as a mother figure here is on the one hand stretching things - since Caroline was only thirteen years older than Hervey - but on the other allowed the two of them to express their affection scandal free and in public; no one, not even the most relentless Hervey hater who accused Hervey of having pimped Anne Vane to FoW and of being Sporus and an evil gay etc., ever accused him of having illicit designs on the Queen's virtue, or the Queen to behave in any way inappropriate towards a man not her husband. This is a great contrast to what happened after of FoW' death with his poor widow, Augusta, who was accused to have an affair with her son future G3's tutor Lord Bute, who'd later become G3's minister of state (and also Lady Mary's son-in-law). Going by all we know, there was zero truth in that, and G3's fondness for Lord Bute was because the man had been a father figure to him in his adolescence, but there was still a great deal of hostility, satire and misogyny directed against Augusta, and even her coffin was cursed by the crowd as that of a shameless whore. With, again, zero evidence that she ever had done anything with Lord Bute.)
The Pulteney scandal and the ensueing duel plus even more scandal didn't seem to immediately affect FoW's feelings for Hervey - Hervey even makes a light hearted joke about it in one of his letters at the time - but the authors speculate that the affair in combination with the Dutch scandal of the trials against gay men and the fact that Fritz of Wales started to court a good public opinion at this point in order to get some standing in England (where he was looked at as a foreigner while brother future Billy the Butcher had been born and raised in the country) might have all contributed to Fritz of Wales deciding to trade in Hervey to Dodington.
Lastly: when they were close, how close where they? The essay starts with that quote from Hervey's letter to Stephen Fox where he says he wished he could love Fritz of Wales the way he loves Stephen Fox. Now, when I had read that quote first, in Halsband's Hervey biography, I had read it negatively, meaning "since this relationship could be the making of me, I wish I could love the guy at all, and I pretend to, but I don't". This, of course, is not how Stephen Fox took it; he seems to have read it as "I wish I could love the Prince the way I love you, i.e. romantically", hence the further exchange of tearful letters and Hervey apologizing and swearing he loves no one the way he loves Stephen.
On the other hand, Fritz of Wales actually uses the same nickname for Hervey as did Stephen Fox, and in one of the two preserved letters gets a bit teasing and flirtatious about it:
(T)hese show a deep affection for Hervey which leaps from the page. Frederick adopted the classical mythological personas of Orestes and Pylades for Hervey and himself, writing in one letter as 'the warm Orestes, to his Dear Pilades'. Orestes was the son of King Agamemnon, and he and Pylades were celebrated in classical literature as the inseparable friends who were willing to die for each other. The pair feature in Ambrose Philips's popular neo-classical drama, The Distrest Mother (1712), a play with which the prince was already acquainted, having ordered a command performance of it in January 1729. Frederick also had a more familiar name for Hervey-'My L[or] d Chicken', and 'my Dear Chicken'-an epithet, it seems, about Hervey's lack of physical robustness, and one which Hervey also liked to use about himself in his letters to both the prince and Stephen Fox. In 1730, then, Frederick liked to suggest, or indeed saw, Hervey as his intimate, immutable companion.
Of course FoW had girlfriends throughout the relationship and pre Anne Vane confided to Hervey about them - one of Hervey's "Hephaistion" letters asks whether "Roxana or Statira is in favour", making references to Alexander the Great's wives - but that doesn't exclude some homoerotic frisson, for, as the authors write: It is possible to read Hervey's and Frederick's relationship as having a similar heterosexual and homoerotic charge. This might explain Frederick's rather flirtatious wish in one letter to bait Stephen Fox about Frederick's and Hervey's friendship. Frederick wrote to Hervey, when he was visiting Stephen Fox in Somerset, by joking that 'being a fraid that this Letter should be opened if I sent it directly to you so I make a direction to Mr Fox, as if it was written to You by a Lady, to make you be teazed a little a bout it Adieu my Dear'. Perhaps the most compelling-if opaque-evidence for the complexity of Hervey's and Frederick's feelings for each other comes from Hervey's letters to Stephen Fox in the autumn of I73I. Hervey's and Frederick's relationship seems to have reached an intensity by late August I73I that unsettled Hervey. On 26 August Hervey told Fox that the prince had been seriously ill with a fever and added mysteriously, 'I should say many things to you if you were here which I shall not trust even to a Cypher. Solomon you know says speak not in Palaces for the Walls have Ears, nor of Princes for the Birds of the Air will reveal it.'
In conclusion: how an erastes and eromenos relationship can go truly, badly wrong, even if it remained subtextual between them.
Leafing through these reports, I keep thinking "OMG Mildred has to see this", so have a few impressions. First of all, this envoy is distinctly lower on the hacking order than all the previous envoys, unsuprisingly, since Braunschweig/Brunswick is another principality in the HRE, not a completely sovereign nation like Denmark or England. Even Saxony is different, due to being also the Kingdom of Poland at the time. So S. is either ultra cautious or really not so much in loop as the others, thought I at first (until getting to Katte's execution). There's no report on any friction between Fritz and FW until January 1730, and then it's very cryptic and only identifiable by footnote with the editor saying this is probably a hint of that. S. is the envoy equivalent of the kind of (old fashioned, not today's) conservative tabloid that writes cute family stories about the Royals and would never, or hardly ever, report anything nasty. So we hear what little Heinrich, age 4, gave SD as a birthday present (a china tea pot - I take it this was selected for him by someone else), or how the wetnurse for baby Ferdinand was selected (which I did find interesting), but nothing at all about FW shouting at his son (and oldest daughter), let alone manhandling or publically humiliating him. As late as August 18th, S. only knows Katte was arrested "for corresponding with a person of high rank".
Then, after Fritz' arrest is really really public, he keeps reporting rumors that he's about to be forgiven by Dad just the next few days, in September that Katte managed to clear himself almost totally and is facing just a few years of arrest, max. Wilhelmine is consistently reported sick for the remainder of 1730, that's the explanation S. keeps giving for why no one is allowed to see her anymore. She's in a bad state of health. Home arrest, what home arrest? On October 14th, he's noticed the messengers being sent from Wusterhausen to Köpenick (where the war tribunal was held) and back and optimistically concludes FW wants to reopen the palace at Köpenick as Fritz' new residence and forgiveness is really really imminent now. He also has heard that the tribunal wanted to deliver an ultra strict sentence on Katte, but FW, being the merciful King he is, has intervened and provided mercy and will soon declare Katte's pardon.
Just when I was ready to conclude he just doesn't have luck with his spies and paid informants, I check out the November entries, and lo, not only does S. provide a pretty accurate report of the execution, complete with dialogue between Fritz and Katte, but he also, near the end of November (25th) in another entry, has read the three letters Katte wrote (to the King, to his father and to his grandfather) in copies. (He still insists on lightside FW, saying that the King read Katte's letter only two days ago but bitterly regrets it and swears he'd totally have pardoned Katte if he had read it first.) (He also says Hans Heinrich has offered his resignation, and so has Katte's superior Natzmer, but that FW refused to accept it and on the contrary that the Katte family is in for some favors.) And then in December we get back to rumors of Fritz' imminent return to parental favor and neighbourhood, i.e. evidently false intelligence. So how come his intel on the execution is suddenly dead on? S., you are a man of mystery. Here's what he writes, and you know the scene so well that I give you Rokoko German:
Berlin, den 11. November 1730. Nach dem jüngst gemeldetermaßen, der Lieut. v. Katte gestern vor 8 Tagen, unter einer Escorte von 30 Mann Gens d'Armes in Begleitung des Ritt-Meisters v. Aßeburg und des Gens d'Armerie Feld Predigers nach der 10 Meil von hier entlegenen Veste Cüstrin gebracht und daselbst den 3. Tag darauf, am vergangenen Sonntage, abgeliefert worden; hat der, auf Königl. Befehl, dahin voraus gegangene Geh. Rath pp. Gerbet, in Gegenwart des gleichfalls aldar schon an gelangt gewesenen Obristen v. Derschau und anderer dazu bestimmter Officiern, demselben abermahls das Todesurtheil vorlesen und auf den folgenden Tag, dessen die Execution ankündigen müßen. Der Feld Prediger hat demnach die Devotion mit ihm continuiret, da andern Morgens der Condemnatus bald nach 7 Uhr im Schloße sich auf einen daselbst angefahrenen Sand-Haufen, gleich gegen des Cron-Prinzen Fenster über, eingefunden und wie Se. Königl. Hoheit ihn darauf angeredet. Mons. Katte! ich bitte euch vergebet mir, wann Ich euch zu leyde gethan und Ursache an euern Tode bin; und er sich dagegen hinwieder ganz constant in Antwort vernehmen laßen: Ihro Hoheit haben nicht Ursache um Vergebung zu bitten, weil Sie mir nichts zu wieder gethan und ich selbst meines Todes Ursache bin. Er darauf mit Gebet sich zu Gott gewandt, so folglich sich selbst die Augen verbunden und also in gleicher Constance des Henckers Schwerd Schlag abgewartet, der dann auch so glücklich gelungen, daß mit einem Hieb der Kopf vom Cörper abgesondert worden; welchem necht man dem Leichnam mit dem ausgebreiteten schwarzen Tuch bedecket und also bis 2 Uhr Nachmittags zum Schau liegen laßen; da man selben in einen Sarg geleget und die bestellte 12 Bürger des Orts selbigen so folglich zur Beerdigung auf den Kirchhof getragen; mit welcher Tragedie dann in so weit dieser Actus geendet, und wird gesagt: daß, wann der König dieses decollierten Lieutnants Verbrechen nach der rigoeur hätte bestrafen lassen wollen und nicht consideration für die viele vornehme Verwandten Se. Maj. selben mit einerweit eclatanteren Todes-Strafe belegen können.
Given S. earlier reports all those imminent pardons, the turnaround to "FW totally could have made it worse!" (i.e. FW's own argument) is especially startling. And the fact that it all checks out - the dialogue exchange, the sandheap, Katte binding his own eyes.
In the same November 25th entry where S. mentions the three letters and having read copies, he also provides us with this priceless anecdote about, wait for it, young AW confronting FW with Katte:
Sonsten wird pargiret: daß der zweyte Königl. Prinz jüngster Tagen beim Exercieren, da ein Officier ihm die Handgriffe bey bringen sollen, ganz ermüdet worden und nicht mehr damit fortfahren wollen; wie nun des Königs Majt. zu Ihm gelaget, wenn Du nicht exerciren willst, so sollst Du auch kein port d'epée mehr tragen; worauf der Prinz geantwortet: mein lieber Papa! das will ich wohl gleich wieder geben; wie der König darauf repliciret: Wilhelm! so kanst Du auch kein Officier sein; hätte der Prinz erwidert; da frage ich nichts nach, mein lieber Papa läßet ja einen Officiers die Köpfe abhauen. Was nun hiermit weiter vorgefallen, übergehet man billig mit Stillschweigen; inzwischen habe der König geargwohnet: daß gegen den Prinzen jemand dergleichen Reden geführet haben müßte; weswegen Er etwas hart angelaßen, solches zu bekennen; Er hat aber keinen genannt; indessen soll der Kriegs Rath Lindener als Informator, deswegen ein scharfes Bad haben ausstehen müßen.
English translation, because I need you to understand this if google doesn't deliver: It's also told that the second royal prince the other day during drilling grew exhausted when an officer was supposed to teach him all the right grips, and hadn't wanted to continue; then the King came to him, he told him, if you don't want to drill anymore, you'll have to return your sword, to which the Prince replied: Dear Papa! I want to return it at once! and the King answered: Wilhelm! Then you can't be an officer! To which the Prince supposedly returned, I don't care for it, my dear Papa orders his officers' heads to be cut off. What then happened should rather be covered with silence; by now the King suspects someone has been talking in front of the Prince with such speeches, and he's approached him somewhat harshly to confess to this; but (AW) did not provide anyone's name; but still, the Councillor Lindener as the likely informant has been in hot waters because of this.
Continuing with my job moonlighting as Peter Keith's biographer, some developments this week.
* Remember when we found his eulogy and it said he spent three years at Trinity College in Dublin, but mostly reading alone in a room, and I said I *thought* it sounded like he didn't enroll but was there informally, but I couldn't be sure? I've finally managed to confirm that.
...By emailing Trinity College and asking the manuscripts department to check their archives. :D They had no record of him in the admissions lists, nor in the catalogue of letters to, from, or related to him.
But now we know! This had been bugging me enough that when the eulogy turned up while I was writing "Lovers", I tweaked a sentence in the first draft to be ambiguous instead of a blanket statement that he never attended university.
I admit that when I found he had a connection to Trinity College, I was delighted, because there are many archives in Germany I would like to email with questions like this, but I don't speak German well enough to carry on a correspondence. But English-language archivists are going to get emails from me. Or as iberiandoctor once put it, dubconning people into doing research for my fandom. ;)
* In the course of this correspondence, I found a sentence in Wikipedia that was added during the latest round of edits, stating that Fritz refused a suggestion from the British to appoint Peter Keith envoy on the grounds that Keith wasn't experienced enough. I was initially skeptical, because Wikipedia, but then I saw the citation was Koser.
Sure enough! Koser cites his source as an exchange in the Political Correspondence, which goes like this:
Letter from the British to Podewils: Please tell Fritz we think his new envoy should be Peter Keith. "A man like him would have more credit with us than a more skilled but less well-intentioned negotiator."
Fritz to Podewils: I just bet he would. Too bad it's in *my* best interests to send a negotiator who's more skilled and less well-intentioned toward them.
In more detail, slightly paraphrased, Fritz's letter was very interesting:
I'm very surprised at this letter you forwarded. After perusing it closely, I have to assume that either Keith has been intriguing and the English were happy to oblige him, or, what is more likely, the English don't want me sending someone who can penetrate their system and shed light on their affairs for me. Someone like Keith would be very convenient for them, since they regard him as half a Briton, and since he has no idea of what it is to negotiate, they would do whatever they wanted. And that's not even counting that he's poor, which is a consideration that drives out all others.
Meaning that he's bribable because you won't pay him and he's not independently wealthy? I guess you would know all about that driving out all other considerations, Fritz. :P
Fritz: Look, I lied to Dickens about my debts, got all the money I wanted, and all I had to do was promise not to try to escape, but I made sure there was a loophole and I tried to escape anyway. It's not that hard to accept bribes ethically if you're willing to double-cross your bribers!
So...while I agree that like Lehndorff, Peter is probably not someone I would send to do hard negotiating, it is interesting that both Fritz and the English view him as half Briton (remember Lehndorff saying he'd picked up English manners), and Fritz doesn't trust him not to be intriguing with the English behind his back.
Oh! I should mention the date. February 7, 1747. So during that 1740s period when their relationship was evidently at an all-time low.
I do agree with Fritz that it's much more likely that the English wanted a favorable envoy, than that Peter was scheming. And it's interesting that they thought of him ten years after his stay (1736-1740 in Portugal, remember), and after his patron, Queen Caroline, had died in 1737.
Peter Keith's son, in contrast, later gets to be envoy to the Sardinian court in the 1770s, I guess because he's fully Prussian in Fritz's mind and has some idea of what it is to negotiate.
Incidentally, this reminds me that Fritz sent Algarotti to Turin in 1741, but didn't entrust him with full envoy credentials or official responsibility, but told him to go secretly and try to find out what he could without letting on why, but of course no one in power would talk politics with him because he didn't have an official position, and he was such a celebrity that everyone immediately knew where he was and guessed why, and so that was a disaster.
All of which is to say that Fritz generally doesn't trust the people he met socially with anything resembling power. Which is why Fredersdorf getting to be spymaster and treasurer is so unusual.
* 1747 was also the year that Peter became curator at the Academy of Sciences. His predecessor died in March, so he wasn't yet curator when this letter was sent.
I'd always taken that appointment to mean that Fritz was at least vaguely favorably disposed toward Keith getting to pursue his intellectual dreams by holding what we now call academic-adjacent positions. And I put a line in "Lovers" to reflect that.
But after reading the Maupertuis biography, I find that Fritz gave Maupertuis a free hand with appointments, unlike his successors. I had been basing my impression on Fritz's involvement on the fact that after Maupertuis died, the Academy had to submit its lists of proposed members to Fritz for approval or veto.
So now that we know that Maupertuis and Keith were at least on good enough terms that the Pollyanna of eulogists could describe his former colleague Keith as a valuable friend to his current boss Maupertuis (i.e. take with a grain of salt), it's possible Fritz had nothing to do with this appointment.
Since I read the Maupertuis bio as research for "Lovers", I removed all references to Fritz approving membership, but I left in Peter's gratitude for the academic-adjacent positions, because if my escapist fic isn't for shipping my ship, what is it for? :P
Plus, Peter became an honorary member on February 16, 1744. Fritz started micromanaging the institute in the absence of Maupertuis (who had left after the debacle of getting captured at Mollwitz) in mid January, 1744. And everyone who'd been part of the self-organized society in 1743 was immediately grandfathered in on January 23. And Maupertuis wouldn't show up in Berlin again until August 1745.
So it seems very much like Fritz personally approved Peter's membership, even if not the curatorship.
* Oh! Koser says that Fritz kept Peter "far from service in his army as well as from his person." Now, you guys know my theory on this, but I have some evidence: he gave him a court position first, evidently with SD, and a commission as an officer when Peter finally asked for it. If he was trying to keep Peter out of the army because, what, he thought he was half Briton? Why would he let him in when he asked?
Besides, I just got to the part in Oster where Oster says Wilhelmine probably expected Fritz to summon her immediately to court, and she was disappointed when he didn't. (This I believe, because I've always been surprised that he didn't.) He did summon Algarotti, Euler, Maupertuis, etc. to court...and then proceeded to ignore them while he went off to war. You know if Suhm had lived, he would have been in this group.
So I still think Fritz was trying to keep Keith from dying, not keeping him at a distance from his army per se, and getting distracted by war and politics, not personally avoiding him out of displeasure. I think Keith got the standard Fritz treatment of low pay, being taken for granted that he'd be around when Fritz had time for him, lack of clear communication about his intent, and some favors that were much bigger in Fritz's mind than in the recipient's.
* Finally, the odds of me finishing the fix-it fic, which I haven't written since May (I had to drop it for RMSE and then German, because I have a limited number of projects I can work on at one time--you'd think I could do a little each day, or alternate, but it doesn't work like that1), are low, but I'm still enjoying plotting it. And I thought you would like to know that this week, I finally came up with a way for Peter and Ariane to meet in the same year that they met in real life. <3
Now, she still has to agree to 1) move to France, 2) convert, if they want to get married, but that's handwavable with "love".:D
Peter may also have to convert; I'm toying with the idea of Fritz, Wilhelmine, and Katte converting while privately sneering at the whole thing, but Peter being a much less visible and slightly more devout individual who silently reads his Bible at home and doesn't attend illicit Huguenot services and just doesn't go to Mass...until suddenly he needs recognition of his marriage. I think I like it, because it shows that the love goes both ways, just as the understanding about his affairs with men involves compromise. (SOMEONE has to be a good husband. :P)
1. My advisor in grad school very much wanted me to finish my dissertation and also turn chapters into published journal articles at the same time, and I told her those were both lovely ideas but that it was either/or, and since one got me to a PhD and the other didn't, I finished the dissertation and did not turn the chapters into articles.
August 21st 1728 is the entry about the punished pages, plural; I also misremembered the punishment. Just before this info, there's a telling Fritz anecdote reported, apropos the portrait painted of the Russian princess Natalya which is making the rounds in Potsdam:
It was said to the Crown Prince on the 11th in jest: this princess could be a bride for him. He, however, replied: He wouldn't think of a bride for many years more, but if he had to choose one, he wouldn't allow himself to be dictated to. He would hope that his Majesty his father could imagine how he'd have liked it to get a wife forced on him against his will and would have to marry her. On the 18th, too of the King's body pages had to stand on the block for four hours at Neumarkt because they'd forgotten to bring the King's overcoat along in the morning for the parade when it had started to rain.
Stratemann includes a sympathy poem written for Fritz in late 1730. (I'll get to by whom and why.) In German. With a reply poem by Fritz. In German. Note that the poem contains nothing objectionable, they just hope Fritz will get through the dark times and that the sun of grace will shine on him again. Stratemann, interestingly, also provides the entire (French) text of the poem Katte wrote while under arrest at his regiment still in Berlin which you probably know from various biographies. Here it is:
Vers composés par Mr.de Katte, lors qu'il-etoit Prisonnier dans la Guarde des Gensd'Armes.
Cest toi fortune inconstante, fausse Divinité! Qui pour remplir nôtre attente. charme nôtre Vanité; Menteuse! dans tes promesses, Injuste! dans tes largesses, Terrible! dans tes revers, Il n'-y-a jour qui-finisse Sans nous montrer bon Caprice par mille tours divers. Celui qui la curiosité portera a lire cette ecriture apprendra que l'ecrivain a-été mit aux arrests par l'Ordre desa Majesté le 16me d'Auot 1730 non sans esperance de se revoir bientôt én liberté, quoique la façon d'ont-il-a-été gardé Par le temps et la Patience En obtient les fruits d'une bonne Conscience; Si vous voulés savoir qui c'est, Le nom de Katte vous l'apprendra, Toujours constant en Esperance.
This so far is the sole passage in French. Since the next few entries are all Wilhelmine and family related, I'll fast forward here to another intriguing Katte mention, this time of Hans Heinrich, more than half a year later:
Berlin, June 31st 1731: Supposedly General Lieutenant v. Katte after leading his regiment at the revue before the King got off his horse and put his sword at the King's feet, and asked again for his demission, whereupon his majesty showed himself very much displeased. Rumor even has it (Hans Heinrich) got arrested as a consequence.
Now, obviously the arrest didn't happen - I don't think biographers would have overlooked that! -, but this is also the first time I heard about Hans Heinrich making this gesture. Since the revue was a really big public spectacle (this is also why Fritz was pissed off when Heinrich didn't salute him properly in the after the 7 Years War, remember), such a gesture would have been quite something. And does argue it's FW Hans Heinrich is struggling for forgive. Not to mention that it gives the lie to the "Hans Heinrich totally on board with FW executing his son!" version. All the more so since Stratemann is really the most FW friendly envoy ever.
Back to the winter of 1730/1731. Case in point: the same entry that has the AW anecdote also includes this story: It is said that his royal highness recently wrote a submissive letter to His Majesty his lord father, and in it, due to the now allowed changes regarding his earlier limited stay in Küstrin, has given submissive thanks, with many sayings from the bible, which is very seemly towards an once angry but now soothed father, and the King when the letter was read to him squeezed many tears from his eyes. His Majesty also supposedly declared that the entire country was open to his Fritz, he should be able to go and live within the country wherever he pleases.
This, mind, the same month that we know FW wrote the furious "if there would be 200 000 Kattes I'd have them beheaded" rant, had SD toast to England's demise and according to Guy Dickens said he was now sorry re: Katte whose death had to rest heavily on Fritz' conscience, what with Fritz being the one to blame.
S. notes that Ulrike is much in favor, being other than Charlotte FW's favourite daughter for now. So how does this family celebrate the Christmas of 1730:
December 23rd 1730: Her Majesty the Queen spent most of the day with her daughter, the oldest princess, who still hasn't recovered from her illnesss. The second and third prince, too, have come down with a strong cold and cough. The Crown Prince now presides over the government of Küstrin and reports almost daily from events there to the King's greatest pleasure. When his Royal Highness for the first time arrived at the council chamber, the second Secretary, as an acccomplished poet, had welcomed him with a few verses, whereupon the Prince briefly replied in the same fashion. These verses circulate only in a few hands, and I'm not yet allowed to get them, but I will try and will communicate them accordingly.
December 24th: The court jeweller has created presents in gold and silver in the worth of 12/m Reichstaler, of which the Queen had golden pieces for her cabinet, the princes and princesses had silver lates. Princess Charlotte, our Prince of Bevern's bride, received an expensive jewel, some silver kitchen supply, shovels and pliers, and a few pretty things to dress herself up. His Highness her groom shall receive a set of laces, next to a golden set Point d'Espange and other treats sent to him on the occasion of Holy Christ's feast. Now the Princess Ulrike had asked for a while to receive the King's portrait as a Christmas present, and it was among her gifts; when the third prince (i.e. Heinrich) noticed, he asked for a portrait as well, and did receive one, about which this princess showed herself somewhat disgusted. The King went on Christmas Eve in his own person with an entourage to the local Christmas Market and bought entertaining pleasantries for the little princes and princesses. (...) At the first day of Christmas, the widowed Madam General v. Dörfling had had carried a good bowl of cooked Sauerkraut with a roasted fat goose to the palace, as his Majestly loves to eat this dish, and on the holiday a bowl with beautiful apples, which has been received very graciously.
Okay, while I doubt Heinrich asking for Dad's portrait was about more than "big sis got something special, I'd like to have one of those as well", it does provide ammo together with the fish for supper at the start of the year if you want to make a case that FW at this early point indulged him somewhat. And of course FW going shopping for his kids shows him in full loving pater famiilias vein. Our editor chides Wilhelmine again for her harsh, unloving picture of her parents. However: at this point Stratemann still insists she's simply ill. In 1731, he'll finally admit she wasn't ill, she was locked up, for months, and I'll get to the conditions which honestly brought it home to me she really was no less imprisoned as Fritz had been, just in her own rooms. Now, in late 1730, talk is out FW wants to marry little Sophie to BayreuthFriedrich. Sophie therafter keeps getting referenced as the bride of the Erbprinz of Bayreuth. Then, on January 6th, Stratemann reports this rumor:
January 6th: After the King these last days told the Princess Sophie that the Prince Heir of Bayreuth desired to have her as his wife, she started to cry heartily and pronounced that she didn't want to marry at all, but wanted to stay with the clerical career for which she'd been meant earlier. The King supposedly returned to this: it couldn't happen, the bridegroom would soon arrive, who'd please her being a handsome prince, which the princess gave no reply to, but later towards her governess Fräulein de Joccourt sounded very sad about. Now the completely unfounded rumor is making the rounds that the oldest Princess, who is still sick, wishes to replace her sister as the future Abbess of Hertford.
This is one of the few times where I think we can pinpoint who is Stratemann's source for this story, i.e., Sophie's governess. Bear in mind Sophie is barely pubescent at this point. And destined to marry the godawful Schwedt cousin. Poor Sophie.
On January 13th, Stratemann finally admits in his report that a) Fritz' release and rejoining the family isn't so imminent after all, and b) Wilhelmine isn't sick, she's in disgrace, locked up, and still not reconciled with Dad.
Of the Crown Prince, nothing has been said, and so it doesn't seem that he will appear at the 24th on the occasion of his birthday in Potsdam after all. The oldest Princess remains completely in her room, and thus circumstances argue that a complete reconciliation on both parts is still full of impediments. Her Majesty the Queen, however, enjoys with her husband the King a most endearing complete harmony and bliss, and thus rumor has it that she's expecting another child.
Yeah, not so much, Stratemann.
January 27th: As soon as the King left for Potsdam on the 19th, the Queen went to the oldest Princess, which she hadn't seen during the fourteen days spent with the King, and this most regarded Princess, who hasn't left her room since the 27th of August, which means in five months, went downstairs for to the Queen on the following Sunday the 20th, which I guess the King must have permitted; still, one is assured that the King does not yet permit (Wilhelmine) to appear in front of him, and the much hoped for complete reconciliation with the Crown Prince still seems to be far away; and yet the young gentleman lives very pleasantly at Küstrin and is so popular among so many that the artisans and low workers have said: they want to donate a penny of their daily salaries to his royal highness; then the nobility in the entire country keeps sending food supplies; in the midst of this the King took from the Prince the sole much loved valet left and transfered the later to Halle to get an appointment as Torschreiber (Gate Secretary, literally) with 30 Reichstaler per year as a salary, about which he (the valet) pretended to be embarrassed, but in the end accepted it with devotion.
February sees the rumor that Bayreuth Friedrich (who, if you recall, isn't in Germany, he's on his Grand Tour) has died, which of course isn't true.
On March 10th, Wilhelmine is still in disgrace: The reconciliation of the oldest royal princess has still made no progress, and there isn't much hope for it; by now, the court preachers have received an order to pray with her once a week in her room, but not to preach to her. She hasn't received communion for eight months now, and since August 16th has not been allowed to see any ladies in her chamber other than the governesses of the royal princesses and the Queen's Dames d'honeur. According to rumor, she tries to pass her time with music.
Not receiving communion might not seem a harsh punishment to us, but it's actually really nasty, because if Wilhelmine had died during that time, she'd have died in a damned state. Anyway, see what I mean about Wihelmine being kept as much a prisoner as Fritz? Actually more so, since he gets to attend and work in the Küstrin government, which might not be the most thrilling of occupations but is at least something other than sit and brood in a room.
On March 24th, FW allows Wilhelmine to come from Berlin to Potsdam but still under great restriction and without seeing her. Otoh, he does see his other daughters
At once when they arrived His Majesty ordered the fourth princess, Sophie, the bride of the Prince of Bayreuth and the youngest Princess Amalie to him, and when he saw the Princess Sophie, he was somwhat surprised at her size. Two months ago, she'd entered her thirteenth year, and has grown taller than her three older sisters, and so the King said to her: Sophie! What have you done to grow so tall, you grow taller than me, let me see your shoes. When he saw her shoes had heels of about two inches, the King said: Away with those! You don't need them anymore. On the next morning, the King visited the smallest prince, who is now nearly a year old, and took along the two above named princesses. When the King noticed that the Princess Sophie wasn't as tall anymore as the other day and saw with appreciation the flat shoes, he told her very sweet things.
And finally, Wilhelmine gets a break:
At last the royal decision regarding the oldest Princess has been made that she was allowed to receive communion at a service to be held in her chamber, which she'd wished to do in the cathedral with the rest of the people but has been refused to for unknown causes; when the second court preacher Steinberg this last Sunday held a service in the audience room of the princess, her royal highness, her stewardess Fr. v. Wittenhorst-Sonsfeld, the Queen's lady of honor Fr. v. Bodenbruch, and the Baroness de Joccourt, the governess of the three younger princesses, attended. One still hopes the Princess after having spent eight months in her retreat would be reconciled, but this hasn't happened yet, but it is expected to happen within the next four weeks and the arrival of the foreign dignitaries.
Again, I say the Baroness de Joccourt is Stratemann's likely source, not just for these but for all the stories featuring the kids.
More stories from Küstrin about how everyone, not just local nobility but French, Dutch, British and from the other German states keeps sending food and drink to Fritz but under incognito names and everyone is rooting for FW to release him.
Poor Gundling dies, and Stratemann gives a description of his ghastly funeral. Gundling's arch enemy and successor, Fassmann, who ridiculed him in a speech at said funeral quickly finds out what it means to be FW's new punching bag. He's sent fool garnments and refuses to wear them (Stratemann: But they were presents! How could he!). Flash foward to July, and Fassmann has had it, and we get a nasty reminder of 18th century antisemitism to boot:
Councillor Faßman who'd been appointed Court Fool has fled, because he does not want to be a Bouffon de la Cour, and it is said he has deserted to England. Most recently, he had a clash at Potsdam with a Jew named Marcus who has often been used by the court for such offices, and had to receive a slap in the face by the later, which the Jew had been licensed to do by a higher authority, whereupon (Fassmann) threw him on the ground and kicked him, and tore at his hair and strangled him so much that he'd have killed him if (Marcus) had not been saved by the surrounding officers. Faßmann then said to the King: he'd once had set the condition that he didn't want to be vexed by anyone, no matter how high ranking, much less by an infamous Jew, and thus he's left royal service and did not return.
Back to spring: May 31st: After the arrival of the Prince of Dessau at Potsdam on the 10th, the later along with the Duke of Bevern has had a long conversation with the King which mostly concerned the reconciliation with the Crown Prince and the oldest Princess. The King supposedly remained harsh and wasn't movable, but one still flatters oneself: that his Majesty will be moved by these two best of princes. If it comes to this, the Prince of Dessau will go to Küstrin himself and pick the Crown Prince up there. Regarding the oldest Princess, it's said that within a few days, her destiny will be cleared up. A few days ago, she has been visited by General and Secret Councillor of his Majesty v. Grumbkow as well as the General Leutnants v. Borck, v. Podewils and v. Thulemeier, all four arriving in a chaise without announcement at the palace, and spent over an hour with the Princess. The sisters of the Princess and their governesses as well as her stewardess v. Wittenhorst-Sonsfeld and two of the Queen's ladies had been present at first then suddenly all had retired from the room and some with them greatly upset so that they had to take the red powder by Stahl. Of the proposition which was made to the Princess by these ministers of the cabinet, there is much conflicting rumor. Some claim to guess that a new marriage has been proposed to the Princess, either with the ruling Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth (i.e. BayreuthFriedrich's DAD) or with his Prince3 Heir who otherwise had been meant for the fourth Princess. But everything is still uncertain, and it's been covered up. But one thing is true; when the Princess came down to supper this evening, she wasn't, as she used to since allowed to supper, in a cheered up mood, but completely withdrawn in thoughts, and hardly spoke a word during the entire meal.
Editor Richard Wolff: the Margravine gives one of her typical exaggarated descriptions of this meeting in her memoirs of these four gentlemen trying to "bully" her into marriage.
And lo, it's public submission time for Wilhelmine:
Before the arrival of the King, the oldest, the fourth and the sixth Princess (and the first one after an encounter with the Queen) positioned themselves in his Majesty's rooms and received the King; when the oldest Princess threw herself at the King's feet and pleaded with his Majesty: to forgive her with what she has angered her merciful Papa; and squeezed out some tears while saying this, at which the King, too has cried a bit, and thus this Princess, after a retreat to her room of nine months, has not only been received again with grace but has now been put in new circumstances; but what will happen next and whose bride she shall be, time will show. The Queen has been received by the above named three princesses and Her Majesty had been very glad to find the oldest Princess, whom she hasn't seen for four months, reconciled with the King, for we all know that this Princess above all others has been close to the Queen's heart. And now the only thing lacking is that the Crown Prince, too, will be released into Freedom, to make everyone's joy complete.
In fairness, as of this point, anyone would have said Wilhelmine had been SD's favourite daughter and confidant, given not just SD pushing the English marriage for her. Still, the contrast between SD resenting the hell out of Wilhelmine's accepting the Bayreuth marriage in rl (and in younger Seckendorff's description when Wilhelmine is already married, so we don't have to rely on Wilhelmine's own word about this) and Stratemann's description is striking.
One hadn't believe the affair at first; but since the oldest Princess has submitted herself completely to the King's will, she's been gifted with much rich clothing, a purse and other precious triflings; and thus there can be no doubt (as to the reconciliation). Princess Ulrike, who since a year has been the King's greatest favourite and had been preferred to her older sister Sophie, has now been degraded due to a minor mistake. Despite her being only eleven years of Age, she still possess a great mind and thus a noble spirit; and thus she's very touchy about this and torments herself: at the King's demand, the Queen has taken the diamond earrings which the Queen of Sweden had given (Ulrike) some years ago away, and then she had to sit at the table with her youngest sister Princess (Amalie) despite having been allowed to sit for a year at the King's table.
On June 5th, Wilhelmine's engagement to Bayreuth Friedrich officially takes place. Stratemann thinks Bayreuth Friedrich only learned at the last minute he wouldn't get Sophie but Wilhelmine. To truly appreciate his description of the engagement party, bear in mind SD hated Bayreuth Friedrich's guts. (Or rather, hated that he married her daughter, making him the symbol of her defeat in the marital battle.)
The noble engaged couple sat at the high point of the table, and the King's pleasure was above measure. His highness the Duke of Würtemberg emptied a large cup while toasting the health of the engaged couple. After supper, the groom led his bride to the ballroom, but the King at once took her from him and started the dance with her; then he danced with the Princess Bride of Bevern (i.e. Charlotte, and then with Princess Sophie. The first two were warmly embraced by the King, and they kissed his Majesty's hands, which was repeated twice or thrice. When the two youngest princesses saw that the King had not asked them to dance, they, too, kissed his hands, and thus the King has danced with his five princess daughters en suite. The noble groom had been told by the King to ask the Queen to dance, but when her Majesty excused herself, the Prince Heir shrugged; but when the King tried again by telling her that the King asked her to do this, she no more refused but danced with the Heir Prince, whereupon Her Majesty did the same thing with the Duke of Würtemberg and the Duke of Bevern, and finally with the King himself, who held both of her hands, during the dance itself, too. He kept kissing her hand, and the ball ended only at three in the morning.
Meanwhile ,the British envoy: Wilhelmine looked pale and if she'd faint the entire time, and the Queen was upset and almost in tears, and the King glowered. Taking the British bias into acccount, I suppose the truth was somewhere in between, but Stratemann's polyanna-ness is still striking. Mind you, FW able to dance with all five of his daughters is not a picture one usually has of him.
Wilhelmine gets supportive poetry (in German) too, on the occasion of her engagement. An anonymous poem is making the rounds according to Stratemann:
One sees the secretly circulating verses that an adroit poet has made on the occasion of the oldest Princess' future departure for Bayreuth, and which go thusly:
Geh, Englische Prinzeß! nach deinem werthen Francken, Gott und die Nach-Welt wird dir deine Treue dancken, Indeßen bleibt dein Ruhm der ganzen Welt bekandt: Denn wo Du lebst, da ist das rechte Engelland.
The poem makes a pun between "Englisch" as in "English", and "Englisch" as in old fashioned German for "Engelhaft" in modern German, "Angelic". You might recall that Isabella makes a similar pun in a letter to Maria Christina. I'll try my hand regardless. First the literal translation:
Go, English/Angelic Princess! with your worthy Franconian, God and posterity will thank you for your loyalty, and in the meantime, your fame is known to the entire world, for where you live, that's where the true country of the English/Angels is. Verse:
Oh English Princess, go with your Franconian man, God knows your loyalty, and posterity will thank you then. Still, all the world knows of your fame: For where you live, that's Angelcountry all the same.
Now according to Stratemann, FW is hell bent on making Wilhelmine and future Margrave have sex and consumate the marriage before it's a marriage. Why? Because that would make it legal as a marriage, and rumor has it the Brits are making trouble by pointing to Fritz' of Wales' earlier claim to Wilhelmine's hand, which supposedly invalidates her current engagement. Mind you, having read Hervey's memoirs where the whole thing only gets half a sentence mention, I really doubt that, but I can see SD spreading such a rumor via her daughter's governesses, which, see above, I think were Stratemann's sources.
And then, come August, we get the big Fritz submission, of which Stratemann reports nothing new. That's as far as I got.
It's what it says on the box, really, I'm new to all of this :'D
So, uh, hi! I'm Jana, I've talked to mildred_of_midgard on AO3 and I was told that I could introduce myself/be part of the chat! I have no idea whether I picked the correct page for this! The joy of joining a new social network!
I'm 20 years old and about to enter my third semester of history and art history at uni. I've been interested in Fritz since I was about 13, but, being 13, I didn't get many proper sources until way later, so all of my knowledge is kind of... a huge mess of anecdotes and a few primary sources that I read way later. I am currently attempting to solidify my knowledge on Fritz with more books and more primary sources and honestly, your page has been a goldmine, it's SO fun to read!
My first language is German, I'm alright at English and I can manage some French. I've drawn some comics about historical anecdotes years ago and intend on maybe doing so again and, as of right now, I'm in the middle of painting a pop art style portrait of Katte to match the pop art style poster of Fritz that my parents got me from the Deutsches Historisches Museum. That kind of sums up my level of weird.
Uh... yeah! I really hope I picked the right place to post this!
Since cahn asked on AO3, I thought I'd just put the link here. I attempted to translate Friedrich Mythos und Tragödie back in 2016 to show it to an American friend of mine (because I needed other people to suffer like I did). The subtitles were... alright enough, but I revised them last month, so now they're actually in the vague vicinity of good :'D The amount of serotonin I got when, after four years, I finally understood that FW says "You will serve in the Gens d'armes regiment" and not "asdsghjdsfjhkg SERVE!" - amazing.
I am not a professional translator and sometimes I am just plain lazy (I couldn't be arsed to spend too much brain power on retranslating the Katte/Wilhelmine duet...) soooo there are probably still mistakes. Anyway, here .
Geez, my love-hate relationship with this musical. I mean, some of the songs are great. Sometimes it is obvious that they did do their research (other times it is obvious that they did not give a shit about it...). I do think the cast had potential. Even though they picked the worst day to record for poor Tobias Bieri (Crown Prince Fritz), he sounds so much better in the bootlegs I've seen...
Post- submission at Küstrin, Stratemann reports that now the marriage game for Fritz has been restarted. Also, his return to Potdam is, once again, imminent:
"The local rooms of the Crown Prince are with all eagerness being redecorated, and it's even said that the King had ordered all the wallpaper that used to be in these rooms, and all the books and papers which were still here, to be burned."
Same entry (August 25th 1731): the next unlucky guy to succeed Gundling and the rage-quitting Faßmann doesn't fare much better:
The successor of the late Councillor Gundeling and of Faßmann as court historian, v. Drost, has been offered by the King a salary of 1000 Reichstaler, but he keeps protesting and doesn't want to accept this office and the treats going with it; but he has still been ordered to Potsdam, and it's not doubted that given time, he'll accept everything since he's not capable of avoiding this.
Don't be so sure, Stratemann. Fritz gets three new beautiful riding horses sent to him to Küstrin; he's now reported as socializing with the Wreechs. Meanwhile, Wilhelmine has been allowed to drink coffee with Fritz of Bayreuth Otoh, Stratemann reports Fritz' secret library has been sold, though the buyer, a "French merchant", no name given, has announced he's holding it for Fritz as a future present.
It's the anniversary of the battle of Malplaquet (most devastating European battle pre 7 Years War; young FW, Seckendorff and Grumbkow were all youthful participants, and their relationship started there) which FW celebrates each year, this time by being so drunk he can't get up from the floor anymore without his servants' help.
September 22nd: hunting time, AW allowed to participate for the first time, Heinrich has fallen sick : The royal Prince August Wilhelm has been permitted to go hunting for the first time, with a gun, and he has sent the first shot partridge to the old governess of the royal children, Madame v. Roucoulles, as a present.
(Adult AW will not be a fan of hunting.)
Meanwhile, Drost, too, has gotten the hell out of Prussia rather than accept Gundling's job, "and nobody knows where. His colleague the advocate, however, has shown himself here again, and will probably be commissioned in his place. (...) The Medicus shall wear the same costume as the late Gundlng, and if he wants to, it will be permitted to him to let his wife come to Prussia, and it will be allowed to him to take his creditor, v. Lövenklau, as his Maitre d'Hotel.
So will this concessions make the guy accept the job? Stay tuned...
In October, FW proves he doesn't necessarily stiff actors: A strong man who has arrived from Italy this week has been at the King's and has displayed his strength and has presented comedies with his troupe which consists of about 20 people, whereupon both Majesties and the court were so pleased that ihe did not only receive gifts but has been permitted to show his arts in this country for money; which is why he has ordered a house made of wood to be built at Neumarkt here, and willl debut next week.
However, there's still an ongoing problem:
The King supposedly has a burning desire to debate again with a learned man like Gundling or Faßmann history as well als all matters in Europe, and wants to have such a man near his person again, which is why the vice director of Halberstadt, v. Dacheröden, who has proved during his last stay here that he is a capable man, has been suggested. So the King in order to close the arrangement quickly has given an order already.
Yeah, well...
It's getting near November, when Wilhelmine is supposed to marry. Her sister Friederike, who has married the Margrave of Ansbach even before Fritz' escape attempt, is coming to Berlin for the first time since that marriage for the occasion. FW decides to hire some musicians to celebrate her arrival.
Thus a few of the royal Polish musicians have come from Dresden. What's more, the so called Dönhoff-Horrible Band Of Musicians has arrived as a backup, which consists of lame clubfeets, one eyed and humpback bodies, so that everyone will be shattered by the ensuing noise.
I bet. Ugh at 18th century abelism.
November 20th 1731: Wilhelmine's wedding starts: The Crown Prince has not come from Küstrin, despite the Princess Bride kept begging with letter after letter for it, and no royal order has been edited to him, either.
As you noticed from Oster, SD is much displeased at the new comedians making sex jokes and wants to protet her daughters from same, so the three youngest princesses aren't allowed to attend the comedian appearances anymore. Stratemann gives a thorough description of the ceremonies and what everyone was wearing. Like I said, he's the old fashioned conservative gossip magazine of envoys. The bedding ceremony:
The King has helped the groom undress, the Queen has helped the bride, and then the later's eyes were bound while the bridal crown which was taken from her head has been given to another, who happened to be her youngest sister Princess Amalie, who took it. Then the noble couple had to go into bed in charming sleeping wear in front of all the illustrious guests, while the King held a little joking sermon and has sung a funny song, and then said: they should kiss each other now. Which they either out of awe or out of dumbness did not do, but probably wanted to postpone for another time. After everyone withdrew, the bridal couple was transported in chaises to the apartment destined for them, to which the King and the Queen followed them. They wished them a good night, and withdrew again; meanwhile, dancing kept up until late at night. (...)
Post Scriptum. De dato Berlin, 24. Nov. 1731. Last night around 7 pm and when the ball had already been started hours earlier, the Crown Prince, at first completely unknown and not with his cavaliers, has appeared at court. As soon as he was recognized by the princesses, his sisters (plural, yes), the joy has been indescribable, and many, many people both illustrious and not have shed tears of joy, including the Crown Prince himself. His Royal Highness looked somewhat serious while there was dancing, and hasn't danced with a lady other than his sisters and some princely people. He wore a grey suit, which had silver tressings at the edges, and which is referred in this country as a Secret Councillor Frock. So it is said that the King two days ago has sent an urgent message to Küstrin calling his royal highness here.
Stratemann will later say something more about Fritz at the wedding, which is typical for his style: first the white washed version, then somewhat later the admittance there were maybe some flies in the ointment after all.
There's a sketch of the wedding table and who sat where! So if anyone wants to write fanfic about Wilhelmine's wedding, this is really the book to consujlt. Even Polyanna Stratemann notes that SD retired early each evening of the wedding festivities after the first day.
FW is reported in a great mood throughout the week of Wilhelmine's wedding celebrations:
The King shows his tenderness towards the royal children in public, as they kissed the King's hands a dozen times, and have been allowed to kiss him on the mouth as well, which both the Margravine of Ansbach (Friederike) and her sister, the Princess Bride of Bevern (Charlotte) did at once, and then the former had to kiss her husband on the King's demand; morever, the Princess of Bayreuth and the little princesses received the grace to kiss their Papa and be kissed by him. After Count Seckendorff declared supper to have ended, the King gave in front of all illustrious guests with unusual solemnity to the Crown Prince the sword of an officer, and the uniform to go with it, along with the regiment Golz which was transfered to him, which is why on the following days one saw the Prince at the parade wearing a blue coat to the greatest marvelling of the public, as his royal highness just a year ago when the Cavalry and the Colonel Lieutenant office of the King's Regiment had been taken from him had vowed never again to wear a blue coat.
On the dispatch dated December 11th 1731, Stratemann admits that maybe it wasn't all harmony at the wedding:
Secretly, one is assured: that the Crown Prince when he was present here has shown a disagreeable face to some people, and that this has been the cause of his sudden departure back to Küstrin, and that this is why it's now doubtful that the Prince will get the Golz regiment and other privileges after all.
Okay. According to Wilhelmine's memoirs, Fritz was cold-to-rude towards her new husband and distant to her, and Grumbkow (neglecting to mention that he'd advised Fritz to put up some boundaries) told her the King was displeased by this. I had written this off as double talk by Grumbkow, but I can't think of who else Fritz was noticed to have been rude to at the wedding, causing this rumor to reach Polyanna Stratemann's ears.
On December 29, 1731, we get a description of the Hohenzollern Clan celebrating the Christmas of 1731:
On Christmas Eve, the King has ordered small frogs to be exposed in the antechamber in order to amuse the little princes and princesses, and has given presents to all the family of royal blood, which were very precius and consisted of silver pieces and gallant trifles. The Prince of Bayreuth and his wife were given presents in the worth of 1000 Reichstaler. The Margrave of Ansbach and his wife got presents in the same worth, and many boxes were filled with them. What the two oldest princesses thus received were other than two precious boxes dozens of plates, knives, forks and spoons, big silver soup bowls, great candelabras, two big spoons for potatos, a barber bowl with a pot and a box to put the soap into. Princess Charlotte the Bevern Bride has received two silver brooms for the kitchen and other silver pieces. Princess Sophie got the least of all from the King, as she was only given two plates and some pretty trifles, but the Queen has more than made up for this since her Majesty gave her secretly a big cruxific full of diamonds. Princess Ulrike, who is the King's current favourite, has been given various gallant trifles in addition to three big plates and one candelabra. The little princes received an equal share of silver coins but also silver rods, with which the King hit the Prince Wilhelm's fingers with in jest, whereupon the Prince was shocked and by jumping back had a bad fall, which is why he's now confined to a sickbed.
No matter how pleasantly this evening passed, the next Christmas Day the King was suffering from a strong colic and threw up, so that her Majesty, too, has not left her room. In the evening, the joyful news was spread that the King through the main doctor Stahl's care and eagerness has been completely recovered.
No, I don't know where he got the frogs in December from. And the German word is "Fröschling", which I can't translate in another fashion but "little frog". Also, poor AW.
Stratemann hears rumors that give yet another reason why Fritz left Berin not overhwelmed with joy:
The local fish market wants to know about the Crown Prince's recent return to Küstrin: that a marriage has been offered to this dear lord which he hasn't been able to agree with joy on yet.
Given whom Fritz ends up marrying, this is rather coy from the Brunswick envoy.
January 12th 1732: At Christmas, the Crown Prince has been in Frankfurt, where the students have prepared a song and some music for him. But his marriage keeps nearly every journalist busy to get the scoop on, without knowing any certainties.
Since this Frankfurt (an der Oder) musical presentation is one of the two origin stories for Fritz/Fredersdorf we have, I note they spent the Christmas of 1731 together, at least.
Stratemann's tactful hint that Fritz is no yett keen on EC: There is much rumor about this prince's current establishment about which, due to worrisome causes, discreet silence must be kept; one has to wait for the certain success.
In early 1732, Franz Stephan's impending arrival causes quite a buzz. He shows up on February 15th, i.e. a good month before the official Fritz/EC engagment party (March 10th), and is a hit with most people, including Fritz.
The report about the engagement party is written on March 15th: The Crown Prince has started the ball with the Queen after supper on this most special engagement day, the King with the Duchess of Bevern, then with the Princess Bride and some of his princess daughters, and all the illustrious foreign visitors have shown themselves joyful and happy, and entertained themselves with both old and new dances. (..) The Duke of Lorraine finds much joy here, and his royal highness likes this residence in particular, due to the free conversation and not being bound to any ceremony, but also due to the daily interaction with the Royal family, and he has said: that he'd rather sit and eat with the young princes and princesses than at the Queen's table.
I bet, Franzl, I bet. I mean, if you had the choice to sit with glowering SD or with the kids from AW and Ulrike downwards, whom would you pick?
FW has a great idea for an extra (and cheap) engagement present for his new Braunschweig in-laws:
The smallest royal Prince, August Ferdinand, who is now nearly two years old and has been called August so far, now following the highest order should be adressed as Prince Ferdinand, which is the name he received from the Duke of Bevern, whereas the first one was in honor of the King of Poland.
(August the Strong, who is now dead.)
The rest of the dispatches has the news that Wilhelmine has written she's really happy with her new husband in Bayreuth, the Protestant religious refugees from Salzburg arrive, and then there's the sudden time jump of a year to 1733 when Fritz gets married. No more interesting stuff. But no matter; Stratemann certainly delivered before that.
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No Pity for the Wives readthrough (cont)
Re: No Pity for the Wives readthrough (cont) - Seven Years' War
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Re: No Pity for the Wives readthrough (cont) - EC and Fritz
Re: No Pity for the Wives readthrough (cont) - post Seven Years' War
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Re: No Pity for the Wives readthrough (cont) - Everyone dies off
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Lord Hervey (cont)
Could she have been so repulsive as Lord Egmont describes her -a fat and ill-shaped dwarf,with nothing good to recommend her, neither sense nor wit ?
*sigh* Misogyny strikes again!
In wishing to love the Prince so well he had ' ly'd egregiously; I am as incapable of wishing to love any Body else so well, as I am of wishing to love You less. God forbid any Mortal should ever have the power over me you have, or that you should ever have less. ... Adieu ,if Iwas to fill a thousand Reams of paper it would be only aiming in different phrases & still imperfectly to tell you the same thing, & assure you that since I first knew you I have been without repenting & still am & ever shall be undividedly & indisolubly Yours.'
LOLOLOL. Man, my days of considering this a gigantic soap opera are certainly reaching a middle.
The fact that he allowed other scandalous revelations (Miss Vane as Hervey's mistress, for example ) to remain in the copy of thememoirs is evidence that what he read and destroyed for the years 1730 to 1732 he regarded as far too shocking to remain among his family papers in either the autograph or the copy.
!
maybe it was a hot threesome...I see that mildred has already had this thought!
Re: Lord Hervey (cont)
Re: Lord Hervey (cont)
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Re: Lord Hervey (cont)
Maupertuis
In short:
Maupertuis: is born the son of an ennobled son of a privateer (= licensed by law pirate) in Saint-Malo, Brittany. He'll use the corsair association and imagery to make a splash at first, and it will even be used in his obituary. Parisian Voltaire (not born to an ennobled father but adding the "de" to his name just because he can) uses Maupertuis being from Brittany later when bickeringly corresponding with Fritz, if you'll recall. (Parisian rat Voltaire vs Breton mastiff Maupertuis. Fritz, of course, is a lion.)
His career goes very well the larger art of his life, his books are well liked; some of which are anonymously published, too, btw. And like Algarotti and the book Algarotti modelled his Newton for Ladies on which the dissertation names and I forgot, Maupertuis writes a "explaining science to a sexy lady" book. He did explain maths to Émilie early on, and Terrel quotes lettes of hers from that first period of aquaintance where she seems into him both mathematically and personally, so Maupertuis, at least, did practice the pedagogic eros in rl as well; Terrel points out that this was when a lot of writers discovered that lo and behold, female readers are a market, and not just for novels and poetry.
Speaking of, Voltaire at first was into Maupertuis as well, and claimed him as a Newtonian before Maupertuis had actually fully joined the Newtonian side of the force. (Terrel says that contrary to earlier assumptions, he wasn't yet a Newtonian when he visited England.) There's no sign of mixed feelings on Voltaire's part until Maupertuis has that military misadventure of getting captured when with Fritz at Mollwitz and Voltaire can't resist making fun of him back home in Paris, see earlier comment. Maupertuis is less than thrilled about this, but on the surface relations remain sociable and harmonius until they're both in Berlin at the same time, though a mutual acquaintance already said when the news came that Voltaire had finally given in and was on his way to Potsdam that this might not be such a good idea, because of the two egos (of Voltaire and Maupertuis, not Voltaire and Fritz). Back in the Cirey days, though, all seemed reasonably well, and I'm amused that when Maupertuis is preparing his big expedition and invites Algarotti along, our otherwise dry author observes that she can't think of what Algarotti was supposed to contribute to the expedition, "except for his company", since he wasn't a geometer, a surveyor or a man of action who couldn't have helped with the hardcore travel parts. Ms Terrell, hot stuff Algarotti was clearly part of the intendended entertainment for the Lappland nights!
The Lappland expedition - to prove the Earth flattens on top - is a big success and makes Maupertuis into an international celebrity who is much sought after in Europe from this point onwards. He does get into the Academie in France, so it's not like Fritz was the without alternatives, but then they didn't offer to make him head of the Academie which is what Fritz offered for the Berlin Academie, plus everyone wrote glowingly about the new philosopher king, so off to Prussia Maupertuis went, and got bored, see Mildred's tale about how all the intellectuals were widdling their thumbs while Fritz was off conquering Silesia. Maupertuis was the only one who made the mistake of following him into the field and getting captured. Then, as detailed in the earlier comment, after a few days he was identified by Count Neipperg and got ever courtesy, including a round trip to Vienna and then back to Berlin. By which time Voltaire from France and Fritz from nearer by cracked jokes and Maupertuis just about had it and left Prussia again. (I have to say, his story about his reception at Vienna, which is partly in the main text and partly in a footnote, would have deserved some authorial scepticism from Terrel. I can buy FS gave him a golden watch to compensate him from the one stolen from him in the scuffle of him getting taken prisoner, but the supposed dialogue with MT about who's the most beautiful Queen of them all really defies belief.)
Maupertuis does eventually return and takes his place as head of the Academy, and that's when valuable research stuff happens in this biography.
Fritz: I want the Academy to be a true republic of intellectuals. I'm just one of its citizens here, and I want you to treat my contributions as you do any other. Also, forget about the old place where the Academy, such as it was, met in my father's day, used to me and about the places where you met while I was off making war, I'm telling you where I want you to meet, of course.
Maupertuis: ...Okay. Academy members, we will model this Academy and its interactions on the new modern state of Prussia. I'm Fritz, of course. You're everyone else.
German academy members: We feel discriminated against anyway because of Fritz and his French hangup. I mean, we're not even allowed to hand in papers in our own language or Latin without also adding a translation into French at our own expense. And now we're getting bossed around not just by the King but this French guy who doesn't talk German at all? Grrr. Argh.
Maupertuis: Wolff, want to come?
Wolff: No way. I'm staying in Halle. Teaching in German.
Maupertuis: I'm getting a sense of some German hostility here. Also, all Germans are foodies. Direct quote: “Experience teaches me that there is nothing so prejudicial to the progress ofthe sciences in Germany as giving them too much to eat and drink. There is no one who will not abandon Homer when he hears the dinner bell. " Clearly, some more calling for discipline on my part is the way to proceed. After all, I'm the Fritz here.
Maupertuis: on the bright side, becomes bff with Euler and makes a friend in Kästner who is his eyes and ears in the camp of the enemy, aka Halle, where Wolff resides.
Maupertuis: Also gets married to Fräulein von Borck, scion of one of the old Brandenburg families
Mary Terrel: shame we don't know anything about her other than she did her best for her husband's work and memory to florish after his death, so she must have been devoted to him.
Mary Terrel: clearly hasn't read Lehndorff's journals, where Madame Maupertuis shows up a couple of times, notably when Amalie gives her some jewelry so she can make the journey to her dying husband in the middle of the war.
Early Academy feuding not starring either Maupertuis or Voltaire: *happens*
Maupertuis: *staying above it all* Remember, members: Dignity! Always dignity!
Émilie: *dies*
Mary Terrel: And then Voltaire showed up. "Friedrich had tried to woo him with flattering letters and with lavish gifts for years."
Voltaire: Lavish what? He haggled about my travel expenses!
König: Earlier, the Academy had done a competition like the one in Paris, I made an entry, and I lost. This endeared Maupertuis to me enormously.
Gottsched (remember him?) and other German intellectuals: We think the Academy is a bunch of foreign elitist snobs and their cowed German lackeys. If it's supposed to make local culture florish, where's the local culture in it? And how's the President ever supposed to get a clue about if he still doesn't speak German?
Maupertuis: *writes treatise and the principle of least action*
König: *writes attack on the treatise, complete with Leipniiz quote and accusation that Maupertuis isn't just wrong on the larger point, he also uses stuff Leipniz already said*
Maupertuis: How dare he! Of course I, as President, can't reply to this outrage in person. Faithful subjects, I mean, academy members, pray deal with König.
Quote: The generally hostile treatment of the management of the Berlin Academy in the German press had primed Maupertuis to respond forcefully to König, a more accessible and more vulnerable target than Gottsched or anonymous journalists. Seeing his scientific accomplishments and his personal integrity called into question, Maupertuis took steps to
demonstrate his power to silence " scoundrels" . (...)
Maupertuis made a strategic decision to focus on the authenticity of the letter, suspecting König's vulnerability on this point. As he explained later to d'Alémbert, “ instead of disputing with him , I limited myself to pressing him to produce
the original, regarding it anyway as quite a mark of approval to want to attribute the basis [ofmy principle ] to the great Leibniz.” If all went well, the disciplining of König might be turned into positive publicity for the principle of least action . The Academy formally demanded that König produce the letter which turned out to be a copy, and then initiated a search for the original in Hermann's papers in Switzerland. Maupertuis used his prerogative to make the dispute a matter of honor for his institution and for the king. (...) Publicly, Maupertuis limited his concern to the existence and authenticity of the letter ; privately , he hoped to expose his accuser as a charlatan ,“ to bury König in the mud as he deserves." (...)
Euler bent to the task with a will,no doubtharboring his own hostility to the Wolffian professor who had defended monads to the Academy a few years before:When König could not produce the letter,Euler submiitted a report, concluding "that (König's ] cause is completely 'untenable and that this fragment was forged, either to wrong M.de Maupertuis; or to exaggerate bý a pious fraud the praises of the great Leibniz ." 86 The evidence for forgery was circumstantial, bur König had muddied his claims with so many improbable and unsubstantiated explanations that Euler stated his condemnation in the strongest possible terms. In April 1752, the Academy voted unanimously to approve Euler's report, although there was some private grumbling about the president's righthold on power, and bitterness about the impossibility of dissent. A footnote here provides the direct quote from a German academy member: Weil Maupertuis alle Gewaltin Händen hat,und man nicht sehr laut gegen ihn reden darf , so ist die Verbitterung im Geheim desto stärker, und dises thut der Academie grossen Schaden "
(Sulzer to Künzli, April 1752, quoted in Harnack , Geschichte, 1 (1 ): 338 , n.2 ).
And only at this point, according to Terrel, Voltaire enters the struggle.
Voltaire: I actuallly have no idea whether Maupertuis is correct about the principle of least action without Émiilie explaining it to me, but I do know a bully when I see one, and also, I could think of a better president of the Academy, namely, me. Be that as it may: have a satiric pamphlet. Or several.
Maupertuis: But...?
Academy members: OMG!
Europe: *Popcorn*
Terrel: and from this point onwards, no one cared about the principle of least action, or Leipniz. Voltaire had turned it into a literary quarrel, and then Fritz intervened, and at this point König and Maupertuis could do little more than watch along with the rest.
Maupertuis: Surely, with the King himself defending me, I don't have to respond to these outrages. Everyone will see right is on my, that is, our side!
Everyone: No idea who's right, but Voltaire is funnier. Also, did Fritz just burn a book? Mr. Enlightened Monach? OMG!
Maupertuis: *can't even enjoy the Frankfurt drama, because now he's in bad health*
Maupertuis: Okay, two more years in Prussia, but in late 1755 I'm off to go to France before the benefit of my health. Can I have paid leave, your majesty? I promise to comeback.
Fritz: That' what Algarotti said. But okay, you've been through a lot.
Maupertuis: *meets Voltaire's sworn enemy Fréron, a journalist*
Maupertuis: *writes to Fritz* Sire, until now I've kept a dignified silence, but now I've met this Fréron guy who says he can bury Voltaire, and I'm just thinking, how about I give him a tell-all to show how noble you've behaved in all this, defending me, and how dastardly Voltaire?
Fritz: I don't think that's a good idea.
Maupertuis: Sorry, Fréron, you can't be my revenge ghost writer, but I can tell you some stuff about Voltaire THAT UNSPEAKABLE BASTARD which you can use in some other pamphlets.
1756: Arrives. With the Diplomatic Revolution.
Fréron: So, dear readers, my personal conclusion is that Maupertuis and Voltaire are both dirty traitors to France who should never allowed Fritz to lure them away from la patrie anyway. Wasn't France good enough for them anymore? Stay tuned for me attacking Voltaire on the Mademoiselle Corneille front soon.
Maupertuis: OMG. Fritz and France at war? What is my duty here? If I go back to Berlin now, I'm definitely a traitor. But Fritz has been good to me, that making fun of my Austrian captivity post Mollwitz bit aside.
Some French friends: You could resign from your office as President of the Academy at least.
Maupertuis: No. That's part of my income. Also it's a nice honor. And Fritz would take it personal as hell. What if he wins this war and I can't go back to Prussia? My wife is there! This was just supposed to be some months back home in Brittany to recover my health!
Euler: Dear M, don't worry, I'm running the Academy for you. Take as much time as you need. The war will be over soon, surely.
Maupertuis: *tries to be diplomatic, congratulating Fritz on his military successes and asking for save routes from France to Berlin, but never actually going*
Maupertuis: *dies*
French Academy of Science: Traitor.
Academy Francaise: No, a man of lettres and esprit! Have some favourite works! And his style! He paints with so much warmth , with so much liveliness , thathe transports us to the very places he describes. One scales with him the summits ofHorrilakero; one follows him on the frozen waters of Tornea; one flies at his sideon the fragile sleds of the Laplander."
Academy in Berlin: Total hero: Saint Malo is a kind of republic of Argonauts ; M.de Maupertuis's compatriots ... bring back to their fatherland (patrie) çiçhes which they have often devoted to the defense and health of that same country in the most glorious manner.M.de Maupertuis was the Jason of a different class of Argonauts . The treasures, he sought in the world's extremities are themost precious of all that enrich the mind, and he shared them not only with his country (patrie ),but with the whole human race.
Euler: He was the best. But seeing as he's dead now, and I've been running the Academy de facto since he left, how about making me the next President, Sire?
Fritz: ...You're German.
Euler: Fuck you. I'm off to St. Petersburg as soon as the war is over.
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Re: Yuletide Nominations, Redux
I was thinking about the possibility of putting the fic snippets on AO3 itself so that other people could read them :) (Oh come on, doesn't everyone want to read the outline of Fritz/Joseph marriagefic? OF COURSE THEY DO.) I was thinking maybe just one AO3 work, with each different snippet as a different chapter. Rheinsberg would work too, of course.
I'm for collecting all the prompts at a Rheinsberg post. Not sure about the round robin and fic snippets at the A03; for now, I'd rather see them also at Rheinsberg.
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Wilhelmine's Memoirs
On the other hand! Maybe Manteuffel was Diable, and his very short successor was Diablotin. That actually makes sense.
It does, and it's entirely possible that this was an early Suhm nickname before everyone got to know him better, and then Fritz named him Diaphenes for the reasons your beautiful story provides.
Lady Darlington aka Sophia von Kielmannsegg: speaking of putting the pieces together, her mother was the same Countess Platen wo played a role in bringing the Sophia Dorotha the older/Count Königsmarck affair out in the open and thus getting SD locked up for life and Königsmarck killed. No wonder SD was wary.
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Librarian update
Fanworks are still at the top, but if we accumulate enough of them, they'll get a designated folder too. :)
2)
his trashy tell all memoirs. Which, [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard, yes, I'd like to have in the library. I mean, sadly due to grandson censorship they're missing the vital years of 1730 to 1732, and thus can't tell us among other things how Uncle George first reacted when he heard what went down in Prussia with FW and Fritz, but maybe there are other useful quotes in them, and they do sound very entertaining.
Bowdlerized memoirs in the library, with obligatory 19th century editorial disclaimer that it was perfectly acceptable to be coarse then, so much so that he wishes he could have bowdlerized *more*, but the memoirs wouldn't make sense with entire passages suppressed, so he contented himself with some lacunae and rewriting. Sigh. Someone bring him his smelling salts.
If I find a more complete copy, I'll let you know, but for now, this is what we have. There appears to be a more modern (but still 1960s) edition, that's severely abridged down to less than 300 pages.
3) Lady Hervey's letters are also in the library, in the correspondence folder.
Also, any time you want anything, whether it be Lord Hervey's memoirs or an English or German translation of Voltaire on short notice, let me know, and I'll see what I can do! It's not like I hesitate to ask you to read things for us. ;)
4) And because I couldn't resist, also the memoirs of Princess Dashkova. We haven't talked about her, but she was Catherine's BFF, helped put her on the throne, headed the Russian academy of sciences, and seems generally cool. And in keeping with our Enlightenment theme!
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I'm happy for you to put snippets in Rheinsberg -- and yes, separate posts with tag sounds like a good idea :)
Hervey's Memoirs: The Prussia Connection
So, the FW passages:
To oppose the execution then of the Vienna Treaty made between the Emperor and Spain, France and England formed the Hanover Treaty, September 3, 1727, when the late King (i.e. G1) was at Hanover. As soon as this treaty was concluded, to which England, France, and Prussia were the original contracting parties, copies of it were sent to all the Courts and little States in Europe ; and whilst the Emperor and Spain were soliciting, on one hand, for accessions to their Treaty of Vienna, England and France were, on the other, strengthening, by as many powers as they could list, the alliance of Hanover.
The defection of the King of Prussia from the latter was a sudden turn, and proceeded partly from a fear of his superior, the Emperor, and partly from a sullen, envious hatred he bore to his father-in-law, the King of England, who, from the time of his advancement to that crown, sank in his son-in-law's favour, just in the same proportion as he rose above him in grandeur. This was a great loss to the allies of Hanover, the King of Prussia having a standing force of 70,000 men. The forces of Spain were about 60,000, besides their naval power ; and the army of the Emperor in all, after the new levies, about 200,000. Muscovy was the only considerable power, besides Prussia, that acceded to the Treaty of Vienna ; for whilst the Czarina alone obliged herself, in case of a rupture, to furnish 30,000 men, the Electors of Bavaria, Cologne, and Treves, besides several other little German Princes that his Imperial Majesty had bullied, cajoled, or bought into his party, could muster no more than 27,000.
While Prince of Wales, future G2 had remained in Britain, but once he was G2, he irritated his English subjects by spending part of his time in Hannover, like his father had done:
Whilst the King was at Hanover he had several little German disputes with his brother of Prussia, the particulars of which being about a few cart-loads of hay, a mill, and some soldiers improperly enlisted by the King of Prussia in the Hanoverian state, I do not think them worthy of being considered in detail ; and shall say nothing further about these squabbles than that, first or last, both of them contrived to be in the wrong. And as these two princes had some similar impracticabilities in their temper, so they were too much alike ever to agree, and from this time forward hated one another with equal imprudence, inveteracy, and openness.
It was reported, and I believe not without foundation, that our Monarch on this occasion sent or would have sent a challenge of single combat to his Prussian Majesty; but whether it was carried and rejected, or whether the prayers and remonstrances of Lord Townshend prevented the gauntlet being actually thrown down, is a point which to me at least has never been cleared.
There was another subject of dispute between the Kings of England and Prussia, which I forgot to enumerate, though it was the only one really of consequence, and that was with regard to the affairs of Mecklenburg. The short statement of their differences on this article was, whether the Prussian or Hanoverian troops (both ordered into Mecklenburg by a decree of the Aulic Council) should have the greatest share (under the pretence of keeping peace) in plundering the people and completing the ruin of that miserable duchy, already reduced to such a state of calamity by the tyrannical conduct of their most abominable, deposed, or rather suspended duke.
It's time for (another) War of the Polish Succession. As a reminder: France backs Louis XV's father-in-law, Stanilaus Lescyinski; Mt's Dad the Emperor backs August the Strong's son, future August III. FW is technically obliged to back both in his dual capacity of Elector of Brandenburg and King of Prussia. Then there's the battle of Philippsburg where no one does much but where Fritz, FW and old Prince Eugene are on one side and the Duc de Richelieu (and Voltaire as a tourist) on the other. G2 wants to join the war effort. His PM, Robert Walpole, and Hervey really really want Britain to stay out of hit.
During these transactions abroad, the King was in the utmost anxiety at home. The battles of Bitonto and Parma, the surrender of Philipsburg, and the bad situation of the Emperor's affairs in every quarter, gave his Majesty the utmost solicitude to exert himself in the defence of the House of Austria, and to put some stop to the rapid triumphs of the House of Bourbon.
For though the King was ready to allow all the personal faults of the Emperor, and was not without resentment for the treatment he himself had met with from the Court of Vienna, yet his hatred to the French was so strong, and his leaning to an Imperial cause so prevalent, that he could not help wishing to distress the one and support the other, in spite of all inferior, collateral, or personal considerations.
In all occurrences he could not help remembering that, as Elector of Hanover, he was a part of the Empire, and the Emperor at the head of it ; and these prejudices, operating in every consideration where his interest as King of England ought only to have been weighed, gave his Minister, who consulted only the interest of England, perpetual difficulties to surmount, whenever he was persuading his Majesty to adhere solely to that.
The King's love for armies, his contempt for civil affairs, and the great capacity he thought he possessed for military exploits, inclined him still with greater violence to be meddling, and warped him yet more to the side of war. He used almost daily and hourly, during the beginning of this summer, to be telling Sir Robert Walpole with what eagerness he glowed to pull the laurels from the brows of the French generals, to bind his own temples ; that it was with the sword alone he desired to keep the balance of Europe •, that war and action were his sole pleasures ; that age was coming fast upon him ; and that, if he lost the opportunity of this bustle, no other occasion possibly might offer in which he should be able to distinguish himself, or gather those glories which were now ready at his hand. He could not bear, he said, the thought of growing old in peace, and rusting in the cabinet, whilst other princes were busied in war and shining in the field; but what provoked him most of all, he confessed, was to reflect that, whilst he was only busied in treaties, letters, and despatches, his booby brother, the brutal and cowardly King of Prussia, should pass his time in camps, and in the midst of arms, neither desirous of the glory nor fit for the employment ; whilst he, who coveted the one and was trained for the other, was, for cold prudential reasons, debarred the pleasure of indulging his inclination, and deprived of the advantage of showing his abilities.
See what I mean about deja vu?
But the circumstance that gave Sir Robert Walpole the most trouble of all was that with regard to the war he found the Queen as unmanageable and opinionated as the King. There are local prejudices in all people's composition, imbibed from the place of their birth, the seat of their education, and the residence of their youth, that are hardly ever quite eradicated, and operate much stronger than those who are influenced by them are apt to imagine ; and the Queen, with all her good
sense, was actuated by these prejudices in a degree nothing short of that in which they biased the King.
Wherever the interest of Germany and the honour of the Empire were concerned, her thoughts and reasonings were often as German and Imperial as if England had been out of the question ; and there were few inconveniences and dangers to which she would not have exposed this country rather than give occasion to its being said that the Empire suffered affronts unretorted, and the House of Austria injuries unrevenged, whilst she, a German by birth, sat upon this throne an idle spectatress, able to assist and not willing to interpose.
More about Queen Caroline elsewhere. But Hervey's general attitude with its "why are they so German?" ness was widely shared among the British politicians and makes me think Heinrich wasn't wrong when in his RPG with AW when assuming Britain would not have been willing to go to total war for Hannover. Speaking of the family seat, G2 making another trip there is the occason of the last Prussia mention in volume 1, as his PM tries to argue him into not going. It's the mid 1730s:
Neither would it have been a very agreeable incident for the King of Great Britain, after a month's residence at Hanover, to be running back again through Westphalia to England with seventy thousand Prussians at his heels ; and yet, considering
the terms he and the King of Prussia were upon at present, this might easily have happened, and was suggested by Sir Robert Walpole to deter his Majesty from this expedition ; but to their remonstrances his Majesty always answered, "Pooh!" and "Stuff!" or, " You think to get the better of me, but you shall not ;" and, in short, plainly showed that all efforts to divert him from this expedition would be fruitless.
You know what's nearly totally missing (unless it was in the censored by grandson passages)? The endless marriage negotiatioins for Fritz and Wilhelmine. There's one single aside about some there being some idea to marry Fritz of Wales to "a daughter of Prussia", and that's it. Otherwise, the entire rigmorale is of zero interest to Hervey.
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Hervey's Memoirs: Meet the (Royal) Family
For my own part, I have the conduct of princes in so little veneration, that I believe they act yet oftener without design than other people, and are insensibly drawn into both good and bad situations without knowing how they came there. (...) I think most of these political contenders for profit and power are, like Catiline and Caesar, actuated by the same principles of ambition and interest, and that as their success determines their characters, so accident determines their success. Had Csesar fallen in the plains of Pharsalia, like Catiline in those of Pistoia, they had both been remembered in the same manner; the different fortune of those battles is what alone constitutes the different characters of these two men, and makes the one always mentioned as the first and the other as the last of mankind.
Hervey on the coronation of G2 and Queen Caroline:
In October the ceremony of the Coronation was performed with all the pomp and magnificence that could be contrived ; the present King differing so much from the last, that all the pageantry and splendour, badges and trappings of royalty, were as pleasing to the son as they were irksome to the father. The dress of the Queen on this occasion was as fine as the accumulated riches of the City and suburbs could make it ; for besides her own jewels (which were a great number and very valuable) she had on her head and on her shoulders all the pearls she could borrow of the ladies of quality at one end of the town, and on her petticoat all the diamonds she could hire of the Jews and jewellers at the other; so that the appearance and the truth of her finery was a mixture of magnificence and meanness not unlike the eclat of royalty in many other particulars when it comes to be nicely examined and its sources traced to what money hires or flattery lends.
You may gather from this that contrary to what Halsband told me in his biography, Hervey writes critical stuff about Queen Caroline as well as about the rest of the family. This upsets Croker in the introduction, not least because Hervey also insists he loved the Queen and she loved him. Though our Victorian editor is most upset about what Hervey presumably didn't mean critically at all, to wit, Caroline a) despising her oldest son, and b) having no problem with her husband's mistresses. Speaking of whom, remember Lady Suffolk, who started out as Mrs. Howard and whom G2 took as an English mistress when he was still Prince of Wales when his Dad G1 upset people by bring a German mistress along? Whom G2 visited strictly by the hour and was more dutiful than affectionate towards as opposed to his wife? This is how Hervey introduces her:
She was civil to everybody, friendly to many, and unjust to none : in short, she had a good head and a good heart, but had to do with a man who was incapable of tasting the one or valuing the other.
Meanwhile, Queen Caroline:
Her predominant passion was pride, and the darling pleasure of her soul was power; but she was forced to gratify the one and gain the other, as some people do health, by a strict and painful regime, which few besides herself could have had patience to support, or resolution to adhere to. She was at least seven or eight hours tute-a-tcte with the King every day, during which time she was generally saying what she did not think, assenting to what she did not believe, and praising what she did not approve ; for they were seldom of the same opinion, and he too fond of his own for her ever at first to dare to controvert it (" consilii quamvis egregii quod ipse non afferret, inimicus :"— " An enemy to any counsel, however excellent, which he himself had not suggested." — Tacitus) ;'' she used to give him her opinion as jugglers do a card, by changing it imperceptibly, and making him believe he held the same with that he first pitched upon. But that which made these tete-a-tetes seem heaviest was that he neither liked reading nor being read to (unless it was to sleep) : she was forced, like a spider, to spin out of her own bowels all the conversation with which the fly was taken. However, to all this she submitted for the sake of power, and for the reputation of having it ; for the vanity of being thought to possess what she desired was equal to the pleasure of the possession itself. But, either for the appearance or the reality, she knew it was absolutely necessary to have interest in her husband, as she was sensible that interest was the measure by which people would always judge of her power. Her every thought, word, and act therefore tended and was calculated to preserve her influence there ; to him she sacrificed her time, for him she mortified her inclination ; she looked, spake, and breathed but for him, like a weathercock to every capricious blast of his uncertain temper, and governed him (if such influence so gained can bear the name of government) by being as great a slave to him thus ruled, as any other wife could be to a man who ruled her. For all the tedious hours she spent then in watching him whilst he slept, or the heavier task of entertaining him whilst he was awake, her single consolation was in reflecting she had power, and that people in coffeehouses and ruelles were saying she governed this country, without knowing how dear the government of it cost her.
This was not how G2 saw it, of course:
The King himself was so little sensible of this being his case, that one day enumerating the people who had governed this country in other reigns, he said Charles I. was governed by his wife ; Charles II. by his mistresses ; King James by his priests ; King William by his men—and Queen Anne by her women—favourites. His father, he added, had been by anybody that could get at him. And at the end of this compendious history of our great and wise monarchs, with a significant, satisfied, triumphant air, he turned about, smiling, to one of his auditors, and asked him—"And who do they say governs now?"
Whether this is a true or a false story of the King, I know not, but it was currently reported and generally believed. The following verses will serve for a specimen of the strain in which the libels, satires, and lampoons of these days were omposed :
—
" You may strut, dapper George, but 't will all be in vain ;
We know 'tis Queen Caroline, not you, that reign—
You govern no more than Don Philip of Spain.
Then if you would have us fall down and adore you,
Lock up your fat spouse, as your dad did before you." '
And as for that love rat, Fritz of Wales:
The Prince's character at his first coming over, though little more respectable, seemed much more amiable than, upon his opening himself further and being better known, it turned out to be ; for though there appeared nothing in him to be admired, yet there seemed nothing in him to be hated—neither anything great nor anything vicious ; his behaviour was something that gained one's good wishes, though it gave one no esteem for him ; for his best qualities, whilst they prepossessed one the most in his favour, always gave one a degree of contempt for him at the same time ; his carriage, whilst it seemed engaging to those who did not examine it, appearing mean to those who did : for though his manners had the show of benevolence from a good deal of natural or habitual civility, yet his cajoling everybody, and almost in an equal degree, made those things which might have been thought favours, if more judiciously or sparingly bestowed, lose all their weight. He carried this affectation of general benevolence so far that he often condescended below the character of a Prince; and as people attributed this familiarity to popular, and not particular motives, so it only lessened their respect without increasing their good will, and instead of giving them good impressions of his humanity, only gave them ill ones of his sincerity. He was indeed as false as his capacity would allow him to be, and was more capable in that walk than in any other, never having the least hesitation, from principle or fear of future detection, in telling any lie that served his present purpose. He had a much weaker understanding, and, if possible, a more obstinate temper, than his father ; that is, more tenacious of opinions he had once formed, though less capable of ever forming right ones.
Had he had one grain of merit at the bottom of his heart, one should have had compassion for him in the situation to which his miserable poor head soon reduced him ; for his case, in short, was this :—he had a father that abhorred him, a mother that despised him, sisters that betrayed him, a brother set up against him, and a set of servants that neglected him, and were neither of use, nor capable of being of use to him, nor desirous of being so.
There, there, Hervey. Celebrity break-ups are the worst, we know. Have a glass with Voltaire.
Re: Hervey's Memoirs: Meet the (Royal) Family
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Hervey's Memoirs: The Phantom of the Opera
Another judicious subject of his enmity was her supporting Handel, a German musician and composer (who had been her singing master, and was now undertaker of one of the operas), against several of the nobility who had a pique with Handel, and had set up another person to ruin him ; or, to speak more properly and exactly, the Prince, in the beginning of his enmity to his sister, set himself at the head of the other opera to irritate her, whose pride and passions were as strong as her brother's (although his understanding was so much weaker), and could brook contradiction, where she dared to resent it, as little as her father. What I have related may seem a trifle ; but though the cause was indeed such, the effects of it were no trifles. The King and Queen were as much in earnest upon this subject as their son and daughter, though they had the prudence to disguise it, or to endeavour to disguise it, a little more. They were both Handelists, and sat freezing constantly at his empty Haymarket Opera, whilst the Prince with all the chief of the nobility went as constantly to that of Lincoln's Inn Fields. The affair grew as serious as that of the Greens and the Blues under Justinian at Constantinople; an anti-Handelist was looked upon as an anticourtier ; and voting against the Court in Parliament was hardly a less remissible or more venial sin than speaking against Handel or going to the Lincoln's Inn Fields Opera. The Princess Royal said she expected in a little while to see half the House of Lords playing in the orchestra in their robes and coronets ; and the King—though he declared he took no other part in this affair than subscribing lOOO pound. a-year to Handel—often added at the same time that " he did not think setting oneself at the head of a faction of fiddlers a very honourable occupation for people of quality ; or the ruin of one poor fellow [Handel] so generous or so good-natured a scheme as to do much honour to the undertakers, whether they succeeded or not ; but the better they succeeded in it, the more he thought they would have reason to be ashamed of it." The Princess Royal quarrelled with the Lord Chamberlain for affecting his usual neutrality on this occasion, and spoke of Lord Delaware, who was one of the chief managers against Handel, with as much spleen as if he had been at the head of the Dutch faction who opposed the making her husband Stadtholder.'
Re: Hervey's Memoirs: The Phantom of the Opera
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Hervey's Memoirs: Those Germans!
Okay, onwards: G2 keeps irritating his English subjects with visiting Hannover, remember. On one such visit, his English mistress, Lady Sussex, gets married again despite being in her 40s. G2 hears about it from Caroline via letter, drags out his time in Hannover, and comes back with a German (!) mistress, Madame Waldmoden, the ultimate insult. This causes Lord Hervey to muse thusly:
Whilst the late King lived, everybody imagined this Prince loved England and hated Germany ; but from the time of his first journey, after he was King, to Hanover, people began to find, if they had not been deceived in their former opinion, at least they would be so in their xpectations; and that his thoughts, whatever they might have been, were no longer turned either with contempt or dislike to his Electoral dominions.
But after this last journey Hanover had so completed the conquest of his affections, that there was nothing English ever commended in his presence that he did not always show, or pretend to show, was surpassed by something of the same kind in Germany. No English or even French cook could dress a dinner; no English confectioner set out a dessert ; no English player could act ; no English coachman could drive, or
English jockey ride; nor were any English horses fit to be drove or fit to be ridden; no Englishman knew how to come into a room, nor any Englishwoman how to dress herself; nor were there any diversions in England, public or private ; nor any man or woman in England whose conversation was to be borne—the one, as he said, talking of nothing but their dull politics, and the others of nothing but their ugly clothes. Whereas at Hanover all these things were in the utmost perfection: the men were patterns of politeness, bravery, and gallantry; the women of beauty, wit, and entertainment; his troops there were the bravest in the world, his counsellors the wisest, his manufacturers the most ingenious,
his subjects the happiest; and at Hanover, in short, plenty reigned, magnificence resided, arts flourished, diversions abounded, riches flowed, and everything was in the utmost perfection that contributes to make a prince great or a people blessed. (...)
In truth he hated the English, looked upon them all as king-killers and republicans, grudged them their riches as well as their liberty, thought them all overpaid, and said to Lady Sundon one day as she was waiting at dinner, just after he returned from Germany, that he was forced to distribute his favours here verydifferently from the manner in which he bestowed them at Hanover ; /that there he rewarded people for doing
their duty and serving him well, but that here he was obliged to enrich people for being rascals, and buy them not to cut his throat.
The Queen did not always think in a different style of the English, though she kept her thoughts more to herself than the King, as being more prudent, more sensible, and more mistress of her passions ; yet even she could not entirely disguise these sentiments to the observation of those who were perpetually about her, and put her upon subjects that betrayed her into revealing them.
Hervey was a satirist, so I'm taking this a pinch of salt and the awareness that G2 believing some things were better in Hannover would already been taken as Britain bashing by most Brits, given their idea of England as the climax of civilisation. This said, I still find it amusing, and Mildred, if you do get around to writing Fritz in G2's presence, imagine how the Hannover and Germany praise goes down then. :)
Caroline, btw, never goes with G2 to Hannover; she stays because he always makes her regent in his absence. (Never Fritz of Wales.) Which she thoroughly enjoys. Hervey, ever ready to share scandal, can't report one more about Madame W. other than that he can't understand what G2 sees in her, so he turns towards another German lady in G2's entourage and claims one of "Aunt" Melusine's sisters has also been getting it on with not one, but two Georges and Fritz of Wales:
This Madame d'Elitz was a Schulemberg, sister to my Lady Chesterfield—a very handsome lady, though now a little in her decline, with a reat deal of wit, who had had a thousand lovers, and had been catched in bed with a man twenty years ago, and been divorced from her husband upon it. She was said to have been mistress to three generations of the Hanover family — the late King, the present, and the Prince of Wales before he came to England, which was one generation more than the Duchess of Valentinois " (mistress to Henry II.) could boast of in France. The present King had quitted Madame d'Elitz for Madame Walmoden, upon which a quarrel ensued between the two ladies, and the King thereupon had turned Madame d'Elitz out of the palace the year before; just therefore when the King set out for Hanover this year, Madame d'Elitz set out for England, where she now was with her aunt and sister, the Duchess of Kendal and Lady Chesterfield.
Note from our Victorian editor Croker: Hervey is wrong about Diane de Poitiers having slept with Francis I. of France as well as his son Henry II (the one married to Catherine de' Medici), that was slander, and he's probably slandering the third Schulenburg sister as well. He could be right. Anyway, how come we haven't heard of her before?
ETA: Also: didn't Lord Chesterfield help Peter Keith leave Amsterdam hidden as part of his entourage? If Chesterfield was married to a Schulenburg sister, that means he's distantly related to the Kattes, thus also justifying imaginary descendant's name of Philip Stanhope in "Zeithain". Anyway: I propose someone should filk "The Schuyler Sisters" to "The Schulenburg Sisters" /ETA
Speaking of mistresses: G2 makes it known Fritz of Wales should finally tie the knot, and he's found an ideal bride while in Hannover: 17 years old Augusta von Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Queen Caroline adds he should ditch the girlfriend with the child she refuses to believe is her son's. Fritz of Wales, who is about to break up with Miss Vane anyway and according to Hervey has been eying another mistress, takes this parental news and commands well for a change and sends his flunky Lord Baltimore to Miss Vane, with a proposal that she should marry Lord Baltimore and get a pension, thus being cared for, but that it would be tactful to his future bride if she and Baltlimore were to travel abroad for a while. The kid, however, should stay here (and he swears he'll continue to take care of it). Miss Vane upon Hervey's advice and using Hervey as ghostwriter fires off an indignant letter that he's breaking her heart and no way will she leave the country her child is in and what kind of thrifty bastard is he anyway? The upshot of this is that the Lord Baltlimore marriage is off the table, Miss Vane gets a larger pension in her own name and doesn't have to leave the country. 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.
On to Lady Archibald Hamilton, according to Hervey the new mistress of the love rat. (Again, it's worth keeping in mind that the same Hervey who is writing all this managed to juggle his own wife, Miss Vane, Stephen Fox and Fritz of Wales.)
Lady Archibald Hamilton was not young, had never been very pretty, and had lost at least as much of that small share of beauty she once possessed as it is usual for women to do at five-and-thirty, after being the mother of ten children. Her husband, Lord Archibald Hamilton, was a Scotchman, uncle to the Duke of Hamilton, a Lord of the Admiralty, and of so quiet, so secure, and contented
a temper, that he seemed cut out to play the passive character his wife and the Prince had graciously allotted him. His wife was cunning, and had just sense enough to make that cunning useful to her, when employed to work on such a husband as Lord Archibald Hamilton, and such a lover as the Prince of Wales ; and succeeded perfectly well in flattering the first into an opinion of
her virtue, and the latter into an admiration of her beauty and understanding, which she facilitated by the much easier task of making the Prince believe she was entirely captivated by his.
But as there always are some people who doubt of the most notorious intrigues, as well as others who make no doubt of what only themselves believe, 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. He saw her often at her own house, where he seemed as welcome to the master as the mistress ; he met her often, too, at her sister's; walked with her day after day for hours together tete-a-tete in a morning in St. James's Park ; and whenever she was at the drawing-room (which was pretty frequently), his behaviour was so remarkable
that his nose and her ear were inseparable(...)
And you thought Voltaire was bitchy about Fritz and Fredersdorf. Lady Archibald Hamilton becomes lady-in-waiting to the new bride, Augusta. Augusta has gotten one of those long distance royal marriages where a substitute gets send and brings the bride home, to which Lord Delaware:
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 ; for, except his white staff and red riband, as Knight of the Bath, I know of nothing belonging to the long, lank, awkward person of Lord Delaware that could attract her eyes ; nor do I believe there could be found in any of the Goth or Yandal courts of Germany a more unpolished ambassador for such an occasion.
Augusta, poor girl, arrives in Britain and throws herself on the ground before the King and Queen, which wins them over for a few days at least. Hervey, however, is not impressed:
She could speak not one word of English, and few of French; and when it was proposed the year before to her mother, when this match was resolved upon, that she should be taught one of these languages, her mother said it must be quite unnecessary, for the Hanover Family having been above twenty years on the throne, to be sure most people in England spoke German (and especially at Court) as often and as well as English. A conjecture so well founded that I believe there were not three natives in England that understood one word of it better than in the reign of Queen Anne.
Hervey, I think that says rather more about British nobility than it does about Augusta's Mom's assumptions.
The Princess was rather tall, and had health and youth enough in her face, joined to a very modest andgood-natured look, to make her countenance not disagreeable; but her person, from being very ill-made, a good deal awry, her arms long, and her motions
awkward, had, in spite of all the finery of jewels and brocade, an ordinary air, which no trappings could cover or exalt.
Now if you think only women who have sex with Fritz of Wales are the objects of Hervey's scorn, you're mistaken. He's just as malicious about the woman who would have married Fritz of Prussia, to wit, Princess Amalie (as her mother calls her) or Emily (as Hervey calls her). The only princess Hervey likes is Princess Caroline, but as for Amalia/Emily/Amalie:
The Queen used to speak to Lord Hervey on this subject with as little reserve when the Princess Caroline was present, as when alone ; but never before the Princess Emily, who had managed her affairs so well, as to have lost entirely the confidence of her mother, without having obtained the friendship of her brother; by trying to make her court by turns to both, she had by turns betrayed both, and at last lost both. Princess Emily had much the least sense, except her brother, of the family, but had for two years much the prettiest person. She was lively, false, and a great liar ; did many ill offices to people, and no good ones; and, for want of prudence, said as many shocking she said disagreeable ones behind their backs. She had as many enemies as acquaintances, for nobody knew her without disliking her.
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. Princess Caroline had affability without meanness, dignity without pride, cheerfulness without levity, and . prudence without falsehood.
So much for the maybe Queen of Prussia. I should say here she sounds far more amiable in her wiki entry, which is the only other thing I've read about her. Who knows?
Chesterfields, Schulenburgs, and Kattes, oh my!
Re: Chesterfields, Schulenburgs, and Kattes, oh my!
Re: Chesterfields, Schulenburgs, and Kattes, oh my!
Re: Chesterfields, Schulenburgs, and Kattes, oh my!
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Re: Hervey's Memoirs: Those Germans!
Re: Hervey's Memoirs: Those Germans!
Re: Hervey's Memoirs: Those Germans!
Hervey's Memoirs: Who's the worst Fritz of them all?
Now, Fritz of Wales' budget is much less than what his father G2 used to get when he'd been Fritz of Wales, and when this still doesn't change after marriage, he doesn't just keep asking his parents for more, no, he tries to get his budget heightened via parliament. This scheme doesn't work, partly Sir Robert Walpole and Hervey work against it. (Hervey asks for a peerage for Stephen Fox from Walpole given that Stephen did his best to cajole his parliamentary colleagues to side with the King, not the Prince, and for some thank you money for Henry Fox, who did the same.) Meanwhile, FW's rants against Fritz are completely matched by Queen Caroline's words about her son and his attempt to make common cause with MPs:
"My God," says the Queen, " popularity always makes me sick ; but Fritz's popularity makes me vomit. I hear that yesterday, on his side of the house, they talked of the King's being cast away with the same sang-froid as you would talk of a coach being overturned ; and that my good son strutted about as if he had been already King. Did you mind the air with which he came into my drawing-room in the morning, though he does not think fit to honour me with his presence or ennui me with his wife's of a night?"
Events come to a head when Augusta gets pregnant and Caroline tells everyone she thinks Augusta is faking it, and will substitute a bought baby, and then Fritz of Wales refuses to tell his parents when the birth is expected when G2 orders him and Augusta to Hampton Court, and when his wife gets into labor, insists on taking her to St. James. (Which however you look at it was an incredibly selfish jerk move - that drive with a woman in labor must have been hell - but of course Hervey doesn't think all the relentless hate from the rest of the family might have given Fritz of Wales the inspiration of not wanting his parents present at the kid's birth. As mentioned in my Horowitz write up , the baby is a sickly girl which, Caroline says, is the only reason why believes it's Augusta's baby after all. She's nice to Augusta when she visits but doesn't say a word to Fritz of Wales. The rupture between son and parents is now complete. Letters are exchanged. Some courtiers try to mediate, but:
Lord Essex telling, and asking, at the same time, if he should call one of the Ministers, the Queen said, " For what? to give an answer to Fritz ? Does the King want a Minister to tell him what answer he likes to give to his son ? or to call a council for such a letter, like an aifair d'etat?"
In between everything else, an old plan gets revived - separating Hannover and Britain, with giving one to Caroline's and G2's fave William, future Billy the Butcher. Says our editor in a footnote:
George I., in his enmity to George II., entertained some idea of separating the sovereignty of England and Hanover (Coxe^s Walpole, p. 132) ; and we find from Lord Chancellor King's ' Diary,' under the date of June, 1725, " a negotiation had been lately on foot in relation to the two young Princes, Frederick and William. The Prince (George II.) and his wife were for excluding Prince Frederick, but that after the King and the Prince he should be Elector of Hanover, and Prince William King of Great Britain ; but that the King said it would be unjust to do it without Prince Frederick's consent, who was now of an age to judge for himself, and so the matter now stood " (Campbell's ' Chancellors,' iv. 318). Sir Robert Walpole, who communicated this to the Chancellor, added that he had told George I. that " if he did not bring Prince Frederick over in his life-time, he would never set his foot on English ground." This early enmity of his parents to Frederick Lord Campbell cannot explain ; " but the Prince had his revenge by perpetually disturbing the government of his father till, in 1751, the joyful exclamation by George II was uttered, ' Fritz is dead!' "—ib.
Which Hervey, who died in the early 1740s, didn't live to see. (Nor Fritz of Wales as a father even his enemies couldn't bash; FoW raised his children - he had nine all in all - with English as their first language, he gave them all a bit of the garden in his estate they were to garden themselves as they wanted, which started a life long passion in future G2, "Farmer George", and he played with them and encouraged them with music.) What he did live to see where endless "We hate Fritz" parties with the other royals:
The Princess Caroline, who loved her mother and disliked her brother in equal and extreme degrees, was in much the same state of mind as the Queen ; her consideration and regard for her mother making her always adopt the Queen's opinions, as well as share her pleasures and her afflictions. They neither of them made much ceremony of wishing a hundred times a day that the Prince might drop down dead of an apoplexy— the Queen cursing the hour of his birth, and the Princess Caroline declaring she grudged him every hour he continued to breathe ; and reproaching Lord Hervey with his weakness for having ever loved him, and being fool enough to think that he had been ever beloved by him, as well as being so great a dupe as to believe the nauseous beast (those were her words) cared for anybody but his own nauseous self—that he loved anything but money—that he was not the greatest liar
that ever spoke—and would not put one arm about anybody's neck to kiss them, and then stab' them with the other, if he could censored passageShe protested that from the time he had been here six months—so early had she found him out—she had never loved him better or thought better of him than at that moment.'
At this point it must have occurred to Hervey that future readers might doubt how reliable he is re: Fritz of Wales, so he does some self analysis about his motives, in the third person:
The truth is, if his temper was susceptible of provocation, he might, without being capable of feeling long provoked at the same circumstance, have continued long warm in his resentment against the Prince, since scarce a day passed without some new lie the Prince had made of him during the quarrel, as well as some virulent thing he now said of him, being reported to Lord Hervey by the Queen or the Princess Caroline, who both hated the Prince at this time to a degree which cannot be credited or conceived by people who did not hear the names they called him, the character they gave him, the curses they lavished upon him, and the fervour with which they both prayed every day for his death.
It would be endless to endeavour to repeat all the lies Lord Hervey at this time heard the Prince had coined of him, but one or two of the most remarkable I will insert. The Prince told the Queen and all his sisters that Lord Hervey had told him everybody said his Royal Highness was known to have such a partiality for the Princess Eoyal, and to be so incapable of concealing anything from her, that nobody doubted (Note from Editor - lines stricken out in manuscript by grandson).
Another was that Lord Hervey, from the moment he first came about him, had been always endeavouring to give him ill impressions of the Queen and all his sisters ; to blow him up against his father and a hundred times endeavoured to persuade him to
make a party to move for his 100,000?. a-year in Parliament^ as well as brought offers to him from people in the Opposition, and made use of Miss Vane's interest to get them accepted.
I do not relate these things as any justification of Lord Hervey's conduct at this time ; for if personal resentment, and a desire to vex and mortify the Prince,- had any share in his views and counsels at this juncture, I own he is not justifiable, as nothing can justify the meanness of a man of sense desiring, from a principle of revenge, to hurt those by whom he has been injured, further than
self-preservation requires, or the silly received laws of mistaken customary honour enjoin: but take this particular (with regard to the Prince) out of Lord Hervey's character, and I believe it would be impossible to give another instance of the same sort of wrong to anybody in any part of his conduct ; though few people had more enemies, or had reason to be irritated against more people, if being abused is allowed to be a reason.
Yes, Hervey, I'm sure you were the milk of human kindness otherwise. Good grief.
Re: Hervey's Memoirs: Who's the worst Fritz of them all?
Re: Hervey's Memoirs: Who's the worst Fritz of them all?
Re: Hervey's Memoirs: Who's the worst Fritz of them all?
Hervey's Memoirs: King Lear's Family has nothing on this
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
Re: Hervey's Memoirs: King Lear's Family has nothing on this
Re: Hervey's Memoirs: King Lear's Family has nothing on this
Re: Hervey's Memoirs: King Lear's Family has nothing on this
Re: Hervey's Memoirs: King Lear's Family has nothing on this
Re: Hervey's Memoirs: King Lear's Family has nothing on this
Re: Hervey's Memoirs: King Lear's Family has nothing on this
Re: Hervey's Memoirs: King Lear's Family has nothing on this
Re: Hervey's Memoirs: King Lear's Family has nothing on this
Re: Hervey's Memoirs: King Lear's Family has nothing on this
Yuletide nominations are OPEN!
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.
Re: Yuletide nominations are OPEN!
Re: Yuletide nominations are OPEN!
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Re: Yuletide nominations are OPEN!
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Re: Yuletide nominations are OPEN!
Re: Yuletide nominations are OPEN!
Re: Yuletide nominations are OPEN!
Re: Yuletide nominations are OPEN!
Oster Wilhelmine readthrough
No comments tonight, as it's my bedtime, and also
Good luck with the Enlightenment nominations, guys! Sorry I'm not more help, but, you know, German and sleep. #priorities But I'm following the developments and silently cheering you on.
Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough
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The artist formerly known as Enlightenment RPF
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Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough - young Wilhelmine
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Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough - marriage negotiations
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HRE politics
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Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough - marriage negotiations
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Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough - 1730s
Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough - 1730s
Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough - 1730s
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Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough - 1740s
Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough - 1740s
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Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough
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Hephaistion and Alexander
Which is an excellent, highly readable essay of about 30 pages succeeding in what sets out to do, put the Hervey/FoW relationship into context and drawing conclusion. The authors always make it clear when they're speculating, but also on what grounds they do so.
In terms of context for Favourites: generally speaking, in public consciousness there lived two types of Favourites. The Bad Favourite, obviously, bleeding the realm dry, which is why Princes should not have just one but should dispense their favour among several. (Only human affection doesn't always work that way.) And the Good Favourite, the Trusted Faithful Lieutenant, who is loyal to his lord (or lady) but also speaks truth to power when necessary. When Sarah Churchill re: her relationship with Queen Anne prides herself on her candor, she's also pointing towards this role model. In terms of antique role models, Hephaistion is the Good Favourite - "He, too, is Alexander", loyal but never expoitative, unafraid to talk back to Alexander when needed, which is emphasiized in the most popular Alexander biography read at the time, the Quintus Curtius Rufus one. Which is one of the association Hervey will go for when picking the name. At the same time, the homoerotic association the Alexander/Hephaistion relationship evoked was definitely there as well, especially for someone who was as well read in the classics as Hervey was.
The other important context the authors establish is that of the changing attitude towards same sex relationships. In Stuart times, the self proclaimed libertines included m/m and f/f in their erotic poetry, Rochester prominently. Same sex relationships were also used for slander, especially in a political context; again, see Sarah Churchill, when losing Anne's favour to Abigail Masham, causing scandalous poetry and pamphlets being written that accuse Abigail of a lesbian relationship with Anne. Still, there was a great deal of laissez faire in the nobility, and all the nobility clubs like the Kit Kat club which had a great deal of ribaldry and (het) sex objects swapping also had at the very least homoerotic jokes and phallocentric conversations through the 18th century in England, but as time went on, the attitudes changed. By the 1760s, a self proclaimed libertine and free thinker like John Wilkes isn't just aggressively heterosexual but aggressively attacking homoerotic relationships as decadent and coded into princely depravity and tyranny.
Hervey and his entourage were more old school, obviously. Now I had noticed Hervey in the later part of his memoirs mentioning our old aquaintance Charles Hanbury Williams as a young man, aka Poniatowski's future mentor, the Fritz-loathing future envoy. He was a part of Hervey's wider social circle, friends with both Fox brothers (i.e. Hervey's boyfriend Stephen and Stephen's brother Henry), and guess what:
Winnington and the Fox brothers were also close friends with Hanbury Williams, who, in February 1740, penned a series of verses on Winnington's abandonment of Horatio Townshend for Teddy Byng. The following July, Hanbury Williams wrote an ode to Horatio Townshend that was even more explicit:
' Come to my Breast, my Lovely Boy!
Thou Source of Greek & Roman Joy!
And let my Arms entwine 'ye;
Behold my strong erected Tarse,
Display your plump, & milk-white Arse,
Young, blooming, Ligurine!
(Our authors note that Hanbury Williams and Henry Fox were also notorious womanizers and H-W wrote just as explicit het verses, so: bi, rather than gay.)
As noted in my previous Hervey write-ups, Hervey being attacked by Pulteney specifically for his sexual ambiguity is also a sign of this changing time, of homoeroticism put more and more into a negative satiric context, and othered. And that was if you were a protected by your status noble. Really news to me and very important for not just the British climate towards same sex relationships was this bit of information:
And what may have given their fears extra impetus was the growing climate of moral panic over sodomy, itself provoked by the sensational trials of around three hundred men and boys for sodomy which were taking place in many of the leading cities of the United Provinces from 1730 onwards.The Dutch sodomy trials had swiftly made their way into the British press. Such reports not only expressed their abhorrence of this 'abominable Vice' and described in detail how the 'detested Criminals' were executed by being partially strangled, 'burnt with Straw', and drowned." They also noted how the accused included those who had held important political office. As the London Evening Post commented in June 1730, 'all Ranks are infected to that Degree, that the Magistrates are almost at a Loss how to Extinguish this Infernal Heat', and cited by name two prominent Dutch politicians suspected of the crime.
The Daily Journal went further and described the fury of the Amsterdam crowd when it became known that those who had been convicted of sodomy amongst 'the richer Sort of People' had been granted the privilege of a private execution. 'The Populace arising in Arms, and demanding publick Execution of the Rich as well as the Poor ... the Magistrates were obliged to send to the Hague ... to quell this Mob'.' Thus, when Pulteney wrote of how the 'unnatural, reigning Vice' of which he accused Hervey had 'of late, been severely punish'd in a neighbouring Nation', he was making both a highly emotive connection that his readers would have immediately understood-and suggesting, by implication, that Hervey deserved the same brutal punishment.
Yet another context in which the Hervey and Fritz of Wales relationship plays out is that of the Royal Family. Here our authors do us the immense service and point out the timing, and remind us of the dates:
1716: 20 years old Hervey, when on his Grand Tour, visits Hannover and as urged by his father take the trouble to make nice with 9 years old Fritz, in order to impress the future monarch.
December 1728: adult Fritz of Wales finally arrives in England following the death of G1 and the coronation of his father as G2. During this time, however, Hervey is on his second Europe journey, this one with Stephen Fox.
October 1729: Hervey returns to England.
May 1730: Hervey becomes appointed Vice Chamberlain
1731: Hervey's friendship with FoW peaks; this is where the two preserved letters from FoW to Hervey (all others were destroyed) are from. (Hervey's own original letters to FoW were also destroyed, - after Fritz of Wales died, Augusta supposedly burned most of his correspondance - but luckily Hervey kept copies of his outgoing mail, so we do have his letters to the prince in copy.)
Late autumn and winter of 1731: Hervey writes angry letters about FoW to boyfriend Stephen Fox and to Lord Bristol, Hervey's father. FoW's affair with Hervey's mistress Anne Vane becomes public; Hervey is replaced as FoW's advisor by Bubb Dodington (what a name!).
April of 1732: Hervey tries to blackmail and bully Anne Vane into getting the Prince to take him back as advisor, thereby allienating the Prince even further. The relationship is over for good.
You may have noticed from the dates that Hervey establishing himself as royal Chamberlain and as the confidant to Queen Caroline and Hervey's friendship with Fritz of Wales happen exactly at the same time. This wasn't clear to me before, and it's hugely important. Our authors speculate that Hervey might have had Buckingham in mind as a role model of a generation uniting Royal Favourite. (
When it comes to "why did Hervey respond to the breakup to badly?", the authors don't think it was about Anne Vane as such, because Hervey's set was fine with mistress sharing more often than not, and Hervey never comes across caring about Anne Vane for more than sex. (Especially when compared to the love letters he writes to Stephen Fox or Algarotti.) But being dumped for a man like Dodington, that's what hurt. Along with losing the prospect of being the next King's Favourite. But the authors don't think it was just all careerism on Hervey's part, not if he'd been even partly serious with picking Hephaistion as his role model. Hephaistion dumped by Alexander is unthinkable.
The question as to why Fritz of Wales dumped Hervey gets replied by taking all these various factors into account. Fritz of Wales wanted to establish his own identity outside the family he didn't get along with, and Hervey simultanously vying for Mom's favor and his own was an active negative rather than a positive here.
(BTW, re: the Hervey and Caroline relationship, the author says the relentless emphasis on Caroline as a mother figure here is on the one hand stretching things - since Caroline was only thirteen years older than Hervey - but on the other allowed the two of them to express their affection scandal free and in public; no one, not even the most relentless Hervey hater who accused Hervey of having pimped Anne Vane to FoW and of being Sporus and an evil gay etc., ever accused him of having illicit designs on the Queen's virtue, or the Queen to behave in any way inappropriate towards a man not her husband. This is a great contrast to what happened after of FoW' death with his poor widow, Augusta, who was accused to have an affair with her son future G3's tutor Lord Bute, who'd later become G3's minister of state (and also Lady Mary's son-in-law). Going by all we know, there was zero truth in that, and G3's fondness for Lord Bute was because the man had been a father figure to him in his adolescence, but there was still a great deal of hostility, satire and misogyny directed against Augusta, and even her coffin was cursed by the crowd as that of a shameless whore. With, again, zero evidence that she ever had done anything with Lord Bute.)
The Pulteney scandal and the ensueing duel plus even more scandal didn't seem to immediately affect FoW's feelings for Hervey - Hervey even makes a light hearted joke about it in one of his letters at the time - but the authors speculate that the affair in combination with the Dutch scandal of the trials against gay men and the fact that Fritz of Wales started to court a good public opinion at this point in order to get some standing in England (where he was looked at as a foreigner while brother future Billy the Butcher had been born and raised in the country) might have all contributed to Fritz of Wales deciding to trade in Hervey to Dodington.
Lastly: when they were close, how close where they? The essay starts with that quote from Hervey's letter to Stephen Fox where he says he wished he could love Fritz of Wales the way he loves Stephen Fox. Now, when I had read that quote first, in Halsband's Hervey biography, I had read it negatively, meaning "since this relationship could be the making of me, I wish I could love the guy at all, and I pretend to, but I don't". This, of course, is not how Stephen Fox took it; he seems to have read it as "I wish I could love the Prince the way I love you, i.e. romantically", hence the further exchange of tearful letters and Hervey apologizing and swearing he loves no one the way he loves Stephen.
On the other hand, Fritz of Wales actually uses the same nickname for Hervey as did Stephen Fox, and in one of the two preserved letters gets a bit teasing and flirtatious about it:
(T)hese show a deep affection for Hervey which leaps from the page. Frederick adopted the classical mythological personas of Orestes and Pylades for Hervey and himself, writing in one letter as 'the warm Orestes, to his Dear Pilades'. Orestes was the son of King Agamemnon, and he and Pylades were celebrated in classical literature as the inseparable friends who were willing to die for each other. The pair feature in Ambrose Philips's popular neo-classical drama, The Distrest Mother (1712), a play with which the prince was already acquainted, having ordered a command performance of it in January 1729. Frederick also had a more familiar name for Hervey-'My L[or] d Chicken', and 'my Dear Chicken'-an epithet, it seems, about Hervey's lack of physical robustness, and one which Hervey also liked to use about himself in his letters to both the prince and Stephen Fox. In 1730, then, Frederick liked to suggest, or indeed saw, Hervey as his intimate, immutable companion.
Of course FoW had girlfriends throughout the relationship and pre Anne Vane confided to Hervey about them - one of Hervey's "Hephaistion" letters asks whether "Roxana or Statira is in favour", making references to Alexander the Great's wives - but that doesn't exclude some homoerotic frisson, for, as the authors write: It is possible to read Hervey's and Frederick's relationship as having a similar heterosexual and homoerotic charge. This might explain Frederick's rather flirtatious wish in one letter to bait Stephen Fox about Frederick's and Hervey's friendship. Frederick wrote to Hervey, when he was visiting Stephen Fox in Somerset, by joking that 'being a fraid that this Letter should be opened if I sent it directly to you so I make a direction to Mr Fox, as if it was written to You by a Lady, to make you be teazed a little a bout it Adieu my Dear'.
Perhaps the most compelling-if opaque-evidence for the complexity of Hervey's and Frederick's feelings for each other comes from Hervey's letters to Stephen Fox in the autumn of I73I. Hervey's and Frederick's relationship seems to have reached an intensity by late August I73I that unsettled Hervey. On 26 August Hervey told Fox that the prince had been seriously ill with a fever and added mysteriously, 'I should say many things to you if you were here which I shall not trust even to a Cypher. Solomon you know says speak not in Palaces for the Walls have Ears, nor of Princes for the Birds of the Air will reveal it.'
In conclusion: how an erastes and eromenos relationship can go truly, badly wrong, even if it remained subtextual between them.
Re: Hephaistion and Alexander
Re: Hephaistion and Alexander
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The Braunschweig Perspective : First Impressions
Then, after Fritz' arrest is really really public, he keeps reporting rumors that he's about to be forgiven by Dad just the next few days, in September that Katte managed to clear himself almost totally and is facing just a few years of arrest, max. Wilhelmine is consistently reported sick for the remainder of 1730, that's the explanation S. keeps giving for why no one is allowed to see her anymore. She's in a bad state of health. Home arrest, what home arrest? On October 14th, he's noticed the messengers being sent from Wusterhausen to Köpenick (where the war tribunal was held) and back and optimistically concludes FW wants to reopen the palace at Köpenick as Fritz' new residence and forgiveness is really really imminent now. He also has heard that the tribunal wanted to deliver an ultra strict sentence on Katte, but FW, being the merciful King he is, has intervened and provided mercy and will soon declare Katte's pardon.
Just when I was ready to conclude he just doesn't have luck with his spies and paid informants, I check out the November entries, and lo, not only does S. provide a pretty accurate report of the execution, complete with dialogue between Fritz and Katte, but he also, near the end of November (25th) in another entry, has read the three letters Katte wrote (to the King, to his father and to his grandfather) in copies. (He still insists on lightside FW, saying that the King read Katte's letter only two days ago but bitterly regrets it and swears he'd totally have pardoned Katte if he had read it first.) (He also says Hans Heinrich has offered his resignation, and so has Katte's superior Natzmer, but that FW refused to accept it and on the contrary that the Katte family is in for some favors.) And then in December we get back to rumors of Fritz' imminent return to parental favor and neighbourhood, i.e. evidently false intelligence. So how come his intel on the execution is suddenly dead on? S., you are a man of mystery. Here's what he writes, and you know the scene so well that I give you Rokoko German:
Berlin, den 11. November 1730.
Nach dem jüngst gemeldetermaßen, der Lieut. v. Katte gestern vor 8 Tagen, unter einer Escorte von 30 Mann Gens d'Armes in Begleitung des Ritt-Meisters v. Aßeburg und des Gens d'Armerie Feld Predigers nach der 10 Meil von hier entlegenen Veste Cüstrin gebracht und daselbst den 3. Tag darauf, am vergangenen Sonntage, abgeliefert worden; hat der, auf Königl. Befehl, dahin voraus gegangene Geh. Rath pp. Gerbet, in Gegenwart des gleichfalls aldar schon an gelangt gewesenen Obristen v. Derschau und anderer dazu bestimmter Officiern, demselben abermahls das Todesurtheil vorlesen und auf den folgenden Tag, dessen die Execution ankündigen müßen. Der Feld Prediger hat demnach die Devotion mit ihm continuiret, da andern Morgens der Condemnatus bald nach 7 Uhr im Schloße sich auf einen daselbst angefahrenen Sand-Haufen, gleich gegen des Cron-Prinzen Fenster über, eingefunden und wie Se. Königl. Hoheit ihn darauf angeredet. Mons. Katte! ich bitte euch vergebet mir, wann Ich euch zu leyde gethan und Ursache an euern Tode bin; und er sich dagegen hinwieder ganz constant in Antwort vernehmen laßen: Ihro Hoheit haben nicht Ursache um Vergebung zu bitten, weil Sie mir nichts zu wieder gethan und ich selbst meines Todes Ursache bin.
Er darauf mit Gebet sich zu Gott gewandt, so folglich sich selbst die Augen verbunden und also in gleicher Constance des Henckers Schwerd Schlag abgewartet, der dann auch so glücklich gelungen, daß mit einem Hieb der Kopf vom Cörper abgesondert worden; welchem necht man dem Leichnam mit dem ausgebreiteten schwarzen Tuch bedecket und also bis 2 Uhr Nachmittags zum Schau liegen laßen; da man selben in einen Sarg geleget und die bestellte 12 Bürger des Orts selbigen so folglich zur Beerdigung auf den Kirchhof getragen; mit welcher Tragedie dann in so weit dieser Actus geendet, und wird gesagt: daß, wann der König dieses decollierten Lieutnants Verbrechen nach der rigoeur hätte bestrafen lassen wollen und nicht consideration für die viele vornehme Verwandten Se. Maj. selben mit einerweit eclatanteren Todes-Strafe belegen können.
Given S. earlier reports all those imminent pardons, the turnaround to "FW totally could have made it worse!" (i.e. FW's own argument) is especially startling. And the fact that it all checks out - the dialogue exchange, the sandheap, Katte binding his own eyes.
In the same November 25th entry where S. mentions the three letters and having read copies, he also provides us with this priceless anecdote about, wait for it, young AW confronting FW with Katte:
Sonsten wird pargiret: daß der zweyte Königl. Prinz jüngster Tagen beim Exercieren, da ein Officier ihm die Handgriffe bey bringen sollen, ganz ermüdet worden und nicht mehr damit fortfahren wollen; wie nun des Königs Majt. zu Ihm gelaget, wenn Du nicht exerciren
willst, so sollst Du auch kein port d'epée mehr tragen; worauf der Prinz geantwortet: mein lieber Papa! das will ich wohl gleich wieder geben; wie der König darauf repliciret: Wilhelm! so kanst Du auch kein Officier sein; hätte der Prinz erwidert; da frage ich nichts nach, mein lieber Papa läßet ja einen Officiers die Köpfe abhauen.
Was nun hiermit weiter vorgefallen, übergehet man billig mit Stillschweigen; inzwischen habe der König geargwohnet: daß gegen den Prinzen jemand dergleichen Reden geführet haben müßte; weswegen Er etwas hart angelaßen, solches zu bekennen; Er hat aber keinen genannt; indessen soll der Kriegs Rath Lindener als Informator, deswegen ein scharfes Bad haben ausstehen müßen.
English translation, because I need you to understand this if google doesn't deliver: It's also told that the second royal prince the other day during drilling grew exhausted when an officer was supposed to teach him all the right grips, and hadn't wanted to continue; then the King came to him, he told him, if you don't want to drill anymore, you'll have to return your sword, to which the Prince replied: Dear Papa! I want to return it at once! and the King answered: Wilhelm! Then you can't be an officer! To which the Prince supposedly returned, I don't care for it, my dear Papa orders his officers' heads to be cut off.
What then happened should rather be covered with silence; by now the King suspects someone has been talking in front of the Prince with such speeches, and he's approached him somewhat harshly to confess to this; but (AW) did not provide anyone's name; but still, the Councillor Lindener as the likely informant has been in hot waters because of this.
Re: The Braunschweig Perspective : First Impressions
Re: The Braunschweig Perspective : Rumors, Rumors
Re: The Braunschweig Perspective : Rumors, Rumors
Re: The Braunschweig Perspective : Rumors, Rumors
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Peter Keith
* Remember when we found his eulogy and it said he spent three years at Trinity College in Dublin, but mostly reading alone in a room, and I said I *thought* it sounded like he didn't enroll but was there informally, but I couldn't be sure? I've finally managed to confirm that.
...By emailing Trinity College and asking the manuscripts department to check their archives. :D They had no record of him in the admissions lists, nor in the catalogue of letters to, from, or related to him.
But now we know! This had been bugging me enough that when the eulogy turned up while I was writing "Lovers", I tweaked a sentence in the first draft to be ambiguous instead of a blanket statement that he never attended university.
I admit that when I found he had a connection to Trinity College, I was delighted, because there are many archives in Germany I would like to email with questions like this, but I don't speak German well enough to carry on a correspondence. But English-language archivists are going to get emails from me. Or as
* In the course of this correspondence, I found a sentence in Wikipedia that was added during the latest round of edits, stating that Fritz refused a suggestion from the British to appoint Peter Keith envoy on the grounds that Keith wasn't experienced enough. I was initially skeptical, because Wikipedia, but then I saw the citation was Koser.
Sure enough! Koser cites his source as an exchange in the Political Correspondence, which goes like this:
Letter from the British to Podewils: Please tell Fritz we think his new envoy should be Peter Keith. "A man like him would have more credit with us than a more skilled but less well-intentioned negotiator."
Fritz to Podewils: I just bet he would. Too bad it's in *my* best interests to send a negotiator who's more skilled and less well-intentioned toward them.
In more detail, slightly paraphrased, Fritz's letter was very interesting:
I'm very surprised at this letter you forwarded. After perusing it closely, I have to assume that either Keith has been intriguing and the English were happy to oblige him, or, what is more likely, the English don't want me sending someone who can penetrate their system and shed light on their affairs for me. Someone like Keith would be very convenient for them, since they regard him as half a Briton, and since he has no idea of what it is to negotiate, they would do whatever they wanted. And that's not even counting that he's poor, which is a consideration that drives out all others.
Meaning that he's bribable because you won't pay him and he's not independently wealthy? I guess you would know all about that driving out all other considerations, Fritz. :P
Fritz: Look, I lied to Dickens about my debts, got all the money I wanted, and all I had to do was promise not to try to escape, but I made sure there was a loophole and I tried to escape anyway. It's not that hard to accept bribes ethically if you're willing to double-cross your bribers!
So...while I agree that like Lehndorff, Peter is probably not someone I would send to do hard negotiating, it is interesting that both Fritz and the English view him as half Briton (remember Lehndorff saying he'd picked up English manners), and Fritz doesn't trust him not to be intriguing with the English behind his back.
Oh! I should mention the date. February 7, 1747. So during that 1740s period when their relationship was evidently at an all-time low.
I do agree with Fritz that it's much more likely that the English wanted a favorable envoy, than that Peter was scheming. And it's interesting that they thought of him ten years after his stay (1736-1740 in Portugal, remember), and after his patron, Queen Caroline, had died in 1737.
Peter Keith's son, in contrast, later gets to be envoy to the Sardinian court in the 1770s, I guess because he's fully Prussian in Fritz's mind and has some idea of what it is to negotiate.
Incidentally, this reminds me that Fritz sent Algarotti to Turin in 1741, but didn't entrust him with full envoy credentials or official responsibility, but told him to go secretly and try to find out what he could without letting on why, but of course no one in power would talk politics with him because he didn't have an official position, and he was such a celebrity that everyone immediately knew where he was and guessed why, and so that was a disaster.
All of which is to say that Fritz generally doesn't trust the people he met socially with anything resembling power. Which is why Fredersdorf getting to be spymaster and treasurer is so unusual.
* 1747 was also the year that Peter became curator at the Academy of Sciences. His predecessor died in March, so he wasn't yet curator when this letter was sent.
I'd always taken that appointment to mean that Fritz was at least vaguely favorably disposed toward Keith getting to pursue his intellectual dreams by holding what we now call academic-adjacent positions. And I put a line in "Lovers" to reflect that.
But after reading the Maupertuis biography, I find that Fritz gave Maupertuis a free hand with appointments, unlike his successors. I had been basing my impression on Fritz's involvement on the fact that after Maupertuis died, the Academy had to submit its lists of proposed members to Fritz for approval or veto.
So now that we know that Maupertuis and Keith were at least on good enough terms that the Pollyanna of eulogists could describe his former colleague Keith as a valuable friend to his current boss Maupertuis (i.e. take with a grain of salt), it's possible Fritz had nothing to do with this appointment.
Since I read the Maupertuis bio as research for "Lovers", I removed all references to Fritz approving membership, but I left in Peter's gratitude for the academic-adjacent positions, because if my escapist fic isn't for shipping my ship, what is it for? :P
Plus, Peter became an honorary member on February 16, 1744. Fritz started micromanaging the institute in the absence of Maupertuis (who had left after the debacle of getting captured at Mollwitz) in mid January, 1744. And everyone who'd been part of the self-organized society in 1743 was immediately grandfathered in on January 23. And Maupertuis wouldn't show up in Berlin again until August 1745.
So it seems very much like Fritz personally approved Peter's membership, even if not the curatorship.
* Oh! Koser says that Fritz kept Peter "far from service in his army as well as from his person." Now, you guys know my theory on this, but I have some evidence: he gave him a court position first, evidently with SD, and a commission as an officer when Peter finally asked for it. If he was trying to keep Peter out of the army because, what, he thought he was half Briton? Why would he let him in when he asked?
Besides, I just got to the part in Oster where Oster says Wilhelmine probably expected Fritz to summon her immediately to court, and she was disappointed when he didn't. (This I believe, because I've always been surprised that he didn't.) He did summon Algarotti, Euler, Maupertuis, etc. to court...and then proceeded to ignore them while he went off to war. You know if Suhm had lived, he would have been in this group.
So I still think Fritz was trying to keep Keith from dying, not keeping him at a distance from his army per se, and getting distracted by war and politics, not personally avoiding him out of displeasure. I think Keith got the standard Fritz treatment of low pay, being taken for granted that he'd be around when Fritz had time for him, lack of clear communication about his intent, and some favors that were much bigger in Fritz's mind than in the recipient's.
* Finally, the odds of me finishing the fix-it fic, which I haven't written since May (I had to drop it for RMSE and then German, because I have a limited number of projects I can work on at one time--you'd think I could do a little each day, or alternate, but it doesn't work like that1), are low, but I'm still enjoying plotting it. And I thought you would like to know that this week, I finally came up with a way for Peter and Ariane to meet in the same year that they met in real life. <3
Now, she still has to agree to 1) move to France, 2) convert, if they want to get married, but that's handwavable with "love".:D
Peter may also have to convert; I'm toying with the idea of Fritz, Wilhelmine, and Katte converting while privately sneering at the whole thing, but Peter being a much less visible and slightly more devout individual who silently reads his Bible at home and doesn't attend illicit Huguenot services and just doesn't go to Mass...until suddenly he needs recognition of his marriage. I think I like it, because it shows that the love goes both ways, just as the understanding about his affairs with men involves compromise. (SOMEONE has to be a good husband. :P)
1. My advisor in grad school very much wanted me to finish my dissertation and also turn chapters into published journal articles at the same time, and I told her those were both lovely ideas but that it was either/or, and since one got me to a PhD and the other didn't, I finished the dissertation and did not turn the chapters into articles.
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The Braunschweig Perspective: Family Holidays
It was said to the Crown Prince on the 11th in jest: this princess could be a bride for him. He, however, replied: He wouldn't think of a bride for many years more, but if he had to choose one, he wouldn't allow himself to be dictated to. He would hope that his Majesty his father could imagine how he'd have liked it to get a wife forced on him against his will and would have to marry her. On the 18th, too of the King's body pages had to stand on the block for four hours at Neumarkt because they'd forgotten to bring the King's overcoat along in the morning for the parade when it had started to rain.
Stratemann includes a sympathy poem written for Fritz in late 1730. (I'll get to by whom and why.) In German. With a reply poem by Fritz. In German. Note that the poem contains nothing objectionable, they just hope Fritz will get through the dark times and that the sun of grace will shine on him again. Stratemann, interestingly, also provides the entire (French) text of the poem Katte wrote while under arrest at his regiment still in Berlin which you probably know from various biographies. Here it is:
Vers composés par Mr.de Katte, lors qu'il-etoit Prisonnier dans la Guarde des Gensd'Armes.
Cest toi fortune inconstante,
fausse Divinité!
Qui pour remplir nôtre attente.
charme nôtre Vanité;
Menteuse! dans tes promesses,
Injuste! dans tes largesses,
Terrible! dans tes revers,
Il n'-y-a jour qui-finisse
Sans nous montrer bon Caprice
par mille tours divers.
Celui qui la curiosité portera
a lire cette ecriture apprendra
que l'ecrivain a-été mit aux arrests
par l'Ordre desa Majesté
le 16me d'Auot 1730
non sans esperance de
se revoir bientôt
én liberté, quoique
la façon d'ont-il-a-été gardé
Par le temps et la Patience
En obtient les fruits d'une bonne Conscience;
Si vous voulés savoir qui c'est,
Le nom de Katte vous l'apprendra,
Toujours constant en Esperance.
This so far is the sole passage in French. Since the next few entries are all Wilhelmine and family related, I'll fast forward here to another intriguing Katte mention, this time of Hans Heinrich, more than half a year later:
Berlin, June 31st 1731: Supposedly General Lieutenant v. Katte after leading his regiment at the revue before the King got off his horse and put his sword at the King's feet, and asked again for his demission, whereupon his majesty showed himself very much displeased. Rumor even has it (Hans Heinrich) got arrested as a consequence.
Now, obviously the arrest didn't happen - I don't think biographers would have overlooked that! -, but this is also the first time I heard about Hans Heinrich making this gesture. Since the revue was a really big public spectacle (this is also why Fritz was pissed off when Heinrich didn't salute him properly in the after the 7 Years War, remember), such a gesture would have been quite something. And does argue it's FW Hans Heinrich is struggling for forgive. Not to mention that it gives the lie to the "Hans Heinrich totally on board with FW executing his son!" version. All the more so since Stratemann is really the most FW friendly envoy ever.
Back to the winter of 1730/1731. Case in point: the same entry that has the AW anecdote also includes this story: It is said that his royal highness recently wrote a submissive letter to His Majesty his lord father, and in it, due to the now allowed changes regarding his earlier limited stay in Küstrin, has given submissive thanks, with many sayings from the bible, which is very seemly towards an once angry but now soothed father, and the King when the letter was read to him squeezed many tears from his eyes. His Majesty also supposedly declared that the entire country was open to his Fritz, he should be able to go and live within the country wherever he pleases.
This, mind, the same month that we know FW wrote the furious "if there would be 200 000 Kattes I'd have them beheaded" rant, had SD toast to England's demise and according to Guy Dickens said he was now sorry re: Katte whose death had to rest heavily on Fritz' conscience, what with Fritz being the one to blame.
S. notes that Ulrike is much in favor, being other than Charlotte FW's favourite daughter for now. So how does this family celebrate the Christmas of 1730:
December 23rd 1730: Her Majesty the Queen spent most of the day with her daughter, the oldest princess, who still hasn't recovered from her illnesss. The second and third prince, too, have come down with a strong cold and cough. The Crown Prince now presides over the government of Küstrin and reports almost daily from events there to the King's greatest pleasure. When his Royal Highness for the first time arrived at the council chamber, the second Secretary, as an acccomplished poet, had welcomed him with a few verses, whereupon the Prince briefly replied in the same fashion. These verses circulate only in a few hands, and I'm not yet allowed to get them, but I will try and will communicate them accordingly.
December 24th: The court jeweller has created presents in gold and silver in the worth of 12/m Reichstaler, of which the Queen had golden pieces for her cabinet, the princes and princesses had silver lates. Princess Charlotte, our Prince of Bevern's bride, received an expensive jewel, some silver kitchen supply, shovels and pliers, and a few pretty things to dress herself up. His Highness her groom shall receive a set of laces, next to a golden set Point d'Espange and other treats sent to him on the occasion of Holy Christ's feast. Now the Princess Ulrike had asked for a while to receive the King's portrait as a Christmas present, and it was among her gifts; when the third prince (i.e. Heinrich) noticed, he asked for a portrait as well, and did receive one, about which this princess showed herself somewhat disgusted. The King went on Christmas Eve in his own person with an entourage to the local Christmas Market and bought entertaining pleasantries for the little princes and princesses. (...) At the first day of Christmas, the widowed Madam General v. Dörfling had had carried a good bowl of cooked Sauerkraut with a roasted fat goose to the palace, as his Majestly loves to eat this dish, and on the holiday a bowl with beautiful apples, which has been received very graciously.
Okay, while I doubt Heinrich asking for Dad's portrait was about more than "big sis got something special, I'd like to have one of those as well", it does provide ammo together with the fish for supper at the start of the year if you want to make a case that FW at this early point indulged him somewhat. And of course FW going shopping for his kids shows him in full loving pater famiilias vein. Our editor chides Wilhelmine again for her harsh, unloving picture of her parents. However: at this point Stratemann still insists she's simply ill. In 1731, he'll finally admit she wasn't ill, she was locked up, for months, and I'll get to the conditions which honestly brought it home to me she really was no less imprisoned as Fritz had been, just in her own rooms. Now, in late 1730, talk is out FW wants to marry little Sophie to BayreuthFriedrich. Sophie therafter keeps getting referenced as the bride of the Erbprinz of Bayreuth. Then, on January 6th, Stratemann reports this rumor:
January 6th: After the King these last days told the Princess Sophie that the Prince Heir of Bayreuth desired to have her as his wife, she started to cry heartily and pronounced that she didn't want to marry at all, but wanted to stay with the clerical career for which she'd been meant earlier. The King supposedly returned to this: it couldn't happen, the bridegroom would soon arrive, who'd please her being a handsome prince, which the princess gave no reply to, but later towards her governess Fräulein de Joccourt sounded very sad about. Now the completely unfounded rumor is making the rounds that the oldest Princess, who is still sick, wishes to replace her sister as the future Abbess of Hertford.
This is one of the few times where I think we can pinpoint who is Stratemann's source for this story, i.e., Sophie's governess. Bear in mind Sophie is barely pubescent at this point. And destined to marry the godawful Schwedt cousin. Poor Sophie.
On January 13th, Stratemann finally admits in his report that a) Fritz' release and rejoining the family isn't so imminent after all, and b) Wilhelmine isn't sick, she's in disgrace, locked up, and still not reconciled with Dad.
Of the Crown Prince, nothing has been said, and so it doesn't seem that he will appear at the 24th on the occasion of his birthday in Potsdam after all. The oldest Princess remains completely in her room, and thus circumstances argue that a complete reconciliation on both parts is still full of impediments. Her Majesty the Queen, however, enjoys with her husband the King a most endearing complete harmony and bliss, and thus rumor has it that she's expecting another child.
Yeah, not so much, Stratemann.
January 27th: As soon as the King left for Potsdam on the 19th, the Queen went to the oldest Princess, which she hadn't seen during the fourteen days spent with the King, and this most regarded Princess, who hasn't left her room since the 27th of August, which means in five months, went downstairs for to the Queen on the following Sunday the 20th, which I guess the King must have permitted; still, one is assured that the King does not yet permit (Wilhelmine) to appear in front of him, and the much hoped for complete reconciliation with the Crown Prince still seems to be far away; and yet the young gentleman lives very pleasantly at Küstrin and is so popular among so many that the artisans and low workers have said: they want to donate a penny of their daily salaries to his royal highness; then the nobility in the entire country keeps sending food supplies; in the midst of this the King took from the Prince the sole much loved valet left and transfered the later to Halle to get an appointment as Torschreiber (Gate Secretary, literally) with 30 Reichstaler per year as a salary, about which he (the valet) pretended to be embarrassed, but in the end accepted it with devotion.
February sees the rumor that Bayreuth Friedrich (who, if you recall, isn't in Germany, he's on his Grand Tour) has died, which of course isn't true.
On March 10th, Wilhelmine is still in disgrace: The reconciliation of the oldest royal princess has still made no progress, and there isn't much hope for it; by now, the court preachers have received an order to pray with her once a week in her room, but not to preach to her. She hasn't received communion for eight months now, and since August 16th has not been allowed to see any ladies in her chamber other than the governesses of the royal princesses and the Queen's Dames d'honeur. According to rumor, she tries to pass her time with music.
Not receiving communion might not seem a harsh punishment to us, but it's actually really nasty, because if Wilhelmine had died during that time, she'd have died in a damned state. Anyway, see what I mean about Wihelmine being kept as much a prisoner as Fritz? Actually more so, since he gets to attend and work in the Küstrin government, which might not be the most thrilling of occupations but is at least something other than sit and brood in a room.
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The Braunschweig Perspective: On the Wings of an Angel
At once when they arrived His Majesty ordered the fourth princess, Sophie, the bride of the Prince of Bayreuth and the youngest Princess Amalie to him, and when he saw the Princess Sophie, he was somwhat surprised at her size. Two months ago, she'd entered her thirteenth year, and has grown taller than her three older sisters, and so the King said to her: Sophie! What have you done to grow so tall, you grow taller than me, let me see your shoes. When he saw her shoes had heels of about two inches, the King said: Away with those! You don't need them anymore. On the next morning, the King visited the smallest prince, who is now nearly a year old, and took along the two above named princesses. When the King noticed that the Princess Sophie wasn't as tall anymore as the other day and saw with appreciation the flat shoes, he told her very sweet things.
And finally, Wilhelmine gets a break:
At last the royal decision regarding the oldest Princess has been made that she was allowed to receive communion at a service to be held in her chamber, which she'd wished to do in the cathedral with the rest of the people but has been refused to for unknown causes; when the second court preacher Steinberg this last Sunday held a service in the audience room of the princess, her royal highness, her stewardess Fr. v. Wittenhorst-Sonsfeld, the Queen's lady of honor Fr. v. Bodenbruch, and the Baroness de Joccourt, the governess of the three younger princesses, attended. One still hopes the Princess after having spent eight months in her retreat would be reconciled, but this hasn't happened yet, but it is expected to happen within the next four weeks and the arrival of the foreign dignitaries.
Again, I say the Baroness de Joccourt is Stratemann's likely source, not just for these but for all the stories featuring the kids.
More stories from Küstrin about how everyone, not just local nobility but French, Dutch, British and from the other German states keeps sending food and drink to Fritz but under incognito names and everyone is rooting for FW to release him.
Poor Gundling dies, and Stratemann gives a description of his ghastly funeral. Gundling's arch enemy and successor, Fassmann, who ridiculed him in a speech at said funeral quickly finds out what it means to be FW's new punching bag. He's sent fool garnments and refuses to wear them (Stratemann: But they were presents! How could he!). Flash foward to July, and Fassmann has had it, and we get a nasty reminder of 18th century antisemitism to boot:
Councillor Faßman who'd been appointed Court Fool has fled, because he does not want to be a Bouffon de la Cour, and it is said he has deserted to England. Most recently, he had a clash at Potsdam with a Jew named Marcus who has often been used by the court for such offices, and had to receive a slap in the face by the later, which the Jew had been licensed to do by a higher authority, whereupon (Fassmann) threw him on the ground and kicked him, and tore at his hair and strangled him so much that he'd have killed him if (Marcus) had not been saved by the surrounding officers. Faßmann then said to the King: he'd once had set the condition that he didn't want to be vexed by anyone, no matter how high ranking, much less by an infamous Jew, and thus he's left royal service and did not return.
Back to spring:
May 31st: After the arrival of the Prince of Dessau at Potsdam on the 10th, the later along with the Duke of Bevern has had a long conversation with the King which mostly concerned the reconciliation with the Crown Prince and the oldest Princess. The King supposedly remained harsh and wasn't movable, but one still flatters oneself: that his Majesty will be moved by these two best of princes. If it comes to this, the Prince of Dessau will go to Küstrin himself and pick the Crown Prince up there. Regarding the oldest Princess, it's said that within a few days, her destiny will be cleared up. A few days ago, she has been visited by General and Secret Councillor of his Majesty v. Grumbkow as well as the General Leutnants v. Borck, v. Podewils and v. Thulemeier, all four arriving in a chaise without announcement at the palace, and spent over an hour with the Princess. The sisters of the Princess and their governesses as well as her stewardess v. Wittenhorst-Sonsfeld and two of the Queen's ladies had been present at first then suddenly all had retired from the room and some with them greatly upset so that they had to take the red powder by Stahl. Of the proposition which was made to the Princess by these ministers of the cabinet, there is much conflicting rumor. Some claim to guess that a new marriage has been proposed to the Princess, either with the ruling Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth (i.e. BayreuthFriedrich's DAD) or with his Prince3 Heir who otherwise had been meant for the fourth Princess. But everything is still uncertain, and it's been covered up. But one thing is true; when the Princess came down to supper this evening, she wasn't, as she used to since allowed to supper, in a cheered up mood, but completely withdrawn in thoughts, and hardly spoke a word during the entire meal.
Editor Richard Wolff: the Margravine gives one of her typical exaggarated descriptions of this meeting in her memoirs of these four gentlemen trying to "bully" her into marriage.
And lo, it's public submission time for Wilhelmine:
Before the arrival of the King, the oldest, the fourth and the sixth Princess (and the first one after an encounter with the Queen) positioned themselves in his Majesty's rooms and received the King; when the oldest Princess threw herself at the King's feet and pleaded with his Majesty: to forgive her with what she has angered her merciful Papa; and squeezed out some tears while saying this, at which the King, too has cried a bit, and thus this Princess, after a retreat to her room of nine months, has not only been received again with grace but has now been put in new circumstances; but what will happen next and whose bride she shall be, time will show. The Queen has been received by the above named three princesses and Her Majesty had been very glad to find the oldest Princess, whom she hasn't seen for four months, reconciled with the King, for we all know that this Princess above all others has been close to the Queen's heart. And now the only thing lacking is that the Crown Prince, too, will be released into Freedom, to make everyone's joy complete.
In fairness, as of this point, anyone would have said Wilhelmine had been SD's favourite daughter and confidant, given not just SD pushing the English marriage for her. Still, the contrast between SD resenting the hell out of Wilhelmine's accepting the Bayreuth marriage in rl (and in younger Seckendorff's description when Wilhelmine is already married, so we don't have to rely on Wilhelmine's own word about this) and Stratemann's description is striking.
One hadn't believe the affair at first; but since the oldest Princess has submitted herself completely to the King's will, she's been gifted with much rich clothing, a purse and other precious triflings; and thus there can be no doubt (as to the reconciliation). Princess Ulrike, who since a year has been the King's greatest favourite and had been preferred to her older sister Sophie, has now been degraded due to a minor mistake. Despite her being only eleven years of Age, she still possess a great mind and thus a noble spirit; and thus she's very touchy about this and torments herself: at the King's demand, the Queen has taken the diamond earrings which the Queen of Sweden had given (Ulrike) some years ago away, and then she had to sit at the table with her youngest sister Princess (Amalie) despite having been allowed to sit for a year at the King's table.
On June 5th, Wilhelmine's engagement to Bayreuth Friedrich officially takes place. Stratemann thinks Bayreuth Friedrich only learned at the last minute he wouldn't get Sophie but Wilhelmine. To truly appreciate his description of the engagement party, bear in mind SD hated Bayreuth Friedrich's guts. (Or rather, hated that he married her daughter, making him the symbol of her defeat in the marital battle.)
The noble engaged couple sat at the high point of the table, and the King's pleasure was above measure. His highness the Duke of Würtemberg emptied a large cup while toasting the health of the engaged couple. After supper, the groom led his bride to the ballroom, but the King at once took her from him and started the dance with her; then he danced with the Princess Bride of Bevern (i.e. Charlotte, and then with Princess Sophie. The first two were warmly embraced by the King, and they kissed his Majesty's hands, which was repeated twice or thrice. When the two youngest princesses saw that the King had not asked them to dance, they, too, kissed his hands, and thus the King has danced with his five princess daughters en suite. The noble groom had been told by the King to ask the Queen to dance, but when her Majesty excused herself, the Prince Heir shrugged; but when the King tried again by telling her that the King asked her to do this, she no more refused but danced with the Heir Prince, whereupon Her Majesty did the same thing with the Duke of Würtemberg and the Duke of Bevern, and finally with the King himself, who held both of her hands, during the dance itself, too. He kept kissing her hand, and the ball ended only at three in the morning.
Meanwhile ,the British envoy: Wilhelmine looked pale and if she'd faint the entire time, and the Queen was upset and almost in tears, and the King glowered. Taking the British bias into acccount, I suppose the truth was somewhere in between, but Stratemann's polyanna-ness is still striking. Mind you, FW able to dance with all five of his daughters is not a picture one usually has of him.
Wilhelmine gets supportive poetry (in German) too, on the occasion of her engagement. An anonymous poem is making the rounds according to Stratemann:
One sees the secretly circulating verses that an adroit poet has made on the occasion of the oldest Princess' future departure for Bayreuth, and which go thusly:
Geh, Englische Prinzeß! nach deinem werthen Francken,
Gott und die Nach-Welt wird dir deine Treue dancken,
Indeßen bleibt dein Ruhm der ganzen Welt bekandt:
Denn wo Du lebst, da ist das rechte Engelland.
The poem makes a pun between "Englisch" as in "English", and "Englisch" as in old fashioned German for "Engelhaft" in modern German, "Angelic". You might recall that Isabella makes a similar pun in a letter to Maria Christina. I'll try my hand regardless. First the literal translation:
Go, English/Angelic Princess! with your worthy Franconian,
God and posterity will thank you for your loyalty,
and in the meantime, your fame is known to the entire world,
for where you live, that's where the true country of the English/Angels is.
Verse:
Oh English Princess, go with your Franconian man,
God knows your loyalty, and posterity will thank you then.
Still, all the world knows of your fame:
For where you live, that's Angelcountry all the same.
Now according to Stratemann, FW is hell bent on making Wilhelmine and future Margrave have sex and consumate the marriage before it's a marriage. Why? Because that would make it legal as a marriage, and rumor has it the Brits are making trouble by pointing to Fritz' of Wales' earlier claim to Wilhelmine's hand, which supposedly invalidates her current engagement. Mind you, having read Hervey's memoirs where the whole thing only gets half a sentence mention, I really doubt that, but I can see SD spreading such a rumor via her daughter's governesses, which, see above, I think were Stratemann's sources.
And then, come August, we get the big Fritz submission, of which Stratemann reports nothing new. That's as far as I got.
Re: The Braunschweig Perspective: On the Wings of an Angel
Re: The Braunschweig Perspective: On the Wings of an Angel
Hi, I'm new and I don't know how dreamwidth works?
So, uh, hi! I'm Jana, I've talked to
I'm 20 years old and about to enter my third semester of history and art history at uni. I've been interested in Fritz since I was about 13, but, being 13, I didn't get many proper sources until way later, so all of my knowledge is kind of... a huge mess of anecdotes and a few primary sources that I read way later. I am currently attempting to solidify my knowledge on Fritz with more books and more primary sources and honestly, your page has been a goldmine, it's SO fun to read!
My first language is German, I'm alright at English and I can manage some French. I've drawn some comics about historical anecdotes years ago and intend on maybe doing so again and, as of right now, I'm in the middle of painting a pop art style portrait of Katte to match the pop art style poster of Fritz that my parents got me from the Deutsches Historisches Museum. That kind of sums up my level of weird.
Uh... yeah! I really hope I picked the right place to post this!
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Re: Hi, I'm new and I don't know how dreamwidth works?
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The weird-ass musical
I attempted to translate Friedrich Mythos und Tragödie back in 2016 to show it to an American friend of mine (because I needed other people to suffer like I did). The subtitles were... alright enough, but I revised them last month, so now they're actually in the vague vicinity of good :'D The amount of serotonin I got when, after four years, I finally understood that FW says "You will serve in the Gens d'armes regiment" and not "asdsghjdsfjhkg SERVE!" - amazing.
I am not a professional translator and sometimes I am just plain lazy (I couldn't be arsed to spend too much brain power on retranslating the Katte/Wilhelmine duet...) soooo there are probably still mistakes. Anyway, here .
Geez, my love-hate relationship with this musical. I mean, some of the songs are great. Sometimes it is obvious that they did do their research (other times it is obvious that they did not give a shit about it...). I do think the cast had potential. Even though they picked the worst day to record for poor Tobias Bieri (Crown Prince Fritz), he sounds so much better in the bootlegs I've seen...
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The Braunschweig Perspective: Wedding Bells are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine
"The local rooms of the Crown Prince are with all eagerness being redecorated, and it's even said that the King had ordered all the wallpaper that used to be in these rooms, and all the books and papers which were still here, to be burned."
Same entry (August 25th 1731): the next unlucky guy to succeed Gundling and the rage-quitting Faßmann doesn't fare much better:
The successor of the late Councillor Gundeling and of Faßmann as court historian, v. Drost, has been offered by the King a salary of 1000 Reichstaler, but he keeps protesting and doesn't want to accept this office and the treats going with it; but he has still been ordered to Potsdam, and it's not doubted that given time, he'll accept everything since he's not capable of avoiding this.
Don't be so sure, Stratemann. Fritz gets three new beautiful riding horses sent to him to Küstrin; he's now reported as socializing with the Wreechs. Meanwhile, Wilhelmine has been allowed to drink coffee with Fritz of Bayreuth Otoh, Stratemann reports Fritz' secret library has been sold, though the buyer, a "French merchant", no name given, has announced he's holding it for Fritz as a future present.
It's the anniversary of the battle of Malplaquet (most devastating European battle pre 7 Years War; young FW, Seckendorff and Grumbkow were all youthful participants, and their relationship started there) which FW celebrates each year, this time by being so drunk he can't get up from the floor anymore without his servants' help.
September 22nd: hunting time, AW allowed to participate for the first time, Heinrich has fallen sick : The royal Prince August Wilhelm has been permitted to go hunting for the first time, with a gun, and he has sent the first shot partridge to the old governess of the royal children, Madame v. Roucoulles, as a present.
(Adult AW will not be a fan of hunting.)
Meanwhile, Drost, too, has gotten the hell out of Prussia rather than accept Gundling's job, "and nobody knows where. His colleague the advocate, however, has shown himself here again, and will probably be commissioned in his place. (...) The Medicus shall wear the same costume as the late Gundlng, and if he wants to, it will be permitted to him to let his wife come to Prussia, and it will be allowed to him to take his creditor, v. Lövenklau, as his Maitre d'Hotel.
So will this concessions make the guy accept the job? Stay tuned...
In October, FW proves he doesn't necessarily stiff actors: A strong man who has arrived from Italy this week has been at the King's and has displayed his strength and has presented comedies with his troupe which consists of about 20 people, whereupon both Majesties and the court were so pleased that ihe did not only receive gifts but has been permitted to show his arts in this country for money; which is why he has ordered a house made of wood to be built at Neumarkt here, and willl debut next week.
However, there's still an ongoing problem:
The King supposedly has a burning desire to debate again with a learned man like Gundling or Faßmann history as well als all matters in Europe, and wants to have such a man near his person again, which is why the vice director of Halberstadt, v. Dacheröden, who has proved during his last stay here that he is a capable man, has been suggested. So the King in order to close the arrangement quickly has given an order already.
Yeah, well...
It's getting near November, when Wilhelmine is supposed to marry. Her sister Friederike, who has married the Margrave of Ansbach even before Fritz' escape attempt, is coming to Berlin for the first time since that marriage for the occasion. FW decides to hire some musicians to celebrate her arrival.
Thus a few of the royal Polish musicians have come from Dresden. What's more, the so called Dönhoff-Horrible Band Of Musicians has arrived as a backup, which consists of lame clubfeets, one eyed and humpback bodies, so that everyone will be shattered by the ensuing noise.
I bet. Ugh at 18th century abelism.
November 20th 1731: Wilhelmine's wedding starts: The Crown Prince has not come from Küstrin, despite the Princess Bride kept begging with letter after letter for it, and no royal order has been edited to him, either.
As you noticed from Oster, SD is much displeased at the new comedians making sex jokes and wants to protet her daughters from same, so the three youngest princesses aren't allowed to attend the comedian appearances anymore. Stratemann gives a thorough description of the ceremonies and what everyone was wearing. Like I said, he's the old fashioned conservative gossip magazine of envoys. The bedding ceremony:
The King has helped the groom undress, the Queen has helped the bride, and then the later's eyes were bound while the bridal crown which was taken from her head has been given to another, who happened to be her youngest sister Princess Amalie, who took it. Then the noble couple had to go into bed in charming sleeping wear in front of all the illustrious guests, while the King held a little joking sermon and has sung a funny song, and then said: they should kiss each other now. Which they either out of awe or out of dumbness did not do, but probably wanted to postpone for another time. After everyone withdrew, the bridal couple was transported in chaises to the apartment destined for them, to which the King and the Queen followed them. They wished them a good night, and withdrew again; meanwhile, dancing kept up until late at night. (...)
Post Scriptum. De dato Berlin, 24. Nov. 1731. Last night around 7 pm and when the ball had already been started hours earlier, the Crown Prince, at first completely unknown and not with his cavaliers, has appeared at court. As soon as he was recognized by the princesses, his sisters (plural, yes), the joy has been indescribable, and many, many people both illustrious and not have shed tears of joy, including the Crown Prince himself. His Royal Highness looked somewhat serious while there was dancing, and hasn't danced with a lady other than his sisters and some princely people. He wore a grey suit, which had silver tressings at the edges, and which is referred in this country as a Secret Councillor Frock. So it is said that the King two days ago has sent an urgent message to Küstrin calling his royal highness here.
Stratemann will later say something more about Fritz at the wedding, which is typical for his style: first the white washed version, then somewhat later the admittance there were maybe some flies in the ointment after all.
There's a sketch of the wedding table and who sat where! So if anyone wants to write fanfic about Wilhelmine's wedding, this is really the book to consujlt. Even Polyanna Stratemann notes that SD retired early each evening of the wedding festivities after the first day.
FW is reported in a great mood throughout the week of Wilhelmine's wedding celebrations:
The King shows his tenderness towards the royal children in public, as they kissed the King's hands a dozen times, and have been allowed to kiss him on the mouth as well, which both the Margravine of Ansbach (Friederike) and her sister, the Princess Bride of Bevern (Charlotte) did at once, and then the former had to kiss her husband on the King's demand; morever, the Princess of Bayreuth and the little princesses received the grace to kiss their Papa and be kissed by him.
After Count Seckendorff declared supper to have ended, the King gave in front of all illustrious guests with unusual solemnity to the Crown Prince the sword of an officer, and the uniform to go with it, along with the regiment Golz which was transfered to him, which is why on the following days one saw the Prince at the parade wearing a blue coat to the greatest marvelling of the public, as his royal highness just a year ago when the Cavalry and the Colonel Lieutenant office of the King's Regiment had been taken from him had vowed never again to wear a blue coat.
On the dispatch dated December 11th 1731, Stratemann admits that maybe it wasn't all harmony at the wedding:
Secretly, one is assured: that the Crown Prince when he was present here has shown a disagreeable face to some people, and that this has been the cause of his sudden departure back to Küstrin, and that this is why it's now doubtful that the Prince will get the Golz regiment and other privileges after all.
Okay. According to Wilhelmine's memoirs, Fritz was cold-to-rude towards her new husband and distant to her, and Grumbkow (neglecting to mention that he'd advised Fritz to put up some boundaries) told her the King was displeased by this. I had written this off as double talk by Grumbkow, but I can't think of who else Fritz was noticed to have been rude to at the wedding, causing this rumor to reach Polyanna Stratemann's ears.
On December 29, 1731, we get a description of the Hohenzollern Clan celebrating the Christmas of 1731:
On Christmas Eve, the King has ordered small frogs to be exposed in the antechamber in order to amuse the little princes and princesses, and has given presents to all the family of royal blood, which were very precius and consisted of silver pieces and gallant trifles. The Prince of Bayreuth and his wife were given presents in the worth of 1000 Reichstaler. The Margrave of Ansbach and his wife got presents in the same worth, and many boxes were filled with them. What the two oldest princesses thus received were other than two precious boxes dozens of plates, knives, forks and spoons, big silver soup bowls, great candelabras, two big spoons for potatos, a barber bowl with a pot and a box to put the soap into. Princess Charlotte the Bevern Bride has received two silver brooms for the kitchen and other silver pieces. Princess Sophie got the least of all from the King, as she was only given two plates and some pretty trifles, but the Queen has more than made up for this since her Majesty gave her secretly a big cruxific full of diamonds. Princess Ulrike, who is the King's current favourite, has been given various gallant trifles in addition to three big plates and one candelabra. The little princes received an equal share of silver coins but also silver rods, with which the King hit the Prince Wilhelm's fingers with in jest, whereupon the Prince was shocked and by jumping back had a bad fall, which is why he's now confined to a sickbed.
No matter how pleasantly this evening passed, the next Christmas Day the King was suffering from a strong colic and threw up, so that her Majesty, too, has not left her room. In the evening, the joyful news was spread that the King through the main doctor Stahl's care and eagerness has been completely recovered.
No, I don't know where he got the frogs in December from. And the German word is "Fröschling", which I can't translate in another fashion but "little frog". Also, poor AW.
Stratemann hears rumors that give yet another reason why Fritz left Berin not overhwelmed with joy:
The local fish market wants to know about the Crown Prince's recent return to Küstrin: that a marriage has been offered to this dear lord which he hasn't been able to agree with joy on yet.
Given whom Fritz ends up marrying, this is rather coy from the Brunswick envoy.
January 12th 1732: At Christmas, the Crown Prince has been in Frankfurt, where the students have prepared a song and some music for him. But his marriage keeps nearly every journalist busy to get the scoop on, without knowing any certainties.
Since this Frankfurt (an der Oder) musical presentation is one of the two origin stories for Fritz/Fredersdorf we have, I note they spent the Christmas of 1731 together, at least.
Stratemann's tactful hint that Fritz is no yett keen on EC: There is much rumor about this prince's current establishment about which, due to worrisome causes, discreet silence must be kept; one has to wait for the certain success.
In early 1732, Franz Stephan's impending arrival causes quite a buzz. He shows up on February 15th, i.e. a good month before the official Fritz/EC engagment party (March 10th), and is a hit with most people, including Fritz.
The report about the engagement party is written on March 15th: The Crown Prince has started the ball with the Queen after supper on this most special engagement day, the King with the Duchess of Bevern, then with the Princess Bride and some of his princess daughters, and all the illustrious foreign visitors have shown themselves joyful and happy, and entertained themselves with both old and new dances. (..) The Duke of Lorraine finds much joy here, and his royal highness likes this residence in particular, due to the free conversation and not being bound to any ceremony, but also due to the daily interaction with the Royal family, and he has said: that he'd rather sit and eat with the young princes and princesses than at the Queen's table.
I bet, Franzl, I bet. I mean, if you had the choice to sit with glowering SD or with the kids from AW and Ulrike downwards, whom would you pick?
FW has a great idea for an extra (and cheap) engagement present for his new Braunschweig in-laws:
The smallest royal Prince, August Ferdinand, who is now nearly two years old and has been called August so far, now following the highest order should be adressed as Prince Ferdinand, which is the name he received from the Duke of Bevern, whereas the first one was in honor of the King of Poland.
(August the Strong, who is now dead.)
The rest of the dispatches has the news that Wilhelmine has written she's really happy with her new husband in Bayreuth, the Protestant religious refugees from Salzburg arrive, and then there's the sudden time jump of a year to 1733 when Fritz gets married. No more interesting stuff. But no matter; Stratemann certainly delivered before that.
Re: The Braunschweig Perspective: Wedding Bells are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine
Re: The Braunschweig Perspective: Wedding Bells are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine
Re: The Braunschweig Perspective: Wedding Bells are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine