Yeah, since F1 isn't exactly taking care of tiny babies, he probably remembers that Wilhelmine didn't like Bb!Fritz2, and of course the number 2 was burned into his brain, as in the number of prospective heirs that have died, and he conflated the two.
I'm just impressed that within the space of about a page, Oster manages to report all these dates and quote this letter and never notice the contradiction!
Wilhelmine the snob: oh, absolutely. Mind you, I suspect this tendency in her was strengthened via the awareness the Hohenzollern were considered as upstarts
Yep. I forget which biographer said FW's attitude toward all things German vs. French smacks of an inferiority complex, but it makes perfect sense.
I could also see child Wilhelmine extra internalizing class bias precisely because of Leti, i.e. this woman had been given power over her and abused her, and she clung to her self confidence by telling herself "I'm still better than you, Italian lowlife!"
Also makes perfect sense!
Governesses also had this weird in between status - not really part of the servants, but also not really on a level with the family that gets talked about a lot in any book about the Brontes.
Yep, I was thinking of the Brontes. Even today, my wife talks about the class tensions of being middle to upper middle class and being raised largely by poor nannies in Brazil, where labor is still that cheap. When you tell the kids what to do and can punish them, but they're still considered inherently superior to you, and their parents control your life...it can get complicated.
I'm glad Sonsine worked out.
Though after reading the memoirs, I had forgotten just how pro-English marriage Wilhelmine depicts her as being, to the point of scolding Wilhelmine for finally giving in and agreeing to marry into Bayreuth. :/
She was also a strict Calvinist who altered between punishing him, groping him and quoting the bible at him. It's not surprising adult Byron didn't care much for religion, and scandalized the country.
Indeed. Also, *facepalm*.
Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough - young Wilhelmine
Mind you, the flipside of that is what a relation of one of Charlotte's charges said to Mrs. Gaskell: My cousin Benson Sidgwick, now vicar of Ashby Parva, certainly on one occasion threw a Bible at Miss Bronte! and all that another cousin can recollect of her is that if she was invited to walk to church with them, she thought she was being ordered about like a slave; if she was not invited, she imagined she was excluded from the family circle.
Sonsine being pro English marriage: well, to be fair, of all the matches available at that time, it was definitely the toppermost of the poppermost. The only comparable match would have been to Louis XV. of France, and good old Stanislav Lescynsky got there first. (P)RussianPete was still HolsteinPete in blissful ignorance of his future and also years younger, even Ulrike's future husband was still HolsteinAdolf and not yet Crown Prince of Sweden, and since the Polish crown wasn't inheritable but went by vote, there was no guarantee August the Strong's son - who'd have matched Wilhelmine's age far better than August - would have succeeded him as King of Poland as well as Elector of Saxony. If you were a Princess of Wilhelmine's age and generation, the future King of England (not that he'd ever be, but no one knew that) was the big marital price to be had. Especially if your own father was only the second king of his line and his tiny kingdom brandnew.
...whereas all the Margraves FW considered as matches for his daughters meant they were marrying down. Within FW's life time, Charlotte did best with a duke (of Braunschweig), lending some strength to the argument that among the daughters, she was his fave, but Wilhelmine, Friederike and Sophie really were not making good matches in terms of rank, power and splendor.
Byron: see my reply to Cahn below.
Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough - young Wilhelmine
Sonsine being pro English marriage: well, to be fair, of all the matches available at that time, it was definitely the toppermost of the poppermost.
Oh, no question! And advocating for this as the marriage Wilhelmine should make is one thing. But after she's already agreed to marry into Bayreuth through the application of force majeure by the absolute monarch, scolding her that she did a bad thing tells you something about Sonsine's priorities. That's the part that came as a surprise to me.
Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough - young Wilhelmine
Yeeeeah. We had a couple of nannies for the kids when we needed childcare but they were too young to go to preschool, and it was... interesting, because of this tension. The whole experience taught me, looking back on it, that for a weird job like this where you're all but living with the family, personality fit (and maybe even more specifically, communication style??) with parents is way more important a component than one might realize (or at least than I realized), and a nanny can be great with the kids and yet both adult parties can be unhappy through no fault (or at least, not much fault) of the individual parties.
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Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough - young Wilhelmine
Yeah, since F1 isn't exactly taking care of tiny babies, he probably remembers that Wilhelmine didn't like Bb!Fritz2, and of course the number 2 was burned into his brain, as in the number of prospective heirs that have died, and he conflated the two.
I'm just impressed that within the space of about a page, Oster manages to report all these dates and quote this letter and never notice the contradiction!
Wilhelmine the snob: oh, absolutely. Mind you, I suspect this tendency in her was strengthened via the awareness the Hohenzollern were considered as upstarts
Yep. I forget which biographer said FW's attitude toward all things German vs. French smacks of an inferiority complex, but it makes perfect sense.
I could also see child Wilhelmine extra internalizing class bias precisely because of Leti, i.e. this woman had been given power over her and abused her, and she clung to her self confidence by telling herself "I'm still better than you, Italian lowlife!"
Also makes perfect sense!
Governesses also had this weird in between status - not really part of the servants, but also not really on a level with the family that gets talked about a lot in any book about the Brontes.
Yep, I was thinking of the Brontes. Even today, my wife talks about the class tensions of being middle to upper middle class and being raised largely by poor nannies in Brazil, where labor is still that cheap. When you tell the kids what to do and can punish them, but they're still considered inherently superior to you, and their parents control your life...it can get complicated.
I'm glad Sonsine worked out.
Though after reading the memoirs, I had forgotten just how pro-English marriage Wilhelmine depicts her as being, to the point of scolding Wilhelmine for finally giving in and agreeing to marry into Bayreuth. :/
She was also a strict Calvinist who altered between punishing him, groping him and quoting the bible at him. It's not surprising adult Byron didn't care much for religion, and scandalized the country.
Indeed. Also, *facepalm*.
Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough - young Wilhelmine
Mind you, the flipside of that is what a relation of one of Charlotte's charges said to Mrs. Gaskell: My cousin Benson Sidgwick, now vicar of Ashby Parva, certainly on one occasion threw a Bible at Miss Bronte! and all that another cousin can recollect of her is that if she was invited to walk to church with them, she thought she was being ordered about like a slave; if she was not invited, she imagined she was excluded from the family circle.
Sonsine being pro English marriage: well, to be fair, of all the matches available at that time, it was definitely the toppermost of the poppermost. The only comparable match would have been to Louis XV. of France, and good old Stanislav Lescynsky got there first. (P)RussianPete was still HolsteinPete in blissful ignorance of his future and also years younger, even Ulrike's future husband was still HolsteinAdolf and not yet Crown Prince of Sweden, and since the Polish crown wasn't inheritable but went by vote, there was no guarantee August the Strong's son - who'd have matched Wilhelmine's age far better than August - would have succeeded him as King of Poland as well as Elector of Saxony. If you were a Princess of Wilhelmine's age and generation, the future King of England (not that he'd ever be, but no one knew that) was the big marital price to be had. Especially if your own father was only the second king of his line and his tiny kingdom brandnew.
...whereas all the Margraves FW considered as matches for his daughters meant they were marrying down. Within FW's life time, Charlotte did best with a duke (of Braunschweig), lending some strength to the argument that among the daughters, she was his fave, but Wilhelmine, Friederike and Sophie really were not making good matches in terms of rank, power and splendor.
Byron: see my reply to Cahn below.
Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough - young Wilhelmine
Oh, no question! And advocating for this as the marriage Wilhelmine should make is one thing. But after she's already agreed to marry into Bayreuth through the application of force majeure by the absolute monarch, scolding her that she did a bad thing tells you something about Sonsine's priorities. That's the part that came as a surprise to me.
Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough - young Wilhelmine