. 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.
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.
Exactly what I was thinking! If your predecessor is "Devil", "Little Devil" is exactly what you get called when you first show up, he's still fresh in everyone's minds, and you're short. ;)
"Diaphanes" may actually have been as late as 1736. I have no evidence for it before that, and Wilhelmine (who's admittedly been away for years) doesn't seem to know about it.
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.
Ooooh. Wow, yeah, it's good to know about all these little connections.
* Okay, now SD is trying to make the marriage happen by going through her father G1's mistress the Duchess of Kendal, whom I recognize as Katte's "aunt" Melusine. I'm so glad I waited a year to reread these memoirs so I could pick up on a bunch of minor characters.
* Wilhelmine agrees about Anglo-centrism: she gets introduced to G1's retinue, they all say she looks English and speaks English like a native and is clearly destined to be their queen someday, and she writes: "This means something, since the English think of themselves as the best, and if they say someone could pass for an English(wo)man, they think this is the highest praise they can give."
You're not wrong, Wilhelmine!
* On Cardinal Richlieu: Did too much evil to be praised, too much good to be spoken evil of.
* Lol at SD trying to distract FW by claiming Wilhelmine says her dog is better than SD's dog, and Wilhelmine, playing along, is like, "But of course! My dog is so sweet and smart! <3 <3 <3"
Also, good to know she has her own dog already. I know one of the famous paintings of Fritz and Wilhelmine as small children has a dog in it, but I've always been curious at what age they got to have their very own dogs. I mean, since staff was going to take care of it anyway, maybe from the beginning?
Did Fritz have a dog that missed him while he was in Küstrin? Did he get it back at Ruppin? Did he have to get a new dog? Did he not get to have a dog until Rheinsberg? I need to know these things!
I'm assuming Fritz got to have a dog as a boy but possibly no longer once he was a teenager, since as opposed to Wilhelmine he's now part of the army and gets run ragged by Dad? But that's just guessing. Now that I think of it, Biche is always described as the first Italian Greyhound, not the first dog Fritz ever had...
Sudden thought: dogs are used for hunting. Maybe when FW was trying to make Fritz the hunter happen, he got a hunting dog as bribery?
Or maybe FW thought dogs were for girls and women, full stop, but I doubt it, since the picture of him as a kid is showing him with a dog as well, and he's stroking its head.
I'm assuming Fritz got to have a dog as a boy but possibly no longer once he was a teenager, since as opposed to Wilhelmine he's now part of the army and gets run ragged by Dad? But that's just guessing.
That's always been my guess too! But yes, it's just a guess.
Sudden thought: dogs are used for hunting. Maybe when FW was trying to make Fritz the hunter happen, he got a hunting dog as bribery?
Maybe! I know that when FW was dying, he's supposed to have let the Old Dessauer take his pick of the royal hunting dogs, since he knew Fritz wasn't interested.
Or maybe FW thought dogs were for girls and women, full stop, but I doubt it, since the picture of him as a kid is showing him with a dog as well, and he's stroking its head.
Am I recalling correctly that that was a hunting dog, though? I've always seen Fritz described as unusual not in that he loved his dogs, but that he was a male monarch who loved lap dogs with no purpose other than keeping him company.
Also, one thing that always struck me as weird was that Fritz said when he was being forced to hunt as a teenager, he used to stop the dogs, but "I had to be careful: if I'd stepped on one (si j'avais marché sur un), the King would have screamed." Source: Catt's diary.
Maybe I'm just not clear on the logistics of the hunt here, or maybe "marché" is something other than "stepped on" (I know it's "walk" most often). But Fritz is having to be careful not to step on dogs, not because he doesn't want to hurt the dog, but because FW would be upset at Fritz sneaking his way out of the hunt? Otherwise, he would totally step on the dog? I mean, I can see FW's hunting dogs being a form of torture rather than a creature he feels empathy for, but I feel like I'm missing something here.
The complete passage, which is very telegraphic:
Il voulut que je fusse chasseur. On me donna toute l'éducation convenable. Il fallait courir: j'arrêtais les chiens; et il fallait bien prendre garde. Si j'avais marché sur un, le Roi aurait crié. Le piqueur était bien aise que j'arrêtais.
Translation, at a guess:
He wanted me to be a hunter. I was given the appropriate training. It was necessary to run: I used to stop the dogs, and I had to be on my guard. If I had walked/stepped on one, the King would have yelled. The master of hounds was glad that I would stop.
My best guess: "I used to slow the dogs down", not "stop the dogs".
Ooh, that makes sense! I was thinking of Fritz's claims that he used to read during the hunt, but of course, if everyone is still moving, just more slowly, then he might very well accidentally step on a dog's foot and have to watch out.
* Suhm cameo! FW is going to Saxony, Fritz is sad because he's not invited, Wilhelmine tells Suhm, Suhm tells Augustus the Strong, and Augustus obligingly invites Fritz, and FW lets him come. And then the whole insane Dresden interlude ensues.
Wilhelmine says she knew Suhm "very well" and he was very friendly to her brother. <3
* I was right about Wilhelmine attributing her brother's interest in people who were not her to the lack of governor's influence: immediately before Peter Keith is introduced, she says, "Dad was whaling on Fritz more than usual, nobody dared to talk to him, his governors didn't dare to follow him around and regulate his behavior, so he led a very dissolute life, with Page Keith as his pander."
Fritz is in disgrace with his father and therefore the people appointed by FW to make him behave don't dare speak to him to make him behave?? Much more likely: Keyserlingk was like, "Wow, this kid's life sucks. I think I'll look the other way while he explores his sexuality. Then someday I'll be on the top 6 list of most loved, and he'll cut my daughter some slack while she has sexual adventures after my death."
Wow, she doesn't like his boyfriends. cahn, just as a reminder:
[Fritz] entirely abandoned himself to debaucheries. One of the pages of the king, named Keith, was the pandar of his vices. This young man had found means to insinuate himself so much, that the prince was passionately fond of him, and gave him his entire confidence. I knew nothing of his irregularities, but I had noticed some familiarities which he had with this page, and I often reproached him about it; representing to him that such manners were unsuitable to his rank. But he excused himself, saying that as the young man reported to him all that passed, he was induced to treat him kindly; particularly as the information he conveyed to him, saved him from many vexations.
Classist, homophobic, or both? I mean, I know it's a cover for "Don't leeeeave meeeee!", but given that she can't say that in so many words, how would Fritz have perceived it?
Also, lol at Peter as pander. I mean, I'm sure if Fritz wanted to meet with Doris or Orzelska-in-disguise, Peter would help! But yeah, things are going to be interesting when it's Fritz, Wilhelmine, Katte, and Keith in exile in France together. I bet she'll write an opera. :P
* Wilhelmine on Fritz of Wales, the love rat:
A man who has mistresses, becomes attached to them, and to that degree his love for his true spouse diminishes.
This is so telling: love is a zero sum game, Fritz can't have boyfriends or love his wife, her husband definitely can't have mistresses, and she is *not* down for polyamory. She's in the majority, even today, obviously! But that possessiveness is very IC.
* Herr von Knyphausen cameo! Assuming it's the same guy, and since he seems to be hobnobbing with foreign envoys, I think it is...we know him as 1) the go-between for Fritz and French Count Rottembourg, since Rottembourg and Fritz had to pretend not to be interested in each other while they spied on FW and tried to arrange a coup, and 2) Peter's future father-in-law. Although he will die 10 years before Peter and Ariane get married, and it's
Ugh, German wiki tells me that in addition to having been envoy to places like France, Spain, Russia, and Denmark back in the day, he was also president of the Brandenburg-African company, aka the Prussian slave trade, until F1 dissolved it. Bad Knyphausen.
* FW threatening to lock Wilhelmine up with the guy he's trying to get her to marry, the Duke of Weißenfels, and says that after that, she'll be only too glad to marry him. Is that a rape threat or just a loss of reputation threat?
* According to Wilhelmine, Jean-Charles de Folard, who Wikipedia tells me was a famous military theorist, did a detailed description of the Zeithain camp. I would very much like to get my hands on that, since I really want a detailed description beyond what I've been able to find online so far. (Reason: fix-it fic opens with Fritz and Katte at the camp, where they make their escape from.)
* Remember the rats at Küstrin story, where Fritz tells Wilhelmine that ghosts are mostly rats?
Wilhelmine recounts a similar episode, where she and SD were hanging out and heard some horrible shrieking sound in a nearby corridor, but every time they went to investigate, there was nothing there. SD told her to mark the date, and it turned not only to be the same day that Fritz got arrested for trying to escape while on a road trip with FW, but the same corridor on which FW and SD had their first encounter when an angry FW returned.
Wilhelmine: "I believe there was a natural cause."
She never figured out what it was, but she evidently agrees with Fritz on the supernatural.
* Wilhelmine is corresponding with an imprisoned Fritz secretly, but can't bring herself to burn the letters, so she has them sent to safety. This means she might actually have had access to them all when writing the memoirs. She does claim to be copying some verbatim, but I'd always assumed most of them got burned. Guess not!
* Wilhelmine: repeatedly mentions that she got married for Fritz, and later will complain that he wasn't grateful. Does not mention, at least as far as I've read, and I've gotten to the Berlin revue in May, that Fritz wrote her a letter telling her not to, i.e. that he was willing to sacrifice himself for *her*.
hahahaha, yeah, I remember from my Vol 1 readthrough that she really didn't like his boyfriends! Also that she tooooooold Fritz over and over again that escaping was was a bad idea! (It was a bad idea, Fritz, sorry.)
Remember Katte's interrogation, which greatly emphasizes how he tried to talk Fritz out of it and throw up lots of obstacles, and never ever actually encouraged it except in order to prevent it from happening? And how none of us actually believe that's the whole story? Especially given that 1) he wanted to stay in England permanently just a year before, 2) he totally admitted he would have gone if Fritz had gone?
And you know how Oster is constantly emphasizing the ways in which Wilhelmine's memoirs were written with the benefit of hindsight and attribute a lot of correct opinions and emotions to her that the contemporary documentary evidence at least partially contradicts?
And how Oster is highly skeptical that Fritz's closest confidante knew that he wanted to escape in general, but had nooo idea about the concrete details of this particular plan?
And how Fritz was pawning jewelry that Wilhelmine and SD had given him, supposedly without telling them why he wanted it?
And how Wilhelmine claims she and SD had to destroy a bunch of letters, and Katte may have risked his life to make sure they got destroyed, NOT because they showed her personal involvement in the escape plan, but because of double-marriage scheming and trash-talking of FW? But now that the letters are destroyed, we don't know *what* they contained?
...Yeah.
Now, I'm willing to believe both Katte and Wilhelmine were reluctant conspirators. Especially Wilhelmine, who didn't have any prospect of escaping with him, and who would be punished, and, most of all, left behind, notwithstanding Fritz's optimism that the Hannovers will help make everything work out for her in the long run. And both Wilhelmine and Katte could probably see that this wasn't the most well-thought-out plan ever.
But did Wilhelmine try to help make it happen, give him her jewelry, etc? We'll never know, but none of the evidence we have is exactly inconsistent with that. It's not like I think she'd admit it in her memoirs, even after Fritz is king (and even if she wasn't writing under threat of torture, like Katte, her memoirs were started when FW was still king, remember), not after the plan failed catastrophically and even Fritz is regretting it.
Oh, and speaking of Katte risking his life over those letters, I meant to point out in the Oster thread that Oster reports that Katte stayed behind because he didn't think there was any danger of Fritz fleeing when he, Katte, had the money--and adds that this was a disastrous miscalculation that cost him his life, *and* that his reasoning was incomprehensible, since Fritz was telling Katte to meet up with him in the Hague, so Katte should have known lack of money wouldn't be an obstacle.
To which I'm like, "Yeah, so MAYBE that wasn't Katte's real reason??" This kind of thing is what I mean by not being impressed with Oster's scholarship: there are so many other reasons given in our sources, even in Wilhelmine's memoirs, for Katte's lingering that you can't just take the one from his interrogation (under threat of torture! where he has to deny that he had any reason to believe he knew his arrest was impending!), announce that his reasoning doesn't make any sense, and stop there.
Like, just out of sheer psychology, even if we had no other sources, I could come up with other reasons someone might choose to stay. Not least that if you stay, you at least haven't committed desertion and can hope to insist on your innocence (an argument that carried some weight during the trial and would have gotten him a ten-year imprisonment if not for FW), whereas if you flee, you *have* committed desertion, and you're in Berlin, not Wesel, and you might GET CAUGHT.
Seriously. That's not even taking into account the actual reasons given by Fritz and Wilhelmine for why he lingered, both of which are plausible if you consider the evidence external to them that Katte did know his arrest was coming and had to deny it.
That's *also* not taking into account the documentary evidence that he requested leave to go into the countryside and received it, but didn't get to use it in time to get out of Berlin before his arrest.
Oh, and Oster does something that I've seen other biographers do: quote Wilhelmine saying Katte was so indiscreet as to go around telling "the whole city" about the escape plan, and implicitly chide Katte for it, without recounting that the actual episode in her memoirs went like this:
Some courtiers: Hey, Wilhelmine, you know that Katte is telling everyone your brother wants to escape? Wilhelmine: Katte, how could you?! Katte: I never did! I only told Lovenorn, who's totally on our side. [He will later be the one who supposedly tells Katte his arrest is coming and he'd better get the hell out of Dodge, and Fritz will still be remembering him fondly and wanting to know how he's doing nine years later.]
Now, maybe Katte *was* indiscreet! I'm not absolving him just on his own word. But nobody, when citing this passage, ever seems to point out that even Wilhlelmine says he denied it. We simply have no way of knowing.
And if you think, well, obviously some people know Fritz is planning an escape and it involves Katte, so someone must have told someone something!...remember, Rottembourg in Madrid 2 years earlier knew Fritz planned to escape, and I totally believe Wilhelmine's account that Katte was running around telling everyone that the Crown Prince loved him and confided in him. That's how you act whether you're genuinely head over heels in reciprocated love or just exploiting a royal for all the favor you can get out of him while pretending to be in love with him.
It wouldn't have been that hard to put two and two together, even if Katte had kept totally mum about the escape (and I'm not saying he did).
So, yeah. I feel like a lot of reading between the lines needs to be done for this whole episode, given how everyone after the fact wants to disclaim any connection with the catastrophe.
Lol, I'm reminded of what I was reading immediately before I switched to Fritz: 4th century Athenian oratory, where as soon as the Peace of Philocrates was seen to have failed miserably, Athenian politicians were falling all over themselves to announce that they knew it was a bad idea from the beginning.
Yes, and it works both ways: when Kennedy was killed and for years became a shining idol, way more Americans recalled voting for him than ever did. Also, when I talked with my AP about the battle of Hochkirch he at first refused to believe everyone except for Fritz said making camp there was a terrible idea and that the Austrians would attack and cited just this phenomenon. My counter argument was that the early historians invested in the legend of Fritz the genius general had to resort to the story of the double agent spy giving Fritz false intel to explain his misjudgment there, and that it was far less popular to write "the King had made a mistake, and we pointed this out to him before the fact", not to mention risky in an absolute monarchy.
re: did Wilhelmine know more about the escape plan than she later admitted, given how it turned: FW certainly believed she did, and it would work with the need to destroy those letters and her giving Fritz jewelry to pawn. It would even work with the later "I sacrificed myself for his freedom" without mentioning Fritz told her not to re: the marriage, because while she can talk about the marriage, she wouldn't be able to talk about the earlier escape attempt, if she was involved - and if she helped him there, she certainly would have been willing to risk FW making her pay in the worst way for his, had Fritz succeeded, and it would have been a sacrifice. (Honestly, there's no way I can see FW allowing Wilhelmine to marry a Hannover afterwards. She'd have been extremely lucky if he married her to anyone at all, as opposed to do what he claimed he'd have done in the 1731 submission scene - shut her into into the worst prison he could find.)
This prospect is why I'm also not 100% sure she'd have done it. If she believed Fritz would otherwise die or commit suicide out of desperation over FW's treatment of him, then yes. But give up the brother who was her main source of affection, possibly forever, and face a future of becoming Dad's favourite punishment target, when there's still a chance that if Fritz holds out some years more, FW dies and Fritz becomes King? Not sure.
Re: why Katte remained in Berlin, Fontane is with you, as you might recall. He thinks Katte remained because of his knightly instincts and because he was just too busy to make a getaway in time.
Katte boasting of Fritz' favor: also ties with the part in his letter to his father about having had ambitions etc. Not to say this is what it was about for him with Fritz, but I doubt he was immune to the fact that this was the future King when they first became friends.
This prospect is why I'm also not 100% sure she'd have done it. If she believed Fritz would otherwise die or commit suicide out of desperation over FW's treatment of him, then yes. But give up the brother who was her main source of affection, possibly forever, and face a future of becoming Dad's favourite punishment target, when there's still a chance that if Fritz holds out some years more, FW dies and Fritz becomes King? Not sure.
Yeah, that's also why I'm not sure, and why I am sure she was a very reluctant conspirator. (I think I've said this before: his willingness to leave and her reluctance to let him go, I think *must* have fed into some kind of repressed and even subconscious mutual resentment after the fact, no matter how much they understood the other's motives.)
But as for dying: she does record that scene where Fritz tells her FW was trying to strangle him with a cord and had to be pried off him by (invisible and very brave) servants). So maybe?
Re: why Katte remained in Berlin, Fontane is with you, as you might recall. He thinks Katte remained because of his knightly instincts and because he was just too busy to make a getaway in time.
I absolutely remember. :) He was a victim of his knightly disposition. Fontane also thinks Mitchell's "on account of some girl he was fond of" can't be right, because it hasn't occurred to Fontane that "some girl" might be Wilhelmine. ;)
Katte boasting of Fritz' favor: also ties with the part in his letter to his father about having had ambitions etc.
Yep, I always connect those two things too. And while those letters can't be trusted, I have always believed, like you, that he was in no way immune to Fritz being the Crown Prince. Plus that other letter (the Puncta one, written by Müller), where Katte says Fritz had promised him great things someday when he was king (and thus Katte's death shows the vanity of human plans, etc., etc.).
Now, that letter *really* can't be trusted, but given who Katte's father and grandfather were, I imagine he would expect some kind of preferment as a matter of course, and that's not mutually exclusive with him having real feelings for Fritz. (Which I'm sure he did: the fact that he was repeatedly asking to talk to Fritz at Küstrin and was reassuring him that he didn't blame him tells me that, motives for religion and pleasing Dad and going to a "good death" aside, he actually cared about Fritz's feelings after his death.)
Btw, now that I've seen the exchanges between Fritz and AW in the 1730s, I'm more willing to believe in the existence of that letter that Peter Keith is supposed to have carried with him for 10 years, saying that Fritz will always be grateful and stating or implying that there will be rewards someday.
This is all fascinating! I do think Wilhelmine must have been a reluctant conspirator, if she was a conspirator. And I can totally see how, if she was, that could easily have turned into her memoir-as-therapy saying "It was totally a bad idea, see??"
Now, that letter *really* can't be trusted, but given who Katte's father and grandfather were, I imagine he would expect some kind of preferment as a matter of course, and that's not mutually exclusive with him having real feelings for Fritz.
Yeah, I mean, it's a pretty common thing with humans. It's hard or impossible to turn off what you know of someone's external situation, but you can fall in love with someone at the same time as you are perfectly aware that person is the Crown Prince and will someday be King.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
Wilhelmine's Memoirs
Date: 2020-09-15 04:19 pm (UTC)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.
Re: Wilhelmine's Memoirs
Date: 2020-09-15 04:57 pm (UTC)Exactly what I was thinking! If your predecessor is "Devil", "Little Devil" is exactly what you get called when you first show up, he's still fresh in everyone's minds, and you're short. ;)
"Diaphanes" may actually have been as late as 1736. I have no evidence for it before that, and Wilhelmine (who's admittedly been away for years) doesn't seem to know about it.
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.
Ooooh. Wow, yeah, it's good to know about all these little connections.
Re: Wilhelmine's Memoirs
Date: 2020-09-16 01:39 pm (UTC)* Wilhelmine agrees about Anglo-centrism: she gets introduced to G1's retinue, they all say she looks English and speaks English like a native and is clearly destined to be their queen someday, and she writes: "This means something, since the English think of themselves as the best, and if they say someone could pass for an English(wo)man, they think this is the highest praise they can give."
You're not wrong, Wilhelmine!
* On Cardinal Richlieu: Did too much evil to be praised, too much good to be spoken evil of.
* Lol at SD trying to distract FW by claiming Wilhelmine says her dog is better than SD's dog, and Wilhelmine, playing along, is like, "But of course! My dog is so sweet and smart! <3 <3 <3"
Also, good to know she has her own dog already. I know one of the famous paintings of Fritz and Wilhelmine as small children has a dog in it, but I've always been curious at what age they got to have their very own dogs. I mean, since staff was going to take care of it anyway, maybe from the beginning?
Did Fritz have a dog that missed him while he was in Küstrin? Did he get it back at Ruppin? Did he have to get a new dog? Did he not get to have a dog until Rheinsberg? I need to know these things!
Re: Wilhelmine's Memoirs
Date: 2020-09-16 02:56 pm (UTC)Sudden thought: dogs are used for hunting. Maybe when FW was trying to make Fritz the hunter happen, he got a hunting dog as bribery?
Or maybe FW thought dogs were for girls and women, full stop, but I doubt it, since the picture of him as a kid is showing him with a dog as well, and he's stroking its head.
Re: Wilhelmine's Memoirs
Date: 2020-09-16 03:12 pm (UTC)That's always been my guess too! But yes, it's just a guess.
Sudden thought: dogs are used for hunting. Maybe when FW was trying to make Fritz the hunter happen, he got a hunting dog as bribery?
Maybe! I know that when FW was dying, he's supposed to have let the Old Dessauer take his pick of the royal hunting dogs, since he knew Fritz wasn't interested.
Or maybe FW thought dogs were for girls and women, full stop, but I doubt it, since the picture of him as a kid is showing him with a dog as well, and he's stroking its head.
Am I recalling correctly that that was a hunting dog, though? I've always seen Fritz described as unusual not in that he loved his dogs, but that he was a male monarch who loved lap dogs with no purpose other than keeping him company.
Also, one thing that always struck me as weird was that Fritz said when he was being forced to hunt as a teenager, he used to stop the dogs, but "I had to be careful: if I'd stepped on one (si j'avais marché sur un), the King would have screamed." Source: Catt's diary.
Maybe I'm just not clear on the logistics of the hunt here, or maybe "marché" is something other than "stepped on" (I know it's "walk" most often). But Fritz is having to be careful not to step on dogs, not because he doesn't want to hurt the dog, but because FW would be upset at Fritz sneaking his way out of the hunt? Otherwise, he would totally step on the dog? I mean, I can see FW's hunting dogs being a form of torture rather than a creature he feels empathy for, but I feel like I'm missing something here.
The complete passage, which is very telegraphic:
Il voulut que je fusse chasseur. On me donna toute l'éducation convenable. Il fallait courir: j'arrêtais les chiens; et il fallait bien prendre garde. Si j'avais marché sur un, le Roi aurait crié. Le piqueur était bien aise que j'arrêtais.
Translation, at a guess:
He wanted me to be a hunter. I was given the appropriate training. It was necessary to run: I used to stop the dogs, and I had to be on my guard. If I had walked/stepped on one, the King would have yelled. The master of hounds was glad that I would stop.
?
Re: Wilhelmine's Memoirs
Date: 2020-09-17 08:14 am (UTC)he was a male monarch who loved lap dogs with no purpose other than keeping him company.
King Charles II.: I would like to point out I got there first. Spaniels I adored/named after me, too/Like me, they were fun/with a natty hairdo.
Re: Wilhelmine's Memoirs
Date: 2020-09-18 11:13 pm (UTC)Ooh, that makes sense! I was thinking of Fritz's claims that he used to read during the hunt, but of course, if everyone is still moving, just more slowly, then he might very well accidentally step on a dog's foot and have to watch out.
Re: Wilhelmine's Memoirs
Date: 2020-09-20 04:13 pm (UTC)* Suhm cameo! FW is going to Saxony, Fritz is sad because he's not invited, Wilhelmine tells Suhm, Suhm tells Augustus the Strong, and Augustus obligingly invites Fritz, and FW lets him come. And then the whole insane Dresden interlude ensues.
Wilhelmine says she knew Suhm "very well" and he was very friendly to her brother. <3
* I was right about Wilhelmine attributing her brother's interest in
people who were not herto the lack of governor's influence: immediately before Peter Keith is introduced, she says, "Dad was whaling on Fritz more than usual, nobody dared to talk to him, his governors didn't dare to follow him around and regulate his behavior, so he led a very dissolute life, with Page Keith as his pander."Fritz is in disgrace with his father and therefore the people appointed by FW to make him behave don't dare speak to him to make him behave?? Much more likely: Keyserlingk was like, "Wow, this kid's life sucks. I think I'll look the other way while he explores his sexuality. Then someday I'll be on the top 6 list of most loved, and he'll cut my daughter some slack while she has sexual adventures after my death."
Wow, she doesn't like his boyfriends.
[Fritz] entirely abandoned himself to debaucheries. One of the pages of the king, named Keith, was the pandar of his vices. This young man had found means to insinuate himself so much, that the prince was passionately fond of him, and gave him his entire confidence. I knew nothing of his irregularities, but I had noticed some familiarities which he had with this page, and I often reproached him about it; representing to him that such manners were unsuitable to his rank. But he excused himself, saying that as the young man reported to him all that passed, he was induced to treat him kindly; particularly as the information he conveyed to him, saved him from many vexations.
Classist, homophobic, or both? I mean, I know it's a cover for "Don't leeeeave meeeee!", but given that she can't say that in so many words, how would Fritz have perceived it?
Also, lol at Peter as pander. I mean, I'm sure if Fritz wanted to meet with Doris or Orzelska-in-disguise, Peter would help! But yeah, things are going to be interesting when it's Fritz, Wilhelmine, Katte, and Keith in exile in France together. I bet she'll write an opera. :P
* Wilhelmine on Fritz of Wales, the love rat:
A man who has mistresses, becomes attached to them, and to that degree his love for his true spouse diminishes.
This is so telling: love is a zero sum game, Fritz can't have boyfriends or love his wife, her husband definitely can't have mistresses, and she is *not* down for polyamory. She's in the majority, even today, obviously! But that possessiveness is very IC.
* Herr von Knyphausen cameo! Assuming it's the same guy, and since he seems to be hobnobbing with foreign envoys, I think it is...we know him as 1) the go-between for Fritz and French Count Rottembourg, since Rottembourg and Fritz had to pretend not to be interested in each other while they spied on FW and tried to arrange a coup, and 2) Peter's future father-in-law. Although he will die 10 years before Peter and Ariane get married, and it's
Ugh, German wiki tells me that in addition to having been envoy to places like France, Spain, Russia, and Denmark back in the day, he was also president of the Brandenburg-African company, aka the Prussian slave trade, until F1 dissolved it. Bad Knyphausen.
* FW threatening to lock Wilhelmine up with the guy he's trying to get her to marry, the Duke of Weißenfels, and says that after that, she'll be only too glad to marry him. Is that a rape threat or just a loss of reputation threat?
* According to Wilhelmine, Jean-Charles de Folard, who Wikipedia tells me was a famous military theorist, did a detailed description of the Zeithain camp. I would very much like to get my hands on that, since I really want a detailed description beyond what I've been able to find online so far. (Reason: fix-it fic opens with Fritz and Katte at the camp, where they make their escape from.)
* Remember the rats at Küstrin story, where Fritz tells Wilhelmine that ghosts are mostly rats?
Wilhelmine recounts a similar episode, where she and SD were hanging out and heard some horrible shrieking sound in a nearby corridor, but every time they went to investigate, there was nothing there. SD told her to mark the date, and it turned not only to be the same day that Fritz got arrested for trying to escape while on a road trip with FW, but the same corridor on which FW and SD had their first encounter when an angry FW returned.
Wilhelmine: "I believe there was a natural cause."
She never figured out what it was, but she evidently agrees with Fritz on the supernatural.
* Wilhelmine is corresponding with an imprisoned Fritz secretly, but can't bring herself to burn the letters, so she has them sent to safety. This means she might actually have had access to them all when writing the memoirs. She does claim to be copying some verbatim, but I'd always assumed most of them got burned. Guess not!
* Wilhelmine: repeatedly mentions that she got married for Fritz, and later will complain that he wasn't grateful. Does not mention, at least as far as I've read, and I've gotten to the Berlin revue in May, that Fritz wrote her a letter telling her not to, i.e. that he was willing to sacrifice himself for *her*.
Re: Wilhelmine's Memoirs
Date: 2020-09-27 12:03 am (UTC)Re: Wilhelmine's Memoirs
Date: 2020-09-27 03:42 pm (UTC)Remember Katte's interrogation, which greatly emphasizes how he tried to talk Fritz out of it and throw up lots of obstacles, and never ever actually encouraged it except in order to prevent it from happening? And how none of us actually believe that's the whole story? Especially given that 1) he wanted to stay in England permanently just a year before, 2) he totally admitted he would have gone if Fritz had gone?
And you know how Oster is constantly emphasizing the ways in which Wilhelmine's memoirs were written with the benefit of hindsight and attribute a lot of correct opinions and emotions to her that the contemporary documentary evidence at least partially contradicts?
And how Oster is highly skeptical that Fritz's closest confidante knew that he wanted to escape in general, but had nooo idea about the concrete details of this particular plan?
And how Fritz was pawning jewelry that Wilhelmine and SD had given him, supposedly without telling them why he wanted it?
And how Wilhelmine claims she and SD had to destroy a bunch of letters, and Katte may have risked his life to make sure they got destroyed, NOT because they showed her personal involvement in the escape plan, but because of double-marriage scheming and trash-talking of FW? But now that the letters are destroyed, we don't know *what* they contained?
...Yeah.
Now, I'm willing to believe both Katte and Wilhelmine were reluctant conspirators. Especially Wilhelmine, who didn't have any prospect of escaping with him, and who would be punished, and, most of all, left behind, notwithstanding Fritz's optimism that the Hannovers will help make everything work out for her in the long run. And both Wilhelmine and Katte could probably see that this wasn't the most well-thought-out plan ever.
But did Wilhelmine try to help make it happen, give him her jewelry, etc? We'll never know, but none of the evidence we have is exactly inconsistent with that. It's not like I think she'd admit it in her memoirs, even after Fritz is king (and even if she wasn't writing under threat of torture, like Katte, her memoirs were started when FW was still king, remember), not after the plan failed catastrophically and even Fritz is regretting it.
Oh, and speaking of Katte risking his life over those letters, I meant to point out in the Oster thread that Oster reports that Katte stayed behind because he didn't think there was any danger of Fritz fleeing when he, Katte, had the money--and adds that this was a disastrous miscalculation that cost him his life, *and* that his reasoning was incomprehensible, since Fritz was telling Katte to meet up with him in the Hague, so Katte should have known lack of money wouldn't be an obstacle.
To which I'm like, "Yeah, so MAYBE that wasn't Katte's real reason??" This kind of thing is what I mean by not being impressed with Oster's scholarship: there are so many other reasons given in our sources, even in Wilhelmine's memoirs, for Katte's lingering that you can't just take the one from his interrogation (under threat of torture! where he has to deny that he had any reason to believe he knew his arrest was impending!), announce that his reasoning doesn't make any sense, and stop there.
Like, just out of sheer psychology, even if we had no other sources, I could come up with other reasons someone might choose to stay. Not least that if you stay, you at least haven't committed desertion and can hope to insist on your innocence (an argument that carried some weight during the trial and would have gotten him a ten-year imprisonment if not for FW), whereas if you flee, you *have* committed desertion, and you're in Berlin, not Wesel, and you might GET CAUGHT.
Seriously. That's not even taking into account the actual reasons given by Fritz and Wilhelmine for why he lingered, both of which are plausible if you consider the evidence external to them that Katte did know his arrest was coming and had to deny it.
That's *also* not taking into account the documentary evidence that he requested leave to go into the countryside and received it, but didn't get to use it in time to get out of Berlin before his arrest.
Oh, and Oster does something that I've seen other biographers do: quote Wilhelmine saying Katte was so indiscreet as to go around telling "the whole city" about the escape plan, and implicitly chide Katte for it, without recounting that the actual episode in her memoirs went like this:
Some courtiers: Hey, Wilhelmine, you know that Katte is telling everyone your brother wants to escape?
Wilhelmine: Katte, how could you?!
Katte: I never did! I only told Lovenorn, who's totally on our side. [He will later be the one who supposedly tells Katte his arrest is coming and he'd better get the hell out of Dodge, and Fritz will still be remembering him fondly and wanting to know how he's doing nine years later.]
Now, maybe Katte *was* indiscreet! I'm not absolving him just on his own word. But nobody, when citing this passage, ever seems to point out that even Wilhlelmine says he denied it. We simply have no way of knowing.
And if you think, well, obviously some people know Fritz is planning an escape and it involves Katte, so someone must have told someone something!...remember, Rottembourg in Madrid 2 years earlier knew Fritz planned to escape, and I totally believe Wilhelmine's account that Katte was running around telling everyone that the Crown Prince loved him and confided in him. That's how you act whether you're genuinely head over heels in reciprocated love or just exploiting a royal for all the favor you can get out of him while pretending to be in love with him.
It wouldn't have been that hard to put two and two together, even if Katte had kept totally mum about the escape (and I'm not saying he did).
So, yeah. I feel like a lot of reading between the lines needs to be done for this whole episode, given how everyone after the fact wants to disclaim any connection with the catastrophe.
Lol, I'm reminded of what I was reading immediately before I switched to Fritz: 4th century Athenian oratory, where as soon as the Peace of Philocrates was seen to have failed miserably, Athenian politicians were falling all over themselves to announce that they knew it was a bad idea from the beginning.
Re: Wilhelmine's Memoirs
Date: 2020-09-28 01:54 pm (UTC)re: did Wilhelmine know more about the escape plan than she later admitted, given how it turned: FW certainly believed she did, and it would work with the need to destroy those letters and her giving Fritz jewelry to pawn. It would even work with the later "I sacrificed myself for his freedom" without mentioning Fritz told her not to re: the marriage, because while she can talk about the marriage, she wouldn't be able to talk about the earlier escape attempt, if she was involved - and if she helped him there, she certainly would have been willing to risk FW making her pay in the worst way for his, had Fritz succeeded, and it would have been a sacrifice. (Honestly, there's no way I can see FW allowing Wilhelmine to marry a Hannover afterwards. She'd have been extremely lucky if he married her to anyone at all, as opposed to do what he claimed he'd have done in the 1731 submission scene - shut her into into the worst prison he could find.)
This prospect is why I'm also not 100% sure she'd have done it. If she believed Fritz would otherwise die or commit suicide out of desperation over FW's treatment of him, then yes. But give up the brother who was her main source of affection, possibly forever, and face a future of becoming Dad's favourite punishment target, when there's still a chance that if Fritz holds out some years more, FW dies and Fritz becomes King? Not sure.
Re: why Katte remained in Berlin, Fontane is with you, as you might recall. He thinks Katte remained because of his knightly instincts and because he was just too busy to make a getaway in time.
Katte boasting of Fritz' favor: also ties with the part in his letter to his father about having had ambitions etc. Not to say this is what it was about for him with Fritz, but I doubt he was immune to the fact that this was the future King when they first became friends.
Re: Wilhelmine's Memoirs
Date: 2020-09-28 03:28 pm (UTC)Yeah, that's also why I'm not sure, and why I am sure she was a very reluctant conspirator. (I think I've said this before: his willingness to leave and her reluctance to let him go, I think *must* have fed into some kind of repressed and even subconscious mutual resentment after the fact, no matter how much they understood the other's motives.)
But as for dying: she does record that scene where Fritz tells her FW was trying to strangle him with a cord and had to be pried off him by (invisible and very brave) servants). So maybe?
Re: why Katte remained in Berlin, Fontane is with you, as you might recall. He thinks Katte remained because of his knightly instincts and because he was just too busy to make a getaway in time.
I absolutely remember. :) He was a victim of his knightly disposition. Fontane also thinks Mitchell's "on account of some girl he was fond of" can't be right, because it hasn't occurred to Fontane that "some girl" might be Wilhelmine. ;)
Katte boasting of Fritz' favor: also ties with the part in his letter to his father about having had ambitions etc.
Yep, I always connect those two things too. And while those letters can't be trusted, I have always believed, like you, that he was in no way immune to Fritz being the Crown Prince. Plus that other letter (the Puncta one, written by Müller), where Katte says Fritz had promised him great things someday when he was king (and thus Katte's death shows the vanity of human plans, etc., etc.).
Now, that letter *really* can't be trusted, but given who Katte's father and grandfather were, I imagine he would expect some kind of preferment as a matter of course, and that's not mutually exclusive with him having real feelings for Fritz. (Which I'm sure he did: the fact that he was repeatedly asking to talk to Fritz at Küstrin and was reassuring him that he didn't blame him tells me that, motives for religion and pleasing Dad and going to a "good death" aside, he actually cared about Fritz's feelings after his death.)
Btw, now that I've seen the exchanges between Fritz and AW in the 1730s, I'm more willing to believe in the existence of that letter that Peter Keith is supposed to have carried with him for 10 years, saying that Fritz will always be grateful and stating or implying that there will be rewards someday.
Re: Wilhelmine's Memoirs
Date: 2020-10-02 04:46 am (UTC)Now, that letter *really* can't be trusted, but given who Katte's father and grandfather were, I imagine he would expect some kind of preferment as a matter of course, and that's not mutually exclusive with him having real feelings for Fritz.
Yeah, I mean, it's a pretty common thing with humans. It's hard or impossible to turn off what you know of someone's external situation, but you can fall in love with someone at the same time as you are perfectly aware that person is the Crown Prince and will someday be King.