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.
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.
Email away. They all speak English. Seriously. Knowledge of other foreign languages like French, or Latin, or Spanish, or Russian, or Greek depends on what type of school you visit, but everyone going to a German school who is younger than, oh, 6o, had to take English to a level where they can correspond in and talk it.
The English proposing Peter Keith as envoy: that is very interesting. Alas, 47 is way too late for Hervey (he died in the early 1740s) to consult. In addition to Caroline being dead, Sir Robert Walpole who was PM when Peter was there is out of the government, there are new ministers all around as far as I know. So who did make the suggestion? Of course, an irresistable fanwank occurs to me: Peter did meet Algarotti....and young Andrew Mitchell. By 1747, Andrew Mitchell was rising in the ranks of the foreign office - not yet enough to be envoy himself, but he was certainly forming connections with Lords Holderness and Newcastle. Maybe he recced Peter?
Fritz the paranoid being Fritz the paranoid: unsurprising, if bad for Peter.
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.
Definitely Fritz' favourite husband, too.
I finally came up with a way for Peter and Ariane to meet in the same year that they met in real life.
Lovely! I was wondering about her fate in your AU.
Why do I feel like in somewhere between a day and a week we are going to see a LOT more action in this already action-packed fandom? ;)
Of course, an irresistable fanwank occurs to me: Peter did meet Algarotti....and young Andrew Mitchell. By 1747, Andrew Mitchell was rising in the ranks of the foreign office - not yet enough to be envoy himself, but he was certainly forming connections with Lords Holderness and Newcastle. Maybe he recced Peter?
YES PLEASE. And those of you who might write fic about Peter Keith, you know who you are, could totally put it in the fic :D
Why do I feel like in somewhere between a day and a week we are going to see a LOT more action in this already action-packed fandom?
Lol. I can see why you might think so, but it took me 4 months to finally email Trinity after finding the eulogy, and no, it didn't take me 4 months to think of it. I immediately thought of it. It took me 4 months to get around to. So...we'll see.
And those of you who might write fic about Peter Keith, you know who you are, could totally put it in the fic :D
LOLOL. On a totally unrelated note, I'm looking forward to Yuletide. :D
Email away. They all speak English. Seriously. Knowledge of other foreign languages like French, or Latin, or Spanish, or Russian, or Greek depends on what type of school you visit, but everyone going to a German school who is younger than, oh, 6o, had to take English to a level where they can correspond in and talk it.
You know, English-speaking Germans always tell me this, but every time I go to Germany and have to rely on English to get around, I find myself completely unable to get simple questions like "How much are tickets?" or "Where are the spoons?" answered outside of airports and hotels. I've always figured it's like algebra and geometry being required subjects in the US: as long as you scrape through the class, you don't have to be able to perform on the spot decades later.
That said, I'm willing to grant that archivists replying to emails are more likely than, say, people staffing a museum on foot, to have the necessary competence in English to make up for my lack of German. Plus, if they're even willing to reply in German, I'm in a much better position to understand the answer than I was when put on the spot with by people speaking German to me ten years ago.
I will give it a try!
(Btw, it's for this reason that I would like to get my comprehension of spoken German up to basic proficiency someday--not now, I can only do one thing at a time--namely that people kept speaking German to me in Germany and not being able to switch to English when it was clear I hadn't a clue what they were saying, and that made for far more stressful situations than did my inability to make myself understood in German.)
So who did make the suggestion?
Preuss's footnote is kind of complicated, and requires more research than I've had time to do yet, but at any rate, it doesn't tell me whose *idea* it was, just the lines of communication along which the idea traveled to Fritz. So Villiers sent a letter to the Dutch envoy von Ginkel, who sent it to Podewils, who sent it to Fritz.
So far I've figured out that Villiers is this guy, who was British envoy to Berlin from 1746 to 1748. Von Ginkel I haven't turned up yet. So there's a chance Villiers knew Peter personally (maybe Peter hung out with British envoys to practice his English and ask after people he knew? or scheme for positions as envoy to Britain??), but I feel like someone in England still would have had to think this was a good idea.
But maybe it was Villiers' idea, and he acted on it unilaterally.
Oh, cahn, I forgot to spell out that when Algarotti is sent to Turin and Keith's son to Sardinia, those are the same place. The court of Sardinia was in Turin during our period (like Brandenburg-Prussia, it was a composite state).
Of course, an irresistable fanwank occurs to me: Peter did meet Algarotti....and young Andrew Mitchell. By 1747, Andrew Mitchell was rising in the ranks of the foreign office - not yet enough to be envoy himself, but he was certainly forming connections with Lords Holderness and Newcastle. Maybe he recced Peter?
But I'm totally on board with this! Besides, I do think before you suggest to a foreign king that he send a particular envoy to your country, you maybe get a thumbs up from your court, in case said prospective envoy created all kinds of bad feelings there ten years ago that you don't know about?
Fritz the paranoid being Fritz the paranoid: unsurprising, if bad for Peter.
My thoughts exactly. I really do hope things warmed up between them in the 1750s, but it's quite possible that you're right that his memoirs "got disappeared" because they were too critical of post-1740 Fritz.
Definitely Fritz' favourite husband, too.
<3
Lovely! I was wondering about her fate in your AU.
Originally, she had none, but then I developed her for that fic, and now I think they're really good for each other and I ship them. :D So I spent a while banging my head against the question of how to get them to meet up at the right time, and finally came up with a solution.
Fredersdorf, alas, hasn't found a way into this fic, but given that Fritz gets to live with Wilhelmine (who, like him, never marries) AND Katte AND Keith AND (to at least some degree that I haven't decided) Suhm, Fredersdorf/Fritz might just have to fall through the cracks in this AU.
I thought his name rang a bell among Mitchell's correspondants, and sure enough, they were pals. Andrew Bisset - who just a page earlier is withering about Horace Walpole the Younger (aka the other bitchy memoirist of the era), because Walpole in turn had dissed both Villiers and Mitchell in favour of Hanbury Williams:
It might, indeed, have been supposed, that this, namely to be the carrier of tittle-tattle would be the beau ideal of a diplomatist, as understood by such a person as that egregious scandal-monger and retailer of Court small-talk—tittle-tattle of the smallest and dirtiest kind—Horace Walpole, the younger. Accordingly, we find him delivering himself of the following observations:—
"Every attempt of our sending men of parts to circumvent him had succeeded ill; the King of Prussia was so far a little genius that he dreaded trying himself against talents. For this reason he used Legge and Sir Charles Williams in the most ungracious manner. Lord Hyndford, Mr. Villiers and Mitchell were the men that suited him ; and had he known him, he would not have feared Yorke. But the King made Mitchell introduce him, would talk to him on no business, and entertained him with nothing but a panegyric on Mitchell.”* Let any one who knows anything of the characters of the two men, imagine Frederic of Prussia circumvented by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams.
Bisset then goes on to say that if he wanted wits, Fritz had Voltaire, he didn't need a small scale wit like Hanbury Williams. Otoh, he liked Mitchell for being a relative straight shooter among diplomats and a brave man, and surely Villliers was of the same type. Then Bisset goes on to quote a few letters from Villiers written to Mitchell during the 7 Years War, when Villiers had become Lord Hyde: We have no doubt it was the same manly frankness, joined to good sense, which made Villiers, as well as Mitchell, an efficient negotiator with Frederic. The following letters from him, when Lord Hyde, to Mitchell, we have great pleasure in being enabled to publish, as affording very unequivocal testimony to the private worth and sociable and amiable qualities of both the parties. As regards the writer they show, we think, in a very unostentatious way, both head and heart.(...)
MY DEAR MITCHELL, 27. June 1761
Though I can’t say that I am fond of unnecessary writing or unnecessary talking, I was happy in receiving a letter from an old friend that I love; having heard that his health which endured the follies of youth had been injured by ministerial toils. By matrimony it seems I am freed from both, and enjoy life in a plain, insignificant way, with a wife that I value, and three boys and a girl. I give no flattery and receive no favours: I am not out of humour, but see things, as far as my sight will reach, without prejudice or partiality; how long this state of annihilation will last, I can’t determine as I have taken no resolutions on it, but considering my great indolence and little merit, I shall scarce be again in an active station; so my friends will scarce ever have any thing of me, but my wishes which would have accompanied your's had I known they had tended to Augsbourg, I mean for yourself, for as to me I am happy that Lord Egremont is at the head of our ministers there. A fitter man, or one more my friend, England has none at present. Lord Granville is much as he was as to spirits and dignity, at least to us who see him daily and partially. Perhaps you would perceive that time had made its impression and lessened both. We often talk you over and wish for the stories we are to have when you return. Lord Jersey has rather more gout than he had, in other respects the same. Lord Weymouth is in the bed chamber and becomes it. H. Thynne has not yet altered his course of life. He begins to want a rich wife and a sinecure place, and I am disposed to imagine he will succeed. Notwithstanding this sameness among a few, don't conclude that it extends through the state; you will find, whenever you come among the great, many new plans and new persons. I wish my poor friends in your parts were as I left them. I often feel for you and for Fritsch as much as for any. Let those who are alive, who are not many, and fall in your way, be assured of my regard, esteem, and compassion, and be yourself convinced that I am unalterably yours, H. My wife begs her compliments of friendship and esteem. As to the business part of your letter it shall be executed; much is due to your care and friendship.
Remember, Charles Hanbury Wlliams ended his life in the third stage of syphilis, locked up as mad, so this is about disposing of those of his possessions stillin various European countries:
MY DEAR MITCHELL, 24th Sept. 1763: . I am very glad to find by your favour of the 3d, that your health is better, and that you are not so germanised but that you wish to be among us; all who know you, wish to have you, none more than my wife and myself. You will find terrible gaps in our acquaintance; death has made cruel havock ; we that remain according to Prussian discipline should stand the closer. As to the boxes in question, which have given you so much trouble, but at the same time an opportunity to show a very kind and friendly disposition, I have desired Mrs. Capel Hanbury, whose husband I believe to be an executor and abroad, to employ an agent authorized at Hamburg to receive and forward the same and to reimburse all expenses thereon. I am an entire stranger to Sir Charles Hanbury Williams' testamentary disposition, and to all the affairs of that family, or should not have left anything from you so long undone. I am, with the truest esteem, my dear Mitchell, most faithfully yours,
H.
MY DEAR MITCHELL, 1st Dec. 1763
I suppose the inclosed expresses Mr. Hanbury's sense of your obliging and friendly care of his brother's boxes, and a desire that they may be forwarded to him (who has authority from the younger brother, George, the executor, to receive them), with an assurance that he, Mr. Capel Hanbury, will reimburse, on demand, all expenses incurred on this occasion. This at least was the substance of our conversation, which he desired I would transmit, but I thought it proper that he should pay his own acknowledgments, where so much was due. This past yesterday morning in the presence of Lord Harcourt, who joined in extolling your sociable and worthy qualities, and agreed that it would be very comfortable to hear your adventures from yourself over a bottle or two of claret. If anybody besides yourself thinks of me where you are, you may confidently assert that I retain warm gratitude for Berlin, but I imagine most of my ministerial and military acquaintances are gone gradually or precipitately to their last home, and that my female friends, if any are left, too much wrinkled for one who can pick and chuse. Should ever opportunity be so blindly favourable as to permit you to lay my duty and respects at his Prussian Majesty's feet, you may with great truth add that I shall ever feel, as I ought, the honour done me by his Majesty's most gracious opinion. Is there any historian attempting to describe and keep pace with his wonderful atchievements? The death of the King of Poland, or rather the choice of a new one, will probably open a field for another volume. Was I as young and as unengaged as when I first knew that part of the world, I would again embark in that agitated sea. It is impossible not to have a kind of longing to admire so great a Prince in the midst of such important affairs; but as it is, I must be contented to tell old stories to my wife and children, and to read and explain the Gazettes. Was there any hopes of your assistance in these domestick amusements we should all be the happier. My wife joins in hearty wishes for your welfare, and in that perfect esteem with which I unalterably remain, My dear Mitchell, Most cordially yours, HYDE.
Bisset's right, Villiers comes across very sympathetic here, and in really friendly terms with Mitchell. Not to mention that he evidently has good memories of his time in Prussia. So it's both likely he befriended Peter in his own right, and/or that he could have followed a Mitchell recommendation. Bear in mind, too, that Mitchell could be absolutely withering about someone Fritz did appoint as envoy to England, to wit, Lentulus. ("The second is Major-General Lentulus (formerly in the Austrian service), a tall, handsome Swiss, very weak, very vain, and very indiscreet, but, which is worst of all, a servile flatterer, and capable of reporting to his master the greatest falsehoods, if he thinks they will please him. Of this I had the strongest proofs, when, in the year 1756, Lentulus was sent to England, to give an account of the battle of Lobositz (at which he was not present). On his return into Saxony, he made a most absurd report to the King, his master, concerning the then state of affairs in England, which, after many months labour and infinite pains, I had at last the good fortune totally to annihilate. -")
So at a guess, Peter would have been perceived by contrast by Villiers (and possibly Mitchell) as someone who wasn't just England-friendly but actually familiar with enough with the place to send reliable reports home to Prussia instead of talking rubbish and flattery a la Lentulus.
I have discovered through some googling that Mitchell, Hanbury Williams, and Villiers were among the earliest (founding?) members of the Society of Dilettanti, the club that was founded in in 1730s by a group of young English gentleman who had met on the Grand Tour, whose purpose was to further the study of Greek and Roman art and archaeology, and the one of which Walpole said, "The nominal qualification for membership is having been in Italy, and the real one, being drunk." (I actually recognized that quote from The Club!)
Not having been to Italy, Peter can't have joined, but given that he spent the years 1734-1736 (my best estimate, based on his eulogy) in London, hanging out with intellectuals, it's not unlikely he joined some sort of club.
Villiers also makes appearances in that book on Andrew Mitchell and Anglo-Prussian diplomatic relations that you were going to try to track down.
So at a guess, Peter would have been perceived by contrast by Villiers (and possibly Mitchell) as someone who wasn't just England-friendly but actually familiar with enough with the place to send reliable reports home to Prussia instead of talking rubbish and flattery a la Lentulus.
Yep, this sounds very plausible.
Is there any historian attempting to describe and keep pace with his wonderful atchievements?
:D
Yes, but some of them will be more reliable than others.
to be the carrier of tittle-tattle would be the beau ideal of a diplomatist
HEE.
if he wanted wits, Fritz had Voltaire, he didn't need a small scale wit like Hanbury Williams.
Lol! Well, it's true...
So at a guess, Peter would have been perceived by contrast by Villiers (and possibly Mitchell) as someone who wasn't just England-friendly but actually familiar with enough with the place to send reliable reports home to Prussia instead of talking rubbish and flattery a la Lentulus.
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timeasmymeasure
Peter Keith
Date: 2020-10-03 12:40 am (UTC)* 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.
Re: Peter Keith
Date: 2020-10-03 11:32 am (UTC)Email away. They all speak English. Seriously. Knowledge of other foreign languages like French, or Latin, or Spanish, or Russian, or Greek depends on what type of school you visit, but everyone going to a German school who is younger than, oh, 6o, had to take English to a level where they can correspond in and talk it.
The English proposing Peter Keith as envoy: that is very interesting. Alas, 47 is way too late for Hervey (he died in the early 1740s) to consult. In addition to Caroline being dead, Sir Robert Walpole who was PM when Peter was there is out of the government, there are new ministers all around as far as I know. So who did make the suggestion? Of course, an irresistable fanwank occurs to me: Peter did meet Algarotti....and young Andrew Mitchell. By 1747, Andrew Mitchell was rising in the ranks of the foreign office - not yet enough to be envoy himself, but he was certainly forming connections with Lords Holderness and Newcastle. Maybe he recced Peter?
Fritz the paranoid being Fritz the paranoid: unsurprising, if bad for Peter.
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.
Definitely Fritz' favourite husband, too.
I finally came up with a way for Peter and Ariane to meet in the same year that they met in real life.
Lovely! I was wondering about her fate in your AU.
Re: Peter Keith
Date: 2020-10-04 04:29 am (UTC)Why do I feel like in somewhere between a day and a week we are going to see a LOT more action in this already action-packed fandom? ;)
Of course, an irresistable fanwank occurs to me: Peter did meet Algarotti....and young Andrew Mitchell. By 1747, Andrew Mitchell was rising in the ranks of the foreign office - not yet enough to be envoy himself, but he was certainly forming connections with Lords Holderness and Newcastle. Maybe he recced Peter?
YES PLEASE. And those of you who might write fic about Peter Keith, you know who you are, could totally put it in the fic :D
Re: Peter Keith
Date: 2020-10-04 05:51 pm (UTC)Lol. I can see why you might think so, but it took me 4 months to finally email Trinity after finding the eulogy, and no, it didn't take me 4 months to think of it. I immediately thought of it. It took me 4 months to get around to. So...we'll see.
And those of you who might write fic about Peter Keith, you know who you are, could totally put it in the fic :D
LOLOL. On a totally unrelated note, I'm looking forward to Yuletide. :D
Re: Peter Keith
Date: 2020-10-04 05:35 pm (UTC)You know, English-speaking Germans always tell me this, but every time I go to Germany and have to rely on English to get around, I find myself completely unable to get simple questions like "How much are tickets?" or "Where are the spoons?" answered outside of airports and hotels. I've always figured it's like algebra and geometry being required subjects in the US: as long as you scrape through the class, you don't have to be able to perform on the spot decades later.
That said, I'm willing to grant that archivists replying to emails are more likely than, say, people staffing a museum on foot, to have the necessary competence in English to make up for my lack of German. Plus, if they're even willing to reply in German, I'm in a much better position to understand the answer than I was when put on the spot with by people speaking German to me ten years ago.
I will give it a try!
(Btw, it's for this reason that I would like to get my comprehension of spoken German up to basic proficiency someday--not now, I can only do one thing at a time--namely that people kept speaking German to me in Germany and not being able to switch to English when it was clear I hadn't a clue what they were saying, and that made for far more stressful situations than did my inability to make myself understood in German.)
So who did make the suggestion?
Preuss's footnote is kind of complicated, and requires more research than I've had time to do yet, but at any rate, it doesn't tell me whose *idea* it was, just the lines of communication along which the idea traveled to Fritz. So Villiers sent a letter to the Dutch envoy von Ginkel, who sent it to Podewils, who sent it to Fritz.
So far I've figured out that Villiers is this guy, who was British envoy to Berlin from 1746 to 1748. Von Ginkel I haven't turned up yet. So there's a chance Villiers knew Peter personally (maybe Peter hung out with British envoys to practice his English and ask after people he knew? or scheme for positions as envoy to Britain??), but I feel like someone in England still would have had to think this was a good idea.
But maybe it was Villiers' idea, and he acted on it unilaterally.
Oh,
Of course, an irresistable fanwank occurs to me: Peter did meet Algarotti....and young Andrew Mitchell. By 1747, Andrew Mitchell was rising in the ranks of the foreign office - not yet enough to be envoy himself, but he was certainly forming connections with Lords Holderness and Newcastle. Maybe he recced Peter?
But I'm totally on board with this! Besides, I do think before you suggest to a foreign king that he send a particular envoy to your country, you maybe get a thumbs up from your court, in case said prospective envoy created all kinds of bad feelings there ten years ago that you don't know about?
Fritz the paranoid being Fritz the paranoid: unsurprising, if bad for Peter.
My thoughts exactly. I really do hope things warmed up between them in the 1750s, but it's quite possible that you're right that his memoirs "got disappeared" because they were too critical of post-1740 Fritz.
Definitely Fritz' favourite husband, too.
<3
Lovely! I was wondering about her fate in your AU.
Originally, she had none, but then I developed her for that fic, and now I think they're really good for each other and I ship them. :D So I spent a while banging my head against the question of how to get them to meet up at the right time, and finally came up with a solution.
Fredersdorf, alas, hasn't found a way into this fic, but given that Fritz gets to live with Wilhelmine (who, like him, never marries) AND Katte AND Keith AND (to at least some degree that I haven't decided) Suhm, Fredersdorf/Fritz might just have to fall through the cracks in this AU.
Re: Peter Keith - Villiers
Date: 2020-10-05 06:27 am (UTC)It might, indeed, have been supposed, that this, namely to be the carrier of tittle-tattle would be the beau ideal of a diplomatist, as understood by such a person as that egregious scandal-monger and retailer of Court small-talk—tittle-tattle of the smallest and dirtiest kind—Horace Walpole, the younger. Accordingly, we find him delivering himself of the following observations:—
"Every attempt of our sending men of parts to circumvent him had succeeded ill; the King of Prussia was so far a little genius that he dreaded trying himself against talents. For this reason he used Legge and Sir Charles Williams in the most ungracious manner. Lord Hyndford, Mr. Villiers and Mitchell were the men that suited him ; and had he known him, he would not have feared Yorke. But the King made Mitchell introduce him, would talk to him on no business, and entertained him with nothing but a panegyric on Mitchell.”* Let any one who knows anything of the characters of the two men, imagine Frederic of Prussia circumvented by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams.
Bisset then goes on to say that if he wanted wits, Fritz had Voltaire, he didn't need a small scale wit like Hanbury Williams. Otoh, he liked Mitchell for being a relative straight shooter among diplomats and a brave man, and surely Villliers was of the same type. Then Bisset goes on to quote a few letters from Villiers written to Mitchell during the 7 Years War, when Villiers had become Lord Hyde:
We have no doubt it was the same manly frankness, joined to good sense, which made Villiers, as well as Mitchell, an efficient negotiator with Frederic. The following letters from him, when Lord Hyde, to Mitchell, we have great pleasure in being enabled to publish, as affording very unequivocal testimony to the private worth and sociable and amiable qualities of both the parties. As regards the writer they show, we think, in a very unostentatious way, both head and heart.(...)
MY DEAR MITCHELL, 27. June 1761
Though I can’t say that I am fond of unnecessary writing or unnecessary talking, I was happy in receiving a letter from an old friend that I love; having heard that his health which endured the follies of youth had been injured by ministerial toils. By matrimony it seems I am freed from both, and enjoy life in a plain, insignificant way, with a wife that I value, and three boys and a girl. I give no flattery and receive no favours: I am not out of humour, but see things, as far as my sight will reach, without prejudice or partiality; how long this state of annihilation will last, I can’t determine as I have taken no resolutions on it, but considering my great indolence and little merit, I shall scarce be again in an active station; so my friends will
scarce ever have any thing of me, but my wishes which would have accompanied your's had I known they had tended to Augsbourg, I mean for yourself, for as to me I am happy that Lord Egremont is at the head of our ministers there. A fitter man, or one more my friend, England has none at present. Lord Granville is much as he was as to spirits and dignity, at least to us who see him daily and partially. Perhaps you would perceive that time had made its impression and lessened both. We often talk you over and wish for the stories we are to have when you return. Lord Jersey has rather more gout than he had, in other respects the same. Lord Weymouth is in the bed chamber and becomes it. H. Thynne has not yet altered his course of life. He begins to want a rich wife and a sinecure place, and I am disposed to imagine he will succeed.
Notwithstanding this sameness among a few, don't conclude that it extends through the state; you will find, whenever you come among the great, many new plans and new persons. I wish my poor friends in your parts were as I left them. I often feel for you and for Fritsch as much as for any. Let those who are alive, who are not many, and fall in your way, be assured of my regard, esteem, and compassion, and be yourself convinced that I am unalterably yours,
H.
My wife begs her compliments of friendship and esteem. As to the business part of your letter it shall be executed; much is due to your care and friendship.
Remember, Charles Hanbury Wlliams ended his life in the third stage of syphilis, locked up as mad, so this is about disposing of those of his possessions stillin various European countries:
MY DEAR MITCHELL, 24th Sept. 1763:
.
I am very glad to find by your favour of the 3d, that your health is better, and that you are not so germanised but that you wish to be among us; all who know you, wish to have you, none more than my wife and myself. You will find terrible gaps in our acquaintance; death has made cruel havock ; we that remain according to Prussian discipline should stand the closer.
As to the boxes in question, which have given you so much trouble, but at the same time an opportunity to show a very kind and friendly disposition, I have desired Mrs. Capel Hanbury, whose husband I believe to be an executor and abroad, to employ an agent authorized at Hamburg to receive and forward the same and to reimburse all expenses thereon. I am an entire stranger to Sir Charles Hanbury Williams' testamentary disposition, and to all the affairs of that family, or should not have left anything from you so long undone. I am, with the truest esteem, my dear Mitchell, most faithfully yours,
H.
MY DEAR MITCHELL, 1st Dec. 1763
I suppose the inclosed expresses Mr. Hanbury's sense of your obliging and friendly care of his brother's boxes, and a desire that they may be forwarded to him (who has authority from the younger brother, George, the executor, to receive them), with an assurance that he, Mr. Capel Hanbury, will reimburse, on demand, all expenses incurred on this occasion. This at least was the substance of our conversation, which he desired I would transmit, but I thought it proper that he should pay his own acknowledgments, where so much was due.
This past yesterday morning in the presence of Lord Harcourt, who joined in extolling your sociable and worthy qualities, and agreed that it would be very comfortable to hear your adventures from yourself over a bottle or two of claret. If anybody besides yourself thinks of me where you are, you may confidently assert that I retain warm gratitude for Berlin, but I imagine most of my ministerial and military acquaintances are gone gradually or precipitately to their last home, and that my female friends, if any are left, too much wrinkled for one who can pick and chuse. Should ever opportunity be so blindly favourable as to permit you to lay my duty and respects at his Prussian Majesty's feet, you may with great truth add that I shall ever feel, as I ought, the honour done me by his Majesty's most gracious opinion. Is there any historian attempting to describe and keep pace with his wonderful atchievements?
The death of the King of Poland, or rather the choice of a new one, will probably open a field for another volume. Was I as young and as unengaged as when I first knew that part of the world, I would again embark in that agitated sea. It is impossible not to have a kind of longing to admire so great a Prince in the midst of such important affairs; but as it is, I must be contented to tell old stories to my wife and children, and to read and explain the Gazettes. Was there any hopes of your assistance in these domestick amusements we should all be the happier. My wife joins in hearty wishes for your welfare, and in that perfect esteem with which I unalterably remain,
My dear Mitchell,
Most cordially yours,
HYDE.
Bisset's right, Villiers comes across very sympathetic here, and in really friendly terms with Mitchell. Not to mention that he evidently has good memories of his time in Prussia. So it's both likely he befriended Peter in his own right, and/or that he could have followed a Mitchell recommendation. Bear in mind, too, that Mitchell could be absolutely withering about someone Fritz did appoint as envoy to England, to wit, Lentulus. ("The second is Major-General Lentulus (formerly in the Austrian service), a tall, handsome Swiss, very weak, very vain, and very indiscreet, but, which is worst of all, a servile flatterer, and capable of reporting to his master the greatest falsehoods, if he thinks they will please him. Of this I had the strongest proofs, when, in the year 1756, Lentulus was sent to England, to give an account of the battle of Lobositz (at which he was not present). On his return into Saxony, he made a most absurd report to the King, his master, concerning the then state of affairs in England, which, after many months labour and infinite pains, I had at last the good fortune totally to annihilate. -")
So at a guess, Peter would have been perceived by contrast by Villiers (and possibly Mitchell) as someone who wasn't just England-friendly but actually familiar with enough with the place to send reliable reports home to Prussia instead of talking rubbish and flattery a la Lentulus.
Re: Peter Keith - Villiers
Date: 2020-10-06 12:24 am (UTC)I have discovered through some googling that Mitchell, Hanbury Williams, and Villiers were among the earliest (founding?) members of the Society of Dilettanti, the club that was founded in in 1730s by a group of young English gentleman who had met on the Grand Tour, whose purpose was to further the study of Greek and Roman art and archaeology, and the one of which Walpole said, "The nominal qualification for membership is having been in Italy, and the real one, being drunk." (I actually recognized that quote from The Club!)
Not having been to Italy, Peter can't have joined, but given that he spent the years 1734-1736 (my best estimate, based on his eulogy) in London, hanging out with intellectuals, it's not unlikely he joined some sort of club.
Villiers also makes appearances in that book on Andrew Mitchell and Anglo-Prussian diplomatic relations that you were going to try to track down.
So at a guess, Peter would have been perceived by contrast by Villiers (and possibly Mitchell) as someone who wasn't just England-friendly but actually familiar with enough with the place to send reliable reports home to Prussia instead of talking rubbish and flattery a la Lentulus.
Yep, this sounds very plausible.
Is there any historian attempting to describe and keep pace with his wonderful atchievements?
:D
Yes, but some of them will be more reliable than others.
Re: Peter Keith - Villiers
Date: 2020-10-06 05:15 am (UTC)to be the carrier of tittle-tattle would be the beau ideal of a diplomatist
HEE.
if he wanted wits, Fritz had Voltaire, he didn't need a small scale wit like Hanbury Williams.
Lol! Well, it's true...
So at a guess, Peter would have been perceived by contrast by Villiers (and possibly Mitchell) as someone who wasn't just England-friendly but actually familiar with enough with the place to send reliable reports home to Prussia instead of talking rubbish and flattery a la Lentulus.
This seems very plausible!