cahn | Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 19

I know this is completely irrelevant to anything, but right now I am stuck on "why would you name your kid ('s middle name) after Ahasuerus?"
(Still on phone, still no computer internet, just peeking in)

We also wondered about that! And we found out!

selenak: I also found out where the name "Ahasverus" came into the family. This was the fault of one Gerhard (Ahasverus) von Lehndorff, this guy, a passionate 17th century traveller (and writer of travel books) who got himself even involved with pirates once. He was actually renamed himself Ahasverus, not after Xerxes but according to his wiki entry after the eternal Jew. Being a fellow world traveller and all.

mildred_of_midgard: Per Wikipedia: "At least from the 17th century the name Ahasver has been given to the Wandering Jew, apparently adapted from Ahasuerus 'Xerxes,' the Persian king in the Book of Esther, who was not a Jew, and whose very name among medieval Jews was an exemplum of a fool. This name may have been chosen because the Book of Esther describes the Jews as a persecuted people, scattered across every province of Ahasuerus' vast empire, similar to the later Jewish diaspora in countries whose state and/or majority religions were forms of Christianity."

Oh wow, that's great! I didn't expect my semi-rhetorical question to have an answer, much less a well-researched and interesting one. Thank you! :D

I can hear

cahn laughing, because this is SO typical for us. No minutia is too minute for the Frederician fandom!

(Hi!!)

I KNOW RIGHT?? I had exactly the same question!! And you can see from the dates that I was working on the Esther fic at the time, so I was even more whaaaaat about it than usual :)

(If you parent up, it looks like he wasn't very thrilled with the name either :) )

Hee. :)
My life has just gotten Complicated again, so I probably won't have computer internet for another week. But I am looking forward to being properly communicable-with again.
From my glimpses of it, the Frederician fandom looks delightful. :D

Oh dear, I hope it's good complicated and not bad complicated? Anyway hope all is going well, and I look forward to your triumphant return to communicability :) (And glad you have a phone so you can communicate at least a bit :D )

Can I just say how delighted I am that this is your second consecutive Frederician Yuletide nomination post, and we're still going strong? Nothing in the last year has sparked as much joy for me as our salon. <3

Also: 5/10 FW+SD kids, that's a pretty strong showing on the sibling front!

:D I am amazed and pleased we are still going! :) And by all the fruits of our fandom <3

Edited 2020-10-08 04:41 (UTC)

Just remembered I should be replying on this post. *facepalm*

Oh nooooo :( Heh, the funny thing is that I wouldn't have minded Peter Keith dying instead of Katte nearly as much if mildred hadn't convinced me through fic that he was really cool :P

*beams proudly*

But yeah, I totally had the same reaction. "He could have saved Katte! But Peter! But Katte! But Peter!" :((((

I guess if one of the boyfriends had to die, the one whose family connections could get him beheaded with a single stroke has some advantages over the one who might have had his guts ripped out with red hot pliers before a slow death by hanging.

But consider: Peter's captured before Katte's execution. They were tried at the same court martial, the sentences were handed down at the same time, the execution would presumably have been carried out at the same time...if FW decided *not* to spare Katte, would they both have been shipped to Küstrin at the same time for Fritz to watch? It's not the same situation as Fritz already having had the meltdown and having reformed and been pardoned. And if so, would they have gotten the same punishment? Especially since Peter not only doesn't have the family, but he actualfax deserted, unlike Katte. You could make a real case for torturing him and not Katte.

:/

GAH FW.

You could, but that’s also why even if both Katte and Peter get trials and capital sentences at the same time, I don’t think he’d have sent Peter to Küstrin but would have had him executed in Berlin, in public, the point being the same as with the soldiers who did suffer this way earlier that year: discourage mutiny and desertion among the troops. Since Peter had actually deserted.

The point of Katte’s death, otoh, was specifically aimed at Fritz. So even if their trials happen simultanously, I say Katte (son of Hans Heinrich, grandson of Grandpa Wartensleben) gets the Küstrin execution in front of Fritz, but with circumstances that allow him a quick death and people around him who respect him, while Peter Keith gets the ignominous traitor’s death to show the rest of the army what happens if you desert.

But, like I said: I really do think Katte would have had a good shot at survival if Peter had been caught. Because FW had to override the tribunal twice there, and didn’t have to at all in the case of Peter, who was universally condemned to death in absentia. No question about his guilt whatsoever. FW, for all his FWness, wasn’t a cartoon figure who couldn’t get enough of death sentences. So my money is on Peter getting the death sentence (and either Fritz is brought to Berlin for the execution, or Peter is executed in Küstrin, but either way, if only Peter gets the death sentence, then Fritz is there), and the tribunal sentence of life long imprisonment for Hans Herrmann stands, allowing FW to get praised by all and sunder for his mercy. (Since none of the influentual people care about Peter.)

allowing FW to get praised by all and sunder for his mercy.

Sigh. This sounds horribly plausible. ...I suppose I'm glad Peter didn't get torn apart by red hot pliers. I mean, not that I'm at all reconciled to Katte's death, but it's got to have been better than that.

I knoooow, I'm glad he was at Trinity. <3 Peter. Although maybe next time enroll, Peter? I know you could hardly imagine that posterity would be so interested in finding traces of you in the historical record, but you would be surprised what we get up to in this salon! (Just ask Fredersdorf.)

Next question: if Katte *and* Peter had made it to safety...how much worse would things have been for Fritz?

Oh noooooo do you think then we're in "Fiat Justitia" land?? IDK I sort of got the feeling FW was out for blood...

Alas the chances are quite good then, I fear. Though to be fair: in Fiat Justitia, I achieve it by letting one general move somewhat slower in a spontanous situation. Executing Fritz, by contrast, would have given FW ample opportunity to think, and consider the consequences. Renember, in rl, Frau von Kameke saying "don't be like Peter the Great of Philip of Spain" had a sobering effect, and both these precedents were also impressive because the monarchs in question ended up having no son at all to pass their Empire on to. (Peter had two more other than Alexeij when killing him, but they both died. Hello, century of Czarinas.) FW was just the type to believe God would punish him for a son killing by taking his other sons if he has time to think it through. If he's in the same room with Fritz after having learned both Katte and Peter have made successful escapes, and Fritz, full of relief about that, can't resist taunting him, all bets are off.

Yep, I agree him having time to think about it lowers the odds. FW was in some ways someone who could be talked out of his initial impulses. But there's always the chance!

Re Mosel, is there any evidence for this episode outside Wilhelmine's memoirs? (I don't count Pöllnitz as an independent source, since he wasn't even in Prussia at the time, and they obviously conferred on their memoir writing.) It made a fantastic "what if?" for fiction, of course, but MacDonogh doubts whether it ever happened, because there's no contemporary evidence. And while it's the kind of thing you might try to hush up, is it the kind of thing you would be successful at hushing up?

MacDonogh thinks so!

There was still a chance that Frederick would also be executed...Katte’s death, however, announced a slight lightening of the regime in Küstrin, and a minor rehabilitation for Frederick. Frederick William had assuaged his blood-lust. That, and the problems which might beset the succession, convinced him to spare Frederick, rather than the plea for mitigation that he had received from the emperor in Vienna on 1 November.

Which is consistent with

selenak's case that if Keith, then (probably) not Katte.

Hang on, if FW received the Emperor's plea for Fritz' life on November 1st, that means the story of Seckendorff holding the letter back until later can't be right?

So I just checked the Monarchenbriefe collection (I knew this would be worth the $30 I paid for 30 pages! :P), and the editor actually says two things (well, two things relevant to us) about the letter:

1. It was composed (verfaßt) by Seckendorff. (!!)
2. It was only handed over on October 31, when it was clear that FW would pardon Fritz.

Clear to Seckendorff, maybe.

Interestingly, this is the date the Köpenick court returned the second verdict of incompetence to try Fritz (and imprisonment for Katte).

Also, this collection includes the reply from Fritz to Charles VI, saying that he will as long as he lives do his best to demonstrate his devotion to the Emperor. But that promise dies with Charles, the editor points out.

Is this like Wilhelmine saying that her promise not to let the Marwitzes marry outside of Prussia died with FW?

Clear to Seckendorff, maybe.

Who did generally have a good reading on FW, plus of course had Grumbkow to tell him the FW mood du jour. Mind you, if this was the same day FW was absolutely incensed to learn the Katte verdict, he was hardly in a calm state of mind. So maybe Seckendorff, with or without Grumbkow's imput, also saw the connection between FW deciding not to kill his son but killing Katte as a replacement victim. (Jochen Kepler in his FW novel Der Vater lets FW pull out all the Abraham-Isaac-ram similes at this point.)

Is this like Wilhelmine saying that her promise not to let the Marwitzes marry outside of Prussia died with FW?

I guess. Though imo if Charles hadn't died, Fritz would not have been idle for long but found a different excuse to cover himself with military glory by invading. Maybe he'd have offered Charles his "protection", too

Who did generally have a good reading on FW, plus of course had Grumbkow to tell him the FW mood du jour.

Right, that's what I was thinking: he might have been the first to figure this out, while everyone else is left wondering. Which is why November 1 as a date at which the pardon has been decided felt far too early to you and me. Seckendorff (and Grumbkow) were more on top of things!

Also: not that I want to give you more opportunities to make me fall even further behind in commenting than I already am, zomg :P, but while researching this question, I (re)discovered a 1792 biography + collection of contemporary documents of Seckendorff written by a descendant or other family member, which is now in the library in 4 volumes. The first two volumes seem to be a straightforward biography in German, judging by my skimming of German in an old-fashioned font, and the next two are commentaries and documentation around his political accomplishments, in a mixture of French and German.

Anyway, it's there if we want it, as reference if nothing else. I put it in the biographies folder, despite the collection of documents. Many of these bios are a mixture, thanks to scholars being nice about publishing their sources. (Debating moving Volz's Spiegel to the documents folder, since it seems to be more purely a collection of documents?)

Volz: It is a collection of documents (some of which are excerpts of memoirs, granted), and yes, thus would fit better in the documents folder.

And I salute the royal detective for finding yet another source for us! Have only read the preface and am mightly amused, because:

Preface writer: Seckendorff rocked! No other envoy in this century has accomplished as much as he!

Ghost of Seckendorff *smugly*: Told you so.

Preface writer: as a warrior-diplomat combo, he was unequalled!

All the other envoys: still got imprisoned twice, and once by his own team. We didn't, except Poniatowski.

Poniatowski: I was the victim of a love triangle involving me, Poland and Catherine, what with me loving both passionately and both turning out to demand opposing goals from me. Fall and imprisonment resulting from this is the meat of which tragedies are made. Seckendorff, otoh, got locked up twice because he had made himself enemies, and because the Margrave of Brandenburg was nothing but a gangster with good PR. You can't compare this!

Mitchell: while I can't claim to be a soldier myself, I did survive battles. It also occurs to me that given his missions to the Czarina Catherine, Prince Henry should count as a warrior-diplomat combination as well, and frankly, I would back his soldier credentials against Seckendorff's any time. He also did not have to get the Czarina drunk in order to accomplish the first division of Poland to mutual benefits.

Poniatowski: *sobs*

More seriously, going by the preface, this was the first serious Seckendorff biography, with two previous attempts being anti-Seckendorff pamphlets by enemies, and our preface writer swears he's used all the material he could find. Note that as the book was published in 1792, this can't include Wilhelmine's memoirs. (Or for that matter Lehndorff's entertaining diary entry on paying a visit to old Seckendorff in Magdeburg where he's making an acid remark about the way Fritz describes him in the "History of the House of Brandenburg". But: the biography writer would have been able to interview people who'd actually known Seckendorff in his later years, and have had access to print media long since lost, newspaper accunts, pamphlets and the like.

Edited 2020-10-13 06:07 (UTC)

This sounds awesome, and I look forward to more tidbits!

Preface writer: Seckendorff rocked! No other envoy in this century has accomplished as much as he!

Ghost of Seckendorff *smugly*: Told you so.

Preface writer: as a warrior-diplomat combo, he was unequalled!

All the other envoys: still got imprisoned twice, and once by his own team. We didn't, except Poniatowski.

MT: You know, all that money you poured into Fritz's coffers? (And Wilhelmine's.) I could have used that when I inherited a BANKRUPT COUNTRY. Okay, Fritz was a drop in the bucket. But it's the principle of the thing! All we got in return was one freaking salmon.

But: the biography writer would have been able to interview people who'd actually known Seckendorff in his later years, and have had access to print media long since lost, newspaper accunts, pamphlets and the like.

Let us hope he made good use of them!

All we got in return was one freaking salmon.

I laughed! I mean, we know that was a really good salmon!

He also did not have to get the Czarina drunk in order to accomplish the first division of Poland to mutual benefits.

HEE. Poor Poniatowski. (Go Heinrich!)

Thought I'd share this description of a French execution by torture with you, which I ran across in the Voltaire bio I'm reading:

The prisoner was placed, around five o’clock, on a scaffold eight and a half feet square. They tied him with heavy cords held by iron rings which immobilised his arms and his thighs. They started by burning his hand in a brazier filled with burning sulphur. Then they took red-hot pincers and tore at his flesh on his arms, his thighs and his chest. They poured molten lead and pitch and boiling oil on all his wounds. These tortures dragged from him the most frightful screams.

Four vigorous horses, whipped on by four executioners’ assistants, pulled with cords on the bleeding and flaming wounds of the patient; these pullings lasted an hour. His limbs stretched but did not part. The executioners finally cut some muscles. His limbs parted one after the other. Damiens, having lost two legs and an arm, was still breathing, and did not expire until his other arm was separated from his bleeding trunk. The limbs and the trunk were thrown on a pyre ten feet from the scaffold.

The individual being tortured is Robert-François Damiens, an evidently mentally ill man who tried to assassinate Louis XV with a pocketknife, but only gave him a scratch. Wikipedia tells me he was the last to undergo this sort of execution.

Remember, the guillotine was a big hit because it was so humane!

Lol, flipping through Kloosterhuis looking for info on Katte portraits, I saw that Peter's effects that were left behind were sold, and the proceeds were used for various expenses, including 6 thalers for the creation of a portrait of him to hang in effigy, and 10 for the executioner's fee.

Remember, the guillotine was a big hit because it was so humane!

Yeah. I remember learning that (some time after my French teacher fed me all the French Revolution / Terror books) and it just blowing my mind. :(

Frogs: belatedly, I have a new theory, based on a) Stratemann early on, in the 1728, mentioning how much little AW loves fireworks and how FW indulges him in this, and b) the factthat firecrackers are called “Knallfrösche” in modern German - maybe “Fröschlinge” was the Rokoko term, and what FW did was allow firecrackers lighted in the antechambre to amuse the kids? (Cleaning staff: thanks, your majesty!)

OOOHHH. Yes, this is my new theory! I couldn't find Fröschlinge from googling, but I did find plain "Frösche" as firecrackers, so maybe Stratemann just wrote "Fröschlinge" to signal that they were small firecrackers, suitable for indoor use. Like sparklers?

Also, calling firecrackers frogs makes sense! All that leaping.

Ferdinand’s wetnurse: chosen about a month before SD gave birth via comitee consisting of favored court ladies, there were so many other passages I wanted to translate that I abandoned it. Still can do it, though, since I assume this is how it worked for the other royal children as well.)

I mean, you did kind of almost translate the whole book for us! For which we are endlessly grateful. But if you should have time at some point, I would be interested in hearing about this committee. As you say, relevant for fanfic!

There’s no way to spin “so I hear the Queen and our future Duchess in front of the servants talked about Princess EC has fistula in her anus”.

ROTFL. At least a dozen, remember!

Okay, then small scale fireworks for the kids it shall be. Something I forgot to add: the fact that Stratemann reports Sophie got the least presents from FW in 1731, but SD made it up to her in secret by giving her a cross with diamonds is another hint that Sophie’s governess Madame de Jouccourt (I wrote Jouccoulles by mistake recently, having Madame de Rouccoulles the governess of Fritz and FW on the brain) was his source for all the family anecdotes.

And he really avoids unpleasantness and extolls the King and Queen as good parents whenever he can, hence no reported Fritz abuse before the escape attempt and only cryptic hints that things are tense between the two oldest and FW. There’s actually more about Wilhelmine’s pre-escape attempt problems with FW than those of Fritz, and that only in retrospect (i.e. in the description of FW being considerate to very pregnant with Ferdinand SD, bringing the kids to her, forgiving Wilhelmine and taking her to look after Heinrich). This is really different to all the other envoys, not just from the court of FW. For example, think of Valory remarking on Fritz ruling over his brothers with an iron thumb in his reports, or the French ambassador, after the MT/FS wedding, writing that no one other than MT likes FS at the Austrian court. (Even discounting the French bias - and they were deeply distrustful that the Lorrraine guy would use the Habsburg might to make a play for his former dukedom for years, so the envoy is invested in showing FS in a weak position - he’s reporting some genuine grumblings, though they were probably because from the point of the Austrian nobility, foreigner FS had undeservedly hit the jackpot by marrying himself into the Empire.)

You know what Mitchell wrote about Fritz and Heinrich. And Seckendorff the Younger certainly reports all the ups and downs of the 1730s Fritz/FW relationship as he observes and hears about it (i.e. sometimes it’s “Fritzchen” and paternal love, sometimes it’s snide remarks. And Mantteuffel provides with all the indiscreet utterings Fritz gave about his siblings and inability to get excited about EC. To say nothing of Suhm, back in the day, with the Hubertusday report. Now wasn’t that in 1728 as well, i.e. when Stratemann starts to write? Because I have this vision of Stratemann going “hey, Suhm, you were at the hunting, want to share some adorable stories about how the King is such great father to his children?”

Basically: what I’m saying is that Stratemann is clearly the scriptwriter for Fritz: The Disney Version. Or rather FW: The Disney Version. And since none of the others are, how on earth did they get along?

ETA: OMG.It just occured to me - the Hohenzollern as described by Stratemann was what EC thought she was marrying into. You know, that adorable family where Dad goes Christmas shopping for his kids, and if he neglects one, Mom is there to make her feel treasured, Mom and Dad love each other, of course, he's feeding her hot soup when she's sick, and sure, there was that tiny tiny escape attempt problem, but you know, Dad forgave Sonny almost immediately, and Oldest Daughter was sick, I swear, with her parents making sure she had a good long time to recover from that dreadful illness. And everyone is rejoicing and loving each other. /ETA

Dilettanti: at a guess, this sounds like Horace Walpole the younger was suffering from sour grapes, i.e. maybe he wanted to be a member, but they wouldn’t have him - he had been in Italy, remember, meeting Lady Mary during her years there and writing home disgustedly he heard about her menstruating so that she bled through to the bed of the inn, and this at her age, how disgusting, and she DANCED, too, etc, etc.

Garrick: we should also tell Cahn Garrick had been Johnson’s old pupil. They were from the same place, Lichfield, and Johnson had taught David Garrick and his brother when they were boys. This informed their relationship in both good and bad ways, depending on whether Johnson thought Garrick needed to be defended or was overly praised. (I.e. it was a “no one talks trash about Davy but me” thing.) After Garrick had produced Johnson’s play Irene, Garrick invited him backstage, but Johnson said: “No, Davy, I shall never come back. For the white bubbies and the silk stockings of your actresses excite my genitals.”

Edited 2020-10-07 12:30 (UTC)

the fact that Stratemann reports Sophie got the least presents from FW in 1731, but SD made it up to her in secret by giving her a cross with diamonds is another hint that Sophie’s governess Madame de Jouccourt was his source for all the family anecdotes.

Excellent detective work!

Now wasn’t that in 1728 as well, i.e. when Stratemann starts to write?

Indeed! Scanning that entry with my limited German and blackletter handicap, it seems to be "Bacchus reigned, everyone had a great time, the wine flowed; the feast was celebrated early* because Seckendorff has to leave for Saxony, oh, and there are about to be some executions of officers in Magdeburg soon..."

* I have been wondering about the date of Suhm's letter not matching the feast day, not even a little bit, for a year now! Thanks, Stratemann. :D

Because I have this vision of Stratemann going “hey, Suhm, you were at the hunting, want to share some adorable stories about how the King is such great father to his children?”

Ahahahahaaaaa *lolsob*. This is why I think Johnn, after Katte's execution, grabbed him by force and said, "LOOK. This Disney king of yours is Scar, not Mufasa." To which Stratemann wrote in his report, "Well, it could have been much worse, all sounds very just and noble to me..."

Also, re Suhm, let's remember it's not just Suhm's friend Fritz FW has been whaling on, but Suhm had grabbed his family and fled the country from FW's death threats just a year and a half earlier.

ETA: OMG.It just occured to me - the Hohenzollern as described by Stratemann was what EC thought she was marrying into.

OMG, you're right! :( At least Louise would have known what she was getting into...though I guess she married AW shortly after the happy Rheinsberg years, so we'll say she had at least an inkling. Though Ziebura, if I'm remembering correctly, says EC for a long time thought that things would go back to normal after Fritz was done with his glorious conquests...

Stratemann, see what you did with your Disney AU!

he had been in Italy, remember, meeting Lady Mary during her years there and writing home disgustedly he heard about her menstruating so that she bled through to the bed of the inn, and this at her age, how disgusting, and she DANCED, too, etc, etc.

Oh, right, that was him! It's hard to keep track of all the misogyny. :P

(I.e. it was a “no one talks trash about Davy but me” thing.)

Funnily enough, that's exactly how Damrosch introduces this anecdote:

Whatever tensions existed between Johnson and Garrick, everyone noticed that Johnson wouldn’t allow Garrick to be criticized by anyone but himself. When Boswell tried to get a rise out of him by suggesting that Garrick was too vain about his reputation, Johnson retorted, “Sir, it is wonderful how little Garrick assumes..."

the feast was celebrated early* because Seckendorff has to leave for Saxony

Seckendorff to the other envoys: And this, kids, is why you are all amateurs compared with me. Did FW or Fritz rearrange their funtime schedule for your benefit, eh? I'm telling you, that man loved me.

"Well, it could have been much worse, all sounds very just and noble to me..."

Richard Wolff (editor): This is why the Stratemann gives us the real FW, not the unlovingly and harshly drawn distortion the Margravine as a bad daughter drew in her memoirs.

Stratemann, see what you did with your Disney AU!

He conveniently died in 1739, so he never got to know King Fritz. Or the kind of Queen EC ended up as being.

Though Ziebura, if I'm remembering correctly, says EC for a long time thought that things would go back to normal after Fritz was done with his glorious conquests...

Well, given that she kept expecting him to send for her as late as the 7 Years War, I don't doubt it. In 1740, she probably told herself "Well, he's busy with all this new workload, but once that's settled with...", and when the first Silesian War kicked off in the December, she could tell herself "well, of course he's busy with his glorious conquests, but once he comes back..."

I mean, EC might have been the sole person who hadn't heard Fritz pre marriage had dragged his feet as long as he could and had not wanted her on any level, let alone that he told Grumbkow the marriage would be over once he was King. They had lived together in Rheinsberg, he'd been happy, and had written kind, considerate letters to her, praising her, even, when he was elsewhere. Yes, they probably did not have much of a sex life, if any, but she had no reason to assume they wouldn't continue living like this once he was King.

Then again: if her father did show her some of Stratemann's reports to prepare her for her new family, she must have figured out these were, err, just an aspect of the truth as soon as she met her future in-laws and SD and the sisters started sniggering. No wonder she hardly said a word.

It's also how Boswell introduces this anecdote in "Life of Johnson". Incidentally, I just realised that the same Mr. Croker who proudly censored the already censored Lord Hervey's memoirs some more in his edition also published the edition of Boswell's Life that Macauly pours much scorn on (only some of which is for Boswell himself) for not only censoring Boswell's Georgian frankness but interpolating Boswell's text with other Johnson biographies. Croker: the Henri de Catt of Victorian editors, clearly. It's a good thing Boswell's diaries weren't published until the 20th century.

Seckendorff to the other envoys: And this, kids, is why you are all amateurs compared with me. Did FW or Fritz rearrange their funtime schedule for your benefit, eh? I'm telling you, that man loved me.

Suhm: Fritz gave up sleep to read my translation of Wolff! Which led him to recommend Wolff to AW, and, lo and behold, 6 months later, your guy FW is reading Wolff.

Mitchell: Probably, but

selenak might be in a better position to think of examples?

Lord Marischal: I know I technically don't count as an envoy *to* Fritz, but let's remember: you and I were both foreigners who met our respective kings and became BFFs *first*, then you were sent to Prussia as envoy *because* the king liked you. And I was sent as envoy by Fritz (G2 was hardly about to use me as envoy!) to France. So I say it counts that Fritz used to walk down the hill to eat with me at the Chinese Tea House instead of making me walk up the hill to Sanssouci.

Richard Wolff (editor): This is why the Stratemann gives us the real FW, not the unlovingly and harshly drawn distortion the Margravine as a bad daughter drew in her memoirs.

I don't know whether I want to say GAAHHH or GRRRR to this. Both. :P

He conveniently died in 1739, so he never got to know King Fritz. Or the kind of Queen EC ended up as being.

Stratemann and Grumbkow really picked a good year to die.

I mean, EC might have been the sole person who hadn't heard Fritz pre marriage had dragged his feet as long as he could and had not wanted her on any level, let alone that he told Grumbkow the marriage would be over once he was King.

Oof, you're right. This plus Polyanna Stratemann would explain a lot about her falling in love and holding out hope for so long. Even if you arrive and realize the family is dysfunctional, the guy *did* agree to marry you, and he is being nice to you, if distant...

Ouch.

It's also how Boswell introduces this anecdote in "Life of Johnson".

Well, that explains the coincidence, then. :)

Croker: the Henri de Catt of Victorian editors, clearly.

ZOMG. Oh, remember the 19th century Thiebault editor fleshing out the actual memoirs with passages from Wilhelmine, thus leading us down a garden path for a long time?

STOP IT.

Mitchell: Fritz asked for my opinion on his collected works and took my criticism along with the praise in good spirits, this in the middle of a war where he was looking for scapegoats to abuse left, right and center. Supposedly, he also cried at my funeral, though I wouldn't know about that. What does make me the superior envoy, though, is that I managed to be friendly with him and Heinrich at the same time without either one getting paranoid on me, and that I didn't have to waste lots of bribery money on this. As opposed to all those Lives of Prince Eugene you threw at Fritz without ever getting some political capital in return. I died in Berlin, and Heinrich paid for a bust of me to be put in a church. You were kidnapped in your old age so they could get Moritz of Dessau back, and I didn't see anyone in the Prussian military, some of which had hung out with you and FW back in the day, intervening on your behalf. I rest my case.

Poniatowski: Did any of you get deflowered by the sexiest monarch of Europe, Catherine the Great? You did not. Nor did you end up on a throne as a result, however tragically this ended up being. This isn't even a competition, people.

Well, if we're counting non-Fritz and -FW envoys, Poniatowski obviously wins the laurels!

Seckendorff: Young man, granted, you got laid and crowned, but did you achieve anything for either Saxony or Poland from the Russians? You didn't. Meanwhile, I had FW conducting Imperial-friendly policy until the wedding of Junior with our candidate of choice, and the reason it didn't continue this way had nothing with me but with fools in Vienna suddenly reversing course on the candidate of choice. I therefore still lay claim to the crown of most successful envoy. As for you, Mitchell, no matter how much the royal brothers liked you, did Fritz do anything for Great Britain? As I recall from my lodgings in Magdeburg, he kept asking for more money, talked trash about the Hannovers' family lives and your PM's political craft, and then named asses after your politicians when the the subsidies stopped altogether. Neither of you got your target monarch to act against his own interests and in yours, which is what I achieved. I am the very model of a major envoy general.

Poniatowski: Naturally, I expect nothing less than goalpost-moving from your devious self. Originally the argument was about personal concessions, and then when you lost, suddenly it became about political accomplishments. Don't think we don't see what you did there.

As I recall from my lodgings in Magdeburg...I am the very model of a major envoy general.

Mitchell: You contradict yourself, sir. :P You got your country to pour money into Fritz's pockets, and what did you get out of it? An invasion of your richest province and an imprisonment of your person. We gave Fritz money and actually kept him from invading our province.

did Fritz do anything for Great Britain?

Mitchell: He sent us Ferdinand of Brunswick?

I am the very model of a major envoy general.

Mildred: I laughed!

I am the very model of a major envoy general.

*chokes with laughter*

Fritz asked for my opinion on his collected works and took my criticism along with the praise in good spirits

That is pretty impressive.

I managed to be friendly with him and Heinrich at the same time without either one getting paranoid on me, and that I didn't have to waste lots of bribery money on this.

That is even more impressive! Mitchell for the win!

Did any of you get deflowered by the sexiest monarch of Europe, Catherine the Great? You did not.

HAHAHAHAHAHA omg okay this made me laugh SO HARD :D

OMG.It just occured to me - the Hohenzollern as described by Stratemann was what EC thought she was marrying into.

Oh noooooo. Poor EC. Though like you guys say downthread, Fritz did seem to treat her OK until he became king...

This informed their relationship in both good and bad ways, depending on whether Johnson thought Garrick needed to be defended or was overly praised. (I.e. it was a “no one talks trash about Davy but me” thing.)

hee :)

When I was looking up MacDonogh's quote about FW's blood-lust being assuaged, I happened upon the Hille "You think his wants to be a musician, but it's worse than that, he wants to be a poet!" quote, and it went like this:

You think his passion is music, I wish to God it were so! But he has a stronger inclination: he wants to write verse and become a poet. While he hasn’t a clue whether his ancestors won Magdeburg in a game of cards or whatever, he can count out Aristotle’s poetic rules on his fingers, and for the last two days he has been torturing himself to render into French some German verses that the idiot Wilke* has given him.

And Wilke is footnoted as a civil servant.

The citation for this letter is Volz, who footnotes Wilke as "Geheimer Kriegs- und Domänenrat." Which, as I recall, is the way Stratemann presents the author of the poem. Now, previously, Hille, the director of the Kriegs- und Domänenrat, was the only person we (or I) knew to be affiliated with that, but--I checked Stratemann more closely.

The footnote to the poem says to see page 198.

Page 198 says,

Wie Se. Königl. Hoheit zum ersten mahl in die dasige Cammer kommen, hat der 2. Secretarius, als ein fertiger Poet, Dieselbe mit einigen Versen bewillkommnet, worauf der Prinz auf gleiche Weise gar kurz geantwortet hat.

"2. Secretarius" I think *can't* be Hille, as he's the director. I think it must be Wilke, who's the "accomplished poet," and this is the poem Fritz was "torturing himself to render into French" given to him by "that idiot Wilke." And Stratemann writes that the poem is from the Kriegs- und Domänenrat (or apparently Kriegs und Dom. Cammer-Canzley, which, same diff) because it was formally presented to Fritz by the committee upon his first meeting attendance.

This makes more sense of Hille!

There's more, which I will report later as the weak flesh allows, but for now, I think we've identified our author.

Okay, then Geheimer Kriegs- und Domänenrat Wilke is our (hobby)poet giving the future author of De La Literature Allemande a welome poem. :) Seriously though, it was a sweet gesture, and Fritz evidently appreciated if he both tried to compose a French version and wrote a brief German reply. I’m also reminded of the Frankfurt an der Oder students organizing a musical presentation for Fritz (whether or not Fredersdorf was involved). What all this tells me is that Fritz loving music and poetry must have been known across the kingdom - since neither Wilke nor the students were court insiders -, and also that they evidently wanted to show their solidarity/ make his life a bit better despite living in a kingdom governed by absolute monarch FW. Kudos, I say.

Hard agree. This is why I said that Fritz experienced a lot of kindness when he was young, he just (almost) never experienced consistent kindness coupled with real power. He got intermittent interventions: his mother, Mosel (maybe), the Münchows, etc., but they were all severely limited.

But the random acts of kindness were definitely responsible for him not turning out worse than he did, so kudos to everyone who did their best in a sucky situation.

There's more, which I will report later

Royal Detective reporting for duty!

So, Volz gives the complete (afaict) letter from Hille to Grumbkow, and immediately after the whole "idiot Wilkes" passage, Hille continues:

Bis zur Erschlaffung sage ich ihm die Verse aus Molieres „Misanthrope“ über Oronte her. Er sagt sie seien wundervoll, und läßt sich nicht abbringen. Der Teufel hole seinen verwünschten Lehrer, der weiter nichts verstand, als ihm dergleichen seichtes Zeug in den Kopf zu setzen.

I [Hille] recited him the verses on Oronte from Molière's "Misanthrope" until I was exhausted. He said they were wonderful, and nothing could convince him otherwise. The devil take his cursed tutor [Duhan], who didn't know any better than to put this kind of shallow stuff into his head. [Translation mine; German speakers feel free to correct.]

The last sentence I'd seen quoted, but not the first two. And first I was surprised that Hille was trying to talk Fritz out of poetry by reading him Molière.

So I went and researched this play a bit, and wooooow, this is so much better than I realized.

Our protagonist [Alceste] is a guy who believes all of humanity is just full of empty flattery, he's not impressed with Baroque declarations of undying friendship to mere acquaintances, and he spends the first scene of Act I saying you shouldn't pretend feelings you don't have, you shouldn't tell white lies, and you definitely shouldn't flatter. Whether it's someone's personality, appearance, or painting, if you don't like it, you should tell them to their face. The guy he's talking to takes the stance that some politeness is called for in life.

Scene II: in comes a third party, Oronte. He's just written a poem and wants criticism on it.

Me at this point: Okay, I see why this was the first thing to come to mind for Hille.

But it gets better!

Our protagonist Alceste says he's way too blunt to give feedback, and Oronte is like, "No, no, that's exactly what I want! Bring on the honesty."

So Alceste agrees to hear the poem and give his honest opinion.

Oronte reads a bad poem, which he says he dashed off in 15 minutes. And Alceste gives a speech about how some people just aren't meant to be poets. And if you read this exchange with the mindset that Hille read it aloud to Fritz, and knowing what the rest of Fritz's life is going to be like...I died laughing.

Here goes.

First, the poem:

Hope, it is true, may bring relief
And rock to sleep awhile our pain;
But, Phyllis, what small gain and brief,
If nothing follow in its train!

You showed me some benevolence,
But should have shown me less, or none,
Nor put yourself to such expense
To give me hope, and hope alone.

I can dig up the French, but since none of us are fluent in French, the English will do just as well for now.

Now, Alceste gives his feedback.

ALCESTE
This is a ticklish subject always, sir;
We’re fond of being flattered for our wit.
But I was saying, just the other day,
To some one—I won't mention any names—
On hearing certain verses he had written,
That any gentleman should always keep
In stern control this writing itch we’re seized with;
That he must hold in check the great impatience
We feel to give the world these idle pastimes;
For, through this eagerness to show our works,
'Tis likely we shall cut a foolish figure.

ORONTE
And do you mean to intimate by this,
That I am wrong to wish . . . ?

ALCESTE
I don't say that.
But I was telling him, a frigid piece
Of writing, bores to death; and this one weakness
Is quite enough to damn a man, no matter
What sterling qualities he have withal;
For men are judged most often by their foibles.

ORONTE
Then do you think my sonnet bad?

ALCESTE
I don't say that.
But still, as reason for not writing,
I tried to make him see how, right among us,
This lust for ink has spoiled most worthy men.

ORONTE
Do I write badly then? D' ye mean I'm like 'em?

ALCESTE
I don't say that. But still (said I to him)
What is your urgent need of making verses?
And who the deuce should drive you into print?
Only poor creatures writing for a living
Can ever be excused for publishing
A wretched book. Come, come, resist temptation,
Conceal this sort of business from the public,
And don't, for anything, go and abandon
Your reputation as a gentleman
To get in place on't, from a greedy printer,
That of ridiculous and wretched scribe.
That's what I tried to make him understand.

...

ORONTE
And I maintain my lines are excellent.

ALCESTE
You have your reasons, sir, for thinking so;
But you must grant me reasons of my own,
And not expect that mine shall bow to yours.

ORONTE
I’m satisfied to find that others prize them.

ALCESTE
They have the art of feigning. I have not.

ORONTE
D' ye think you are endowed with all the brains?

ALCESTE
Did I but praise your rhymes, you'd grant me more.

ORONTE
I'll get along quite well without your praise.

ALCESTE
You'll have to get along without it, please.

ORONTE
I'd like to have you write, in your own style,
Some verses on the subject, just to see.

ALCESTE
I might, by bad luck, write as wretched ones;
But I'd be mighty careful not to show 'em.

Wooooow. Can you imagine Hille reading this out loud to 18-yo Fritz? I love it extra because just as Alceste is telling Oronte indirectly that he was telling someone else to stop writing bad poetry--but not telling Oronte directly that his poetry was bad or that he should stop writing!--Hille is reading aloud from a renowned French dramatist a piece explaining why Fritz should stop writing poetry or at the very least stop showing it to people.

Voltaire, Catt, Mitchell, Lucchesini: *lolsob*
Fredersdorf: Je ne parle pas français!

I also love that Fritz never, ever, ever backed down, even knowing that he wasn't a good poet (and that he never stopped wanting to become one).

Related, around the same time, I stumbled across this passage in his letters to Voltaire (1737, so shortly after they started corresponding). The first part we've seen in the big debate over whether it referred to Wreech, Orzelska, or someone else (Doris Ritter?), but the second paragraph was new to me, and it struck me in the context of those verses Hille read him:

A kind person inspired me in the flower of my young years two passions at the same time; you can well imagine that one was love, and the other
poetry. This little miracle of nature, with all possible graces, had taste and delicacy. She wanted to communicate them to me. I succeed quite well in love, but badly in poetry. Since that time, I have been in love quite often, and always a poet.

If you know some secret to cure men of this mania, you will really do Christian work to communicate it to me; otherwise I condemn you to teach me the rules of this enchanting art that you have embellished, and which, in turn, does you so much honor.

I'm convinced this is the context in which Fritz says, "I could have made something of myself if Voltaire had stuck around in Prussia." I really think he's talking about poetry, his major unfulfilled goal in life.

Meanwhile, <3 Wilke for welcoming poor traumatized Fritz to the domain chamber with a poem. And major <333 for Duhan, the guy who got the identical "come quickly!" message that Algarotti got.

Edited 2020-10-17 23:41 (UTC)

I'm with Fritz: Moliere's verses are a masterpiece. :) Also this is another superb bit of work by our Royal Detective.

Many years ago, I saw a modern adaption of The Misanthrope, starring Damian Lewis as Alceste, no less, but while I still remember the general outline, I'd forgotten the details, including how applicable the scene with Oronte is to the Hille and Fritz situation. It's really perfect, and btw, it says something about just how deeply steeped into French culture an 18th century German noble was if even an FW approved official like Hille knows his Moliere well enough to have the correct allusion ready. (BTW, given Fritz at this stage was just to read theology, I wonder what Dad would have said to the lengthy Moliere quotation?)

As for Wilke, I shall honor him by trying my hand at a verse translation again.

Most noble Prince! Your purple here will shine,
where there's a portrait of the founder of your line,
Both eyes and shield across our borders was he,
and justly called a wise Prince across Germany.

Oh Lord! Will you indulge us with a gaze
of brightness, such as your mind otherwise
produces in abundance, and like our sun's rays
warm your good servant, whose devotion never lies.

Please let us kiss your hand in due humility,
and pledge our hearts to you forevermore,
and do excuse the probability
that, noble Prince, in obedience they were yours before.

Your glamor dazzles us and makes us now retreat,
and our humbleness must hem our tongue,
but praying for you shall be an easy feat,
for you, dear Prince, and also for the throne.

Fritz' short German reply poem:

The Prince is grateful for the effort made,
and gracefully accepts poetry's fruit;
If your loyality and duty do not fade,
he will reward such service, and such good.

Edited 2020-10-18 11:21 (UTC)

it says something about just how deeply steeped into French culture an 18th century German noble was if even an FW approved official like Hille knows his Moliere well enough to have the correct allusion ready.

Exactly what I was thinking!

BTW, given Fritz at this stage was just to read theology, I wonder what Dad would have said to the lengthy Moliere quotation?

Ooh, good point.

Hille: Your Majesty, it was for a good cause, I swear!

Lol, I remember you coming up with this exchange when we discovered Fritz's plan to marry into the Hapsburgs:

here's how I imagine things went down in Potsdam:

Grumpkow: Your Majesty, the crown prince is now very devout, praying with Pastor Muller.

FW: Good.

G: He's sworn of the English marriage project.

FW: He'd better.

G:...and wants to marry an Austrian arch duchess, convert to Chatholicism and move to Vienna.

FW: WTF?!!!!!

G: Just a suggestion, maybe allow him to play the flute again? Just as an alternative to Catholicism, of course.

Wilke thanks you for the honor you do him by translating his poems for us to appreciate. :)

I'd forgotten the details, including how applicable the scene with Oronte is to the Hille and Fritz situation. It's really perfect

I don't know anything about Moliere's life story, but I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that, like Voltaire, he probably got asked to beta read bad to mediocre poetry by rich people a lot. ;)

I only know he was a non-noble actor-playwright at the court of Louis XIV., which makes me assume the same thing. :) Checking on his German wiki entry, I see it also claims Alceste in The Misanthrope is the most autobiogrophical of his characters.

(Also, another thing he had in common with Voltaire was that since he was an actor who got in trouble with the church a couple of times (notoriously, because of Tartuffe, the play in which he makes fun of a religious hypocrites), he nearly hadn't gotten a Christian burial; it needed the personal intervention of Louis XIV. for it to happen.

Love the Moliere detective work, that's some awesome literary context!

One thing that came to mind while thinking about the translation of the Hille quote, though:

... for the last two days he has been torturing himself to render into French some German verses that the idiot Wilke* has given him. I recited him the verses on Oronte from Molière's "Misanthrope" until I was exhausted. He said they were wonderful, and nothing could convince him otherwise. The devil take his cursed tutor [Duhan], who didn't know any better than to put this kind of shallow stuff into his head.

If this is all one paragraph - which is what it looks like in the original - then I'd suspect that the bolded they ["sie" originally, not any more clear on what it's referring to, so not a translation problem] might mean Wilke's verses, not Moliere's, and that Fritz might have understood Hille's Moliere reference to mean mostly Wilke and not himself, therefore seeing himself in the position of Alceste more than Oronte here?

Either way, I'm delighted that Hille basically accomplished the opposite of what he wanted.

Re: Fritz' passion for poetry, I really liked the recurring "I don't want your flattery, I know my poetry isn't that great, I rather want you to correct me and tell me what I'm doing wrong, because I want to learn" theme in Fritz' letters to Voltaire.

If this is all one paragraph - which is what it looks like in the original - then I'd suspect that the bolded they ["sie" originally, not any more clear on what it's referring to, so not a translation problem] might mean Wilke's verses, not Moliere's?

Yeah, I went back and forth on what "they" was, and finally settled on "probably Wilke's verses", but it *is* really confusing having "sie" refer to not the most recent applicable plural noun, but the one before it. I should have said something, but I just translated it literally and waited to see what the German speakers thought. :)

Either way, I'm delighted that Hille basically accomplished the opposite of what he wanted.

Fritz at the end of his life: So, Dad and Hille, I still write verses like I'm running out of time, and also I still believe in predestination. Hah!

Re: Fritz' passion for poetry, I really liked the recurring "I don't want your flattery, I know my poetry isn't that great, I rather want you to correct me and tell me what I'm doing wrong, because I want to learn" theme in Fritz' letters to Voltaire.

Yeah, that is great. People not Voltaire were still in a dicey position when asked to offer feedback, but fortunately Mitchell was a professional diplomat and managed to couch his such that Fritz accepted criticism (which, without any data, I'm going to guess was partly to Fritz's credit, partly to Mitchell's).

omg, this is SO GREAT. HAHAHAHA Alceste is hilarious and like you say it's even more hilarious that Hille was reading this indirect critique as an indirect critique of Fritz!

Man, I haven't read any Molière but one of these days...

I did it! I finished the book! Wilhelmine memoirs start tomorrow.

I'm sorry I just did not keep up on this readthrough like I'd said I would! I'm still going, just... much slower than you are. I should be able to finish it before you get through the second volume of the memoirs, though, even at your super-rapid pace :PP

No, no worries! My goals were 1) stay on track with German, 2) get you to read up on Wilhelmine because FIC, and those were accomplished. :D

Besides, I'm lagging behind on commenting; I might not get to it until this weekend.

But now I'm going to give you an additional job: because Wilhelmine is somewhat harder, and we're not doing it together, you must yell at me periodically to hurry up so we can do Lehndorff together. :D Okay?

I find if I outsource my motivation to other people, I can focus more brainpower on the learning part. It works for me!

That sounds good! I had one of those colds where I felt better but it had sort of a long tail. Today was the first day I felt actually normal and I managed to finally read a larger chunk than I've been doing, so one day I will at least vaguely reply to your comments :)

I'm awed at the pace of your progress. Also, I wanted to report that the Stabi has the entire 1803 edition of Lady Mary's letters and poetry online for me to read, all five or volumes. Which I won't have the time for right now, since I have a lot of reading and writing to do elsewhere, but for later, it's there. (Granted, the 1803 one is censored by the family. But Stabi also has Halband's selected edition of her works from the 1960s for me to check.

The 19th century editions aren't hard to find, it's that I keep hearing that, even in addition to the censorship, the scholarship is bad: portions of different letters are mixed and matched and presented as if they're from the same letter, letters are misdated, etc. That was why I wanted Halsband (and got him, up through 1751). But at least the 19th century versions should help us with our Wilhelmine-in-Italy question.

But Stabi also has Halband's selected edition of her works from the 1960s for me to check.

Excellent!

Minimal German today: 5 pages. Not because I didn't yell at myself a lot, but because my rule is that if I have to choose between meeting my German quota and doing something else, I should meet my quota, but if I have to choose between meeting my quota and not hating German, I should get some sleep and try again another day. ;)

But that did mean I had time to do something less difficult, namely get the two volumes that I own of Lady Mary letters into the library. It really is a library!

All right, I won't yell at you, just grumble a bit :P I don't want you to hate German either!

When I'm really sleep deprived, I hate German and you and

selenak and Fritz and salon and everything. :( Then I sleep and I <3 everything again. Yesterday wasn't nearly that bad, but if I'd tried to force it past 5 pages, I would have hated German.

20 pages today and I may do some more before bed. Also, these are longer pages by word-count, and rather harder than Oster, so yay. Progress is being made!

Aww, I'm sorry to hear that. Glad it's finally tailing off, and hope the rest of the family is recovering too!

OK, so I was feeling a bit guilty about not even having made it through the 1730's but WOW it took a REALLY long time to get there, given all the interminable wedding negotiations! There were sure a lot of them.

* Oster has the "don't get married just to get me out of prison" letter, AWWW. I still love the mutual self-sacrifice between these two. YOU TWO. <3

<3

* Oster on Wilhelmine bringing Marwitz to Bayreuth: Little did she know that this girl would one day ruin her marriage.

That's right, blame the woman.

Oh, yeah. Although it is pretty ironic.

Speaking of Fritz and Fredersdorf, as we head into Christmas 1732, Fritz had been visiting FW at Wusterhausen before Wilhelmine arrived! I had missed that and assumed it was the first visit in a while, and wrote accordingly. Oh well! Fanfic takes liberties with chronology.

Ha! I had the same reaction.

[personal profile] cahn, you missed the chance to include that scene. :P (Though historically, as far as I can tell, FW hadn't taken up painting yet. What is fic for if not for chronological liberties!)

OMG. That would have been HILARIOUS and I am deeply mourning the missed opportunity :D

the Sonsfeld who takes care of little Friederike while Wilhelmine is in Berlin is not Sonsine the much loved, but her inexperienced sister who's like, "Halp, a baby, what do?" Or at least so Wilhelmine claims in her letter to try to get money for a proper nurse--I hope that was partly a rhetorical device!

I know, right? Especially since she ended up taking care of the kid for a while! But kid seems to have survived :)

* Judging by the letters and not the memoirs, Fritz had already left for his regiment when the German comedian episode happened, because Wilhelmine reports to him on it.

THAT is one chronological liberty I will stand and die by! Besides, we were writing fanfic of her memoirs. :P

I knoooooow I was so saaaad about that :P Oh well, it makes better fic this way :P

* Fritz of Bayreuth: *loves his baby*
Fritz of Bayreuth: Please don't tell your sarcastic brother-in-law.
Wilhelmine to Fritz: Please tease my husband about this.

Okay, Wilhelmine?

(And yes,

selenak, I do remember you giving us this part! <3 ) So, like...there were several parts, this one, and the bit where Fritz and Fritz of Bayreuth get into a competition to see who loves Wilhelmine most, where I start really remembering that little character sketch

selenak wrote about the Erbprinz... it's really kind of unsettling. Definitely emotional incest going on here.

WOW it took a REALLY long time to get there, given all the interminable wedding negotiations! There were sure a lot of them.

That's what I thought! I was like, we're almost done with the book and she's still not married yet?? I mean, I was being hyperbolic, but still. :P

I LOVE that you and I had the same fic-related reactions!

OMG. That would have been HILARIOUS and I am deeply mourning the missed opportunity :D

I now have this mental image of your FW painting your Fredersdorf, it's GREEEEAT. :D

I hope that was partly a rhetorical device!

I know, right? Especially since she ended up taking care of the kid for a while!

Well, that's exactly why I hope it was exaggerated for effect! If the kid didn't end up in her care, it wouldn't matter.

Definitely emotional incest going on here.

So I just got to the part in W's memoirs where she's like, "My new husband's sister, Wilhelmine, was hoping to marry my brother, and it would have been awesome if they'd been well-suited to each other, but she was kind of awful, so no."

And I was like...symbolic double incest? Also, can you imagine if Fritz's wife was named Wilhelmine, our heads would explode from all the confusion. :P I confess I'm glad that one didn't work out. BAD ENOUGH that I kept reading "Wilhelmine and Friedrich" in Oster as the siblings.

re: emotional incest - there is this later quote in the Oster biogrpahy from one of Wilhelmine's letters during her 1750 visit to Prussia. The Margrave is already en route back to Bayreuth, Wilhelmine has fallen sick and stays behind in Berlin, Fritz is currently busy with something or the other, but the younger sibs try to entertain her, and she writes that it's nice to spend some time with them but "the one who owns all my heart" not being there makes her long for him. There's no question she doesn't write this about the Margrave.

Bayreuth Friedrich: I, too, am glad my sister did not marry the Great. I would have ended up dead on one of his battlefields for sure. As for name confusion, I will say that my mistress being called Wilhelmine Dorothea (von Marwitz) did make things easier in bed...

As for name confusion, I will say that my mistress being called Wilhelmine Dorothea (von Marwitz) did make things easier in bed...

LOL forever.

And yes, I remember that Oster quote and thinking, yep, sounds like those two. "This lute will be your only rival" indeed.

[personal profile] cahn, you missed the chance to include that scene. :P (Though historically, as far as I can tell, FW hadn't taken up painting yet. What is fic for if not for chronological liberties!)

OMG. That would have been HILARIOUS and I am deeply mourning the missed opportunity :D

We had an even better missed opportunity than I thought! I was reading Wilhlemine's memoirs today, and she's still in her 1732-1733 visit, and she refers to her father painting!

I demand an outtake! FW paints Fredersdorf!

OMG. He soooo would have :P

Wriiiiite iiiiiitttt! :P

Remember back when Catherine the Great said in her memoirs that Countess Bentinck was the first woman she saw ride a horse? And I questioned that, because the 18th century is full of women who ride horses, just mostly sidesaddle? And

selenak guessed that it was different from country to country, and that Germany was not big on horseback riding? E.g. MT having to learn for her Hungarian coronation.

Well, I just got to the part in Wilhelmine's memoirs where she says that she learned horseback riding at Bayreuth, partly for her health and for fun. And because ladies riding was a thing in England and France, but not in Germany, everyone freaked out and tried to get her to stop.

Random courtier: I have it on very good authority, from a GHOST, that if Wilhelmine rides out in the next six weeks, something very bad will happen to her. She must stay inside and not set foot outdoors for six weeks!

Wilhelmine: Omg, this is the stupidest thing ever. Husband, make yourself useful.

Bayreuth Fritz: Attention everyone, a reward is offered for any information pertaining to the identity of this alleged "ghost".

Random poor woman: *comes forth with evidence that this ghost was basically a person wearing a sheet*

Aaand, this tells you how controversial horseback riding was for women in Germany.

LOL. It does indeed. Incidentally, Himmelkron, where Wilhelmine and husband repeatedly go as you saw in Oster and see in the memoirs, is one of the places claiming that this is where the original Hohenzollern White Lady, i.e. the family ghost supposed to signal impending death to any member of the House of Brandenburg, had lived and died.

Okay, this is amazing and I love it. Also absolutely adore your title, heeeee!

* In 1743, Wilhelmine's daughter's future husband's mother gets to make a copy of La Pucelle when Voltaire and Fritz visit Bayreuth?

Fritz: WTF, Voltaire. I didn't get a copy until 1750!

*

cahn,

Since the Margravine did not understand the academic language Latin and did not value the French professors too highly, she asked them to discuss the two theses in German.

should read:

Since the Margravine did not...estimate the French language skills of the German professors too highly.

Not what's happening here, but one thing I noticed while reading this is that when Google randomly decides to delete half a sentence or a sentence and a half or whatever, it's frequently the part immediately following a direct quotation. Not just when quotes are split up by "he said," but when it's like "Blah blah. 'Direct quote here.' New sentence not in the quote.", Google will go, "Blah blah. 'Direct quote here.' in the quote.", and completely drop the words "New sentence not", for example.

I might programmatically inject paragraph breaks at the ends of quotes in the future and see if that helps.

* Erlangen journalist who trashes Fritz and causes a Fritz/Wilhelmine fallout is Johan Gottfried Groß.

Ohhhh!

That makes sense of something Blanning said. When recounting how Fritz's lack of people skills and unwillingness to make nice with foreign envoys backfired on him diplomatically, he writes:

So when Frederick went out of his way to insult the newly arrived Russian envoy, von Gross, by asking him whether he was related to a journalist of the same name, he was also ensuring that every last piece of malicious gossip would be reported back to St. Petersburg.

I thought that was just a remark that would be snide in a very classist era (which it was also that!), but Fritz is specifically asking about the guy who trashed him a few years before. See, Blanning needs to tell us these things.

The source, btw, is Koser in an article on the Prussian court circa 1750, which looks potentially interesting, as well as other articles (mostly the Great Elector, but at least one containing letters from Sophie Charlotte to FW's governor Dohna), but in addition to having the bad 1903 font, it is exceedingly tiny. Are they trolling me? :P I can almost read this (a fluent German reader should have no problem), but it just drives me crazy whenever I'm making a good faith effort to deal with a foreign language in a foreign font and then the text *also* has tiny, blurry, faint, or smeared font to boot. :P

Anyway, see Hohenzollern_Jahrbuch under Articles if you're interested.

* Long ago, we had questioned why Fritz calls female Marwitz "Medea": Oster gives enough of the quote that it looks to me that Fritz is saying Marwitz is bent on revenge, which is certainly a feature of Medea.

* Oster says Marwitz was responsible for the Bayreuth court allying more closely with Vienna!

* Wilhelmine is eerily like Fritz when it comes to hanging out with French intellectuals and snarking at her own subjects:

"They take 10 years to learn how to say good day and good evening, and another 10 to learn how to make an awkward bow."

This reminds me of Heinrich's

"I am busy feeding my officers and teaching them to speak. Until recently, they could only speak single words, but I dipped some cookies in Hungarian wine and now they can produce whole sentences."

* Wilhelmine getting the money to build an opera house by telling the committee in charge of finances that if they give her money to build a new palace, she and the Margrave can stay in Bayreuth longer in the winter and not have to go to Erlangen.

Then, "Oops, I accidentally built an opera house with the money." :P

Also, lol at Wilhelmine starting out wanting an opera house like Fritz's and then, after the fallout, even after they've made up, deciding she wants one like the one in Vienna.

* Aww at Wilhelmine enduring a horrible winter trip by pretending she's on her way to Berlin to see Fritz. YOU TWO. <333

* Aww at Wilhelmine wanting to see Fritz so much that she says she would have set out even if on death's door.

(You know which boyfriend I'm thinking of here. <3)

* Oster believes in the orange peel quote, sigh.

* Lol at Wilhelmine getting Fritz's permission to go to Montpellier, in France, for the sake of her health, all the while knowing she's using it as a jumping off point for an Italy trip, but doesn't want to ask him for permission for that up front.

Now I see where Heinrich got it from!

* Lol at Wilhelmine spending the night at the Marquis de Sade's!

* Lol at Wilhelmine making nice with the Pope's people so they'll look the other way while she illicitly exports art from Italy.

And apparently she left the whole Italy collection to Fritz in her will, and so it's still in Berlin to this day.

* Ansbach brother-in-law votes against Fritz in the imperial ban, Fritz swears to avenge himself if he survives the war! Ansbach brother-in-law also criticizes Wilhelmine's expenses, and Fritz says, "That's rich, coming from you, mister big spender. Just be glad the Italy trip was good Wilhelmine's health and she's still alive. Also, I'm not kidding about the vengeance part."

Brother-in-law conveniently dies early in the war, thus evading his eventual meeting with destiny, aka a gangster with good PR. :P

* And with that, I'm finally finished with the Oster comments! I have to say, I appreciated how Oster did justice to Wilhelmine and her husband as doing a good job at being the Baroque/Rokoko representational rulers they wanted to be, while repeatedly pointing out that this meant they were completely out of touch with their people, who justifiably resented their spending and were less than impressed.

Fritz: WTF, Voltaire. I didn't get a copy until 1750!

Voltaire: First, the Duchess Marie Auguste was hot, just ask the Marquis D‘Argenson. Secondly, Würtemberg has a border with France, which is why I parked some of my money there, where neither you nor my sovereign could got your paws on it. I also made loans to the Duchess and her sons with huge interest on that occasion. All of which started by me permitting her to copy La Pucelle.

Johann Gottfried Groß: who also, as I recall Oster reports, was gleefully happy to note that clearly, his was the only German newspaper Fritz actually was reading. :)

Female Marwitz being pro-Austrian: well, not only was her husband Austrian but she did end up in Vienna once she had left Bayreuth, conducting a very successful salon there. Presumably she‘d calculated early on that there was no future back in Prussia being married to a Dad and Fritz chosen guy, and that as Maitresse en titre of Bayreuth Friedrich it wasn‘t in her interest to promote a policy strengthening the ties to the all mighty brother of her lover‘s wife, but rather the opposite. In addition to which Bayreuth really was surrounded by largely Catholic HRE principalities, except for Ansbach.

Also, lol at Wilhelmine starting out wanting an opera house like Fritz's and then, after the fallout, even after they've made up, deciding she wants one like the one in Vienna.

Well, the result would argue she made the right choice. *g*

And yes, Oster‘s good at keeping the balance between showing Wilhelmine and BayreuthFritz acting as princes of their era were supposed to and showing how this affected their subjects. (Hence also the readiness to believe the „that fire was totally a plan, just like Nero and Rome“ story.)

Now I see where Heinrich got it from!

Had not thought of this, but you‘re absolutely right. Well, one of this strengths as a general was noticing and studying efficient strategies. *g*

Ansbach brother in law: in addition to this, he was also yet another lousy husband I am reminded of Fritz‘ unexpectedly touching reaction in a letter to Heinrich when his Ansbach sister died: My dearest brother,
It is the heartbroken with pain that I write to you today. I have just learned of the death of our poor and unhappy sister in Ansbach. This comes back, my dear brother, to what I have been telling you lately, that what is left of our family is shaking up their sleeves. I have always thought of going to Ansbach to see my poor sister again; I never could find the moment. She was a very good and honest person, whose heart was full of integrity. I confess to you, my dear brother, that this distresses me so much, that I will put off another day to answer you.

Friederike Luise had once been a spirited girl whose cheeky telling FW that the food he gives his children is lousy triggered the occasion where he threw with the plates at Wilhelmine and Fritz; she was the first to get married, and by the time she died, she was an utterly depressed lonely woman hardly able to talk anymore.

Well, one of this strengths as a general was noticing and studying efficient strategies. *g*

Wilhelmine: the Traun of the Hohenzollern siblings. :D

Friederike Luise had once been a spirited girl whose cheeky telling FW that the food he gives his children is lousy triggered the occasion where he threw with the plates at Wilhelmine and Fritz; she was the first to get married, and by the time she died, she was an utterly depressed lonely woman hardly able to talk anymore.

Yeah. :/ Her appearance in the last part of Wilhelmine's memoirs is filled with sibling rivalry and resentment.

Wilhelmine: She said to wake up early so we could go on a trip, and then when I Got up early, she stayed in bed and said she didn't feel like going, but she looked fine to me! Her maid said it was just moodiness.

Me: Could be clinical depression.

Wilhelmine: I'm mad at her because she didn't follow my lead in standing on ceremony with this one guy who didn't agree with me about how to treat me as a King's daughter, and she's mad at me because I insisted on my rights! Naturally, everyone at her court agreed with me.

Me: You just keep telling yourself that.

Wilhelmine: And then she insulted me by insisting on standing on ceremony with me and treating me as her social superior! Which technically I am, but I never insist on that with family. This was an insult!

Me: Judging by the previous anecdote, I CAN SEE WHERE SHE GOT THE IDEA she needed to stand on ceremony with you!

Wilhelmine: And then my totally changed now-king brother *shocked* me by wanting to see her when he came to visit me, because he never liked her before. And then he was nicer to her than to me and gave her more presents!

Me: To quote

selenak, have I mentioned yet that you all need therapy?

More memoir updates:

* Wilhelmine buying into toxic masculinity: When an unmarried woman is flirting with every man in sight and her doctors have essentially diagnosed her with sexual frustration, her father is obliged to hit her, otherwise no one will be able to control her. Also, my father-in-law was forced to lock up my mother-in-law because of her bad behavior.

Me: Go back to the horseback riding!

* Wilhelmine says FW abdicated the day he died (remember, there was some ambiguity in different editions of Fritz's correspondence whether it was the day of or the day before), but as caveats, she wasn't there, she was writing 4 years later, and she reports the final parting at 7 am instead of Fritz's 5 am.

Oh, and hilariously, when FW dies and she's sad because none of her relatives would let her come (apparently her husband, brother, and mother were all against it, although to be fair, Fritz said, "Up to you, though,"), she reports that Fritz and SD withdrew into another room and cried together, but whether the tears were genuine or fake, I can't tell.

Probably a little of both? The occasion would have been moving, and Fritz *clearly* had strong feelings, and also this was the last chance for FW to do a "Well done, son." Which, judging the exchange with Voltaire and also the dreams 20 years later, did not happen to Fritz's satisfaction. So I'm guessing the tears were real, which doesn't mean he wasn't also thinking, "Oh, thank God."

* Her dog dies and she takes the opportunity to talk about how dogs are better than people.

I honor the loyalty of dogs; it seems to me that they have the advantage here over people, who are so fickle and changeable (veränderlich).

Granted I'm reading in translation, I'll have to keep an eye out when it comes time for French, but she's writing this in 1744 (the dog died back in 1735; this isn't Folichon), and "verändert" is the word she most often uses of Fritz in this volume. :/

Worth pointing out that she says on his way to the siege at Phillipsburg, he was all sweetness; but her husband wrote her letters from the front talking about how he had changed, and she reports that never after that did she meet the Fritz she used to know; on his way back a few weeks later, he was awful (mocking the "little" court at Bayreuth, that sort of thing).

Now, I know she's writing with hindsight during their fallout and trying to convince herself she should have seen it coming, and I know she reports the first signs of him changing in 1731 (and vacillation after that, until 1734), but given how Fritz *did* seem to have an at-war mode he switched into, and given how absolutely common that is among veterans, I actually buy it.

Mind you, she also says Fritz of Bayreuth "changes" toward her on multiple occasions: immediately after he inherits, and after he recovers from a serious illness and starts checking out Marwitz.

Aaaand, I see why she appreciated her dogs. Therapy animals for everyone.

All this reminds me that one angle we haven't looked on yet is that she's writing the memoirs not just simultanously to the Fritz fallout but to her husband's affair with Marwitz, i.e. both her two main relationships now look to her as if the men don't love her anymore and have traded her in for other people. In addition to therapy animals, the memoirs themselves are also therapy (hence that one Fritz biographer ungraciously though not inaccurately referring to them as "Wilhelmine getting all the gall out of her system"; it's certainly her way of venting all the resentment and yes, absolutely, sibling jealousy. (Mainly in terms of Fritz - as in that outburst about him and Friedrike Luise - , but not exclusively. If you recall, in the memoirs she claims that she used to be FW's favourite daughter early on. Whereas the 20th century biographers, with full access to the preserved Hohenzollern letters and to the envoy correspondances, don't think she ever was once she wasn't the only daughter in talking age anymore, because while Charlotte, Ulrike and early on Friedrike ("Ike", as FW calls her) Luise take turns in the envoy reports as to who's the favourite daughter, it never is Wilhelmine, and there are tender FW letters to Charlotte and Friedrike Luise which just don't exist from FW to Wilhelmine. (Though he could be sentimental about her, too, see Stratemann's reports, if she cried and submitted enough, and pleased if she did things like arrange a smoking room for him during his Bayreuth visit, but that's not on the same level.)

So the Wilhelmine writing her memoirs in the 1740s is one whose sense of self worth has been thoroughly shattered: the lady-in-waiting whom she thought was her best friend has an affair with her husband, the same husband whom her mother blamed and ridiculed her for marrying, with Wilhelmine's counter argument having been "he may not be a future King, but at least he truly loves me"). And the first and foremost affectionate relationship of her life, the one with Fritz, now looks ended or at least so changed she can no longer draw from it the love and confidence she used to.

=> presto Wilhelmine the memoir writer lashing out in jealousy, whether it's sister Friederike Luise or for that matter Katte and Keith, and clinging extra hard on her social standing as the one thing still intact to be proud of

Wilhelmine's other method of self therapy was of course opera composing, and it's worth pointing out that in Argenore, you don't just have

Argenore: tyrannical king who in final scene commits suicide after realising he's destroyed his son and daughter
Palmida: his daughter, is supposed to marry Leonida but loves Ormodo
Ormodo: his long-lost son, whose true identity however is only uncovered to everyone, including himself, in the last act

but also

Leonida: Palmida's fiance, who secretly has a love affair with
Martesia: Palmida's best friend, believed to be Ormodo's sister through most of the opera. Also the sole survivor of this opera (everyone else is dead by the final note).

Wiki points out Martesia is possibly the most interesting role, since the composer gives her the same amount of arias as Palmira has, including the final arias of the second and third act, and the final aria of the overall opera. She is the one who calls the titular character, King Argenore, a "monstrous father" and clears up who's related to whom and what happened in the end. She also isn't a villainess, since she gives up her love for Leonida so he can marry Palmida, and is the only one not killing anyone else. Her guilt is that she holds back on the document that reveals Ormodo is really not her brother but Palmida's, so she's not innocent, either.

...and then of course, the opera has such plot points as King Argenore, wishing to force his daughter Palmida to marry Leonida and forget about Ormodo, wants first to force her to kill Ormodo , and then, when that doesn't work out and he thinks he's got Ormodo killed (but in reality, Ormodo has managed to escape and kill the executor instead, trading clothes with him), wants to force Palmida to look at her lover's dead body.

Meaning: it's not like one opera character completely corresponds to one in Wilhelmine's life, but that the autobiographical points are all intermingled, remixed and given to several characters. The final kicker, btw, is that this opera premiered on the Margrave's birthday, it was officially Wilhelmine's birthday present for him. (Just like her next opera, the opera version of Voltaire's Semiramis, aka the one that ends in matricide, was staged as a birthday present to SD.)

Mind you, all of which is still less harmful a way to work through your trauma than roleplay with your younger siblings or go to war, but then Wilhelmine didn't have the option to do either.

Edited 2020-10-15 05:34 (UTC)

Here it is: after describing the disaster that was Fritz & Hanbury Williams, Koser continues:

Even rougher were at the same time the ending of diplomatic relations wiht Russia. The Empress Elisabeth was represented in Berlin by one Herr von Groß, since 1749, who had succeeded the well-liked Count Keyserling. Since he'd achieved a reputation for rough manners in Paris, the King of Prussia believed that his arrival was supposed to worsen the Prussian-Russian relationships, who'd been in a decline since the second Silesian War, and for his part did nothing to win the new arrival over. Groß emphatically noticed the mockery in the question when the King asked him on his first visit whether he was a brother of the Erlangen journalist Groß. After a yar, in August 1750, Groß felt entitled to complain that he hadn't been invited to supper after a court festivity in Charlottenburg, which all the other foreign envoys had been. The Russian court let three months pass, then recalled its envoy, and listed this complaint in a note presented to the Prussian envoy in St. Petersburg among other complaints. Groß left Berlin without announcing this to any official; he limited himself to asking for postal horses, with a note that goes as follows in its entirety: "The Russian Envoy needs 16 horses for four wagons until tomorrow, December 2nd, in order to get from Berlin to Memel, and hence kindly requests that they should be given to him. Groß."
He was given the horses; later, the explanation was given that while after the first of the Charlottenburg festivities only three foreign envoys had been invited to supper, the Imperial envoy, the Swedish and the Danish envoy, on the second day all the envoys, including Herr von Groß, had been invited to both the ball and to supper.
Maria Theresia's envoy, the imperial Generalfeldwachtmeister Count Anton de la Puebla used his position very differently. Despite in a way fighting for a hopeless cause, he due to his qualities navigated the difficult position he was in quite happily, and accordingly found himself treated with distinction and even up to a point with benevolence. In the summer of 1752, the King gifted him with a splendid box, and he did so, as the court put it, in a fine manner, for the present was offered as an exchange object. The King had wished to see a portrait of the Empress-Queen, Puebla sent one to him, and the King replied that if one was in the possession of such a beautiful portrait, one did not let it go anymore, so the Envoy should in exchange accept the King's portrait along with this box. When rumor had it that Vienna wanted to recall Puebla in favor of a new envoy, the King wrote to his envoy in Vienna that such a change would displease him.

(Puebla remained until the war. Koser adds a footnote re: MT's portrait saying: Maria Theresia's portrait may have been the same which the King pointed to in July 1756 when talking with the British envoy Mitchell while saying: "This lady wants war? She'll get it."

Puebla: I'd like to enter the "Who's the best envoy?" ompetition as a dark horse, please. Since I clearly had the worst start, seeing as Fritz and MT would always hate each other, and there was nothing I could do to change that, and yet I made myself popular with not just the court but Fritz himself. Moreover, Lehndorff reports my mistress kept my portrait on display in her salon even after the war had started and was open about missing me.

Royal reader and translator hard at work, I see. :) (I'm pleased I got at least some of this from a quick skim, but it would have given me a headache to do the whole thing, so thank you.)

Puebla: well done! MT inherited a talent for picking envoys?

In 1743, Wilhelmine's daughter's future husband's mother gets to make a copy of La Pucelle when Voltaire and Fritz visit Bayreuth?

Do we know if/when Fritz found out? (Also, Pleschinski says that Voltaire visited Bayreuth without Fritz, is he wrong about that?)

I thought that was just a remark that would be snide in a very classist era (which it was also that!)

Same here! Great to get more context on that.

Do we know if/when Fritz found out?

I don't. I hope he didn't! Perhaps

selenak knows, though.

Also, Pleschinski says that Voltaire visited Bayreuth without Fritz, is he wrong about that?

I would have to check, but my impression from Oster was that they went to Bayreuth together, but Fritz went off and did his own thing for much of the time without Voltaire, who stayed behind in Bayreuth. Take that with a grain of salt, as I'm going by memory and don't have time to check at present.

Orieux says the same, i.e. Fritz and Voltaire show up in Bayreuth together, and Voltaire stays there somewhat longer than planned while Fritz leaves. Much to Émilie's chargrin, since he'd promised her to remain only ten days in Berlin in totem, with no extra trips announced. (The passage I quoted in my Orieux write up follows, about why Voltaire was so charmed there, and Orieux wishing Émilie would have come with him since Germany would have treated her far better than Paris had done.)

Yeah, Pleschinski even includes the Émilie detail and quotes from a letter she wrote to a third person, in which she expresses how much Voltaire's behaviour is bothering her ("I don't recognize him anymore"). It's just that this comes right after he writes that Voltaire "went to Bayreuth without the King". But the itinerary at Trier (no idea how reliable) says they went together as well, so. ...thinking about it, it might be a simple mistake and Pleschinski actually means Brunswick, which Voltaire did visit alone on his way home.

One of my reasons for asking was that apparently, some of the letters from around that time don't exist anymore, and since it's exactly when the blow-up happens that leads to more than two years of radio silence, I was trying to piece together some more details beyond "Fritz is insulted that Voltaire didn't stay for good" and possibly politics. (And what with the ungratefulness and "only come back with the works I'm owed", I was also wondering in how far not getting the Pucelle played a role, given that he started writing postscripts like these - La Pucelle! la Pucelle! la Pucelle! et encore la Pucelle! Pour l'amour de Dieu, ou plus encore pour l'amour de vous-même, envoyez-la-moi. - on his letters during the first half of the year. So if he found out that Voltaire gave it to someone else in Bayreuth... On the other hand, I'm pretty sure we would know about that, because surely Fritz would have mentioned it.)

I don't have the time to look it up, but if Fritz did hear about it at the time, it might have come up in his correspondance with Wilhelmine during those same months. Especially since I seem to recall there were several snippy comments about the Duchess from him during that time anyway (aproposes whether or not she should have custody of her son Carl Eugen, Wilhelmine's future son-in-law) and Wilhelmine wasn't a fan of the woman, either, though her own mixed feelings came more into play after her daughter's marriage, not before.

Oh, hey, I should have just kept reading, Fritz letter February 22nd 1747:
You lent the Pucelle to the Duchess of Würtemberg: learn that she had it copied overnight. These are the people you confide in; and the only ones who deserve your trust, or rather to whom you should abandon yourself entirely, are those with whom you are distrustful.

Still doesn't tell me when exactly he found out which details, but he sure did know. Voltaire in response says she didn't get anything that Fritz didn't already have (he did possess around five chapters) - if he's lying about that, you guys would know better than me. (On the other hand, why would Émilie let him take the whole thing on a journey at all?)

Ha! Wow, that's great.

rather to whom you should abandon yourself entirely

Tell us how you really feel, Fritz. :D

if he's lying about that, you guys would know better than me

That, I don't know. I do know (or at least have read) that Fritz had a partial copy, hence in "Lovers lying two and two" I had Fritz say in 1750 that he was going to get his hands on a "complete" copy now that Voltaire was in Prussia. How much the duchess had? Your guess is as good as mine.

On the other hand, why would Émilie let him take the whole thing on a journey at all?

Ah, but that I can see. Having someone show up at your house on behalf of the Crown Prince you ~~view as a romantic rival~~ don't trust is one thing, having your lover abscond with a manuscript he owns might be something you don't find out about until it's too late. Maybe?

Aaand, I finished Wilhelmine's memoirs! Increasingly without a translation, because I feel like almost a third of the second volume was cut from the English edition. Also, the German edition included about 10 pages of letters from Wilhelmine to Voltaire in the last year of her life, and those had no translation, and I got almost all of them. *beams* Of course, it helps that she died during the Seven Years' War and not while building a palace, because my architectural vocabulary is much weaker than my military vocabulary, as some of you know. ;)

So! Lehndorff starts tomorrow, and I'm hoping to get Krockow digitized soon as well.

* Most important finding:

A couple of weeks ago, we had this exchange.

mildred_of_midgard: Speaking of SD's politics, I keep seeing in places like Ziebura and Oster that she was disappointed that Fritz didn't let her influence him politically. Is there evidence for this, or just an assumption?

selenak: I've seen this, too, starting with good old Preuß and Koser, but never with a footnote saying "see letter X" or "memoirs y", or "ambassadorial report Z". So until I see a citation, I'm going with "assumption", based on the fact that SD had these political battles with FW for all those years and, I suspect, also a very 19th century moralistic desire to see her punished in some fashion. "She got what she wanted, only to find out her son wasn't her puppet at all but his father's worthy successor and our national hero!", that kind of thing.

Turns out, it's in Wilhelmine! And she wasn't bashing SD, she was bashing Fritz. "He was awful when he became king, everyone was unhappy with him, even Mom, etc."'

Oster's almost quoting, behold.

Oster: Wilhelmine mußte sich mit der Gesellschaft ihrer Mutter begnügen. Die aber hatte schlechte Laune: Sie hatte gehofft, von ihrem Sohn um politischen Rat gefragt zu werden und wurde bitter enttäuscht.

Wilhelmine had to be content with the company of her mother. She, however, was in a bad mood: she had hoped to be asked for political advice by her son, and was bitterly disappointed.

Wilhelmine: Ich war täglich bei der Königin-Mutter, die nur sehr wenig Menschen sah und in tiefer Betrübnis war. Sie hatte stets gehofft, einen starken Einfluß auf den König, meinen Bruder, ausüben zu können und an der Regierung einigen Teil zu haben, sobald er den Thron bestiegen hätte. Der König hingegen zeigte sich auf seine Autorität eifersüchtig und zog sie in keiner Weise zu Rate, worüber sie sich gar nicht fassen konnte.

I went every day to my mother, who saw very few people, and who was plunged in a deep chagrin. She had always flattered herself with having a great ascendency over the mind of the king my brother, and having some share in the government when he ascended the throne; but the king, jealous of his authority, would not allow her to have any interference with business, which appeared very extraordinary to her.

Btw, this echoes another passage in her memoirs, set during the 1734 Phillipsburg campaign, which is when, according to Wilhelmine's narrative, Fritz *really* changed, permanently. In the following passage, Fritz is explaining to Wilhelmine how ~~you should see him in a crown~~ he's going to be a completely different king than everyone expects:

"I shall show the utmost consideration for the queen my mother; I shall load her with honors ; but I will never suffer her to interfere with my affairs, and if she ventures to do so, she will soon find her mistake." I was struck with surprise when I heard this. I hardly knew whether I was dreaming or waking.

Given that the "SD was really unhappy with Fritz!" claim was written during Fritz/Wilhelmine fallout, and is part of a larger argument that how *everyone* in 1740 agreed that Fritz was now the worst (aside from one of the Münchow family, whom Fritz favored at the expense of all the people who were nice to him when he was Crown Prince), I'm keeping this Wilhelmine claim in mind, but holding off until I have further evidence. Because I agree with

selenak that SD *doesn't* seem unhappy with Fritz, or interested in politics even during FW's time, aside from the English marriage. And even that is an obvious attempt to compensate for her own failed dreams by living vicariously through her children, and not remotely motivated by a belief that England will be a good alliance for *Prussia*.

I have been listening to "You should see me in a crown" a lot lately, btw; thank you for introducing me to it,

selenak! It's a chillingly appropriate Fritz song.

* Before Wilhelmine can agree to meet the Empress (the one before MT), their people have to spend a whole day negotiating about etiquette, and explaining to Wilhelmine that since she's in Frankfurt incognito, as a countess, she can't insist on being treated with the full honors due to a Margravine and King's daughter.

So after a day of negotiating, they settle on: the Empress gets a small armchair, Wilhelmine gets a chair with a large back (but no arms).

This sounds absurd, but (you may know this from your French historical fiction reading,

cahn), Versailles had a whole etiquette on who was allowed to sit on what kind of surface (or at all) in whose presence. And it depended on who was in the room: as people who outranked you entered or left, you had to move chairs (or give up your stool and remain standing, or vice versa.) So this is the context in which the chairs are really, really important to Wilhelmine.

Wilhelmine: not on board with "the stupidest goes first".

*

selenak: I see what you mean about a lot of Wilhelmine's chronic illnesses being stress-related; she says so herself, repeatedly. Man. :/

*

cahn, Lehndorff translation is expected to appear in the library tomorrow. I finished formatting, and I just need to tweak my translation script and run it through. Will do that tomorrow.

I did something very clever that I've been annoyed with Schmidt-Lötzen for not doing, namely putting the year at the beginning of every paragraph so you don't have to flip around to figure out what year you're in, every single time. (He could have done it at the top of each page; since my script ignores pages, I went with paragraphs, because it was programmatically easier.)

I did split some paragraphs immediately after closing quotation marks, in hopes of getting Google to not delete those words. We'll see how it goes. It'll mean some sentence fragments at the beginning of a paragraph, but hopefully that'll be less confusing than just completely missing words. Machine translation is not yet a perfected art. :)

Turns out, it's in Wilhelmine! And she wasn't bashing SD, she was bashing Fritz.

Ahhhhhh this explains a lot! Excellent :D

Versailles had a whole etiquette on who was allowed to sit on what kind of surface (or at all) in whose presence.

I may have known this at some point -- it certainly does not surprise me -- but if so I had forgotten, so thank you for the explanation :D

I did something very clever that I've been annoyed with Schmidt-Lötzen for not doing, namely putting the year at the beginning of every paragraph so you don't have to flip around to figure out what year you're in, every single time. (He could have done it at the top of each page; since my script ignores pages, I went with paragraphs, because it was programmatically easier.)

This is genius!

This is genius!

If I have dated a text more transparently than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of 18C handwriting decipherers and programming language developers. ;)

On the 29th passato (i.e. the 29th of last month, April), both the Oberhofmeisterin v. Kamecke and the Hofmeisterin de Rouccoul as well as the royal physician Dr. Stahl audited 36 women, among whom there were wives of court councillors and those of lower descent, and have chosen four among them who at the time of the Queen's delivery will provide the first nourishment to the hopefully cheerful sight. Such a choice only regards that such a person have healthy milk and teeth. She shall be hired for a year, and has to expect 1200 Reichstaler salary for her service. Those who were reviewed and fell through were honest and good women, but they still looked somewhat enviously at the remaining four who, however, are wavering between fear and hope as well...

Next entry picking up the nursing matter: Since the, God willing, happy delivery of the Queen is expected to happen daily, the Oberhofmeisterin, the chief royal physician and the midwife had to stay overnight at the palace for the last three days now, and since a few days a certain number of canon firers has been commanded to the walls in order to fire the usual cheerful salutes; and rumor has it that his highness the Duke, offered to stay at the palace during his time here, has declined to do this as not to incommodate the Queen.
The four chosen women have presented themselves to the Queen, and she was picked among them the wife of a retired French Captain, named de Coulon, a honest and good person as her wetnurse.

*The Duke: Charlotte's engagement to the future Duke of Braunschweig-Bevern had been celebrated only a few weeks earlier, to team Braunschweig was still there.

Thank you! You're right: that was very interesting.

has declined to do this as not to incommodate the Queen.

I seem to remember from the opening pages of Oster that back when Fritz1 and/or Fritz2 died, there were rumors that the exuberant firing of cannons after their births was responsible for their deaths as infants.

SD picking the wife of a retired French Captain (likely, though not necessarily, a Frenchwoman herself) reminded me again that French really was the primary language for these kids. (Remember, Ferdinand was Quecke - "Qu'est-ce que ce?".) Also: given just a few entries later, when Ferdinand is born, you get the story of Amalie's nurse telling her to petition FW for a job for her husband, it's clear these women, while not the peasants they tended to be in France (if her husband was a Captain, in this age and before the revolution, he was probably minor nobility), still weren't into this job not just for the prestige but because they did want the income and the connections for further employment.

I had forgotten Ferdinand was Quecke! Awwww, that's just adorable.

Thanks to

prinzsorgenfrei, I watched the musical Friedrich: Mythos und Tragödie, of which I previously knew some of the songs - the ones which are up at YouTube - but not all, and had read a summary in German.

So, impressions: first of all, the summary had left me with the idea that it was two thirds Crown Prince Fritz, one third Old Fritz. Which technically is true, but because Old Fritz is so often on stage, due to the framing narration, he's as much a presence in the story as Crown Prince Fritz. (Which is a plus in my book, btw: both because it's somewhat cheating if you want to do something about Frederick the Great and emphasize the young prince over the monarch, thereby saving yourself the ambiguity, and because Chris Murray (Old Fritz), at least in this performance, is a better actor and singer than Tobias Bieri (Crown Prince Fritz.)

Secondly, and unsurprising, since I had seen the excerpts and read the summary: Hamilton, this is not, neither in terms of the music or the lyrics/dialogue (i.e. in terms of "how to put on a personal and political 18th century story into a two plus hours musical). Songs and script are on a workman level. This said, the script does try something ambitious - antihero as central character, avoiding the easy solution of limiting themselves to young Fritz and ending with his ascension to the throne and/or Silesia 1 - , and despite the obvious and necessary cutting down of the rl cast to just a few characters and the gratitious het (I'll get to that), a few actual historical details ended up in it I hadn't expected to see, such as FW pressing Fritz to renounce his place in the succession (we don't see any of the non-Wilhelmine siblings on stage, and this is indeed the only indirect acknowledgement of their, or rather of AW's existence) and Fritz' reply, some fragmentary quotes from his letters to Wilhelmine from Küstrin worked into the fictional letter adressed to Katte from Küstrin, Fritz dissolving the Potsdam Giants as a money saving gesture, or the way the argument with Wilhelmine (which for my money is one of the three best musical numbers, along with Ebenbild and the early Fritz/Wilhelmine duet) works in some actual Fritz-and-siblings (not just Wilhelmine) arguments from rl. And they do try to explain why Grumbkow & Seckendorff were against the English marriages, though this brings me to the gratitious het.

Like I told you after reading the summary, it's not just the Katte/Wilhelmine but also Grumbkow/SD (which certainly must be the winner over least likely pairing of a Frederician story); here, Grumbkow fools SD into thinking he's on her side while really scheming against the English marriages. He's also there to pick up the letter in which Fritz reveals all about the Katte connection of his escape which Wilhelmine and SD inexplicably dropped and are leaving behind. I mean, this is far quicker and easier for the audience to understand than how Fritz writing to Katte ended up with the wrong Katte and then with FW, I get it, but given how frantic SD and Wilhelmine were about burning and rewriting letters in rl, it took me out of the mood and made me giggle. The other thing which made me grin regarding our enterprising duo of schemers was that Seckendorff actually gets played with an Austrian accent. Guys, yes, he worked for Team Vienna, but he was actually a Franconian. Quite a different dialect. Oh, and then there's this bit, when newly ascended to the throne Fritz shows his father's council what's what and confronts Seckendorff, who in this version is still Imperial envoy:

Fritz: Is there anyone except for myself in this room whom you (Seckendorff) haven't bribed?

(Historical Seckendorff: Excuse you. I bribed you as well. You took my money gladly. That you didn't deliver was certainly not for lack of spending on my part.)

Other than being fooled by Grumbkow, SD in her few appearances is presented as a tender mother (to both Fritz and Wilhelmine), without a song of her own. She's not much there. FW is his worst self and has to be talked out of executing Fritz by Grumbkow (showing up with the pinched letter that makes Katte the alternate victim). Mind you, given the solid foundation for making him Evil Ogre Dad in this musical, I did not expect anything else. (The complexity comes in by the way the musical makes a big thematic thing out of Fritz, contrary to what FW things, actually sharing traits with him, the more the more time passes, and the song Ebenbild in which he finally faces this and admits FW has won is the emotional climax of the show and the start of his very late liberation.

The equation the show draws isn't particularly new: i.e. his father's brutality culminating in Küstrin created Frederick the Great and his need to compensate with war-won glory and praise while also ensuring life long loneliness, and in terms of history, you can complain about simplification (we talked about this; given the spirit of the age, the existence of the most modern and best drilled army of Europe and the shape of the Prussian territories, even a lightside version of FW as a father would have not made Fritz into a pacifist, and he'd still gone for Silesia, though he might not have been such an attack-attack-attack type of general), but it certainly works as an emotional arc for a musical. By starting with Kunersdorf, then with a time jump into his final years, making Old Fritz confront his life via Ghostly Katte and showing him trying everything to avoid both the memory of the execution specifically or the admission that he did not become what he dreamed of being as a young prince but rather something else, you get a bit of what we call Küchenpsychologie ("kitchen psychology") feeling, but, again: works for a musical.

Ghostly Katte, and Katte in general, I'm in two minds about. The premise itself - Ghost! Katte challenging and making Old Fritz think about his life - is a good idea, though he's a bit too much Fritz' buried conscience and too little a person in his own right for my taste. I also note that in the two full depictions and the one audio depiction of the execution, we get Fritz apologizing and asking for forgiveness, but don't hear Katte's reply. (I'm also nerd enough to complain about his wearing a shirt and his head being covered by a paperback/hood - I mean, after all the trouble we went to accumulating contemporary execution descriptions, it's just a Pavlovian reaction to mutter about this.) This is because Fritz doesn't get forgiven/can't forgive himself until the very end of the musical, I get it, but still - that Katte said it is such an important part of what makes the character in any version.

The other problem with Katte is that partly, though not exclusively due to pairing him up with Wilhelmine romantically and partly due to lacking scenes with Fritz on his lonesome before Fritz springs the "let's escape together" idea on him, the audience just doesn't get a sense of what makes this Katte feel strong enough for Fritz to risk this. I did get the impression the script wanted to have his cake and eat it in terms of Fritz and Katte, i.e., on the one hand, there's the invented romance with Wilhelmine for the no-homo-crowd, on the other, the way Fritz reacts throughout does get across, imo, that he's having feelings for Katte himself. But other than feeling sorry for Fritz because of FW's behavior, I didn't see this musical's Katte being given anything that shows me him having strong emotions about the brother as well as the sister back - right until Fritz begs him to come with him on the escape, and Katte is unable to say no. It's a well played scene, but emotionally, it comes out of nowhere because we did not see this Katte and Fritz develop their friendship, with the musical so set on presenting them and Wihelmine as a trio. (I should add that the Katte/Wilhelmine romance isn't that convincing, either, since it's on a "she's a girl, he's a boy" level, but at least it's there so her being upset that her brother and her boyfriend want to run away and leave her behind to FW's tender mercies does not come out of nowhere.)

Which is to say: you don't even have to ship Fritz/Katte to be dramatically somewhat unsatisfied on the lack of build up for this relationship, which stands in disproportion to what the structure of the musical itself (i.e. the Ghost Katte and Old Fritz confrontations) would have demanded. It's also telling that Fritz and Katte have no duet.

Fritz and Wilhelmine have two, and despite the gratitions Wihelmine/Katte, that makes their relationship the more most successfully depicted in the musical. (Other than Fritz/Power as compensation for Fritz & FW.) I had known the early "We belong together" duet, but not the late one. Now explaining about Marwitz, the Erlangen journalist, and lunch with MT would not have been stage friendly, so the script goes for another element, the (surrounded by pro-MT territories) little Bayreuth wanting to remain neutral (which was a thing, and of course Fritz' assumption that all the principalities his sisters had married into were automatically his ~~subjects~~ subordinate allies was a thing between him and his other brothers-in-law and sisters, too) as the trigger for the argument between Fritz and Wilhelmine when she visits him at some nebulous point in the timeline which is somewhere in the early 1750s (since Voltaire is there, and Sanssouci) but actually incorporates their fallout from the mid 40s) . This is easier to understand for a newbie audience, and also isn't treated as the entire problem but just the thing that lays open the problem. It's a fierce duet with both performers really bringing it, and it culminates with Fritz demanding submission and getting it, and it's absolutely heartbreaking.

Since I mentioned Voltaire: as I expected from having watched Bienvenue in Sanssouci, his number, on YouTube, he's there as the comic relief and played with maximum camp. (Though comic relief or not, this number and the following scene with the table round at Sanssouci do make it clear that the "I'm just a philosopher here and a man of letters" thing is not workable because King Fritz still expects his rules to be obeyed, though funnily the show has Maupertuis, not Voltaire, make the mistake of going against the rules and getting a royal reproof as the result.) There is no mention of the big Fritz/Voltaire implosion and fallout. Mind you, what we get is Katte sarcastically replying to Fritz' boast that he got the idol of his youth to come and join him in Sanssouci with the observation that Fritz is paying Voltaire a large enough salary for this.

(To which the Voltaire in my head said: My good man, you overestimate our boyfriend's generosity and underestimate my business acumen. Let's not forget that this man haggled about my travelling expenses with me. On the other hand, I had decided early in my life that if money without talent is for fools, talent without money is asking for humiliation, and thus ensured I'd be a wealthy man through my own mercenary efforts. Trust me, I made more money due to said efforts than I ever received from my Prussian Alcina. The salary really wasn't what kept me in this mantrap of a country for three nerve-wrecking years.)

The biggest ensemble number is "Sieben Jahre Krieg", which is another "so not Hamilton" moment but here I mean it not in terms of script or musical quality; in terms of how war is depicted in a post WWII German musical versus a American musical. "The World is Upside Down" has very much a "yay us Americans!" vibe, leaving no doubt that the "right" side won. There is no vilification of the British soldiers, no, but that the War of Independence itself was a necessary and good and glorious thing is treated as a given. Meanwhile, "Friedrich: Triumph und Tragödie" has Ghostly Katte dispute Fritz' claim he was forced into this war from the get go and Sieben Jahre Krieg is a complete condemnation of said war (and by implication, all of Fritz' wars), not in a "MT was right" manner but in a "all these people died for his mixture of ego and brokenness" manner, and it leads up to Fritz' big breakdown number "Ebenbild", acknowledging his inner FW.

The award for most cringeworthy lyrics goes to: the Orzelska-seduces-Fritz number in Dresden. (Though I will say that all the praise certainly works with his praise kink. *g*) It's not that the musical tries to make more of the episode than it was - it doesn't - but that writing sexy lyrics that aren't unintentionally funny is hard, and here they missed the mark.

Most bewildering twist from history not already named: FW forced (King August makes him) to leave Fritz and Wilhelmine (who in this version has come along to Dresden as well) at August's court for two more months after departing himself. Yeah, no. OOC for Musical!FW and even more so for RL FW. But I get the musical's wish to give the kids a break.

In conclusion: marks for effort, but also, I can see why this has not been revived for a good long while, as opposed to, say, Elisabeth, when it comes to German language musicals picking a historical subject.

ahhhhhhhh I am trying really hard not to read this (except the end paragraph) so I can watch without too many spoilers. I am looking forward to at least some wtf :D

Since I'm *not* planning on watching this, thank you so much for the writeup! And I'm glad you were able to watch it.

it's not just the Katte/Wilhelmine but also Grumbkow/SD

*sigh*

we talked about this; given the spirit of the age, the existence of the most modern and best drilled army of Europe and the shape of the Prussian territories, even a lightside version of FW as a father would have not made Fritz into a pacifist, and he'd still gone for Silesia, though he might not have been such an attack-attack-attack type of general

Yeeeeeep to all this. Though I agree, psychological simplification is to be expected for a musical of this sort.

Oh, and I would "Fritz's ambition and restlessness" to that list of causes that would have contributed to an invasion even in the lightside FW AU.

One thing I'm not sure if I mentioned: I kind of think young Fritz's "death shroud" attitude toward the army might have been as much nurture as nature, i.e. teenage rebellion against his abusive father, rather than who he would have been with a lightside FW.

(I do severely question whether Fritz puts together an army from scratch if raised by Grandpa F1 instead of lightside FW.)

It's also telling that Fritz and Katte have no duet.

Well, then, what even is the point of this, says the Fritz/Katte shipper. :P

(I'm also nerd enough to complain about his wearing a shirt and his head being covered by a paperback/hood

I wish to note that of all the depictions of Katte's execution I've seen, the only one (Thronfolger) where they felt the need to include the historically accurate detail of Katte removing his shirt was the only one where the actor had pecs that needed to be shown off. :P

- I mean, after all the trouble we went to accumulating contemporary execution descriptions, it's just a Pavlovian reaction to mutter about this.)

LOL forever! I inadvertently conditioned you. :D

It's a fierce duet with both performers really bringing it, and it culminates with Fritz demanding submission and getting it, and it's absolutely heartbreaking.

:(

Trust me, I made more money due to said efforts than I ever received from my Prussian Alcina. The salary really wasn't what kept me in this mantrap of a country for three nerve-wrecking years.

LOL, no, we've seen you all gay-for-Fritz, Voltaire, there's no getting away from it. Ghost!Katte missed the mark on that one. Though if he's meant to be Fritz's conscience, maybe it works on that level: Fritz's own fears and loneliness.

(Though I will say that all the praise certainly works with his praise kink. *g*)

*g* I still want to write a praise kink sex scene with Fritz (and Voltaire?) one day.

You're welcome. I figured you might, given your difficulties with watching films.

Incidentally, the "death shroud" quote gets an entire song of its own, with Fritz singing "no Sterbekittel for me!" just before his final big pre escape attempt clash with FW. Agreed that this was a counter reaction to FW ramming the military down his throat and likely would not have happened with a lightside FW. (Much like his attitude towards German as a language.)

(I do severely question whether Fritz puts together an army from scratch if raised by Grandpa F1 instead of lightside FW.)

That is indeed a far less likely outcome. Along with Fritz putting himself through an austerity program along with the country in order to turn it from broke to prospering. Yes, he cultivated a modest public life style himself later post 7 Years War in rl, wearing only uniforms, but that didn't stop him building palaces with Silesian marble and paying for statues and orchestras. Seriously, both the hero worshipping and the decontructing historians I've read agree that in this sense, without FW, you do not get Frederick the Great or Prussia as a serious European power instead of a so-so German principality, full stop.

I wish to note that of all the depictions of Katte's execution I've seen, the only one (Thronfolger) where they felt the need to include the historically accurate detail of Katte removing his shirt was the only one where the actor had pecs that needed to be shown off.

The actor got shirtless in his sex scenes as young Peter the Great in that other 80s tv series about an 18th century monarch, too, and it's a nice view, is what it is. :) BTW, to be fair, there's an obvious reason why they didn't do that with Katte in the musical, and also why his head is covered, and he doesn't speak. The Katte actor is on stage with a mike so often (in full Gens d'Armes uniform) as a ghost that I assume they used a stuntman for the execution scene, otherwise he'd have to get back into his coat and put his mikrophone on in seconds.

Well, then, what even is the point of this, says the Fritz/Katte shipper.

You get a hug and a playful kiss earlier, but yeah. A musical heavily featuring the crown prince years without a Fritz/Katte duet is missing the obvious.

Yay, someone watched it!

I did not want to tell anyone about SD/Grumbkow, I feel like everyone needs to experience that wtf moment for themselves :'D I agree with your whole review, you put it in words way better than I ever could have!

I did get the impression the script wanted to have his cake and eat it in terms of Fritz and Katte, i.e., on the one hand, there's the invented romance with Wilhelmine for the no-homo-crowd, on the other, the way Fritz reacts throughout does get across, imo, that he's having feelings for Katte himself.

T h i s! So much this! I mean... "you'll lose your pretty head", the kiss, the reaction to Katte's "oh, we have a weird friendship" after their super long hug, the fact that he's hallucinating him 56 years later after barely interacting, that "Forget my sister and run away with me, let me tenderly embrace you from behind"-scene... Someone in that production shipped it and didn't tell the main writers.

The award for most cringeworthy lyrics goes to: the Orzelska-seduces-Fritz number in Dresden

Another thing that I think should be mentioned are the random ladies in cheap wigs clinging to the bed posts in that scene, because... yeah.

I do honestly feel sorry for Tobias Bieri. There are other recordings where his singing is better, so maybe they just picked a bad day to record...? I do vaguely recall there being some form of pre-premiere thing where he had to sing with an inflamed throat, not sure how close that was to the actual stage show, time wise. Recording the premiere and only the premiere may not have been the smartest move on Spotlight's part.

FMuT is certainly no Elisabeth, quality wise, that is for sure... Maybe more along the lines of Ludwig 2. Although I might get that association because Ludwig 2 also had a lot of het stuff where there shouldn't be het stuff (and even a tender dramatic embrace with Ludwig and his Totally Straight Buddy. I sense a pattern).

I haven't watched or heard anything from Ludwig 2 yet, though I'm vaguely curious, between Konstantin Wecker's involvement and me living in Munich. But if you want to read a spoof on how a Frederician themed musical NOT censoring the gay would go, I offer you Lehndorff! The Musical.

"Forget my sister and run away with me

You'll laugh, but rl Fritz did show such a reaction, though not to imaginary Wilhelmine/Katte, but to actual Voltaire-flirts-with-Ulrike. More here.

Being somewhat more invested in the siblings than in the boyfriends, I have to say that when Fritz replied to Musical!Katte's "but what about Wilhelmine, are we just leaving her behind?" objections with "I'll write her a letter, she'll understand", I thought, yeah, no. I mean, we'll never know how much or little Wilhelmine knew in advance about this particular escape plot, but she definitely knew about the general idea, wasn't happy about it, and Fritz wasn't happy hat she wasn't happy. Also, he did say goodbye, of sorts.

(I'm with Mildred that while neither Fritz nor Wilhelmine would have admitted this to themselves, there must have been some mutual resentment festering beneath all the other stuff, on his part that she kept trying to dissuade him from escaping an inreasingly horrible situation, and on her part that he was willing to leave her in said situation.)

Back to the musical, and speaking of singing abilities, considering that Katte is largely a speaking role (since he only sings as part of the "This is our time" trio which is largely carried by Fritz and Wilhelmine, and then a bit with Wilhelmine later), I wonder whether this is because they didn't want to have too many tenors?

Hi! Mildred invited me to share a journal post I made yesterday for discussion, so here I am. I'm currently reading the Fritz-Voltaire correspondance (pretty slowly, as I keep getting side-tracked) and in my entry I talked about a Fritz letter from February 3rd 1739 that I found rather charming (not least because of the geekiness content to be honest). I'll just repost most of it here, with a few alterations:

First he complains that - because he's still recovering from one of his many health crises - his doctors, more cruel than the disease itself, want him to exercise daily instead of study all the time [sidenote: when was that whole "40 cups of coffee instead of sleep" experiment? earlier probably] and then he immediately finds a connection to his philosophy studies, musing:

Unfortunately the mind seems to be only the accessory of the body; it is disturbed at the same time as the organization of our machinery, and matter cannot suffer without the spirit also feeling it. This union so close, this intimate connection is, it seems to me, a very strong proof of Locke's sentiment. What thinks in us is certainly an effect or a result of the mechanics of our animated machinery. Any sensible man, any man who is not imbued with prejudice or self-esteem, must agree.

After that, he gives Voltaire an update on all the things he's been doing/planning, which include

a) physics experiments with a vacuum pump [although only the first - does a clock keep its pace in a vacuum? - is actually physics in hindsight, the second - does a plant seed grow without air? - is not]
b) getting a Berlin astronomer to test his wild theories regarding the causes of winds and air currents

and - That's enough for physics. -

c) fanfic ideas: I made plans for a tragedy; the subject is taken from the Aeneid; the story of the play was to represent the tender and constant friendship of Nisus and Euryale.

[As far as I know, he pretty quickly abandoned the physics interest and he never wrote that Nisus/Euryalus ~~fic~~ tragedy, instead he soon got caught up in writing the Antimachiavell. Nonetheless, he occasionally invoked them in other writings and they did make it into his Temple of Friendship at Sanssouci as one of four homoerotic Greek pairings.
I admit that I had to look them up because I was unaware of the story. After reading about it, I could not help but wonder about the emotional background and possible Katte connections behind Frederick's choice of subject/lovers. What with the loyalty and the age difference and the unsuccessfully trying to save one's lover's life after getting caught and everything ending in death. (Except that, of course, Fritz lived and was forced to be present at Katte's execution.)
Be that as it may, I certainly think that Fritz, lover of statues, would have very much appreciated this Nisus/Euryalus one.]

Back to the letter, and on a lighter note, following the list of plans is a playful and of course complimentary passage about Voltaire's work output - For you, my dear friend, are an incomprehensible being to me. I doubt that there is a Voltaire in the world; I thought up a system to deny his existence., i.e. a whole academy of people who are writing under the name of Voltaire - which concludes with the request to work less for the sake of his health (the exact thing Fritz isn't doing and complained about at the start of the letter; very much in character).

Voltaire in his February 28th response says that Fritz should take his own health advice, and that perhaps Nisus/Euryalus fic is more suitable during a time of recovery than maths. (Which I can only agree with.)

[Added:] He also tells Fritz that they immediately set up the vaccum pump/clock experiment at Cirey and reports on his findings. Émilie on the other hand, in her own letter dated February 27th, tells Fritz that she's totally delighted by his physics interest - he read her work on fire around that time as well and discussed a couple of points with her before this - and hey, there's this W. Derham guy in London who wrote a whole article about this experiment in 1705, here's the reference if you want to find and read it. (So much for amateurs I guess. :D)

So, yeah, this made me smile. It's also very much a "crown prince Fritz at Rheinsberg" letter, because

-- and this is where I added a couple of mostly non-letter related thoughts, which I'll just put here as well --

still pre-meeting and pre-ascension to the throne, there are a lot of things not present in this letter - the sharp sarcasm for example (which could be very witty, or mocking and hurtful, or both), or the often imperious and short-tempered attitude of King Frederick. Part of what makes reading about all of this so interesting are the constant shifts: One minute I'm laughing out loud because a quote is hilarious or daring or WTF, the next I just can't help being touched or impressed, and the next it's "damn it, you asshole".
I certainly see why "enigma" or "contradictory" are terms often used about Frederick, although I think the first one gives the wrong impression of only getting an incomprehensible facade. While he certainly knew - and learned by necessity - how to pretend and how to hide when he wanted (something that's sometimes hard to parse even before you get to the general OTT rococo-ness of the age), I still think there's a lot of insight to be had, it's just that he was indeed quite a mess of contradictions.

Another take-away from my recent reading, particularly the

rheinsberg write-ups: siblings! So many sibling feelings, so many complex and heartbreaking relationships.

There's an image from the Lehndorff diaries that unexpectedly stuck with me, from the party after the Seven Years War ended (a war during which Fritz lost both his older sister Wilhelmine, the sibling he was closest to by far, and his next-in-line brother August Wilhelm, whom he'd treated quite horribly before his death):

The King remains at the table until 11 1/7. When he rises and the ladies in waiting and I begin to pass him, he suddenly stops at the door, holding Princess Amalie with one hand, Prince Heinrich with the other, and stands like this for nearly fifteen minutes, gazing into their faces.

Yeah.

Lastly, I observe that fix-it scenarios don't seem quite as satisfying in a historical fandom. Pesky reality getting in the way. (Not that I won't read them regardless. There are a lot of things one might be compelled to fix here.)

Welcome to the salon!

a whole academy of people who are writing under the name of Voltaire

Naturally, my mind went to the Oxfordians, cursed by their name, and other Anti-Stratfordians in Shakespeare scholarship. :) I'd like to see someone pull off a spoof of the snobby Shakespeare authorship debate along the following lines:

- "There was no Voltare! This hint in Fritz' letter is a confession of the truth disguised as a joke."

- No bourgois notary's son could have written and done all that "Voltaire" did. Clearly, what TRULY happened was that SOMEONE hired Francois Arouet as an actor to escape censorship/disguise their activities from their fellow nobles, but who?

- Possible candidates: Émilie for the Newton book, in order to be taken seriously as author, schoolfriend Richelieu for the early drama and the poetry, in order not to piss off the Regent and then the King, but deflect the heat on "Voltaire", and then (the ultimate insult in terms of rl) Fritz for the later drama, historical works and poetry, in order for his works to be regarded impartially; the Voltaire/Fritz fallout from 1750 - 1753 happened because the actor Arouet demanded more and more money; as for the correspondance, clearly, Fritz wrote both sides, hence all the praise.

Nisus and Euryalus: considering I have, alas, not yet read the complete Aeneid but only retellings (and at first the bowlderized one by Gustav Schwab), I had to look them up as well back in the day. But yes, one can see the attraction.

Interest in physics: may be been especially vivid in 1739 because that was when he met Algarotti whose main claim to fame at that point was Newtonian in nature, too.

when was that whole "40 cups of coffee instead of sleep" experiment? earlier probably

As far as I know, it was in 1737 when Suhm had translated Wolff for him into French. But Mildred should have the exect dates.

Another take-away from my recent reading, particularly the rheinsberg write-ups: siblings! So many sibling feelings, so many complex and heartbreaking relationships.

I must admit this gladdens my heart, because the siblings angle was the one I brought to this fandom, while Mildred is the boyfriends expert. (Though she succeeded in getting me interested in the boyfriends as well while I succeeded in getting her interested in the siblings.) And yes, the handholding with Heinrich and Amalie at the end of the post-war party as something that stuck into my mind in particular, too. (The other physical Fritzian gesture re: Heinrich in the 7 Years War years that struck observers, in this case not Lehndorff but Heinrich's AD Henckel von Donnersmarck, was the post- defeat at Kolin meltdown complete with hug, kiss and "I want to die" outburst, where you have Henckel in his diary going "WTF? Did he ever kiss him before? How screwed are we?").

History AU fixits: I know what you mean, and I speak as someone who actually wrote one, though being me, I "fixed" things by killing Fritz himself of. (Well, Mildred did ask for "Katte lives" scenarios. :) ) They're still enjoyable to read, but it's harder to buy completely into them the way you can in a fictional canon whose characters never lived.

Though she succeeded in getting me interested in the boyfriends as well while I succeeded in getting her interested in the siblings.

This is why I love this fandom!

As far as I know, it was in 1737 when Suhm had translated Wolff for him into French. But Mildred should have the exect dates.

It was in 1736 that Fritz started writing to Suhm, and said he was giving up sleep to study (and Suhm quite understandably said maybe that wasn't the greatest idea?), and I speculated that that was when he tried the experiment, but that's all I've got: speculation.

I appreciate the vote of confidence, though. :) If I had come across exact dates, I would have them and they would be in our chronology!

I speak as someone who actually wrote one, though being me, I "fixed" things by killing Fritz himself of.

As you know, I always refer to this as a "break-it-differently" fic. ;) Don't get me wrong, it was great, and I'm forever grateful that you wrote it because it was the story I never knew I always needed to read, and if I didn't love tragedy, I wouldn't be into this fandom, much less this episode, much less the Brontes, but let's be clear: you broke it differently. :P

Well, Mildred did ask for "Katte lives" scenarios. :)

And I'm glad I did, because there are so many things about that fic I would never give up, but yes. It's very you. ;) (I did something very similar in my last fandom: wrote a fix-it AU where I killed off the main character I was supposedly "fixing", so I definitely can't throw stones.)

it's harder to buy completely into them the way you can in a fictional canon whose characters never lived.

Sometimes I think this is why I have like 10 unfinished AUs--I write and I write, and at the end of the day, I still know it changes nothing.

OKAY THAT DOES IT. I am totally asking for the AU where Émilie is actually the one who wrote everything under the name of "Voltaire," and Francois Arouet is just the witty actor who is the front (since of course no one would take it seriously if they found out it was a WOMAN). And this is why she doesn't want Arouet to go to Prussia, because she is worried ~~they will start an affair and~~ Fritz will find out the truth! (But instead... does he enter into the masquerade instead and write all the letters??)

because the siblings angle was the one I brought to this fandom

And very glad I am for it, too <33333

though being me, I "fixed" things by killing Fritz himself

See, unlike mildred I do think this is a fix-it, because it was just SO cathartic to read Wilhelmine saying "But it is better for you to die than for justice to leave this world" to FW. YES. Stupid reality :P

Thank you!

Interest in physics: may be been especially vivid in 1739 because that was when he met Algarotti whose main claim to fame at that point was Newtonian in nature, too.

Interesting, didn't know that about Algarotti. I think the chronology doesn't quite match up, though, since Algarotti showed up at Rheinsberg in September I think, and the letter is from February. Émilie sent Fritz her work on fire in November 1938, and the whole Émilie/Voltaire/Paris Academy competition was right before that, so I was wondering if that was what got him interested.

The other physical Fritzian gesture re: Heinrich in the 7 Years War years that struck observers, in this case not Lehndorff but Heinrich's AD Henckel von Donnersmarck, was the post- defeat at Kolin meltdown complete with hug, kiss and "I want to die" outburst, where you have Henckel in his diary going "WTF? Did he ever kiss him before? How screwed are we?"

Ohhh, I hadn't heard of that one yet. Damn.

The relevant diary entry from Henckel von Donnersmarck:

dem 19. um 3 Uhr nachmittags. Se. Königl. Hoheit ritten sogleich mit dem Prinzen Ferdinand zu dem Hause in Micheln, welches der König dort vor seinem Abmarsche nach Kolin bewohnt hatte, um ihm darselbst zu erwarten. Welch schmerzliches Schauspiel bot sich unseren Blicken dar, als wir den von Schmerzen und Kummer gebeugt ankommen sahen, der sich noch vor wenigen Tagen für den Eroberer der Welt gehalten hatte. Seit 36 Stunden saß er auf demselben Pferde, und obgleich man deutlich sah, dass er sich vor Ermattung kaum noch barauf erhalten konnte , so zwang er sich doch zu einer guten Haltung. Nachdem er eingetreten war, ließ er den Prinzen Heinrich rufen . Der König lag auf einem mit einem Betttuche belegten Strohsacke, da sein Gepäck noch nicht angekommen war. Er küßte, vielleicht zum ersten Male , seinen Bruder zärtlich, gestand ihm seinen tödtlichen Schmerz und versicherte ihm , daß Alles , was er bis jetzt unternommen habe , nur aus Liebe zu seiner Familie geschehen sei. Er wiederholte zu verschiedenen Malen , daß er zu sterben wünsche und daß er sich das Leben nehmen würde. Der Prinz beschwor ihn , sich zu beruhigen und die ihnen noch bleibenden köstlichen Augenblicke zum Rückzuge zu benutzen , ehe Daun oder Nadaſti Zeit gewönne heranzukommen und ihnen noch mehr Schaden zuzufügen . Der König erwiederte dem Prinzen , daß er jetzt zu Allem unfähig sei und daß er Ruhe bedürfe.
Er beauftragte den Prinzen die nöthigen Dispositionen zu entwerfen , worauf ihm dieser die bereits fertige, welche der König genehmigte, vorwies. Hierauf ersammelte der Prinz die Generalität und theilte ihr die Disposition mit.

Oh, wow, that's something indeed. Thank you so much! I continue to be occasionally surprised by how visceral/explicit the primary sources are, especially in contrast to all the hiding and dissembling that's also happening.

Quite. I was thrilled when I found this one; Henckel delivers on other occasions as well, such as during Fritz' early outbursts against AW followed by the officers starting to mutter he's scapegoating as soon as his back is turned. Come the 19th century, these kind of scenes were ignored because they did not it with the whole national hero image, until Koser (who unearthed a great number of sources) brought them back - he uses Henckel's diary as a source, - though not without chiding him as biased against Fritz due to being Heinrich's AD in the early part of the war and a friend of his in general. It's telling that when Koser describes the same scene (Fritz returning from Kolin) in his Frederick-the-Great biography, he actually uses Henckel's descripton almost verbatim at first, though, just slightly paraphrased, only adding a bit in late 19th century pseudo Wagnerian style - "sein helles Auge, das sonst jedem erstrahlte, nun war es umwölkt" - and censoring the kiss. (Oh, and Henckel's sharp "der sich noch vor wenigen Tagen für den Eroberer der Welt gehalten hatte".)

Henri de Catt hears about the same event from Henckel a few years later, and it shows up in his diary partly in Latin, though not, I think, in his memoirs. BTW, the reason why Heinrich had a retreat plan ready to be okay'd was that as soon as he'd heard what had happened from the messenger Fritz had sent ahead, he figured they'd need one and worked one out. This is the kind of thing that makes an alter ego.

Oh, Henckel *does* say it was the same horse! Wow, that poor horse.

Apropos of that, I must share this recent finding from The Club with

cahn:

After six months in Glasgow, Boswell did a daring thing. He absconded from the university and escaped to London, making the entire three-hundred-mile journey on horseback. Along the way he rode from Carlisle to London in two days and a half, an impressive feat. When he recounted this to some accomplished horsemen they cried out, “What, sir, upon the same horse?” “No, gentlemen,” he replied, “that would be no merit of mine. But I’ll tell you what is better: it was upon the same bum.”

:(

Also, hee :)

The horse is an unsung martyr of the 7 Years War. Along with the two which got shot under Fritz on other occasions, of course. And Heinrich's horse at Prague.

That is a hilarious anecdote I wasn't familiar with yet (the quote, thata is)!

Whee, now I'm proud of myself for finding one that was new to you. :D

(not least because of the geekiness content to be honest)

See, this is one of the things I love about Fritz and his pen pals (Wilhelmine included): they're such geeks! <3

[sidenote: when was that whole "40 cups of coffee instead of sleep" experiment? earlier probably]

Well, this is an interesting question, and you'd think I'd have the precise dates, but what I have instead is this: I've never found an non-anecdotal source for this claim, never mind one that gives dates! I'm starting to wonder if it's one of those things everyone "knows" about Fritz that ends up being apocryphal--there were a lot of anonymous and unsourced anecdotes published immediately after his death.

But I keep hoping we'll turn it up, because it's one of my absolute favorite things about him, and quite possibly saved me from a similar experiment! (In that I tend toward arrogance, and when I was a teenager, I was of the mind that just because other people couldn't do something didn't mean *I* couldn't--but if Frederick the Great, noted workaholic and study-holic whom I respected, couldn't do without sleep despite his best efforts meant that I probably should assume that applied limitation to me as well. As much as I hate sleeping and like working and studying, I have to concede that the spirit is willing and the flesh is weak.)

a) physics experiments with a vacuum pump [although only the first - does a clock keep its pace in a vacuum? - is actually physics in hindsight, the second - does a plant seed grow without air? - is not]

Still geeky! <3

which concludes with the request to work less for the sake of his health (the exact thing Fritz isn't doing and complained about at the start of the letter; very much in character).

Fritz: other people's limitations don't apply to me! (One more reason I related hard to Fritz.)

Voltaire in his February 28th response says that Fritz should take his own health advice, and that perhaps Nisus/Euryalus fic is more suitable during a time of recovery than maths. (Which I can only agree with.)

My fave Émilie would disagree, though. ;) Though I agree it's probably true for Fritz, since that was not really his thing.

still pre-meeting and pre-ascension to the throne, there are a lot of things not present in this letter - the sharp sarcasm for example (which could be very witty, or mocking and hurtful, or both), or the often imperious and short-tempered attitude of King Frederick.

Yeah, he doesn't start lashing at Voltaire quite yet, though having just finished Uwe Oster's Wilhelmine bio tells me that at least one person who wasn't Prince Eugene saw future Fritz coming: Doctor Superville.

In his 1739 words, [Fritz has] much wit/spirit/intelligence, but a bad heart and a terrible character. He's suspicious, stubborn, excessive, selfish, ungrateful, vicious, and unless I'm very much mistaken, will someday be even stingier than his father.

One minute I'm laughing out loud because a quote is hilarious or daring or WTF, the next I just can't help being touched or impressed, and the next it's "damn it, you asshole".

If Fritz were consistent, he wouldn't hold my interest nearly as thoroughly.

I certainly see why "enigma" or "contradictory" are terms often used about Frederick

ZOMG yes.

cahn and

selenak can tell you I say this all the time; searching our chat history, I found no fewer than three examples, such as this one.

although I think the first one gives the wrong impression of only getting an incomprehensible facade...I still think there's a lot of insight to be had, it's just that he was indeed quite a mess of contradictions.

But what I apparently haven't shared is my rant that says exactly this! One of the fictional characters I keep in my head was ranting that obviously Asprey never knew anyone like Fritz, and if you have the word "polutropos" in your vocabulary like the ancient Greeks did, you don't need the word "enigma".

I did point out in salon that at least one translator of the Odyssey has translated the first line as "Tell me about a complicated man," and that I thought that was very suitable for Fritz and our salon. :)

siblings! So many sibling feelings, so many complex and heartbreaking relationships.

This is all thanks to our wonderful

selenak! I owe her a great debt for teaching me all about Hohenzollern dysfunction and complexities: it's fascinating, but I wouldn't have done all that research on my own (not least because it's largely in German, and I only started studying German this year, entirely because

selenak shared German scholarship with us, and I realized I need to read a bunch of it. I'm currently working my way slowly through a long reading list and picking up speed and proficiency as I go. :))

As she noted, she is the queen of siblings in this fandom, and I am the boyfriend expert. :D

Lastly, I observe that fix-it scenarios don't seem quite as satisfying in a historical fandom. Pesky reality getting in the way.

OMG, I have the same reaction! I don't know if I shared my feelings here, but I definitely once said to my wife last year that I can write fix-it fic all day long, and unlike in, say, Hunger Games, where my AU has equal ontological status with canon in my head, at the end of the day, Katte still died on November 6 and Fritz still suffered and made other people suffer. :/

I haven't actually finished, much less posted, my fix-it fics, but there's one I'm still actively working on and have hopes for.

You left out one of your comments from your blog that I wanted to comment on because I had the same reaction!

[Re: health problems, Frederick had a whole litany of them, and I'm seriously impressed that with his workaholic lifestyle of little sleep, tons of snuff and coffee with pepper and mustard, combined with 18th century medicine, he still reached the age of 74. My theory: all the fresh fruit he consumed and grew in Sanssouci, which was a really consistent thing for him. He even sent a pineapple half-way through Europe as a gift to his sister.]

I said that here and here! I even said "litany"!

selenak: On the endearing side: early in the travel correspondance, Fritz sends a pineapple to Wilhelmine from Potsdam. Bear in mind that pineapples otherwise don't exist in Germany at this point, by and large; Fritz had some of the earliest grown for him in garden house, it was a rare and precious thing.

mildred_of_midgard: Fritz totally loved fruit and went to no small expense to get a lot of fresh fruit grown locally for his table, which now that I think of it, may partly account for how he survived his litany of health problems plus 18th century medicine for 74 years, lol. Good to know he shared some of his bounty with Wilhelmine!

So clearly, you are me and I am you. :) Welcome!

Oh, if you want a detailed and organized intro to our salon, I wrote one last month for another recent recruit (who, unlike you, was new even to DW), here.

I'm starting to wonder if it's one of those things everyone "knows" about Fritz that ends up being apocryphal

It's certainly something that would make sense as an exaggerated story that has a lot of truth in it - in this case his general attitude towards work/study and his coffee drinking (and his general personality) - but might not have happened exactly the way it's told through the grapevine. On the other hand, it's Fritz, so who knows. Might as well be true to the letter.

re: Doctor Superville [what a name] - didn't Valory say some similar things that early? I seem to remember coming across that. (And Voltaire kind of jokes about the mutual dislike between him and Fritz in one of the letters I read yesterday.)

if you have the word "polutropos" in your vocabulary like the ancient Greeks did, you don't need the word "enigma"

Had to google that (never got past two weeks of Greek), but now I really like it! Also from a meta standpoint, multiple narratives possible.

Heh, I left out the health/fruit part because I assumed that everyone here knew it anyway, given that I learned most of it from

rheinsberg in the first place. And thank you for the link to the intro post - I see that your "Fritz as Royal Detective" from a few days ago had a double layer there, ha.

It's certainly something that would make sense as an exaggerated story that has a lot of truth in it...On the other hand, it's Fritz, so who knows. Might as well be true to the letter.

Exactly! It's in character, at least.

re: Doctor Superville [what a name] - didn't Valory say some similar things that early? I seem to remember coming across that.

Did he? The famous quotes I'm familiar with from him on Fritz are from 1753. But maybe there are pre-May 31, 1740 ones too.

Doctor Superville [what a name]

I had the same reaction, lol. It keeps calling up Smallville + Superman echoes in my brain, which, to be fair, would not have been the case for contemporaries. :P

Also from a meta standpoint, multiple narratives possible.

Exactly! It applies to Fritz in several different meanings the same way it applies to Odysseus in several different meanings.

Heh, I left out the health/fruit part because I assumed that everyone here knew it anyway, given that I learned most of it from [community profile] rheinsberg in the first place.

The facts, yes, but the hypothesis that it contributed to his longevity is something you and I came up with independently, which is awesome!

I see that your "Fritz as Royal Detective" from a few days ago had a double layer there, ha.

:) Yes, indeed, that was an inside joke aimed at the people who'd been calling me Royal Detective for a year now. And now you're inside the joke too.

Hmmm, maybe I did misremember the Valory thing. Fritz told Voltaire that he didn't like him the minute he showed up and then Voltaire made a joke about the way Valory saw Fritz, so it's entirely possible that I put the wrong date on the Valory quotes in my head. (It's been a looot of new information in a very short time lately. :D)

re: Superville, I immediately saw him as a comics supervillain with a very on-the-nose name ;)

Given Superville met Crown Prince Fritz specifically in his capacity as doctor and given Fritz' opinion of doctors, I don't find it surprising he correctly predicted King Fritz from that encounter. :)

Valory: the most famous description he gave of Fritz which I had translated for Mildred and Cahn last year is from the early 1750s. However, Valory also gave a (less critical) description of Fritz in the early 1740s, when he saw quite a lot of him, since Valory, like Mitchell much later, was with Fritz on campaign now and then in the Silesian Wars. (Hence the plot of Th Palladion.) He also socialized with Fritz' brothers a lot in between. He wasn't the French envoy during all this time - in between, annother Scottish Jcobite exile had that job, Lord Tyrconnel - but he was reappointed French envoy after Tyrconnel's death.

Hiiiiii! :DD So lovely to virtual-meet you! :D As you can see from

rheinsberg, I don't do the research like these powerhouses, but I am always very happy to cheer everyone on :D And Fritz-Voltaire!

selenak sold me on Voltaire so I am excited to find out more about him and about their correspondence :D (

mildred_of_midgard will probably drag me into reading their correspondence at some point -- I also by far am the slowest reader of these three (or at least I have the least time to read, which works out the same) -- but it will be quite a while from now.)

his doctors, more cruel than the disease itself

LOL!

although only the first - does a clock keep its pace in a vacuum? - is actually physics in hindsight, the second - does a plant seed grow without air? - is not

*nods* Did they have the same division of physics that we have now? I had the vague impression they kind of shoved everything science-related under "natural philosophy" and called it a day.

I admit that I had to look them up because I was unaware of the story.

Heh, I did read the Aeneid and I had no idea who they were! (Though it was a while ago now.)

Voltaire in his February 28th response says that Fritz should take his own health advice, and that perhaps Nisus/Euryalus fic is more suitable during a time of recovery than maths. (Which I can only agree with.)

Heeeee. Of course Fritz should :P But also I think this is hilarious because it really shows Voltaire is just so not a scientist/mathematician, despite feeling like he ought to be one because all smart people are, and Obviously He Is Smart. (This is, at least, what I came away with from the Émilie bio I read. But I suppose also can be inferred from Émilie's letter :D )

Part of what makes reading about all of this so interesting are the constant shifts: One minute I'm laughing out loud because a quote is hilarious or daring or WTF, the next I just can't help being touched or impressed, and the next it's "damn it, you asshole".

I KNOWWWWWW. I feel like when these guys tell me stories, I spend 1/3 of the time feeling sorry for him, 1/3 of the time impressed by him, and the rest of the time shaking my head and going, "Oh Fritz." (And not in a good way.)

Another take-away from my recent reading, particularly the [community profile] rheinsberg write-ups: siblings! So many sibling feelings, so many complex and heartbreaking relationships.

yessssss like everyone else is saying, all hail

selenak and getting us all into the siblings! <3333333 Honestly this is when I started to get really emotionally involved -- I was having fun before, but the dysfunctional and complicated sibling dynamics really sold the whole thing to me. (Who is requesting Fritz siblings for Yuletide? This girl! Well, and also

selenak :D )

The King remains at the table until 11 1/7. When he rises and the ladies in waiting and I begin to pass him, he suddenly stops at the door, holding Princess Amalie with one hand, Prince Heinrich with the other, and stands like this for nearly fifteen minutes, gazing into their faces.

..Yeah.

Lastly, I observe that fix-it scenarios don't seem quite as satisfying in a historical fandom. Pesky reality getting in the way.

Absolutely agree. As mildred said, one can say to oneself in a fiction fandom that the fix-it is the thing that really happened. But... one can't really say that with reality :( (Still, though. There is some satisfaction in reading about things the way they ought to have happened ~~like Wilhelmine saying to FW "But it is better for you to die than for justice to leave this world."~~)

Hi, nice to meet you! :) I've learned so many things about Frederick et al these last few weeks and it's been quite a ride so far.

Did they have the same division of physics that we have now? I had the vague impression they kind of shoved everything science-related under "natural philosophy" and called it a day.

Yeah, as far as I know, they didn't have the clear science divisions yet, neither between natural sciences and philosophy as an umbrella term nor between the different natural sciences as we understand them today, that's why I added the hindsight comment. Although I think the 18th century was when that very slowly started to change - they do use the term physics and are employing scientific methods instead of placing the weight on the philosophy part of natural philosophy, even though it's still kind of seen as part of it (and taught that way at universities). Probably one reason why Voltaire's dabbling in it, too. Biology as a term doesn't exist yet, but chemistry as derived from alchemy is kind of around. (Although as Fredersdorf clearly shows, alchemy itself is still a thing as well.)

(Although as Fredersdorf clearly shows, alchemy itself is still a thing as well.)

So I was reading Oster's Wilhelmine bio, and I found this quote from a Fritz letter:

Fritz on October 19, 1732: If I could make gold, I would first use my knowledge to help out Wilhelmine.

To which I commented, "If you could make gold, huh? I wonder if Fritz talked about making gold before 1732, or if we're seeing traces of Fredersdorf here."

Do you know of any Fritzian references to alchemy before 1732? Or is this a sign that Fredersdorf was maybe talking about alchemy with Fritz from the beginning? (I mean, there could be many reasons this was on Fritz's mind, but I do find it curious that it's within a year after he met Fredersdorf.)

I do not know of any earlier alchemy references, but I also feel like I'm not really the person to ask here, given that all I've read that's earlier than 1732 is everything you guys posted on the time period plus all the Fritz-FW and one or two Grumbkow letters. :D I'll certainly keep an eye out during future readings, though.

Thanks! Unfortunately, most of his correspondence from pre-1732 was destroyed, but perhaps there's an envoy report or something.

And until we find counterevidence, I'm reading between the lines and seeing Fredersdorf. :)

Heh, I did read the Aeneid and I had no idea who they were! (Though it was a while ago now.)

I had a semester in college on the Aeneid, in which I read it in its entirety in English and about a third of it in Latin...twenty years ago. So I too had to look up Nisus and Euryalus last year. ;)

There is some satisfaction in reading about things the way they ought to have happened like Wilhelmine saying to FW "But it is better for you to die than for justice to leave this world."

And for that as well as FW's stroke I am forever indebted to our wonderful author! Seriously, I sat up straight when I read that and started yelling out loud. I still call it differently broken, though. ;)

yessssss like everyone else is saying, all hail [personal profile] selenak and getting us all into the siblings! <3333333 Honestly this is when I started to get really emotionally involved -- I was having fun before, but the dysfunctional and complicated sibling dynamics really sold the whole thing to me.

I'm still trying to figure out why I'm not more emotionally invested in them. Intellectually, they're very interesting, but for some reason, my feels haven't latched on. I wondered if it might be that I prefer functional to dysfunctional sibling relationships? But then I remembered exceptions, and so idek. I definitely wouldn't want to do without the glorious Hohenzollern dynamics in this fandom, regardless. I have to say that when

selenak started fleshing out the whole family for me, that's when Fritz and company started to feel like three-dimensional people with an actual context.

I KNOWWWWWW. I feel like when these guys tell me stories, I spend 1/3 of the time feeling sorry for him, 1/3 of the time impressed by him, and the rest of the time shaking my head and going, "Oh Fritz." (And not in a good way.)

That sounds about right. Though in my case, I have to admit "Oh, Fritz" is said with a lot of sympathy. Like, "Oh, Fritz, you put the 'problematic' in 'problematic fave'," or, "Oh, Fritz, I'm sorry everything was so terrible. Please get therapy." But maybe that's just because I'm a Fritz stan of old. ;)

IDK, I wonder if it's because you are so attached to Fritz? Like, part of the reason the dysfunctional sibling dynamics really grab me is that I'm really not particularly attached to Fritz, so the fact that a lot of these dynamics involve him behaving badly is a plus for me rather than a minus, and Heinrich (whom I do love) gets a bit of the woobie dynamic. Whereas it's probably not nearly as emotionally interesting to have one's fave being the one behaving awfully. (For similar reasons, I'm not really all that emotionally invested in the wives... at least not yet. Except possibly for Louise, because of that letter of Amalie's. But even so, my short-term attachment to Heinrich isn't at all to be compared to your long-term attachment to Fritz, so I think it would be very possible;

selenak's fic got me invested in Voltaire, after all, which I didn't think was possible given my attachment to Emilie :P )

Edited 2020-10-12 05:05 (UTC)

Maybe? But for some reason, the feels about his relationship with Wilhelmine, even when they were young, won't come either, and that generally doesn't involve Fritz behaving badly (not until much later). And then again, I can't get the Fredersdorf feels either! Despite trying hard for both of them. And both those relationships are normally totally my jam! And then I'm into relationships that normally aren't, like Katte and Keith.

Idk, this is just a very topsy-turvy fandom for me. *shrug*

The whole period of FW's impending death and Fritz becoming king was really interesting to read - the mixed feelings and anxiety from Fritz re: having to leave his Rheinsberg paradise, vs. a lot of hope and encouragement from Voltaire, and then indeed the difference in Fritz' attitude once he's king (you'll see no other change in me than greater determination/efficency is what he says in February :D which ... isn't entirely wrong?). It also got across the absurdity of one man suddenly becoming an absolutist monarch I thought.

So Fritz repeatedly voices thoughts like these, which are from his first letter on the topic, February 26th: Happy if I had lived without being transplanted/ From this mild and peaceful climate/ Where my freedom flourished/ Into this scabrous, rugged, difficult terrain,/ Infected by Machiavellianism!
And then from March 23rd: When I can neither read nor work, I am like those great tobacco takers who die of anxiety, and who put their hands in their pockets a thousand times, when their snuffbox has been taken away. The decoration of the building can change, without altering in any way the foundations or the walls; this is what you will see in me, because my father's situation leaves us no hope of recovery. So I must prepare to undergo my destiny.
Privacy would be better suited to my freedom [...]. You know that I like independence, and that it is very hard to give it up in order to submit to a painful duty.

Voltaire in return writes the "I dream of my prince like one dreams of a mistress" line in one of his later replies, and I thought his very first one to the February letter was actually quite touching, from I don't know the exact state of your current circumstances, but I've never loved and admired you more to king or prince, you are always my king. I mean, I'd read about a hundred pages of Voltaire complimenting Fritz by that point and these still stood out.

(Also, in between, May 3rd, Fritz tried to put a ring on it?! ;) - May my ring, my dear Voltaire, never leave your finger. This talisman is filled with so many wishes for your person, that it must of necessity bring you happiness)

Oh, and I thought the King vs. Human Fritz thing being introduced was interesting as a symptom of the transition and the relationship, started by Fritz telling Voltaire that he should keep treating him like a normal human being, not a king (later: Voltaire in Berlin -> Fritz: "that's totally not how I meant that"), upon which Voltaire starts alternating between calling him Your Majesty and Your Humanity for a while and keeps bringing up that differentiation in various contexts (including the one where he asks Fritz the human being about his father's attitude towards him before his death, which Fritz doesn't really answer, as

selenak pointed out in her write-up).

And then, November/December 1740, Voltaire in Berlin:

Voltaire:
Non, malgré vos vertus, non, malgré vos appas,
Mon âme n'est point satisfaite;
Non, vous n'êtes qu'une coquette
Qui subjuguez les cœurs, et ne vous donnez pas.

[Fritz demanding hearts but not giving his own! I have thoughts on that.]

Fritz:
Réponse à l'épigramme de ce matin:
Mon âme sent le prix de vos divins appas;
Mais ne présumez point qu'elle soit satisfaite.
Traître, vous me quittez pour suivre une coquette;
Moi, je ne vous quitterais pas.

[Says he, who would have done a "gotta go conquer Silesia, BRB" two weeks later.]

Me: Well, that didn't take long. Guys, you haven't even spent two weeks in each other's company, calm down?

Voltaire:
Je vous quitte, il est vrai; mais mon cœur déchiré
Vers vous revolera sans cesse.
Depuis quatre ans vous êtes ma maîtresse,
Un amour de dix ans doit être préféré;
Je remplis un devoir sacré.
Héros de l'amitié, vous m'approuvez vous-même;
Adieu, je pars désespéré.
Oui, je vais aux genoux d'un objet adoré,
Mais j'abandonne ce que j'aime.

Me: Okay then. There's not even a "like a" before mistress anymore now, I see how it is. (But yeah, Émilie, and Voltaire's feelings for her/her claim on him really are the continuous and strong point of contention.)

Also, editor's note on a Voltaire letter from July: "For four years they've wanted to embrace one another, for four years Voltaire has been hesitating to slip into the Prussian beau's heavenly bed. Does he know that sometimes love becomes difficult once one sees each other and grasps each other's hands daily?"

Me: Okay then, Pleschinski! Nobody forced you to phrase it that way I guess. [Yes, okay, he means canopy bed, I just translated too literally. But still.]

--

Other than their relationship troubles, I was very entertained by Voltaire's travel adventures, be it his descriptions of staying at a Prussian residence (?) in Den Haag - There are also books that only rats have read for fifty years, and which are covered with the largest cobwebs in Europe, lest ignorant people approach them. - or his reaction when, on the way to Berlin in November, his carriage breaks down in the middle of nowhere:

A servant goes to one side to ask for help from Westphalians who believe they are being asked to drink; another runs around without knowing where to. Du Molard however, who promises to describe our trip in Arabic and Syrian, is resourceful as if he were not a scholar. He goes to explore, half on foot, half in a cart, and I ride, in velvet breeches, silk stockings and slippers, on a restive horse. [...] On arriving at Herford in this state, the guard asked me my name; I replied, of course, that my name was Don Quixote, and I enter under this name.

And then, once again stuck in the middle of nowhere on his way back, he writes a lot of verses dissing Westphalia, praising Berlin, and then brings Algarotti into the conversation as a virtual third person to adress, just to start dissing Italy. (Quite lewdly, too, not least by using the accusation of sodomy as an insult - against the Venetians in this case - so that's certainly one more data point for his consistency in that regard, what with using it against Fritz later.)

--

Then it's wartime and there are two letters from 1742 that Pleschinski didn't include (possibly too much relationship back and forth) but which I found rather ... illuminating:

Voltaire (May 26th):
[...] I don't like heroes much, they make too much noise;
I hate these conquerors, proud enemies of themselves,
Who in the horrors of fighting
Have placed supreme happiness,
Seeking death everywhere and making suffer
A hundred thousand men, their fellows.
The more their glory shines, the more hateful they are.
O heaven! that I must hate you!
I love you though, despite all this carnage
With which you soiled the fields of our Germans,
Despite all these warriors that your valiant hands
Pass to the dark shore.
You are a hero, but you are a sage;
Your reason curses inhuman exploits
Where you forced your courage;
In the middle of the cannons, on the dead piled up,
Facing death, and focussing victory,
The blood of the unfortunates cementing your glory,
I forgive you everything, if you moan.

I think of humanity, Sire, before thinking of you; but after having, as Abbe de Saint-Pierre, wept over the human race whose terror you become, I give myself up to all the joy that your glory gives me. This glory will be complete if V. M. forces the Queen of Hungary to receive peace, and the Germans to be happy. You are the hero of Germany and the arbiter of Europe; you will be the peacemaker, and our opera prologues will only be for you.
[...] V. M. has not so far deigned to inform the world of the details of this day; you had, I believe, something else to do than relationships; but your modesty is betrayed by a few eyewitnesses, who all say that one owes the victory of the battle only to the excess of courage and prudence that you have shown. They add that my hero is always sensitive, and that the same man who has so many people killed is at the bedside of M. de Rottembourg. This is what you do not say, and which you could nevertheless confess, as things which are all natural to you. [...]

Fritz responds (June 18th):
I hope that, after making my peace with the enemies, I can in turn make it with you. I ask for the Century of Louis XIV to seal it on your part, and I send you the report that I made myself of the last battle, as you ask me.
Rottembourg's health begins to recover; it is entirely out of danger. Do not believe me cruel, but reasonable enough to choose an evil only when it is necessary to avoid a worse one. Any man who decides to have a tooth pulled out, when it is decayed, will fight when he wants to end a war. To spill blood under such circumstances is really to spare it; it is a bleeding given to a delirious enemy, and which gives him back his common sense.

... and then Voltaire writes his ode to MT, so more bickering.

Also: more Émilie bickering, because Fritz is still jealous. At first, the specifics confused me a bit - Fritz insinuates sex, Voltaire gets all huffy - but then I found the following in

cahn's Émilie write-up:

Voltaire: I am too old for sexual relationships, being 47 and all, "the twilight of my days." [He lived to be 83.] Nay, I only want pure love unsullied by physical considerations.
Émilie: I'm not really happy about this, but I love you, so, okay.
D, who happens to be walking by at the moment: He means he doesn't want sex with her, huh?
Voltaire: *has affair with niece*
Émilie: ????
Voltaire: Uh, yeah, D was right. I meant I didn't want sex with you. Um. Open relationship?

Which I guess explains it. I certainly raised a very skeptical eyebrow when I read Voltaire's "I'm so old, I don't have sex anymore, my relationship with Émilie is all virtuous" claim. As did Fritz. Voltaire meanwhile is apparently still insulted that Fritz invited Gresset to Berlin and tells him "why don't you write to young and virile Gresset about his sex life instead (but of course, the guy wasn't man enough to follow your invitation now, was he) ... jealous, who, me? what?". Me: amused.

Me: Well, that didn't take long. Guys, you haven't even spent two weeks in each other's company, calm down?

Not to mention that in between writing these love messages, Fritz kept bitching about Voltaire wanting him to pay his travel expenses and wrote that icy "no court fool was ever so expensive" line to one of his other correspondants, which is Fritz at his most Son-of-FW-like.

And yes, Pleschinski ships them. I spend a couple of days with him last year in a workshop, and he says they totally deserved each other. Mind you, Orieux - who doesn't ship them, because he'd rather have Voltaire had that kind of relationship with French monarch - uses romantic language as well, what with describing Fritz' plan to make Voltaire having to flee France by faking a poem and leaking letters and concluding "then he'd be forced to fall in the arms, or rather paws of his royal admirer".

Incidentally, if you have Audible, there's a one hour special on Fritz and Voltaire Radio Bandenburg did using Pleschinski's edition as the text source (Christian Brückner speaks Voltaire). This is also Pleschinski approved, as opposed to the Walter Jens-Loriot version, about which he has issues.

At first, the specifics confused me a bit - Fritz insinuates sex, Voltaire gets all huffy

In addition to what was going on re: Émilie and Madame Denis, there's another factor to consider here, because the way it came across to me, Fritz was insinuating sex with Émilie was the main reason why Voltaire remained with her instead of moving to Prussia to be with Fritz. Hence Voltaire's reaction.

As you might recall from our various write-ups, Fritz still gossips about Émilie's sex life yeas after her death, and after his breakup with Voltaire, in the middle of the 7 Years War, with the Marquis d'Argens. (When he insists that surely, Émilie/Maupertuis was at the source of Voltaire's turning against Maupertuis.) And of course there's the letter after his first meeting with Voltaire where he's confident he'll woo Voltaire away from her because "my purse is more filled than the Marquise's". (Which shows you how little Fritz knew about who contributed what to the Émilie and Voltaire household; while Voltaire had benefited from Émilie and her husband giving him shelter back when he would have been arrested for a third time, he'd put actually more money into Cirey than the du Chatelets did. That he wanted Fritz to pay his travel expenses was another issue - he had the not unfounded opinion a King could afford this. But Voltaire was that rarity, a wealthy writer, and he had taken care to be not dependent on any single patron for this.)

Anyway, my point here is, Fritz attempting to explain Voltaire/Émilie by sex or money or both shows a frustrated jealous rival.

(Oh, hey, Christian Brückner! Loved his Sayers' audiobooks back in the day.)

because the way it came across to me, Fritz was insinuating sex with Émilie was the main reason why Voltaire remained with her instead of moving to Prussia to be with Fritz. Hence Voltaire's reaction.

Oh, absolutely, I got that vibe from Fritz as well, and so initially, Voltaire's reaction seemed to make some sense, except then he went all "no sex with Émilie at all, how dare you, and anyway, I'm too old for that now" which made me call BS and so I went and checked the records, i.e.

rheinsberg. :D

went and checked the records, i.e.

rheinsberg. :D

I love this. :D

Also, one time

cahn wanted to call BS on something she was reading (or at least question it), and she checked a fic of mine, because she knew I would have put what she was looking for in the author's notes, and sure enough, it was there. I'm still proud that my AO3 author's notes are a historical reference!

Thank you for all the wonderful quotes!

I mean, I'd read about a hundred pages of Voltaire complimenting Fritz by that point and these still stood out.

I actually laughed out loud. ETA: Okay, I just read it again while previewing my comment, and I laughed aloud again. :D

I replied, of course, that my name was Don Quixote, and I enter under this name.

I had run across this anecdote, but had forgotten. Lol!

Algarotti into the conversation as a virtual third person to adress, just to start dissing Italy. (Quite lewdly, too, not least by using the accusation of sodomy as an insult - against the Venetians in this case - so that's certainly one more data point for his consistency in that regard, what with using it against Fritz later.)

Mind sharing the exact quote? I mean, on the one hand, nobody disses Italy more than Algarotti in the 1730s, but considering that Algarotti is a Venetian *and* Voltaire writes a pornographic slash poem to Fritz about Algarotti and the French envoy's secretary Lugeac, comparing them to Socrates and Alcibiades, it's interesting that he breaks it out as an insult on this occasion. This is in 1740, right? The slash porn is from December 1740.

Me: Okay then, Pleschinski! Nobody forced you to phrase it that way I guess. [Yes, okay, he means canopy bed, I just translated too literally. But still.]

As

selenak points out, it's not accidental! He's come out as a Fritz/Voltaire shipper!

This is in 1740, right? The slash porn is from December 1740.

The letter is from December 6th, so I guess he was on a roll? Or did he sent the poem at the same time? It's all in verse, the original French starts here (quote on the next page) and a rough translation of the relevant passage would be:

[Berlin]
Make[s] you forget the fate
of Italy and France.
Of Italy! Algarotti,
How do you find this language?
I see you, struck with outrage,
Look at me as an enemy.
Moderate this boiling courage,
And respond to us as a friend.
[... insults: smelly lagoons, whores, a useless doge, etc]
A soft, weak, infatuated people
Of ignorance and deceit,
Buttocks often chipped[/tattered],
Due to the efforts of the old sin
Which is called sodomy:
Voilá, the sketched portrait
Of the very noble lordship.
Now is this worth, please,
Our adorable Frédéric,
His virtues, his tastes, his homeland?
I make the whole public judge.

He must have been on a roll: the Algarotti poem is dated to December 15, 1740.

Translation MacDonogh's, as he gives it in full, and Blanning only a short excerpt (you can guess which one :P):

Mais quand, chez le gros Valori,
Je vois le tendre Algarotti
Dresser d’une vive embrassade
Le beau Lugeac, son jeune ami,
Je crois voir Socrate affermi
Sur la croupe d’Alcibiade;
Non pas le Socrate entêté,
De sophismes faisant parade,
A l’oeil sombre, au nez épaté,
A front large, à mine enfumée;
Mais Socrate Vénitien,
Aux grands yeux, au nez aquilin
Du bon saint Charles Borromée.
Pour moi, très-désintéressé
Dans les affaires de la Grèce.
Pour Frédéric seul empressé
Je quittais l’étude et maîtresse;
Je m’en étais débarrassé;
Si je volais dans son empire,
Ce fut au doux son de sa lyre;
Mais la trompette m’a chassé.

Whenever, with fat Valori
I see tender Algarotti
Stiffen, with an electric pass,
Lugeac, his young friend so pretty,
I seem to see Socrates at last
Clasped to Alcibiades’ arse;
Not that stubborn Socrates whose
Sophisms showed a man of class,
He of somber eye and snub nose,
With forehead broad and defiant pose;
But a Venetian Socrates
With Roman nose and eyes which tease
Like Charles Borromeo’s, they said.
For me, quite disinterested
In the things that went on in Greece,
For King Fredericks sake alone
I quit my love and lost my peace;
I abandoned all that I own;
If I hurried to his empire,
It was to the soft strains of the lyre;
But the trumpet has sent me home.

So yeah, he goes for the "Venetian" line again.

Voltaire is coming across as one of those "Some of my best friends are gay! (but I'm still a homophobe)" types.

For me, quite disinterested
In the things that went on in Greece,
For King Fredericks sake alone

So basically, gay for Fritz. :P

(For those new here, this is a running semi-joke: we don't think they went beyond hand-kissing or that Voltaire suddenly discovered he was sexually into Fritz, but the sexually-charged romance is undeniable. And just as you can have a het romance without sex, you can have a gay one too. Hence "gay for Fritz".

I started saying it once I discovered the "I have been given in marriage to the King of Prussia" line was made up after the fact to trash Fritz, to which I said, "Look, we all know Fritz is gay, Voltaire; this makes *you* look gay. :P :P :P"

My own thoughts can be summed up in one sentence: someone is still miffed Algarotti got a "come to me at once!" summon in June 1740 and he did not. :)

(And neither of them knew Fritz' old teacher got exactly the same letter, just like Manteuffel and Voltaire got the same golden Socrates-Alcibiades gift. Fritz: thrifty reuser:)

someone is still miffed Algarotti got a "come to me at once!" summon in June 1740 and he did not. :)

AHAHAHAA, yes, you are right!

Fritz is miffed that Voltaire keeps leaving him in the 1740s, Voltaire is miffed he didn't get the immediate invitation, Fritz is miffed Voltaire won't come without Émilie, Voltaire is miffed Fritz won't invite Émilie...

Pleschinski: OTP. They deserve each other.

Fritz: thrifty reuser:)

Fritz: Time is money!

This is so great!

(Also, in between, May 3rd, Fritz tried to put a ring on it?! ;) - May my ring, my dear Voltaire, never leave your finger. This talisman is filled with so many wishes for your person, that it must of necessity bring you happiness)

heeee! This is amazing.

Depuis quatre ans vous êtes ma maîtresse,...
Me: Okay then. There's not even a "like a" before mistress anymore now, I see how it is.

AHAHAHA. I love this. These guys!

Me: Okay then, Pleschinski! Nobody forced you to phrase it that way I guess.

I am delighted by Pleschinski shipping them :D

I admit that I had to look them up because I was unaware of the story.

I forgot to mention, when I did my write-up of Sanssouci, I covered the Temple of Friendship and did a brief overview of the mythological couples depicted there, because even I, semi-Classicist, had forgotten one of the four, and figured there might be other people who could use an intro to the others. Just FYI!

Also, next time I'm at Sanssouci, I'm so using this page plus Selena's write-up as my cheat-sheet. I missed so many things when I was there!

Oh, speaking of which, I recently read in Wilhelmine's memoirs that her father had set up the Marly Gardens (which are now part of the Sanssouci park), and she has no idea why he named them "Marly". To which I thought, she could use this cheat sheet too! If Wikipedia is to be trusted, he named them ironically after Louis XIV's Marly-le-Roi palace. (Ironic because Louis and FW had kind of opposite opinions on conspicuous consumption.)

Heh, I remembered that they were in the Temple and so I did indeed check out your write-up first before I went to wiki for more info. :D

I didn't know that about the Marly Gardens! They've always been connected to the Friedenskirche in my head, which was built much later, so I just assumed the name happened at the same time. (I also just realized that I've had it wrong all this time: it's Marly, self, not Maryl.)
Naming things after Louis XIV stuff seems more like a FI thing to do - maybe FW was making a statement against both FI and Louis by naming a kitchen garden of all things after Marly?

I missed so many things when I was there!

Tell me about it! I actually unearthed my pictures from ten years ago today, and I discovered that apparently, I was mostly interested in taking pretty landscape pictures of the grounds and artsy detail shots and not so much in photographing stuff that might be useful to me right now. Quite the lack of foresight. :P

The tag set is up!

Stollberg-Rilinger MT bio arrived! (It's *huge*.)

I did 25 pages of Wilhelmine. Only 170 to go. You must yell at me to read more this weekend so we can move on to Lehndorff and MT! Also, if I start taking too long and you want to do a Blanning readalong while you wait, I'm game. Or if you get impatient and want to start Lehndorff, I can do Wilhelmine and Lehndorff simultaneously. Just let me know what you want.

cahn, I must warn you, woooow the English version of Wilhelmine's memoirs is bowdlerized. Sometimes it's obvious why, but sometimes I really can't tell--it seems like some random court intrigue that's no worse than most of the others. Otoh, I'm very rarely checking the translation now, so maybe more intrigues are cut than I realize. ;)

Also: I'm very rarely checking the translation now, zomg. :D

Bad news: I owe people comments and emails, and will try to get to them this weekend, but computer time was severely limited today due to a flare-up, and might continue to be limited this weekend. :/ If you don't hear from me, that's why. I even think I would have done more Wilhelmine today if I hadn't been going oowww the whole time. :( (Oh, it occurs to me that does affect my turnaround time on translations: I haven't prepared Lehndorff yet, much less MT. :/)

Edited 2020-10-10 03:39 (UTC)

eeeeee! BTW Circle of Voltaire RPF is showing up in "Uncategorized Fandoms," if you were like me and were all "Wheeeeeere is it????" :)

Yeah, I can see that a whole metric ton of my attention is going to be on Yuletide for a while now, so I will... probably push Blanning off. Again. :P But if I have spare time I'm not spending on Yuletide-adjacent things (ha ha), would love to finally do Blanning.

Are we going to read the memoirs in French/translation? I can already see there is no way I'm keeping up with you in French, even though I have a head start, but I could probably do a mixture of French and English, and it would be my best bet at getting a crack at them.

Which also: there's no reason to prepare MT yet! We have a while to go :P

eeeeee! BTW Circle of Voltaire RPF is showing up in "Uncategorized Fandoms," if you were like me and were all "Wheeeeeere is it????" :

Royal Detective found it immediately! :D Sorry for not saying so. Most of the historical RPF seems to be hanging out there for the time being.

Okay, no Blanning just yet! I'll just push ahead with Wilhelmine (45 pages today, so only...125 to go), and then we'll start Lehndorff.

Are we going to read the memoirs in French/translation?

Of course! I might even start there, because as we've found, I do better with reading things you want to read in the early stages, than with the things I most want to read. Plus I'll have read them relatively recently in German, which will help.

The other thing I'm thinking of starting with is Catt's diary, since we already have an interleaved translation with short paragraphs and short sentences, and the whole thing is only about a hundred pages, and I read sizable chunks of it when proofreading it without a translation. That was what made me start thinking about doing interleaved translations to beef up my French (and then I accidentally did German first, lol).

Then moving on to Wilhelmine--so maybe I'll do Catt on my own first (it might not be your thing?), and then there's a chance I won't need interleaved translations and can just do side-by-side of the professional translations. Possibly with German, since the English translation is so defective. :P

I can already see there is no way I'm keeping up with you in French, even though I have a head start

Do you mean you're starting them before me? Or just generally practicing your French? My French is probably nearly as good as my German at this point; I think I've only recently surpassed my French proficiency. So I'm hoping French will go faster (at the very least, I can skip the whole Duolingo short story stage!), but we'll see. :) I still have a looong way to go before I get through my German reading list.

Which also: there's no reason to prepare MT yet! We have a while to go :P

I know! But I've only got 100 some pages before Lehndorff, so I should get cracking as soon as my body lets me!

Ha, yeah, as soon as I calmed down and read the yuletide_admin post I promptly found it and all the other RPF :) Interesting that this doesn't seem to have happened last year.

Lol, I may be forsworn on my promise to finish Oster by the time you finish the memoirs! Though mostly because the new Megan Whalen Turner is out, so I'm rereading all the previous ones, and they're really good but I keep just reading those instead of my Oster homework :P

Hmm,

selenak, how is the Voltaire bio in terms of readability? Because that's what I really want to read that's in French :P (I'd rather read that than Wilhelmine's memoirs, honestly, which I wasn't even able to finish in English -- although of course this was sans fistulas :P )

I... have to say that I'm not at all interested in reading Catt :P

I was under the vague impression that my French reading was a bit better than yours, but that could very well be incorrect :) I have been doing a bit of Petit Prince to practice (it turns out I have the English translation all but memorized, so it's basically like proceeding with an interleaved translation) but it has fallen by the wayside lately due to all this other stuff :)

The Voltaire bio by Orieux - it's stylishly written but also very of its time (would probably come across as mannered if encountering this style at first), and above all, really long (over 1000 pages at least in the German translation), so I'm not sure I'd recommend to you for French practice. If you want to read something Voltairian themed in French, have you considered the Fritz correspondance in the original? This has the advantage that Mildred already did the English translation alogorithms for you to counterchek if you get stuck.

Yeah, this might be something I read in English (eventually?) - the correspondence does sound interesting!

Lol, I may be forsworn on my promise to finish Oster by the time you finish the memoirs

Hee, weeelll, I'm still not caught up on Oster comments! I'm also so far behind on salon comments that idk when I'm going to finish Wilhelmine. Selena continues to be a firehose of information and entertainment to read and respond to, and now that my concentration is coming back, I've been reading in English some more, which means I have way more things I want to share with you guys, and also German studies and detective findings and Lehndorff formatting/translation and Yuletide coming up and

felis leaving comments on my fics that I want to reply to and tigers and bears oh my!

Lehndorff! Speaking of Lehndorff, I'm hoping to finish Wilhelmine this week, so I've started work on converting it, in hopes of having it ready this weekend.

cahn, do you want shorter paragraphs? Because if so, given my computer limitations this week, the sheer number of comments I'm behind on, and the fact that I don't need shorter paragraphs any more (woot!), this is going to have to count as a translation favor, sorry. :/

I... have to say that I'm not at all interested in reading Catt :P

Didn't think you were!

I need to go meet my German quota before bed, and I'm waaaaay behind on things I want to say *weep* and it's going to be worse when I wake up, and I'm nowhere near being read to start French readalongs (2021 at this rate), so let us plan our French campaign some other time! But I'm looking forward to it!

...yeah, there's no way I'd be ready to do French before 2021. November and December are historically just really really busy times for me, even laying aside that I plan to do a loooooot less for Yuletide than I did last year (and just enjoy all the fic that other people in our fandom write) :P :)

Very important question buried in that wall of text: do you want shorter Lehndorff paragraphs, and are you willing to have that count as your translation favor?

Lol, whoops, I started that comment meaning to reply to it, too :P No, that's OK, I'm not going to be reading it in German anyway so longer paragraphs are fine.

Update: Lehndorff on Friday, if all goes well tomorrow. :D

Where "all" means both "I finish reading the last 20 or so pages of Wilhelmine's memoirs" (woot) and "I finish formatting the Lehndorff volume, which I'm about halfway done with."

ETA: And I'm also successfully chipping away at comments, but if you read a bunch of books recently and did lengthy write-ups and left me questions involving detective work (you know who you are ;)), I might not get to them until this weekend, just be warned.

And if you replied to my comment on reading pedagogy in a non-Fritz post (you know who you are), I have a reply in my head, but don't hold your breath waiting for it. ;)

Edited 2020-10-15 03:29 (UTC)

Yeah, and meanwhile I'm getting farther and farther behind :P And I won't get caught up tonight as I have to do some work this evening, though I'll try to at least make a start. Maybe this weekend :)

(On the other hand, I have finished all the Thief books now, so I will be able to read other things :PP )

Lehndorff is in the library! I'm going to try to read some before bed, but as you can see, I didn't get the files created until late, so I might not meet my quota. ;)

I also did my Yuletide signup!

ETA: Also, since I programmatically inserted the year at the beginning of each paragraph, and since some entries have more than one paragraph, there are many paragraphs that only have the year indicated, and you have to scroll back to figure out the day and/or month. (Those are written in various ways, and much harder to programmatically manipulate.) But at least you always know what year it is! (Bar the last 6 years, in which there are only a few entries for the whole 6 years.)

Edited 2020-10-17 02:01 (UTC)

I will give you a one-time pass for not meeting your quota because I want to keep up with you too :P I have still not finished Oster, but now that I have finished my epic Thief readthrough I am planning on it, though now that you're starting Lehndorff I am really wanting to read along there.

I kind of spent the last 3.5 hours giving Royal Patron stories from our fandom in return for some articles. :D But after I eat, I shall do more Lehndorff!

Oh, and, I do totally intend to read the prefatory material (I promise, Selena!), but I admit I skipped straight to the diaries last night, because I'm so excited about reading Lehndorff, so you should totally do the same, and at some point we will calm down and go back to the prefaces. (Although, it occurs to me you can skim, at least; I have to work for every sentence. :P)

Btw, Royal Patron development: I was telling him about AW, and had to explain who he was. Then later on in the conversation, I referred again to AW, and to check that he understood who I was talking about, Royal Patron said, "The one Fritz treated as the family stud?" and from then on we just called AW the Stud, and we laughed every time. :D

Also, I emailed RP 7 maps during our conversation, and we sat down and went over them together. He's getting an education out of his patronage! (I'm taking him to Sanssouci someday, and, since I do not drive, making him drive me from there to Küstrin and Wust and probably Rheinsberg, we've already agreed on that. :P Although we do not know WHEN, grr.)

Tag set: I saw!

Stollberg-Rilinger: take your time, I'd advise, because it's really academic German. Don't get me wrong, the biography has a lot of useful info, but it's written in a dry style, not least since our biographer keeps establishing 18th century context, and with, as I said, very academic vocabulary. Better do the other stuff first.

Wilhelmine: now I'm curious (being familiar only with the German version, of course). We've already seen the English versions censored the Dresden visit in part 1 and SD & Charlotte talking of fistula in EC's anus in part 2- can you tell me another especially notabl example of English bowlederizatiaon? (Also: does this mean 19th century Germans were less censorious than 19th century Brits and Amerians? Given which nation had to deal with state censorship and which one prides itself on free speech, I find that, shall we say, iiiinnteresting.

Lehndorff is definitely next on the list, after Wilhelmine, and Krockow at the same time. Possibly some Horowski, depending on how things are going. Then MT. So hopefully by then I'll be ready, because academic German is exactly what I need to learn to read!

(My short-term motivation for learning German is of course Fritz ~~and Katte~~, the reason I'm buckling down is that my long-term motivation is to be able to read academic German when I want to. I'll never have this much short-term motivation again, so if I ever want to be able to develop my German skills to where they should have been when I finished grad school, I have to do it now.)

Wilhelmine: now I'm curious (being familiar only with the German version, of course). We've already seen the English versions censored the Dresden visit in part 1 and SD & Charlotte talking of fistula in EC's anus in part 2- can you tell me another especially notabl example of English bowlederizatiaon?

Well, there's two kinds of bowdlerization that I'm seeing: one where it's really obviously prudishness at work, and one where I'm not really sure what's going on.

So, like, when the Emperor and Empress visit the baths because they only have living daughters and they're hoping for an improvement in her fertility for the sake of an heir, our English translator just says, "They visited the baths! Because of reasons." Literally,

The emperor and empress visited Carlsbad at this time, to take the benefit of the baths and mineral waters.

Whereas the German, page 267 in the Kindle copy, has

Der Kaiser und die Kaiserin begaben sich ungefähr um diese Zeit nach Karlsbad, um dort eine Bade- und Trinkkur zu gebrauchen. Sie hatten nur drei Prinzessinnen; der Erzherzog war im Jahre 1716 gestorben. Man hoffte, daß die Bäder, die als der Fruchtbarkeit sehr zuträglich galten, der Kaiserin zu einem Erzherzog verhelfen und so der Wunsch des gesamten Reiches sich erfüllen würde.

But then there's Wilhelmine's lying-in. And I get that references to her pregnancy have to be cut. But if

Wir schrieben Ende Juni, und im August sollte ich niederkommen.

can be translated

It was now the end of June. I reckoned upon being brought to bed in the month of August.

Then I don't see why everything from Da ich am Ende des Monats niederkommen sollte und wir den siebenten hatten, meinte der König, es sei nun so weit,Er fand mich sehr elend und verabreichte mir fürs erste eine Dosis seiner wunderbaren Pillen, has to be cut. Then, just to show you how aggressive the cutting is, the entire love affair between Grumbkow's niece? and Wilhelmine's brother-in-law is cut on page 279, everything between Der Hof von Ansbach hielt sich noch einige Tage länger bei uns auf and Durch die Abreise des Ansbachschen Hofes wurde diese Sorge wieder von mir genommen, inclusive.

But okay, one is medical and one is a love affair. But what I really don't understand is cutting everything between Der Markgraf mit dem Prinzen, seinem Bruder, nahmen tags darauf Abschied von mir, da sie nach Himmelkron gehen wollten" and Ew. Königliche Hoheit ihm einen Boten senden, muß man sich nach ihm richten.«, inclusive, and then everything between Herr von Voigt machte sich alsbald auf den Weg nach Berlin; and Er war mit der Zusammenstellung sehr zufrieden, und einen Augenblick später verließ er mich on page 283.

That last bit means that you lose Wilhelmine telling her father-in-law she may never see him again, the drama around him wanting to be informed by cannon shots instead of reports, and then the part where that goes wrong because the winds are contrary and the cannons are misplaced, and then he's upset about not finding out, then the part where the baby has to be baptized on the third day, and Wilhelmine picking the godparents.

I mean, there are two references to "Niederkunft," lying in, just as a marker of time, but since we've already seen that translated as "brought to bed," I don't see why we had to lose almost 4 pages because of it, including the decision of which family members got to be godparents.

???

You can look up the full passages, or I can copy-paste them if you want, and tell me if you see why all that was cut, but it seems a bit extreme to me. Love affair, okay; announcing the birth of a child--okay?; baptism and godparents--what?

(Also: does this mean 19th century Germans were less censorious than 19th century Brits and Amerians?

Evidently, but let's not forget why I'm reading the German: because neither the English nor the French edition I was looking at had the fistulas, and you told me the German did. Looking more closely, this 1810 French edition was published in Brunswick, and omits the *entire* trash-talking scene of EC, including the foolish laugh and the "only says yes or no." Brunswick honor at stake here!

So everyone cuts something different, I guess. :D

Btw,

cahn, I did find a French version with fistulas, so when we go to tackle it in French, we should be good. :)

Given which nation had to deal with state censorship and which one prides itself on free speech, I find that, shall we say, iiiinnteresting.

Well, I would argue that social customs regarding bodily functions and and political freedom of speech are two totally different things. I'm much more ready to tell you my unfavorable opinions about my current president than about my bowel movements, and that bit of self-censorship has nothing to do with my first amendment rights. ;)

ETA: I forgot to mention, one key scene that got cut from the English translation of Wilhelmine's memoirs that I wanted to share was the one where she gets accused by her father-in-law of faking her pregnancy. Because not marrying into the Hannovers is no guarantee you'll be spared this fate.

At least her husband didn't drag her by carriage to another palace while she was in labor?

Edited 2020-10-11 03:12 (UTC)

True, and her mother-in-law was first locked up and then in Scandinavia, instead of around and loudly doubting her husband could sire children at all.

As to the bowlderization: honestly? I suspect the non-prudery cuts were because some editor at the English publisher's said: Nobody knows who these people are anymore anyway, these memoirs are getting read because of the Fritz related stuff, so cut down the rest where you can.

I did know some of the 1810 French version was cut. Keep in mind it got still accused of being a an evil anti Hohenzollern forgery until people could check out the manuscript. This wasn't as far fetched as it sounds; in the 18th century, faked memoirs of Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV's mistress and morganatic wife, were published, and it took a while until they were identified as false. Voltaire said so from the start, but Voltaire was biased since he'd just published his "Age of Louis XIV", and this would have been a major source to have missed, had they been the real deal. Also, there was the famous Ossian fraud. So you could forgive people reacting to "check out the memoirs of Frederick the Great's favourite sister, making her entire family sound nuts!" with "aha, forgers strike again!". And that's before we get to the part where Prussian spirits were really low ever since Napoleon had defeated Prussia at Jena and Auerstedt, thus shattering the leftover nimbus of "The army of Frederick the Great".

As to the bowlderization: honestly? I suspect the non-prudery cuts were because some editor at the English publisher's said: Nobody knows who these people are anymore anyway, these memoirs are getting read because of the Fritz related stuff, so cut down the rest where you can.

You'd think, but if so, why did they cut a reference to Fritz (being godfather to his niece) in favor of reams and reams of intrigues between obscure people that I've been slogging through the last few days, and that are the reason that

cahn and I never made it all the way through volume 2 in English? I decided to read this in German right now solely because the only way I will ever force myself to read volume 2 line by line is if I'm getting language practice out of it. :P

This wasn't as far fetched as it sounds; in the 18th century, faked memoirs of Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV's mistress and morganatic wife, were published, and it took a while until they were identified as false...Also, there was the famous Ossian fraud. So you could forgive people reacting to "check out the memoirs of Frederick the Great's favourite sister, making her entire family sound nuts!" with "aha, forgers strike again!"

Yep!

Ossian fraud:

cahn, this was a collection of poems on ancient Irish mythology (Oisín, the son of Finn McCool) that were published in the mid-18th century by a Scottish guy, who claimed they were from ancient manuscripts he found, but he would never produce. A *huge* debate raged on whether they were real or whether he made them up. Consensus: there was no manuscript, the poetry was 18th century, the material was based on oral traditions that were older.

This is not unlike what happened with the Kalevala, except Lönnrot, though he may have underreported the extent of his own involvement in composition, never claimed he had an ancient manuscript, but actually said he was collecting older songs and working them into a single national epic. Disclaimer: I am not an expert on the Kalevala and am only reporting what I've read: although he acknowledged turning multiple oral songs into a written single epic, he may have invented more than he let on.

At any rate, if the Ossian guy (*googles* MacPherson) had acknowledged what he was doing instead of trying to pass it off as an ancient manuscript, there wouldn't have been this big controversy and we wouldn't be using the word "fraud"! And people would have told him he was a good poet, but no, he wanted to claim antiquity. (Which tells you something about society's priorities: people want folklore and mythology to be really old.)

Also, in this particular case: the the Scots were in a situation where the last uprising had been violently quelled and the Highlander gear forbidden, where there was increasing anti-Scots and anti-Northern English feeing in the English south. (I mentioned the Boswell recorded incident when the returning from the 7 Years War soldiers from the Highlander Regiment get booed and hissed at in a London theatre with cries of "No Scots! No Scots!"; as they said to Boswell, "if these were French, could they have done worse?". Scots bashing was en vogue, not just by Tories like Johnson but also by liberal radicals like John Wilkes. (Because of Lady Mary's son-in-law, the PM Lord Bute, who was a Northerner and accused of sleeping with G3's Mom Augusta without any basis for this whatsoever other than G3 treating Lord Bute as a father figure. So if you were writing against the government, you more often than not did not just bash the PM but all Scots while you were at it.) Scots they were constantly told how much lesser they were, accused of being a burden on English tax payers and having nothing to compare to the great English cultural heritage. So the "discovery" of supposedly ancient Gaelic verses by a Scotsman that had nothing to do with Anglosaxon heritage was considered one big identity/heritage booster, too.

(Incidentally:remember George Keith giving Boswell his copy about an actual old Scottish epic about Robert the Bruce, to be read once a year? That's in this spirit, too.)

Just to show how things change just in a few decades, with Sir Walter Scott deserving much of the credit: with his novels, labelled as fiction and specifically his own fiction, he made Scottish history very popular in England. To the degree that when G4, the former Prince Regent, visited Scotland (first Hannover King to do so), Sir Walter Scott got him to wear a Highlander kilt. In public. A King of the House of Hannover, whose great uncle, Billy the Butcher Cumberland, had quelled the 45 uprising with war crimes, after which the wearing of kilts had been strictly forbidden. From this point onwards at the latest, Scotland wasn't the land of primitive boo-hiss worthy barbarians anymore, it was the romantic country of heroes, and of years yet two more decades later you get young Victoria and Albert building themselves a holiday home there, Balmoral, where the royal family holidays to this day, and the English singing Auld Lang Syne on New Year.

Edited 2020-10-13 05:32 (UTC)

:D I had actually heard of the Ossian fraud before (my history: I probably have not heard of whatever-it-is unless it involves Celtic literature in some way) but I had forgotten about it :) (But I know almost nothing about the Kalevala except that I have to read it at some point because The Raven Tower is based on it :P )

Since Mildred reminded me, and since Stabi is open for business again, I went and got a couple of books, among them: "Andrew Mitchell and the Anglo-Prussian Diplomataic Relations During the Seven Years War", the republished 1972 doctoral thesis by Patrick Francis Doran. (That was the gentleman giving us the "the Prussian Lord Hervey, though without that lord's malice or style" description of Lehndorff.)

As expected by the excerpts which are online, this is informative. Most of it is about the war from a British pov and all the various twists and turns coming from the various government changes (Newcastle-Pitt-Bute) as well as the G2 to G3 change. I will say that it looks like Hervey was dead-on in just how much G2 was emotionally committed to his Elector of Hannover identity, which made him extremely uncomfortable being in a war against the Emperor, even aside from the fact he didn't trust Prussian Nephew as far as he could throw him and suspected Son of FW to have designs on Hannover. (Sadly, Doran doesn't say whether he ever got a copy of Heinrich's and AW's RPG.) When G2 was staying in Hannover in 1755, Fritz hinted he could visit, and G2 was all NO NO NO DO NOT WANT to his ministers, who had to tone it down and massage it into a diplomatic reply. Generally speaking, "British envoy in Berlin" from the later FW years onwards until Mitchell was considered a lousy job. To illustrate just how strained Anglo-Prussian relations had been pre 1756:

At the time of Mitchell's appointment Britain had been without diplomatic represantation in Berlin, apart from the short and ill-fated mission of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams in 1750-51, since Henry Legge's even shorter stay there in 1758. The recall of Jean-Henri D'Andrie, who was Prussian minister in London from 1738 to 1747, left Prussian representation there in the hands of a secretary of legation. Hanbury Williams, who was at his post less than eight months, succeded in that short space of time in m aking himself persona non grata with the king and with court. (And then he went to Vienna and became the sole envoy managing to piss off both Fritz and MT in equal measure. Whereupon he was transfered to St. Petersburg where he enabled the Catherine/Poniatowiski affair and negotiated the Anglo-Russian treaty which became ready for signing just when the Diplomatic Revolution happened.)

Hanbury Williams (...) gave it as his considered opinion that "It was better to be a monkey in the island of Borneo than to be a minister at Berlin". (...) In 1747 Lord Chesterfield, speaking from his experience as secretary of state, and ith the friction between Hannover and Prussia in mind, believed that 'whoever went to Berlin must be a very unhappy man between the two courts". Sir Luke Schaub (...) took the view that a minister who was capable of holding the post of British envoy in Berlin deserved to habe statues erected to him both in the United Provinces and in Britain.

Enter our hero from Scotland. Though alas, given how Anglo-Prussian relations went downhill again from the last years of the war (and Bute ending the subsidies to Fritz) onwards, he lived to see his good work undone. In the end, he got not a statue but a bust in a now destroyed Berlin church and, Doran thinks, was an unhappy man (professionally, though Doran allows he was fine with his friends in Berlin). This being a doctoral thesis from 1971, there is not the slightest bit of speculation about Mitchell's orientation, let alone the "you shall be the tastiest dish when we have supper" quote from Algarotti's ltter. Before I proceed to the potentially useful for fanfic Mitchell life dates this book gives us, some more details I hadn't gotten from the Bisset-edited Mitchell papers:

- Mitchell, due to being on the front lines with Fritz, was one of the few who got to know Eichel and get alone with him well - until later 1758, which was when Mitchell went from distructing Heinrich to hanging out with Heinrich more and more, and Eichel (who apparantly was the "loyal only to the monarch and no one else" type - when FW ruled, this was FW, when Fritz ruled, it was Fritz) became distrustful of Mitchell and considered him contaminated by Heinrich's Fritz-critical opinions

- someone in Vienna had a sharp sense of humor: while G2 was busy lamenting he'd been forced in an alliance against the Emperor, he got a letter reminding him that as Elector of Hannover, he was obliged to send troops to the war effort now that Fritz was officially under Reichsbann; G2's immediate reaction is not on record

- when G3 (born in Britain, no interest in Hannover) came to the throne, both Brits and Prussians first were very relieved and thought this meant Hannover stopped being of much, or any importance, but then the second Miracle happened, Lord Bute thought it was a great time to save money and cut the subsidies, and Fritz then wrote a letter to cousin G3 which G3 called the most impertinent and insulting letter he ever read, felt personally enraged and from this point onwards loathed Fritz as well. (G3, you have the American rebels still ahead of you, calm down.)

- Doran points out Fritz lucked out that his much cherished scheme to get the Turks into an alliance so they'd attack either the Russians or Austrians or preferably both came to nothing, because if Russia had been in a war with Turkey when Peter III. came to the throne, even (P)RussianPete surely could not have switched allegiances

- Fritz never bothered to tell the English about his intermittent use of Wilhelmine, Voltaire, Heinrich to sound out the French for a separate peace; meanwhile, the Brits didn't tell him about their intermittent attempt to get MT into an anti-Bourbon team up by offering her Naples (which they didn't have, and which, reminder, was ruled by an offspring of the Spanish Bourbons who in turn were a branch of the French Bourbons) (Mt: No thanks; I'm going to marry my daughter to the King of Naples instead)

- during the campaign free winter months at Dresden, Leipzig and Magdeburg, Mitchell busied himself learning German and befriended both Gottsched (remember him?) and Gellert (whom he persuaded Fritz to give an audience and a pension to); that he, a foreigner, showed more interest in the German language and literature than Fritz was not lost on either Gottsched or Gellert.

Mitchell dates:

Born in Edingburgh 15 April 1708, one of three children of the Rev. William Mitchell, who was VERY interested in money and was by the time he died in 1727 not just one of the most influential leaders of the Scottish church but also one of its wealthiest divines.

1722: Arranging for his fourteen years old son to marry his ten years old cousin Barbara MItchell and marrying her mother one year later was all about Barbara being the heiress of the Aberdeenshire estate of Thainston. In short, Mitchell Snr. was like the villain of a Robert Louis Stevenson tale.

1723: Andrew enters Edinburgh University, where David Hume is one of his classmates; also Boswell's dad Alexander Boswell, future Lord Auchinleck

1725: Andrew articled to an advocate

1726: poor Barbara the 14 years old dies of the birth of a daughter; the daughter dies while still an infant, when exactly, we don't know, but before Andrew leaves Scotland.

1727: Mitchell Snr. dies. Andrew inherits all, which means he's a well-off man for his remaining life.

1729: Andrew leaves Scotland, first for a few months of London, then on his Grand Tour, which will take years (btw, this is the same year Hervey returns from his second European Tour and becomes Vice Chamberlain); for the remainder of the year, he travels through the Netherlands and Germany

1730: Andrew resumes his studies, enroles at the law faculty i nLeyden where he spends two semesters (this means he's in the Netherlands when Peter Keith hightails it out of Prussia); (studying in the Netherlands for two terms was also what Boswell did before embarking on his Grand Tour, when I read this bit, I thought, that sounds familiar)

July 1731: Andrew goes from the Netherlands to Paris where he remains until the beginning of 1732, at which point he sets out on a leisurely tour through France and Italy (where he meets Algarotti)

September 1734: Andrew back in Paris, where he stays for the remaining year and most of 1735

End of 1735: Andrew Mitchell returns to Britain.

(This meant he really had spend considerable time abroad, and was "proficient" in French and Italian.)

1736 - Mitchell resumes his law studies; he's admitted as a meber of the Faculty of Advocates in Scotland; he's also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society

1738 - Mitchell called to the English Bar; Algarotti stays at his house in Pall Mall during his first trip to England

1740 - Mitchell gains a seat at the council of the Royal Society

1741 - Mitchell becomes private secretary to the fourth Marquess of Tweeddale (again, what a name!) and is made undersecretary for Scotland when Tweeddale is appointed Secretary of State for Scotland in 1742

January 1746 - Tweeddale is forced into resigning, which means Mitchell also loses his job; he considers running in the general election in the next year as MP

April 1747: the MP for Aberdeenshire, Sir Arthur Forbes of Craigievar offers to stand down in Mitchell's favor so he can run for his seat; Mitchell accepts gratefully but pisses off the Duke of Argyll who runs a candidate against him, though said candidate stands down a week before the election; Mitchell wins the seat

1752: Mitchell at his first diplomatic post, as one of the two commissaries appointed to negotiate in Brussels the dispute over the Treaty of Barrier (which was from 1715 (it was about maritime trading privileges, inevitably)

1754: due to government changes, MItchell does not seek reelection for Aberdeenshire, but he does run and gets elected for the Elgin burghs, and will hold that seat for the rest of his life

March 174: Robert, Earl of Holdernesse and pal of Mitchell's, gets transfered from the southern depatment of the Secretaryship of State to the Northern department

Summer of 1755: Holdernesse tries unsuccessfully to get Mitchell appointed as envoy to Vienna

end of January 1756: Mitchell appointed by Newcastle at the suggestion of Holderness as envoy to Berlin.

This is SO GREAT. It's too bad it wasn't actually published in 2019, but even 1972 information that's new to us is good.

in 1755, Fritz hinted he could visit, and G2 was all NO NO NO DO NOT WANT to his ministers, who had to tone it down and massage it into a diplomatic reply

ROTFL

This is how Blanning describes this episode, while recounting Anglo-Prussian relations leading up to the Seven Years' War:

Fortunately, relations with Uncle George (II) had thawed slightly from their normal state of deep freeze. Back in 1751 Frederick had gone out of his way to upset him by sending the Jacobite Earl Marischal George Keith to Versailles as Prussian ambassador. When his foreign minister, Podewils, asked how George might react, Frederick replied coarsely, “I don’t give a fuck!” 86 In late 1754, however, the two kings had cooperated to contain the damage to the Protestant party in the Holy Roman Empire threatened by the conversion of the Crown Prince of Hessen-Kassel to Catholicism. The ice was dissolved further when Frederick traveled across Germany to his territories in the west in May 1755, passing close to George, who was in residence at Herrenhausen. Although the two kings did not meet, amicable messages were exchanged.

Amicable messages thanks to the underappreciated ministers, I see.

Blanning continues:

Frederick also used a visit by the Duchess of Brunswick to the Hanoverian court, on a matrimonial mission of her own, to convey informally the assurance that he would never attack his uncle’s territories.

Fritz: Just in case you had any concerns on that front, or anything.

G2: Thanks, I guess. Your word is as good as gold!

The recall of Jean-Henri D'Andrie, who was Prussian minister in London from 1738 to 1747, left Prussian representation there in the hands of a secretary of legation.

Note: this is when the Brits suggest Peter Keith, and Fritz is all NO NO NO DO NOT WANT about the idea. :P

Mitchell, due to being on the front lines with Fritz, was one of the few who got to know Eichel and get alone with him well - until later 1758, which was when Mitchell went from distructing Heinrich to hanging out with Heinrich more and more, and Eichel (who apparantly was the "loyal only to the monarch and no one else" type - when FW ruled, this was FW, when Fritz ruled, it was Fritz) became distrustful of Mitchell and considered him contaminated by Heinrich's Fritz-critical opinions

Oohh, this is very neat! It's not the least bit surprising of Eichel, but it is new information. Also, Mitchell getting to know him, that *is* a coup!

G2's immediate reaction is not on record

Lol. I still remember Lavisse saying it was a pity that FW's alliance with France never got him into this position vis-a-vis the Emperor.

Mitchell dates:

Woot! This is going in the chronology! This is soooo great, thank you so much.

1730: Andrew resumes his studies, enroles at the law faculty i nLeyden where he spends two semesters (this means he's in the Netherlands when Peter Keith hightails it out of Prussia); (studying in the Netherlands for two terms was also what Boswell did before embarking on his Grand Tour, when I read this bit, I thought, that sounds familiar)

Neat!

In 1747 Lord Chesterfield, speaking from his experience as secretary of state, and ith the friction between Hannover and Prussia in mind, believed that 'whoever went to Berlin must be a very unhappy man between the two courts".

So I know that the Prussian report says that Chesterfield wasn't home when Keith showed up, but he returned to Britain in 1732 and married Aunt Melusine's daughter (possible lover of Katte) Petronella in 1733, and Peter was evidently in London around 1734-1736, so...I wonder if Peter thanked him for his staff's role in saving his life, and if they got to know each other, and if Chesterfield, who was busy expressing opinions on the state of Anglo-Prussian diplomacy in 1747, was interested in getting Keith sent to Britain that year. It's tenuous, but it's possible.

In sum, I've been waiting for this write-up, and, as always,

selenak you are the very best.

So I was googling Chesterfield (his envoy reports exist, but I haven't turned up digitized copies yet), and I found this letter he wrote on December 12, 1730, in which he writes,

The King of [sic!] Prussia in the oath he prepared for the Prince to swallow, among many other things, has made him swear that he will never believe in the doctrine of Predestination! A very unnecessary declaration in my mind for any body who has misfortune of being acquainted with him to make, since he himself is a living proof of free-will, for Providence can never be supposed to have pre-ordained such a creature!

You go, Chesterfield!

Gread quote. Hervey has some dissings of Chesterfield in his memoirs - they were competing wits, and also the Whigs were split in two factions; Chesterfield, after early on being part of the Robert Walpole faction, then changed his mind and joined the other faction, going as far as anonymously publishing a journal called "Old England" trashing Walpole and G2, so he and Hervey were political enemies as well. But even Hervey admits the man knew how to coin a phrase.

(Doctor Johnson had a famous clash with Chesterfield years later and said apropos the "Letters to his son" that Chesterfield's idea of being a gentleman clearly involved having the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing master.)

Haaa, love the quote. Certainly makes one interested in reading the rest of his reports.

It also touches on something that's been irritating me since I first read it: FW's opposition to predestination, and the fact that he made it such an important part of Frederick's submission. Because as far as I know, FW was a calvinist, and Calvin's doctrine was clearly pro predestination, so I don't quite get it. Did he just not care about the doctrine in this case and his opposition is all personal and a result of his conflict with Fritz, as in: Fritz discovering it as a clever argument against him, saying that everything he is/does/likes is predestined by God, so why would his father fault him for it? Certainly comes across that way. (It's an argument to irritate his father for sure, but it's also interesting in the context of Fritz trying to make sense of himself I think.)

And of course Fritz, submission or not, argues for predestination again, early on in his correspondence with Voltaire, while Voltaire obviously takes the free will side. It's very much a philosophical instead of a theological argument with him, though, because since Fritz doesn't believe in an immortal soul, the whole post-death part of salvation/damnation is clearly irrelevant to him.

The answer to this is veeery interesting, but due to physical limitations around computer use, I'll let

selenak take this one, while I go study German. :)

FW being against the predestination doctrine predates his conflict with Fritz, and indeed predates Fritz’ existence. To summ up a longer tale, Tiny Terror FW was an unruly kid terrorizing his teachers until Mom and Dad gave him a really strict Calvinist teacher (despite being lax believers themselves). Thereafter, FW was a strict Calvinist living in religious terror especially due to the predestination doctrine, and argued himself into thinking in this particular case, Luther was right, not Calvin. But it continued to trouble him throughout his life and kept coming up.

Ergo: Fritz could have found no surer way to strike at Dad under the guise of submission (since he was reading religious books and talking with the preacher, as demanded) than to declare himself a believer in predestination. Aside from that, it also was a way to justify himself. (I.e. assert his individuality - if God had meant him to be the way he was, etc.). But seriously, Predestination was a life long terror to FW, and anyone who knew him personally knew that.

OH. Well. So in a way, personal reasons indeed, just a lot more extensive than I expected. Very interesting indeed, thank you.

HA! This is hilarious!

LOL on Blanning's whitewashing of G2's attitude towars Wretched Nephew.
G2: I just don't like younger relations called Fritz, okay? They're never up to any good.

Note: this is when the Brits suggest Peter Keith, and Fritz is all NO NO NO DO NOT WANT about the idea. :P

To fully appreciate how utterly insulting to Peter Keith (and also somewhat insulting to the Brits in terms of how serious he took relations with them until 1756) this is, get this: the Legationssekretär in GB was one Abraham Michell (yes, Michell, just to make life easier for us), whom Fritz had never met, who had, in fact, never visited Prussia in his life, and about whom it's unclear whether he even had taken the customary oath of loyalty to Prussia when becoming the previous envoy's secretary. The previous envoy had also been a Swiss (but at least one who' dbeen to Berlin and was known to people there), and Michell had joined Prussian service through this backdoor. When Podewils suggested raising him from Legationssekretär to minister, rank wise, now that he was full time envoy, Fritz said no, he'd demand a bigger salary then, and Fritz was all about saving money. And Michell - who, again, no one in Berlin knew and who never had visited any part of Prussia in his life - remained on the job.

...I do hope Peter never learned the Brits had asked for him, or at least not who the alternate candidate was. Also, again, date wise: This decision was made in 1747; within two years, after Hans Hermann's half brothers killed each other, Fritz intervenes in Katte family affair and gets cousin Ludolf a rich heiress.

Chesterfield: it is, indeed, possible, but like I said, I REALLY HOPE HE DIDN'T TELL PETER:

Edited 2020-10-11 11:32 (UTC)

LOL on Blanning's whitewashing of G2's attitude towars Wretched Nephew.

It may not be deliberate whitewashing! Maybe he only read the diplomatic versions. After all, those ministers are getting paid for *something*, and that includes successful spin doctoring.

get this: the Legationssekretär in GB was one Abraham Michell (yes, Michell, just to make life easier for us), whom Fritz had never met, who had, in fact, never visited Prussia in his life, and about whom it's unclear whether he even had taken the customary oath of loyalty to Prussia when becoming the previous envoy's secretary.

Oh, gosh. So I was with Fritz that Peter might not be the person you'd want for hardcore negotiations, but if the alternative is this guy, and no formal envoy? In a way, though, that almost makes it better: clearly this has less to do with Peter and more to do with 1) Fritz being cheap, 2) Fritz not giving a damn about British relations.

...It's a balance-of-powers miracle that Fritz ended up with any allies at all in 1756. :P

This decision was made in 1747; within two years, after Hans Hermann's half brothers killed each other, Fritz intervenes in Katte family affair and gets cousin Ludolf a rich heiress.

Yep, I was thinking of this. No wonder my fictional Peter is so insecure in 1750. :/

Chesterfield: it is, indeed, possible, but like I said, I REALLY HOPE HE DIDN'T TELL PETER:

Let's hope it went like this.

British: Sound out Fritz.
British: Get a thumbs down.
British: Decide there's no point in telling Peter.

Let's also hope Peter was happier as Academy curator anyway.

Well, he had Ariane and his friends there, and while presumably he'd have taken his wife and children with him if he'd had to move to London as envoy, it would have meant uprooting again.

British: Decide there's no point in telling Peter.

It did strike me that when after August III's death Heinrich was considered a candidate for next King of Poland, Fritz told the Polish delegation not just no but forbade them to mention it to Heinrich, who indeed dit not find out until visiting Catherine seven years later. So maybe he told the Brits not to tell Peter, either, which would have saved Peter from feeling rejected all over again.

Lehndorff: This is why all right-thinking people are indignant on your behalf, Sir. But I'm honored to know you anyway.

Well, he had Ariane and his friends there, and while presumably he'd have taken his wife and children with him if he'd had to move to London as envoy, it would have meant uprooting again.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

So maybe he told the Brits not to tell Peter, either, which would have saved Peter from feeling rejected all over again.

Good point re Heinrich. I would guess it depends on whether Fritz thinks Keith was scheming, in which case he needs a firm "no, and stop it," or whether it was all the British, in which case he doesn't want to give Peter ideas. Since his letter says he's leaning toward the latter, let's hope he went, "No, and don't bring this up with Keith ever!"

Lehndorff: This is why all right-thinking people are indignant on your behalf, Sir. But I'm honored to know you anyway.

<3 you quoting from my fic!

Oohh, this is very neat! It's not the least bit surprising of Eichel, but it is new information.

Here are the two Heinrich passages for you:

Previously Mitchell had been wary of Henry because of his pro-French sympathies but during the months when he accompanied him on campaign he came to see a different side to the King's brother. In Henry Mitchell found the ideal military commander, one who struck a proper balance between valour and humanitas. He praised the 'goodness' with which the prince treated prisoners, his care for the common soldier and his consideration for his officers, and he admired his 'coolness and presence of mind under fire'. Henry, in fact, had all of Frederick's qualities as a commander except his daring, and conspiciously lacked his impatience, his urge to settle everything in one great battle and his unconcern for his men. during this campaign Mitchell alid the basis of that friendship with Henry which lasted for the rest of his life.

Suspicious Eichel, a year later, when Mitchell instead of staying at headquarters with Fritz goes with Heinrich to Glogau in November 1760:

As worrying as Mitchell's absence from headquarters was his growing intimacy with Henry. Eichel, for one, was particularly unhappy about this. Since the end of August, when Frederick had amalgamated Henry's army with his own force, the prince had been sulking. Returning to Breslau, 'se sentant incommodi d'un accès de fievre', as Eichel wrote carefully to Finckenstein, he brooded over the loss of his command. The subsequent estrangement between the two brothers was a further source of that discontent and flagging morale which both Eichel and Mitchell noted among the army command. Many of the general officers shared Henry's view that the concentration of all the troops into one army seriously reduced the capability of the state to defend itself, whereas Frederick was prepared to accept this risk for the possibility of inflicting a massive defeat on one of his enemies should such an opportunity arise. First at Breslau, then ata Glogau, Mitchell was very much thrown into the company of Henry and in the eyes of Eichel, and perhaps Frederick himself, risked being contaminated by the dissatisfaction with the handling of the war which Henry's circle professed. AS so much depended on Britain retaining belief in Frederick's ability to survive, Eichel's concern was understandable. Mitchell was, in fact, trying to persuade Henry to return to headquarters and heal the breach with the King. But he failed in this attempt 'to heal, to soften and to apologize for the King of Prussia's conduct towards him'.

(This would be when Mitchell wrote he was trying to persuade Prussian ministers to help him reconciling the brothers, but that they chickened out. Maybe he meant Eichel?)

Edited 2020-10-11 11:31 (UTC)

:D That's right, Heinrich is the best! :)

(This would be when Mitchell wrote he was trying to persuade Prussian ministers to help him reconciling the brothers, but that they chickened out. Maybe he meant Eichel?)

Eichel's prominent enough and in favor enough that he'd be my go-to guy for this, if I knew him and got along with him! Too bad Eichel had one-man loyalties.

When G2 was staying in Hannover in 1755, Fritz hinted he could visit, and G2 was all NO NO NO DO NOT WANT to his ministers, who had to tone it down and massage it into a diplomatic reply.

Hee!

and Fritz then wrote a letter to cousin G3 which G3 called the most impertinent and insulting letter he ever read, felt personally enraged and from this point onwards loathed Fritz as well. (G3, you have the American rebels still ahead of you, calm down.)

ahahahaha! I find this hilarious.

Doran points out Fritz lucked out that his much cherished scheme to get the Turks into an alliance so they'd attack either the Russians or Austrians or preferably both came to nothing, because if Russia had been in a war with Turkey when Peter III. came to the throne, even (P)RussianPete surely could not have switched allegiances

Huh! That's interesting. Fritz saved by his own failure :P

G3 apparantly went all "who does he thnk he is? when getting this "most impertinent" letter. To which Dr. Johnson could have replied: Der einzige König. Still writes like Voltaire's footman, though. :) (There is actually a quote from Johnson to the effect that Fritz is the sole real monarch of Europe in Boswell's Life, which was given during G3's reign, so...)

And speaking of Fritzian insults to his Hannover relations, no sooner had he gotten the pardon for George Keith, Lord Marischall that would allow the later to visit Britain again (remember, he did this after the death of James Keith at Hochkirch), that he appointed George Keith - i.e. a man who'd done his best to ensure the Stuarts, not the Hannovers, would sit on the British throne - as Prussian Ambassador to GB.

G3: I think I'll like John Adams better when he's the first American ambassador at my court.

(There is actually a quote from Johnson to the effect that Fritz is the sole real monarch of Europe in Boswell's Life, which was given during G3's reign, so...)

I remembered the quote, but not the source. Johnson, cool!

What about Catherine, inquiring minds want to know? Johnson was apparently quite excited when she decided to propagate one of his works in Russia:

Gentlemen, I must tell you a very great thing. The Empress of Russia has ordered the Rambler to be translated into the Russian language; so I shall be read on the banks of the Wolga. Horace boasts that his fame would extend as far as the banks of the Rhône; now the Wolga is farther from me than the Rhône was from Horace.

ETA:
he appointed George Keith - i.e. a man who'd done his best to ensure the Stuarts, not the Hannovers, would sit on the British throne - as Prussian Ambassador to GB.

I've quoted this before, but now seems a good time to remind everyone that when Keith was dying,

He summoned the British envoy, Elliot, on 23 May 1778: "I called you, because I find pleasure in emitting the last sighs of a Jacobite to a minister of King George."

As I said when I first quoted this, I can see why he and Fritz were friends for so long. :D

Peter Keith: ARGGRHHMBLLWTF!!!!!

That's Fritz for you, Peter.

Edited 2020-10-13 01:11 (UTC)

Would have to reread the "Life" to check about Catherine, but, you know: Dr. Johnson is also the author of that famous misongynistic quip re: a female preacher, that this is like watching a poodle walk upright, i.e. the miracle is in the creature doing it at all, not that it's doing it well. So I doubt he's into female monarchs per se. (Though happy if they translate his works, of course.) And if they kill their husbands to get on the throne? The Algarotti essay volume has reminded me that Orieux chides Voltaire of having had no problem with this, because near the end of the century there's a Russia book by another Italian writer obviously modelled on Algarotti's, only at the passage where Algarotti praises the late Peter the Great, there's a diatribe against Catherine, calling her a "philosophizing Clytaemnestra". So, without having looked it up yet, I guess chances are Dr. Johnson did not approve of Catherine per se.

(As for MT: impeccable moral reputation on the one hand, but Catholic on the other; also an enemy of England in the latest war, and Bisset's editorial comments as well as Holdernesses letters to Mitchell in the Mitchell papers show me the British thought this was totally ungrateful of her, since they credit themselves with having saved her in the Silesian Wars (Hungary: What?!!?; Austrian Trenck: As if!), and she just should have listened to Britain and not stabbed them in the back by teaming up with France. And then she refused Naples - which they didn't have - as a peace offering. Really. Not a good monarch, clearly.)

Dying George Keith: LOL. Scotland forever!

I can see why he and Fritz were friends for so long.

Same here.

I've quoted this before, but now seems a good time to remind everyone that when Keith was dying,

He summoned the British envoy, Elliot, on 23 May 1778: "I called you, because I find pleasure in emitting the last sighs of a Jacobite to a minister of King George."

As I said when I first quoted this, I can see why he and Fritz were friends for so long. :D

Oh, nice, all new to me, and very much appreciated, because the Fritz - G. Keith friendship is rather interesting. May I ask where the quote is from?

Oh, right, we have new people! Then I should definitely repeat myself when the opportunity arises. :D

As for the quote, I have to admit it may be apocryphal: the source is anonymous. It appears in "A Fragment of a Memoir of Field-Marshal James Keith, Written By Himself, 1714-1734." That volume was published in 1843 along with a 5-page summary of the life of George Keith, in which the quote in question appears. That 5-page summary of George Keith is anonymously written, but the 1843 editor says that, although it has many mistakes, it bears the stamp of being written by one personally acquainted with the Earl Marischal, and though the anecdotes it records are mostly well known, the notice may be regarded with some favour, if, as is believed, it be the composition of Sir Robert Strange, formerly known for his attachment to the party which the Keith brothers supported*, and now better remembered as the first of English engravers.

* The Jacobites.

The James Keith memoir is very short, heavy on marches and military maneuvers, and doesn't include Fritz, but it's in the library if anyone wants it.

1730: Andrew resumes his studies, enroles at the law faculty i nLeyden where he spends two semesters (this means he's in the Netherlands when Peter Keith hightails it out of Prussia); (studying in the Netherlands for two terms was also what Boswell did before embarking on his Grand Tour, when I read this bit, I thought, that sounds familiar)

Meant to point out that Katte studied law in the Netherlands (Utrecht), though apparently he's not in their matriculation records (shades of Peter Keith at Trinity), and I can't tell exactly how long, but if it was in 1722 and 1722-1723 is also the time of his Grand Tour, then apparently not for long, maybe only one semester.

Seeing as Boswell‘s father, Lord Auchinleck, was the austere, hard working Protestant type, I‘m going with the shared denominator for Boswell and Katte of: Dads not willing to finance the Grand Tour unless sons willing to do the backpacker thing of also using at least some of the time abroad for studying and hard work. Mitchell, of course, was his own man and in control of all the cash, so in his case it might have been an honest career consideration - i.e. it would be useful to have as a background once he got back to Britain and fully qualified at the bar.

Oooh, yes, that does make sense. I have wondered if Grandpa Wartensleben was maybe the one funding it, but it was also kind of on the short side, so maybe it was Hans Heinrich after all.

Mitchell, of course, was his own man and in control of all the cash

Which his father went to a great deal of trouble to acquire, apparently.

So, I know you're really busy, but if you're hanging out at Stabi again, I've been meaning to ask if you can take a look at this volume on Fredersdorf.

It's short, so it might not have anything new to us, and of course the author might have terrible opinions and methodology, but, on the other hand it's recent, and it's written by a medical doctor. Given the title and table of contents, it might have something of interest about his illness(es) and death and possible connections with mercury. And judging by the table of contents, the author checked out his home town Gartz for signs of him. Don't know if he found anything, of course, but hey.

This volume could go either way (awesome, terrible, bland recap of what we already know), but it's been on my radar since shortly before the shutdown, when you were too busy to take requests, so I just wanted to get it on your radar. I'm not about to fork over money for it sight unseen, not with the shipping costs from Germany.

No rush!

Or, actually, it occurs to me we now have other Germans with access to German libraries too. :) If anyone has access to it and the time to flip through it and see if it's any good, that would be awesome!

Okay, I ordered it. Will pick it up when I return the other books.

Yay, thank you! *fingers crossed for quality*

You already know two excerpts of this - Voltaire on Shakespeare and on Doctor Johnson - but I decided to transcribe the full hilarity for you. It shows why Boswell was the gatecrasher of international celebrities of his time, and it gives a great, vivid impression of what Voltaire was like in his 70s.

First, here's Boswell's letter about the meeting to his friend William Temple:

And whence do I now write to you, my friend? From the chateau of Monsieur de Voltaire. I had a letter for him from a Swiss colonel at The Hague. I came hither Monday and was presented to him. He received me with dignity and the air of a man who has been much in the world which a Frenchman acquires to perfection. I saw him for about half an hour before dinner. He was not in spirits. Yet he gave me some brilliant sallies. He did not dine with us, and I was obliged to poist away immediately after dinner, because the gates of Geneva shut before five and Ferney is a good hour from Town. I was by no means satisfied to have been so little time with the monarch of French literature. A happy scheme sprung up in my adventurous mind. Madame Denis, the niece of Monsieur de Voltaire, had been extremely good to me. She is fond of our language. I wrote her a letter in English begging her interest to obtain fo rme the privilege of lodging a night under the roof of Monsieur de Voltaire, who, in opposition to our sun, rises in the evening. I was in the finest humour, and my letter was full of wit. I told her, 'I am a hardy and vigorous Scot. You may mount me to the highest and coldest garret. I shall not even refuse to sleep upon two stairs in the bedchamber of your maid. I saw her pass through the room where we sat before dinner."

I sent my letter on Tuesday by an express. It was shown to Monsieur de Voltaire, who with his own hand wrote this answer in the character of Madame Denis: "You will do us much honour and pleasure. We have few beds. But you will not sleep on two chairs. My uncle, though very sick, hath guessed at your merit. I know it better; for I habve seen you longer." Temple, I am your most obedient. How do you find yourself? Have you got such a thing as an old friend in this world? Is he to be valued or is he not?

I returned yesterday to this enchanted castle. The magician appeared a very little before dinner. But in the evening he came into the drawing-room in great spirits. I placed myself by him. I touched the keys in unison with his imagination. I wish you had heard the music. He was all brilliance. He gave me continues flashes of wit. I got him to speak English, which he does to a degree that made m now and then start up and cry, 'Upon my soul this is astonishing!' When he talked our language he was animated with the soul of a Briton. He had bold flights. He had humour. He ahd an extravagance; he had a forcible oddity of style that the most comical of our dramatis personae could not have exceeded. He swore bloodily, as was the fashion when he was in England. He hummed a ballad; he repeated nonsense. Then he talked of our Constitution with a noble enthusiasm. I was proud to hear thi sform the mouth of an illustrious Frenchman. At last we came upon religion. Then he did rage. The company went to supper. Monsieur de Voltaire and I remained in the drawing-room with a great Bible before us, and if ever two mortal men disputed with vehemence, we did. Yes, upon that occasion he was one individual and I another. For a certain portion of time there was a fair opposition between Voltaire and Boswell. The daring bursts of his ridicule confounded my undrstanding. He stood like an orator of ancient Rome. Tully was never more agitated than he was. He went too far. His aged frame trembled beneath him. He cried, "Oh, I am very sick; my head turns round," and he let himself gently fall upon an easy chair. He recovered. I resumed our conversation, but changed the tone. I talked to him serious and earnest. I demanded of him an honest confession of his real sentiments. He gave it me with candour and with a mild eloquence which touched my heart. I did not believe him capable of thinking in the manner that he declared to me was "From the bottom of his heart". He expressed his veneration - his love - of the Supreme Being, an dhis entire resignation to the will of Hm who is All-Wise. He expressed his desire to resemble the author of Goodness by being good hiomself. His sentiments go no farther. He does not inflame his mind with grand hopes of the immortality of the soul. He says it may be, but he knows nothing of it. And his mind is in perfect tranquility. I was moved; I was sorry. I doubted his sincereity. I alled to him with emotion, 'Are you sincere?' He answered, 'Before God, I am.'

Temple, was not this an interesting scene? Wold a journey form Scotland to Ferney have been too much to obtain such a remarkable interview? I have given you the great lines. The whole conversation of the evening is fully recorded, and I look upon it as an invaluable treasure. One day the public shall have it. It is a present highly worthy of their attention. I told Monsieur de Voltaire that I had written eight quarto pages of what he had said. He smiled and seemed pleased.

Now, Boswell's notes from the conversations as quoted in John Wain's "Best of Boswell" edition of the diaries; he also notes whether they were talking English or French.

Thursday 27 December 1764 yes, Boswell invited himself over to Voltaire's for just after Christmas - Notes on V'oltaire's English conversation:

VOLTAIRE: Shakespeare has often two good lines, never six. A madman, by G-d, a buffoon at Bartholommew Fair. No play of his own, all old stories.
Chess. “I shall lose, by G-d, by all the saints in Paradise. Ah, here I am risind on a black ram, like a whore as I am. –
Falstaff from the Spaniards.
BOSWELL: I’ll tell you why we admire Shakespeare.
VOLTAIRE: Because you have no taste.
BOSWELL: But, Sir –
VOLTAIRE: Et penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos – all Europe is against you. So you are wrong.
BOSWELL: But this is because we have the most grand imagination.
VOLTAIRE: The most wild. Pope drives a chaise with a couple of neat trim nags but Dryden a coach and six, with postillions and all." Repeated well some passages of Dryden.
BOSWELL: Whata is memory? Where lodge all our ideas?
VOLTAIRE: As Thomson says, where sleeps the winds when it is calm? Thomson was a great painter. Milton, many beauties and many faujlts, as there is nothing perfect in this damned world. His imitators are unintelligible.
BOSWELL: What do you think of our comedy?
VOLTAIRE: A great deal of wit, a great deal of plot, and a great deal of bawdy-houses.
BOSWELL. You speak good English.
VOLTAIRE. Oho! I have scraps of Latin for the vicar. - Addison is a great genius. His character shines in his writings. - Dr. Clarke was a metaphysical clock. A prud priest. He thought he had all by demonstration; and he who thinks so is a madman.
BOSWELL: Johnson is a most orthodox man, but very learned; has much genius and much worth.
VOLTAIRE: He is then a dog. A superstitious dog. No worthy man was ever superstitious.
BOSWELL: He said the King of Prussia wrote like your footboy.
VOLTAIRE. He is a sensible man. - Will you go and see the Pretender* at Rome?
BOSWELL: No. It is high treason.
VOLTAIRE: I promise you I shall not tell your king of you. I shall not betray you. You would see a bigot: a poor being.
BOSWELL: His son is worse. He is drunk every day. He kicks women and he ought to be kicked.
VOLTAIRE: Homer was the only man who took it into his head to write twelve thousand verses upon two or three battles. - It is diverting to hear them say OLD ENGLAND.
BOSWELL: Sir, "Old England", "Old Scotland", and "Old France" have experienced a quite different effect from that.

*The current Stuart claimant of the British throne. Over to Mildred for more.

Thursday 27th December. Notes on Voltaire's conversation, original partly in French.

VOLTAIRE: You have the better government. If it gets bad, heave it into the ocean; that's why you have the ocean all about you. You are the slaves of laws. The French are slaves of men. In France every man is either an anvil or a hammer; he is a beater or must be beaten.
BOSWELL. Yet it is a light, a genteel hammer.
VOLTAIRE: Yes, a pocket hammer. We are too mean for our governors to cut off our heads. We are on the earth; they trample us.

Saturday 29th December. Notes on Voltaire's English Conversation.

BOSWELL: When I came to see you, I thought to see a very great, but a very bad man.
VOLTAIRE: You are a very sincere.
BOSWELL: Yes, but the same sincerity makes me own that I find the contrary. Only, your Dictionaire philosophique troubles me. For instance, Ame, the soul - "
VOLTAIRE: That was a good article.
BOSWELL: No. Excuse me. Is it - immortality - not a pleasing imagination? Is it not more noble?
VOLTAIRE: Yes. You have a noble desire to be King of Europe. You say, 'I wish it, and I ask your protection in continuing to wish it.' But it is not probable.
BOSWELL: No, but all cannot be the one, and may be the other. Like Cato, we all say, 'It must be so', till we possess immortality itself.
VOLTAIRE: But before we say that this soul will exist, let us know what it is. I know not the cause. I cannot judge. I cannot be a juryman. Cicero says, poitus opiandum quam probandum. We are ignorant beings. We are the puppets of Providence I am a poor Punch.
BOSWELL: Would you have no public worship?
VOLTAIRE: Yes, with all my heart. Let us meet four times a year in a great temble with music, and thank God for all his gifts. There is one sun. There is one God. Let us have one religion. Then all of mankind will be brethren.
BOSWELL: May I write in English, and you'll answer.
VOLTAIRE: Yes. Farewell.

BOSWELL: When I came to see you, I thought to see a very great, but a very bad man.
VOLTAIRE: You are a very sincere.
BOSWELL: Yes, but the same sincerity makes me own that I find the contrary. Only, your Dictionaire philosophique troubles me. For instance, Ame, the soul - "
VOLTAIRE: That was a good article.
BOSWELL: No. Excuse me. Is it - immortality - not a pleasing imagination? Is it not more noble?
VOLTAIRE: Yes. You have a noble desire to be King of Europe. You say, 'I wish it, and I ask your protection in continuing to wish it.' But it is not probable.

Heee. The whole conversation is great, but this part in particular is very funny to me.

And wow, Boswell was ~~shameless~~ adept at getting himself invited indeed!

Oh, Boswell had no shame when it came to gate-crashing, which makes him such a great 18th century diarist to read. One of the few encounters he didn't manage, alas, was getting an audience with Fritz, though not for lack of trying.

Ahaha, I think I'd read your Boswell entry before, but that second link was quite a ride. Love the I am certain something very ridiculous would happen on that Occasion quote. Too bad about the missed opportunity.
Also, while I knew he met Keith, I didn't know he was related to him! I'm kind of intrigued by Keith simply because ~~he's Scottish~~ he seems to have had a very trusted and laid-back relationship with Fritz, what with the lack of reported kerfuffles and basically being his closest neighbour until his death.

OK, this is really fascinating! I thought Boswell's description of Voltaire's religious beliefs was very interesting (I guess I'd always thought he was an atheist) and rather in-character, really.

VOLTAIRE: Yes. You have a noble desire to be King of Europe. You say, 'I wish it, and I ask your protection in continuing to wish it.' But it is not probable.

Like

felis says, this is the best line :D

Re: Voltaire's beliefs - a deist, is what biographers generally go with, meaning he believed in the existence of a Supreme Being but did not adher to any of the professed faiths, and, as gets debated in this exchange with Boswell, did not believe in immortality of the soul.

Mind you, given that Voltaire was never lacking visitors and that Boswell wasn't anyone of social significance or a cause like the Calas affair to justify his visit - simply a young Scotsman on the Grand Tour - it's all the more remarkable he managed two audiences and an overnight stay. And I regret once more he was foiled by Fritz, because with Boswell's excellent memory and note taking, we could have gotten this kind of detailed description there. :)

I thought Boswell's description of Voltaire's religious beliefs was very interesting (I guess I'd always thought he was an atheist)

Yep, Voltaire, like Fritz, was a Deist. I have a biography of Diderot, who was a straight-up atheist, coming up next on my reading list ~~which I don't have time for because salon is so busy omg!~~

Most, though not all, of this was in The Club, thank you for providing the full hilarity!

sleep upon two stairs in the bedchamber of your maid

Oh, and this confused me (that sounds not only terribly uncomfortable, but even I, who am not tall, would need at least 3 stairs!) until I read on and realized it was a typo for two chairs. ;) The accidental mental image is great, though.

*The current Stuart claimant of the British throne. Over to Mildred for more.

Oh, no you don't. You know I've been steadfastly avoiding the Jacobites for over a year now, and this week of all weeks? :P

James Francis Edward Stuart, Catholic son of overthrown and exiled Catholic James II/VII, father of Bonnie Prince Charlie, living in Rome on a pension from the Pope because none of the Catholic monarchs want to touch that with a ten-foot pole. I.e. they'd all love to have a fellow Catholic monarch back on the British throne, but politically, they're too savvy to provide more than a bit of support here and there at key moments. The bulk of the effort has to come from within Britain. And if that's not enough to get the Stuarts on the throne, then, "Tough, we'll deal with a Protestant monarch" is the attitude.

Someone's going to yell at me if I don't get off the computer soon and go do German, so that's all you get. :P

Edited 2020-10-17 21:11 (UTC)

Another of the books I found in the Bayrische Staatsbibliothek ws "Francesco Algarotti: Ein philosophischer Hofmann im Jahrhundert der Aufklärung", edited by Hans Schumacher and Brunhilde Wehinger. (Brunhilde Wehinger also wrote and edited several Émilie-related essays and essay collections.) This is an anthology of essays by different authors on Algarotti's work, covering the entire spectrum - the Newton book, the poetry, the philosphical treatises, the correspondance with Fritz, the Russian travel book - and showcases what a polymath he was. Otoh, there is little biography in it; it's really focused on the work. This said, I found various interesting-to-us things to report, starting with a tiny tiny morsel to feed our crack theory of an Algarotti/Heinrich one night stand. (Or two.) Because he dedicated a book to him. Now, book dedications to nobility usually don't signify anything else than the writer hoping for a patron, or trying to keep a patron, and there are enough book dedications written by authors who never met the people in question in this and the next century. But the thing is, Algarotti did this during his time in Prussia, when he already had THE top patron (Fritz of course got a book dedicated to him, too, though technically the second edition of one), and Heinrich pre 7 Years War was not an important, influential person, nor one with financial means that he didn't derive from Fritz. I totally feel justified by canon for one particular dialogue "My brother Narcissus" now.

On to more solid info.The essay about Algarotti's poetry tells me that Algarotti in the first flush of Fritz enthusiasm kept comparing him to Augustus, and himself to Horace in his eloges. (Che se concedi a noi nominarti Augusto/ Di Flacco a me concedi il canto, e il nome.) Modesty clearly was not his problem. I still wish we had the alternate poems for Fritz and MT, depending on who'd win the war, which Lady Mary mentions, but evidently not, instead, two essays tell me that Algarotti supposedly completely bought into the Fritzian propaganda like calling the battle of Prague in May 1757 the modern "Battle of Pharsalus" (with Fritz as Caesar, of course), the decisive battle between Caesar and Pomey, which became a bit awkward when the war kept happening afterwards, not to mention Prussian defeats. Algarotti loyally kept comparing Fritz to Caesar (as in, Fritz surpassing good old Gaius Iulius) all through the war in his letters, though.

Otoh, the essay on the correspondance between Fritz and Algarotti shows him also - in a diplomatic way - from a more independently minded side, when it comes to Voltaire specifically. It also in terms of "how much into Algarotti was Fritz?" points out Algarotti had to be one of the very few not military people who was told by Fritz he'd invade Silesia before he did, in a letter from October 28th 1740 (when he's in Rheinsberg for the last time, I think):

"My dear Algarotti! I completely agree with you that my Antimachiavell contains the mistakes you list. I'm even convinced one could add or cut a great many things would improve the book as it is. However, the death of the Emperor has made me a bad proof reader. I is a fatal time for my book, and a potentially glorious time for me. (...) We act as Caesar and Mark Antony in all calm here and expect to act as them in real life soon. Now that' what one calls leisure activity. (...) I won't go to Berlin now. A little thing like the death of the Emperor doesn't demand great efforts. It's all been prepared. It's just a matter of acting on plans I've been carrying with me for a long time now."

I was also reminded that Algarotti sending Fritz broccoli is canon. ("Je prends la liberté d'envoyer à Sans-Souci des graines de brocoli", Algarotti to Fritz on November 24th 1749.)

But what intrigued me most in the essay about the correspondance was the author pointing out that despite Fritz keeping bitching about Voltaire to Algarotti (whether it's about his Antimachiavel corrections, or in 1749, i.e. when Voltair annoys him by refusing to come before Émilie hasn't given birth, complaining about his rotten character and insisting he only wants Voltaire for his elegant French, Algarotti doesn't sycophantically or sincerely agree but in one instance even cautiously defends Voltaire. This is when Fritz - he who'll later be all "Immortal poetry now! All of Europe must grieve with me for Wilhelmine!" - makes his "he's mourning so loudly that I have no doubt he doesn't mean it and he'll get over it at once" dig, and Algarotti disagrees, writing with a faint note of reproof: Je le pains réellement d'avoir perdu ce qu'il ne retrovuera peut-etre jamais; la perte d'une femme qu'on aime, et avec qui on passait sa vie, est irréparable pour ceux qui ne commandent pas des armées et ne gouvernent pas des États.

(Fritz: Freaking Émilie!)

Our essay writer also points out that correspondingly to the ongoing Fritz/Voltaire implosion, Algarotti prepares his own Frexit by increasingly mentioning his bad health in his letters to Fritz. Conversely, when he did leave Potsdam, Voltaire congratulated him, and as late as 1759 invited him for a visit to his then finally found home in Switzerland, writing, in English: "Let a free man visit a free man."

(Algarotti: no, I'm really sick now. But thanks.)

The correspondance essay furtherly points out that Algarotti kept acting as an informal art agent for Fritz in Italy, sending him architactual plans and designs of Palladio as inspiration for Potsdam, where you an indeed find distinct echoes.

Lastly, the essay about Algarotti's Viaggi di Russia I found fascinating both in terms of having recently read up on Lady Mary, and in terms of the whole "Pamela" stunt from Voltaire.

Algarotti travelled to St. Petersburg in the summer of 1739, as part of a delegation led by Lord Baltimore which G2 had sent to the wedding of Anna von Mecklenburg, niece of the Czarina Anna Ivanova, and her designated successor Anton Ulrick Prince of Brunswick-Lüneburg. En route back from St. Petersburg, he wouldn't just meet Fritz at Rheinsberg but also dine with FW (!!!) in Berlin in his capacity as Lord Baltimore's temporary sidekick. (So FW might not have met Voltaire, but he did meet another Fritzian boyfriend.) This trip resulted in:

a) A travel diary
b) A first, short version of a travel book in the form of nine letters addressed to Lord Hervey, "Saggio di lettere sopra la Russia", published by Algarotti in 1760
c) an extended version which adds twelve more letters to other people drafted in 1763, and
d) the final version from 1764, going into print after Algarotti's death

Like Lady Mary with her Embassy Letters, Algarotti only drew partially on his actual letters from the time for this book and mostly on his diary notes, using the basic material for letters forming a travel narrative. Again, as with Lady Mary, that means no letter repeats information the previous one contains, and the letter format is literature rather than documentation. It's also interesting that he chooses Hervey as his exclusive correspondant for the first version, because by the time he was writing/redrafting this book, Hervey had long since died (Hervey died in 1743, remember), so there was nothing to be gained in terms of patronage by this. It therefore looks like a gesture of respect/affection for the dead man, and Hervey might have been fresh on his mind again as well because he'd rekindled relationships with Lady Mary as a friendship in the later 1750s.

The comparison between the various versions of this book as well as the diary unsurprisingly reveals Algarotti edited out lots of criticism he made re: Russia, such as: The government is potentially the most arbitrary and horrible in the entire world. Al those who are nobility have to live at court against their will, and do whatever they're told. Which is why they can call themselves true slaves, and those who habve left the country feel their misery more than any others and keep complaining about it, especially when they have drunk a bit.

(Sidenote: Russian nobility, who famously owned serfs longer than anyone else in Europe, as slaves, that's... one interesting simile, Algarotti. But you're in the best tradition of Rule, Britannia here , as in "Britons never never never shall be slaves".. they'll just own them.)

There are, otoh, also a lot of vivid landscape descriptions, and it seems Algarotti came up first with the simile of Russia as a threatening white bear and St. Petersbur as "un gran finistrone" - a great window through which Russia looks west, which a lot of people, including Fritz, would adapt later. And of course some redrafts just go for a better styl; the essay here compares a description Algarotti gives of Leopold von Anhalt-Dessauer (the famous old Dessauer, pal of FW) drilling soldiers in the first version to how phrases it in the final version, and the final description is far more elegant.

Now, what all of this makes me wonder is: a) did Lady Mary read it as a work in progress, given that she herself was busy working on the Embassy letters at the same time, and/or did Algarotti read her manuscript in progress?

b) Could it be that what Voltaire at first intended to do when reworking his correspondance with Madame Denis from 1750 - 1753 was something similar in form though of course not in spirit, i.e. a "Prussia Letters" travelogue (doubling as Fritz trashing), and it became redundant when he wrote his trashy tell all memoirs instead? Because while they're called "memoirs" in English, the German title is "Über den König von Preußen", and they're not really Memoirs of Voltaire's life as such, but specifically about his life in connection with Fritz.

The essay about Algarotti as an art collector to August III. in Dresden: Algarotti didn't just shop for established classics, he commissioned a lot of new paintings from living painters!!
Self: That's nice. Go Algarotti for encouraging the artists of your own time!
Essay: ....which during the war were stored in Hubertsburg.
Self: Err.
Essay: ....where they ended up destroyed or sold when Fritz had Lentulus vandalize it.

Lastly, Mildred of course must know it already, but I'd just like to share the first enthusiastic description Algarotti gives of Fritz, in a letter to Voltaire, after having met him for the first time: En revenant j'ai été dans le troisième ciel: j'ai vu, oh me beato! ce prince adorable, disciple de Trajan, rival de Marc Aurèle.

But the thing is, Algarotti did this during his time in Prussia, when he already had THE top patron (Fritz of course got a book dedicated to him, too, though technically the second edition of one), and Heinrich pre 7 Years War was not an important, influential person, nor one with financial means that he didn't derive from Fritz.

That sounds good to me! :D (Heinrich/Algarotti one-night-stand is totally my headcanon now thanks to you, so I am pleased by anything that supports it :D )

and Algarotti disagrees, writing with a faint note of reproof: Je le pains réellement d'avoir perdu ce qu'il ne retrovuera peut-etre jamais; la perte d'une femme qu'on aime, et avec qui on passait sa vie, est irréparable pour ceux qui ne commandent pas des armées et ne gouvernent pas des États.

Oooooh, this is really interesting to me. Go Algarotti! But also it is interesting given that I'd had this idea of Algarotti as the kind of person who was always saying "sure, whatever," to slither out of conflict, which this isn't really. ~~because everyone thought Émilie was the best, clearly~~

Russian nobility, who famously owned serfs longer than anyone else in Europe, as slaves, that's... one interesting simile, Algarotti.

Heh. Yeeeeeah.

Could it be that what Voltaire at first intended to do when reworking his correspondance with Madame Denis from 1750 - 1753 was something similar in form though of course not in spirit, i.e. a "Prussia Letters" travelogue (doubling as Fritz trashing), and it became redundant when he wrote his trashy tell all memoirs instead?

This makes a lot of sense, now that I know it was a thing that people did? Interesting!

En revenant j'ai été dans le troisième ciel: j'ai vu, oh me beato! ce prince adorable, disciple de Trajan, rival de Marc Aurèle.

Okay, this is adorable :P :)

Oooooh, this is really interesting to me. Go Algarotti! But also it is interesting given that I'd had this idea of Algarotti as the kind of person who was always saying "sure, whatever," to slither out of conflict, which this isn't really

That was my reaction, too, including having had the impression Algarotti was conflict-avoidant by all means otherwise. I think one reason why he risks it on this occasion might indeed have been that Émilie wasn't just a name to him, he'd known her in person and also, he'd witnessed her and Voltaire together at the time of their greatest closeness (while missing out on their more critical years), so for Fritz to be that dismissive about the death and the genuineness of Voltaire's grief about it might have actually angered him, or at least irritated him a lot.

By contrast, Algarotti's first Fritz impression:

Okay, this is adorable :P :)

The "oh me beato!" in between the French is what makes it for me. :) As for the classical comparisons: well, Trajan was an expansionist, so clearly Algarotti saw Silesia coming. :) (Kidding. Trajan at this point was regarded as the best of the Roman Emperors, and Marcus Aurelius of course has the philospher emperor reputation, so Algarotti just came up with the highest accolades he could think of.

Heinrich pre 7 Years War was not an important, influential person, nor one with financial means that he didn't derive from Fritz. I totally feel justified by canon for one particular dialogue "My brother Narcissus" now.

Headcanon!

Also, do you know what year this was? The Fritz/Algarotti relationship was kind of rocky after 1740, and Heinrich's obviously going to be in a position of influence if anything happens to Fritz. Algarotti hedging his bets?

I still wish we had the alternate poems for Fritz and MT, depending on who'd win the war, which Lady Mary mentions, but evidently not, instead, two essays tell me that Algarotti supposedly completely bought into the Fritzian propaganda like calling the battle of Prague in May 1757 the modern "Battle of Pharsalus" (with Fritz as Caesar, of course), the decisive battle between Caesar and Pomey, which became a bit awkward when the war kept happening afterwards, not to mention Prussian defeats.

Oops. :P

Algarotti loyally kept comparing Fritz to Caesar (as in, Fritz surpassing good old Gaius Iulius) all through the war in his letters, though.

Aww, Algarotti loyal to his ex.

I was also reminded that Algarotti sending Fritz broccoli is canon.

Yep! That's why I was so surprised a couple days after I found this to see an email notification from you with the word "broccoli" in it. I thought you'd found this episode and had something to say about it! (Your actual post, of course, turned out to be much, much more exciting.)

makes his "he's mourning so loudly that I have no doubt he doesn't mean it and he'll get over it at once" dig, and Algarotti disagrees

Go Algarotti! I have to say, while I will acknowledge that Fritz did many bad things, emotionally, I won't yell at him on other people's behalf in my head, just gently suggest he should stay away from them until he gets some therapy. EXCEPT ÉMILIE. Émilie I will fight Fritz for.

So good for Algarotti and his priorities. :P

b) A first, short version of a travel book in the form of nine letters addressed to Lord Hervey, "Saggio di lettere sopra la Russia", published by Algarotti in 1760
c) an extended version which adds twelve more letters to other people drafted in 1763, and
d) the final version from 1764, going into print after Algarotti's death

Oooohhh. This makes sense of all these copies that I was finding when I was researching the chronology of Algarotti's life. For lo:

Dissertation author points out that Preuss says the first letter from Fritz to Algarotti, after the latter's first visit to Rheinsberg is misdated by about a month (September 1, when they didn't meet until September 20). Then the dissertation author footnotes a letter from Algarotti talking about his visit with Fritz, gives the date, and doesn't notice the date is August 30.

"Both letters were misdated?" I thought. So I did a little digging, found another edition of Algarotti's letters on Russia, and found the same letter had been dated to late October!

So now we've got three misdated letters.

Long story short, I did some cross-referencing, concluded Preuss is correct, and we actually do have three misdated letters. If two of them are from a literary correspondence-cum-travel guide, that makes a lot more sense.

Also, I clearly care waaaay too much about chronology. :P

(Sidenote: Russian nobility, who famously owned serfs longer than anyone else in Europe, as slaves, that's... one interesting simile, Algarotti. But you're in the best tradition of Rule, Britannia here , as in "Britons never never never shall be slaves".. they'll just own them.)

Fritz: I'm a galley slave!

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Could it be that what Voltaire at first intended to do when reworking his correspondance with Madame Denis from 1750 - 1753 was something similar in form though of course not in spirit, i.e. a "Prussia Letters" travelogue (doubling as Fritz trashing)

Seems plausible to me! Now that we know that this is a thing. I notice both Lady Mary and Voltaire wanted theirs released posthumously, though for very, very different reasons. ;)

Because while they're called "memoirs" in English

And French, I note: Memoires Pour Servir A La Vie De M. De Voltaire.

Essay: ....which during the war were stored in Hubertsburg.
Self: Err.
Essay: ....where they ended up destroyed or sold when Fritz had Lentulus vandalize it.

*facepalm*

Let's hope the majority were sold because Fritz needed money?

Also, do you know what year this was?

Alas no. Heinrich is only mentioned along with James Keith as one of Algarotti's non-Fritz dedicatees from his Prussian era in the preface - as part of the larger point of him knowing everyone - , and they don't even provide a footnote to say which works were dedicated to whom. (The dedication of the second edition of *I'll have to look it up* to Fritz is mentioned in the essay about their correspondance, though.)

Oh, and the correspondance essay gave me one little important gem I forgot to mention: with the beginning of the 7 Years War, Fritz switches his usual ending of his letters to Algarotti - and various other people - to "En ceci je prie Dieu qu'il vous ait en sa sainte et digne garde". Previously, I had assumed this was a result of him having to be the defender of the Protestant faith, or somthing like that. Not really, though not unrelated. This precise phrase was the way Henri IV of France, Henri de Navarre, Henri Quatre, aka Most Admired Of All French Kings ended his letters, and to be even more precise, Fritz knew that because Voltaire had used this fact in his epic about Henri IV., the Henriad. So he was making both a literary allusion and a historical comparison (that still cast his opponents as the bigotted Catholic league fighting against Henri IV, never mind that neither Russia nor Sweden were Catholic powers), which his correspondants, and especially a correspondant like Algarotti, were bound to understand at once.

Dating of Algarotti's letters: there's one more factor, also mentioned in the essay. Both Russia and England were still using the Julian calendar at this point. While Algarotti, as an Italian and continental European, most of the time uses the Gregorian calendar as a matter of course in his letters, he might not have done so when writing from Russia to a Brit. Then again, since he was recreating these letters anyway, he might have simply misdated.

I notice both Lady Mary and Voltaire wanted theirs released posthumously, though for very, very different reasons. ;)

Hervey: I wanted mine released posthumously, too, preferably when the love rat has just been crowned, for maximum embarrassment. How was I to know he'd die just a few years after me, and that Grandson would censor my precious manuscript? Voltaire, at least your niece didn't do that but gave posterity the full version.

with the beginning of the 7 Years War, Fritz switches his usual ending of his letters to Algarotti - and various other people - to "En ceci je prie Dieu qu'il vous ait en sa sainte et digne garde". Previously, I had assumed this was a result of him having to be the defender of the Protestant faith, or somthing like that.

Huh, interesting. We had discussed this before (I had noticed that he sometimes did it and sometimes didn't with the same correspondents), and this is what I came up with:

Fritz does the same thing in French to a lot of other correspondents: "je prie Dieu qu'il vous ait en sa sainte et digne garde." Including Algarotti...I was looking through Trier to see who else he does this to (they remind me that he does this to Voltaire periodically, which I had seen but forgotten), and the list is long, and then I saw the editor actually talks about the formula. They conclude that he does this when he's either having a secretary copy his letter (I guess the secretary presumably adds this formula) or even having them write the letter from an outline. Otherwise, Fritz writing his own letters will add his own affectionate or otherwise personal note at the end. And they say this is why Voltaire only gets this formula when Fritz is pissed off at him. Oooh. I wondered why it was only some Voltaire letters.

So I assumed that he switched to doing it with Algarotti during the Seven Years' War because he's more pressed for time and delegating more of his letter-writing. Iirc, Rheinsberg author Hamilton claims that you can tell that the Suhm letters started being delegated as soon as Fritz became king.

Of course, I have no idea whether Preuss is correct, but it is at least worth taking into consideration.

Dating of Algarotti's letters: there's one more factor, also mentioned in the essay. Both Russia and England were still using the Julian calendar at this point...Then again, since he was recreating these letters anyway, he might have simply misdated.

I considered that, but O.S. only accounts for about 12 days, and these letters are off by about 30 in either direction. Misdating or intentional redating to fit a narrative make the most sense.

Hervey: I wanted mine released posthumously, too, preferably when the love rat has just been crowned, for maximum embarrassment.

I make this fandom sound all respectable and impressive when I talk to other people (I'm studying 18th century history!), but it's really just a tabloid meets soap opera. I'm waiting until my French native speaker friend catches on that all the ambiguous lines he gets asked to interpret have to do with sex or sexual orientation. (Seriously, 2/2 so far. :P)

Of course, I have no idea whether Preuss is correct, but it is at least worth taking into consideration

Yes, but if that salutation/end of letter is a direct Henri IV/IVoltaire quote, I‘m going with Fritz styling himself as the hero of the Henriad as an in joke that‘s not entirely meant as a joke by him.

„Tabloid meets soap opera“ sounds about right. A certain friend of mine, reading the Fritz letters to Heinrich re: Marwitz for the first time: „That‘s why too over the top purple prose. I don’t buy it. Who writes like that? Are you sure these weren‘t forged?“

I mean... "tabloid meets soap opera" was how you guys got me into this fandom :P :D

Who writes like that?

Heh, it's true! The Marwitz letters in particular really are way over-the-top.

Though on the other hand, anyone asking whether Voltaire's over-the-top comments about Fritz had been forged would have been right, so there's that... On the other hand, they were forged by Voltaire himself! I am continually delighted by how this fandom is totally WTF :)

The 18th Century: When "over the top" was just normal and understatement had not been invented yet. :)

Seriously though: if you put, say, the Marwitz letters side by side with Lady Mary's love letters to Algarotti, Lord Hervey's fumings about Fritz of Wales and just about any letter from Voltaire to Fritz and vice versa, the over the topness becomes just a matter of perspective.

I'm still standing on my explanation as to why 19th and early 20th historians left them out of the Fritz correspondance, though. :)

side by side with Lady Mary's love letters to Algarotti

Or Hervey's letter to LM *about* Algarotti! That was pretty over the top.

Lauren Gunderson: Emilie. La Marquise du Chatelet defends her life tonight.

Fabulous play, of which I had seen excerpts on Youtube, and which I've finally had the chance to read. Gunderson excells at witty dialogue, she does manage to make the main scientific issues of Émilie's life comprehensible to non-scientists, and while providing ample room for Émilie's love life avoids the trap fall of biopics and bio dramas about female characters, which end up all too often are all about the romance and utterly fail to show what made female character X famous, and what drove her. Not so here. She thanks Judith Zinsser in the preface and mostly follows the outlinesof Zinssers biography, though not so much in the Voltaire characterisation. Her Voltaire is flawed and male ego is a big reason for his clashing with Émiilie re: Newton vs Leipniz and then taking up with Denis, but at the same time, Gunderson's drama does present him as sincerely loving Émilie throughout the story. It helps, of course, that she's a playwright and he's a witty character. (Notable the only one other than Émilie herself who isn't played by the three actors - "Soubrette", "Gentleman", "Madame" - who take over the roles of everyone else at different points in the drama.)

Judith Zinnser: Émilie du Chatelet: Daring genius of the Enlightenment.

Mostly I agree with

cahn's take. It's extremely informative and well researched in terms of Émilie and her world, though there's the occasional glitch an editor should/could have spotted, as when Zinsser, reporting on what the Marquis du Chatelet was doing in the 1740s, says he was busy fighting for King and Country in the Austrian War of Succession against "Prussia and England". Prussia was, of course, an ally of France in the Austrian War of Succession, and the Marquis would have been fighting against Austria (and England). (BTW, Austrian Trenck does mention him briefly and approvingly as a worthy opponent when talking about conquering Straßburg.) I learned a few fascinating details unknown to me, like Louise Gottsched (wife of Gottsched the language defender and important Enlightenment figure in her own right) writing about Émilie, which I must remember to check. Zinsser also is good at pointing out several of the anecdotes about Émilie being just that, anecdotes, and unverifiable, and at giving source citations. However, in her laudable zeal of presenting Émilie as her own woman, not Voltaire's love interest, and arguing against all those years of one sided Voltaire idolisation by biographers (that is, by pro Voltaire biographers - he had of course his enemies writing about him from his life time onwards though for reasons having nothing to do with Émilie), I find she ends up going to the other extreme and simply asssuming the worst with just about everything Voltaire ever said about Émilie. For example, the front page picture of his book about Newton (the one he'd already been working on when falling in love with Émilie but which hugely benefited from her explaining and beta-reading and debating), which Gunderson reprints in the appendix of her play, so I could countercheck it against Zinsser's description. Now, these kind of allegorical pictures, usually meant as an indication what the book is about, were hugely popular at the time. The one of Voltaire's "Elements de la philosophie de Newton" ('Amsterdam, 1738) shows Newton in the upper left sitting on a cloud with the globe in his hand, the light beam going from him to Émilie (upper right), looking at Newton and holding a mirror, with the mirror reflecting the light downwards to Voltaire (bottom left) , or rather, on the manuscript he's writing, not on his figure directly. The symbolism seems pretty obvious to me - Èmilie illluminating Newton for Voltaire - and also the respect (Émilie is up in the heaven with Newton, and note she's looking back at him, not Voltaire). But for Zinsser, the entire picture is a subtle put down and denigration, which she sees as interpreting Émilie "only" as muse, not as scientist in her own right (bear in mind this is before Émilie starts to publish). And thus it continues. Voltaire referring to Émilie as "Madame Newton du Chatelet" in a letter? Can't be a compliment, it's a put down. And so forth. The thing is, Voltaire isn't subtle when he's quarrelling with people. And when he argued with Émilie about Leipniz and Newton, the whole world knew it because he published an essay about it. So you really don't have to look for hidden messages. (This goes as far as Zinsser speculating that Cunegonde in Candide is yet another Voltairian put down of Émilie. As far as I know, no one else ether thought that Cunegonde (short, blonde, on the voluptous side in her looks, German noblewoman and parody of romantic love interests and damsel in distress) was in any way inspired by Émiliie. She#s a parody of a sentimental novel heroine as Candide himself is the parody of a naive sentimental novel hero. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.)

Zinsser by accepting the different dating of Émilie's letters to Saint-Lambert and her emphasis on his grief after Émilie's death attempts to rescue him from his himbo reputation which she says he owes to incensed Voltaire and Rousseau fans (because Saint-Lambert's post Émilie lover was the woman Rousseau couldn't get). With her so far, but I note she doesn't mention something which I thought spoke well of Saint-Lambert and Voltaire when I came across it in Orieux' Voltaire biography, to wit, that these two remained in contact through the years after Émilie's death, to the point that they got in a quarrel with Rousseau and his adlatus Clement together during the Ferney years (Voltaire being Voltaire, of course he couldn't resist jumping to Saint-Lambert's aide when Clement attacked the later in print) , and Saint-Lambert was among the Academie Francaise members greeting Voltaire when he came to Paris in his last months of life, telling him he'd been elected honorary president. Now honestly, given the zillions of correspondants Voltaire had (he wrote so many letters in his life that they still haven't all been printed yet - those still existing, that is, there are even more destroyed), and the many many people clamoring for his attention when he was being a world celebrity, I can't see another reason but Émilie as to why he'd stay in touch with Saint-Lambert, which took a conscious effort of doing under these circumstances. Conversely, Saint-Lambert lived in France, where Voltaire was a celebrity, sure, but also persona non grata in terms of the church and the crown, where a sizable number of people hadn't forgiven him for the Fritz years in Potsdam, and it could have been bad for his career to keep in touch. Again, I can't see this being about someone other than Émilie: they knew the other had loved her, and she had loved them, and that was an experience they shared and no one else did. But to bring this up would not fit with the image of Voltaire the heartless egomaniac who hadn't really cared about Émilie at all anymore when she died, if earlier, so Zinsser doesn't mention it.

All this said: the book isn't about Voltaire, nor should it be. It's about Émilie, and very much succeeds in being so.

Robyn Arianrhod Seduced by logic. Émilie du Chatelet, Mary Sommerville and the Newtonian Revolution.

I've only read the Émilie part of this so far but really like it. Heavy on the scientific side but lucidly written - the author even had the chance to read Émilie's original manuscript of her Principia translation, and describes it - and the description of Émilie's life is neither as romantisizing as Bodanis nor as defensive and feeling in need to rescue Émilie from Voltaire as Zinsser. It also settled contributes yet another opinion on something which I've seen a different interpretation on in each book I've read so far, to wit, Algarotti's "Newton for Ladies" and the connection, of lack of same, to actual ladies, especially Émilie.

Algarotti dissertataion writer: Algarotti took the basic premise of the book - narrator explains science via erotically charged banter to Marquise - from Fontenelle's earlier book from 1698. Thus, his Marquise isn't the portrait of any particular woman. She's a literary trope.

Bodanis and Zinsser: The Marquise was totally a caricature of Émilie, everyone would have seen her as such, and thus Émilie was justly pissed off. (So was Voltaire.)

Isabel Grundy (in her Lady Mary biography): Actually, the Marquise may have been partly inspired by Émilie, but also partly by Lady Mary, and I can prove it. In chapter such and such, Algarotti's narrator says that one proof of how science can benefit women is the inocculation against smallpox. Everyone at the time would have understood this as a Lady Mary allusion and homage. It was what she was most famous for.

Robyn Arrianrhod: I'm mostly with Dissertation writer. Algarotti took the premise and the idea of the Marquise from Fontenelle, not from any living woman. That's also why the book is dedicated to Fontenelle, not to Émilie. Which is one of the things she was irritated about. The other was that she thought several of his similes to explain equations were very shallow and patronizing to women. *gives examples* But she didn't think the Marquise was meant as a portrait or caricature herself, and by quoting longer from her letters than Zinsser has done, I'm proving it.

Jean Orieux: I published my Voltaire book decades ago and I'm with her. "Émilie thought Algarotti was just a shallow boy, and she didn't take him seriously."

Robin Arianrhod: I didn't say that, actually. Have same more letter quotes in which Émilie says re Algarotti, "ah well, he meant well" and that she still likes him. Anyway, IF Algarotti was thinking of any female intellectual in particular to pay homage to in this book, it was....

*drumroll*

Laura Bassi.

Grundy and Zinsser: Who?

Arianrhod: in setting the scene for the first 'dialogue', he used the devise of arousing his Marquise's scientific curiosity by having his narrator read her a poem about light and colours - a pem the narrator has written ' for the glory of our Bolognese savante'. Algarotti had written the poem some years ealrier, to celebrate the graduation of the young Italian Newtonian, Laura Bassi, who had received a degree in philosophy at Bologna in 1732, when she was twenty-one years old. She was only the second woman to gain a modern university degree, after Elena Piscopia (...) Several years younger than Émilie, Bssi was a prodigy who had been given an excellent education by her father. In the 1730s, when Algarotti was writing his book, Bassi was lecturing at the University of Bologna in philosophy, including 'natural philosophy', or physics. (...) she was called the Minerva of Bologna, an she gave public rather than academic lectures. Algarotti no doubt discussed her at Cirey, presumably prompting Voltaire to refer to Émilie as "the Minerva of France'.

Which brings me to another of Arianrhod's strengths: feminist context in that she sees other interesting women not just male biographers have overlooked. Also, this:

Francoise de Gaffney (Madame Gaffney): shows up in Zinsser (and Bodanis) as one of Émilie's and Voltaire's houseguests at Cirey who after being at first impressed by Émilie later is the author of some highly critical descriptions of her.

Zinsser, Bodanis, and also Gunderson in her play: Gaffney = conventional, envious society matron.

Arianhrod: Francoise de Graffigny herself was an unusual woman, and she would later use what she had learned in Cirey in her own writing career: at th time of her visit in late 1738, she was just beginning to reinvent herself as a writer, having recently left her violent, abusive husband and having lost her five children, who all died as infants. Voltaire's play "Alzire" and Émilie's version of "The Fable" would inspire Graffigny's later novel, "Lettres d'une Peruvienne" (Peruvian Letters). "Alzire" had used Peru as an exotic location to epxlore the meaning of 'natural virtue' in the context of religious tolerance. It was set during the sixteenth century Spanish conquest of Peru, and it aimed to show that ethics, or 'virtue', was based on natural human decency rather than on slavish adherence to religious ritual, pagan or Christian; in other words, it aimed to show that it was possible to be a good person without the aid of religious dogma. Émilie's "Fable" had analysed 'virtue' in a similar but broader context, with an emphasis on gender conditions and sexual stereotypes. Now Graffigny wanted to expore this idea in relation to the sexual double standard, in which 'virtue' meant one thing for women - being faithful, or at least discreet, wives - and quite another for men (...). Émilie provided the model for Graffigny's free-spirited Pervusian heroine, Zilia, who wants a life of independence - a life she realises is not considered proper for women in France. "Peruvian Letters", published in 1747, became one of the most popular novels of the century.

See what I mean?

Edited 2020-10-12 14:24 (UTC)

Okay, this is fascinating, thank you so much for this!

I find she ends up going to the other extreme and simply asssuming the worst with just about everything Voltaire ever said about Émilie.

Right?? I definitely noticed she didn't like Voltaire at all, though since I had no other frame of reference for Voltaire at the time, I was willing to be convinced that he was Bad News :) Once you had done some of your Voltaire writing (both salon and fic), it was rather more clear to me that there was rather some bias on her part.

The thing is, Voltaire isn't subtle when he's quarrelling with people. And when he argued with Émilie about Leipniz and Newton, the whole world knew it because he published an essay about it. So you really don't have to look for hidden messages.

HAHAHAHAHA point taken.

I can't see another reason but Émilie as to why he'd stay in touch with Saint-Lambert, which took a conscious effort of doing under these circumstances.

Ooh, that's a good point, thank you.

Heavy on the scientific side but lucidly written - the author even had the chance to read Émilie's original manuscript of her Principia translation, and describes it - and the description of Émilie's life is neither as romantisizing as Bodanis nor as defensive and feeling in need to rescue Émilie from Voltaire as Zinsser.

This sounds... Very Relevant to my interests. :D

Laura Bassi.

Grundy and Zinsser: Who?

I laughed out loud, because this was also my reaction :)

The part about Graffigny is also very cool. Yeah, clearly way more interesting than Zinsser or Bodanis were willing to give her credit for.

Laura Bassi: sounds really cool, and I can't believe no one before Arianrhod mentioned her in the books we've read, especially since Arianrhod also points out that Émilie during the 1740s was voted as an honorary member into the Academia di Bologna, where Bassi taught, and they were both in the same field of science. As for Francoise de Graffigny, here I think the same issue as with Madame Denis applies, i.e. biographers of Émilie approached the supporting cast with certain clichés in their minds and didn't look beyond that. So a younger sexual rival has to be stupid and weak-willed, and an older woman who goes from admiring to critical has to be a conventional society lady.

Having googled some more, I see that Madame Graffigny is very much worth exploring. (And another illustration why you don't want to be a woman in the 18th century.) She got married to her abusive husband at age 17; they were both from Lorraine, which is a crossover plot point later. Several dead children and much marital brutality later, due to all his gambling debts she got him to sign a document obliging him to leave Lorraine and give her authority to handle the family's finances. A few years later, she achieved a legal separation. But all the debts he'd made still were also hers, and so she was really glad to find a place at the court of...

*drumroll*

Elisabeth Charlotte d'Orleans, Duchess Dowager of Lorraine, as in, daughter of Philippe and Liselotte, mother of Franz Stephan. (BTW, Franz Stephan showing up as "Francois-Etienne" in the English wiki entry threw me for a moment before I realised.) This was a happy time for her, and she also met a dashing officer named Leopold Desmarets, thirteen years her junior, whom she fell in (requited) love with. When FS gave up his dukedom so he could marry MT in 1737, this meant Madame Graffigny lost her patroness (since FS' mother, too, left Lorraine and didn't bring all her ladies-in-waiting with her) and had nowhere to go until finding a new job with the Duchesse de Richelieu in 1738 (wife of the BFF of Voltaire and Émilie). Which is how she ended up in Cirey in 1738, and the thirty-odd letters she wrote during her time there is why she ended up in the Voltaire and Émilie biographies.

Now, according to her English wiki entry, what happened was:

The first few weeks at Cirey seemed like a wonderful dream come true. Voltaire read from his works in progress and joined in performances of his plays. The hostess, Émilie, showed off her estate, her furnishings, her clothes and jewelry, and her formidable learning. There were constant visitors, including luminaries like the scientist-philosopher Pierre Louis Maupertuis. The conversation ranged over every topic imaginable, always enlivened by Voltaire's sparkling wit.

Yet trouble was brewing. Voltaire read from his scandalous burlesque poem about Joan of Arc, La Pucelle. Émilie intercepted a letter from Devaux which mentioned the work, leapt to the false conclusion that her guest had copied a canto and circulated it, and accused her of treachery. For a month after that, Françoise de Graffigny was a virtual prisoner at Cirey, until her lover Desmarest passed through en route to Paris and took her on the final leg of her journey.

I swear, that poem really was nothing but trouble. Anyway, you can see where the later Émilie-critical descriptions came from, and it had nothing to do with Graffigny being a disapproving society matron. As for her own artistic efforts, she started out trying to write as early as 1733, but didn't go into print until 1745. By then, the Duchess had died, but Madame Graffigny had managed to establish a well-frequented salon and become the centre of a circle in Paris, and by subletting the house she'd rented to support herself. Her big bestseller "Peruvian Letters" was published in 1747, and by 1748 there were already 14 editions - it really was one of the biggest bestselling books of the time. She died peacefully in 1758, of a stroke while playing cards with three old friends.

Laura Bassi: sounds really cool, and I can't believe no one before Arianrhod mentioned her in the books we've read

Dissertation author: slander!

More seriously, Bassi doesn't get a lot of page time in the dissertation, but enough that I remembered her name and knew facts about her from my reading of it.

Émilie biographers, of course, have no excuse.

*searches*

Okay, Bodanis doesn't mention her at all, but Zinsser gives two passing mentions, including acknowledging that they were both members of the Academy of Sciences in Bologna and that Bassi used one of Émilie's books in her classes. Bassi gets far more page time in the Algarotti dissertation (I wouldn't be surprised if this is because dissertation author is heavily leaning on Italian sources, and Émilie biographers more French sources.)

I swear, that poem really was nothing but trouble.

Evidently!

(BTW, Franz Stephan showing up as "Francois-Etienne" in the English wiki entry threw me for a moment before I realised.)

Hee. Not as much as Hans Heinrich as "John Henry" once threw me. ;)

Anyway, all very interesting women, worthy of more research, my kingdom for more time.

Laura Bassi and Madame Graffigny both sound really interesting! In particular I'm very happy to see that Mme. Graffigny and her situation were rather more complex than the biographies were giving her credit for. Thank you for introducing me to them :D (And now I'm really side-eyeing the Émilie bios, but whatever.)

I swear, that poem really was nothing but trouble.

Ha, yes!

You posted this Monday morning and I was busy all week and so I didn't get to this until now.

But wow, this is one of the best write-ups! The comparative approach is great, and Arianrhod wasn't on my radar. (I'm sure that

cahn, like me, is having Mabinogi flashbacks. ;))

However, in her laudable zeal of presenting Émilie as her own woman, not Voltaire's love interest, and arguing against all those years of one sided Voltaire idolisation by biographers...I find she ends up going to the other extreme and simply asssuming the worst with just about everything Voltaire ever said about Émilie.

:/ Yeah, this is why it's so important in this fandom that we keep reading different takes on the same individuals and events. No one person can be trusted on every aspect.

And when he argued with Émilie about Leipniz and Newton, the whole world knew it because he published an essay about it. So you really don't have to look for hidden messages.

Haha.

*drumroll*

Laura Bassi.

Grundy and Zinsser: Who?

Dissertation author: First European woman to be offered a university position. Holder of the chair of experimental physics at the Istituto delle scienze. Shared a (female) patron with Algarotti. Recipient of praise poems for her achievements, 2 by Algarotti. Subject of an article that the Royal Librarian has just tracked down and put in the library:

Many of the tactics that Algarotti would make use of were also employed by several other scholars, both men and women, in trying to advance their careers. However, given that women faced greater restrictions than men did in trying to establish scholarly careers for themselves, they had to adapt these strategies in order to suit the conditions they faced. For an account of the tactics used by an Italian woman contemporary of Algarotti‘s in trying to establish her scholarly career, see Paula Findlen, "Science as a Career in Enlightenment Italy: The Strategies of Laura Bassi," Isis 84, no. 3 (1993).

In other words, I totally recognized her name from the dissertation when I read this, and I just get didn't get to say so because I've been SO BEHIND on comments this week. What I mostly remembered was that she had a university position, but she still wasn't treated as an equal:

Although they managed to make use of the universities and academies in order to pursue serious scientific interests, the women in these institutions were treated very differently from the men. In spite of all her scientific achievements, many of Bassi‘s contemporaries still felt that her membership in the Istituto, as well as her degree and lectureship, should be regarded as purely symbolic. She was only permitted to give three lectures per year at her initial teaching post, the duties of which also included participating in various public ceremonies. In fact, Bassi‘s frustration at the limitations imposed on her teaching by the university led her to begin giving lectures in experimental physics from her home beginning in 1738.

See what I mean?

Yep, Arianrhod definitely seems worth checking out. Like

cahn, my reading list is getting unmanageably long! (Made slower by the fact that most of it is in German and the page/time ratio is still pretty low (but getting higher!).)

Thank you so much for the write-up.

Mary Sommerville

!! I researched her at one point, and thought she was super interesting, but that was years ago and I've now forgotten most of what I learned (i.e., my active knowledge has become passive). I wouldn't mind a refresher.

Long live comparative literature, say I. :) And see, that's what I get from having read the dissertation only once and then quickly.

Mary Sommerville: with everything else, I haven't read her part of the book yet, but yes, another fascinating woman to explore.

And see, that's what I get from having read the dissertation only once and then quickly.

This is what I get for not only having read it more slowly, but then having gone through it a second time just a few months ago, assembling my Algarotti chronology.

And yet you picked up on the Queen of Hungary bit that I missed! This is why it's so great to be part of a salon. :D

with everything else, I haven't read her part of the book yet

Not surprised! Idk how you're doing as much as you are, I'm still falling behind on comments! (Because unlike a year ago when comments were all I did, I'm now working, studying German, and starting to read again now that I'm feeling better--currently skimming a Diderot bio, will try to do a write-up at some point.)

(I'm sure that [personal profile] cahn, like me, is having Mabinogi flashbacks. ;))

Yup! :D

This brings me, though, to one thing all the Émilie books agree on without ever poviding citation and quotes to back it up, and which I have to say I must question, to wit: Madame Denis as "eager to please, not talking back, conventionally feminine and either of mediocre intelligence" (the non fiction crowd) or downright stupid (Gunderson). Now, as I said before, I don't doubt that there was something of the cliché of "man in midlife crisis goes for sexy young thing" in the whole Voltaire/Denis relationship starting when it did. But given how Madame Denis appears throughout the rest of Voltaire's life, and given the utter lack of eager to please quotes from her in these books, it seems to me our Émilie biographers approach the question with a pre-formed idea (Émilie was too challenging, ergo he went for a bimbo) and don't bother to back it up. Why do I think that? Not because I see her as a misjudged genius, no. But consider this:

- Denis' father dies in 1737, her mother, Voltaire's sister, died five years easier; from this point onwards, Marie-Louise and her two siblings (Elisabeth and the later Abbé Mignot, to come in handy when a Christian burial ground for Voltaire is wanted) , get into closer contact with Uncle Voltaire; he tries to do the conventional thing and finding good marriages for the girls; Elisabeth marries the guy Voltaire suggests, Marie-Louise refuses and picks her own man, Nicholas Denis which slightly surprises Voltaire, but he goes with it and provides her with the same dowry as her sister got. (Marie-Lousise becomes Madame Denis in 1738.) This also when the soon to be married Marie-Louise visits Cirey for the first time but thinks she couldn't stand living in the middle of nowhere. At this point, Voltaire's contact with his nieces and nephew is there but mostly limited to letters and providing financial support since he's the rich uncle, and he doesn't, for example, attend either of the weddings.

- The relationship between Voltaire and Marie-Louise Denis doesn't become intimate (in either sense of the word) until she's widowed and in her early 30s. This still makes her far younger than him, not to mention the incest factor, but, especially given the era they live in, an easily impressionable youngster, she's not, but an adult woman.

- We don't know who initialized the relationship turning sexual (at least not according to the books I've read so far), but she's definitely the one setting the parameters (for example, when Voltaire in a letter expresses the hope of becoming her only lover, she immediately shoots that down; she always had other lovers, and he knew that, not least because some of them ended up having debts he had to help out with. She also refused to come to Prussia with him until the very end of his stay there.

- it's noticeable that Voltaire's memoir-writing valet from the 1730s and early 1740s, Longchamps, complains about Émilie being bossy (not just towars him but Voltaire), while Voltaire's memoir-writing valet from the 1750s, Collini, complains about Madame Denis being bossy (towards not just him, but Voltaire); I'd say either Voltaire just was happy to hand over the thankless task of saying no to the women, or he was into being dominated by them, or both

- as for her intelligence; definitely not a genius like Émilie, but smart and educated enough to know several languages. Also, she wrote as early as 1750 to the Marquis d'Argenson (not be confused with the Marquis d'Argens) when evidently the first grumbling from Prussia had reached her: My uncle is not made to live with kings. His character is too irrepressible, too inconsistent and too unruly; even three years ago, I predicted what is currently happening, but one hadn't thanked me for it then. Spot-on, I'd say.

So, she might have been every bit as greedy for money as Orieux accuses her as having been, but she doesn't come across as stupid, weak-willed or, for that matter, eager to please. Could she have faked such an attitude towards Voltaire in the 1740s when his relationship with her started, only dropping the pretense later? Sure. But in lack of a quote where she does just that, it remains guesswork, with no more canon basis than assuming Saint-Lambert of being her male equivalent towards Émilie.

Back to the actual books. One thing

cahn did not mention, which has nothing to do with Émilie, was Zinsser in her summary of Voltaire's pre-Émilie life and loves springs this on us:

Historians have sugggested the young Voltaire was molested at his college by the Jesuit instructors.

They have? Sadly, no source citation for this one from Zinsser. Orieux certainly does not suggest it, though bear in mind he published his biography in 1966.

mildred_of_midgard, you've read a more recent Voltaire bio, does this one include this speculation, and if so, does it say what it's based on? I mean, it's obviously not impossible (insert current day statistics here), but otoh Orieux does provide several citations, with letters, chapter and verse, of Voltaire having good memories of his school days, keeping in touch with several of his teachers, caring about their opinion of his plays and still writing in praise of some of the Jesuits who taught him as late as the 1740s, when he was busy crusading against the Catholic Church as an institution everywhere else. Now, Voltaire was a contradictory creature all his life, and again, of course it's possible that he liked some of his teachers and loathed others, that the ones whom he praised were not the ones who abused him, or even that he had mixed feelings for an abuser if said abuser was also a good teacher otherwise. But: I would like to have more than "historians have suggested" to base this on, especially with someone like Voltaire, otherwise not known to have kept quiet about anything bad that ever happened to him.

Zinsser then continues to make her case for Voltaire the bisexual by continuing, right after this sentence: Voltaire could also have had his initiation in the libertine circles he frequented when his father sent him to study law in Rouen, or when he first arrived in Paris.

Judith Zinsser, being molested by your teacher as a school boy is quite a different thing to being "initiated" as a willing partner by whoever. The former is also not saying anything about your eventual orientation.

During the years of the Regency, Voltaire was invited to La Source, the chateau of the English political exile Lord Bolingbroke, and probably to his gatherings in Paris as well. Bolingbroke was openly homosexual, modeling himself on Alcibiades and Petronius as the wise elder man schooling his young protegés in political philosophy and erotica. Voltaire was sixteen when they first met. Intimate male friendships, perhaps some having a sexual aspect, were characteristic of the Republic of Letters. Voltaire and Maupertuis, for example, were part of a network of young men of intellect, in a sense a coterie within the Republic of Letters, who wrote letters of introduction to each other, entertained one another, and perhaps exchanged sexual favors, just as they exchanged their verses, treatises and books.

(That's a lot of "perhaps" there.)

This network made Voltaire's exile in England particularly rewarding. (...) Voltaire also maintained his ties to Lord Hervey, the courtier and confidant to Queen Caroline of England. In September 1733, Voltaire reccomended the English version of his 'Lettres philosophiques' to him, and asked the 'charming lord', known for his relationships with women and men, to 'remember a Frenchman who is devoted to your lordship forever with the utmost respect, and loves you passionately.'

What amuses me here is the "Gay (English) network" idea, when Halsband in his Hervey biography, quoting that same letter, goes "how utterly French of Voltaire". He also provides a bit more context for the Hervey and Voltaire relationship, including, remember, Hervey asking for Voltaire's opinion on his poetry, but also Hervey being angry when reading Voltaire's tongue-in-cheek dedication of the "English Letters" to an English merchant where he makes that crack about the nobility on both sides of the channel versus the non-noble merchants. Now, Halsband discusses Hervey's same-sex relations with Stephen Fox and with Algarotti and the whatever it was pre breakup with Fritz of Wales in as much detail as available, so I guess if he'd had any indication there was homoerotic interest between Voltaire and Hervey, he'd have mentioned it, but he didn't. So: if I'm to buy a bi Voltaire, I want a bit more than Rokoko-style over the top letter greetings and socializing with gay and bi people. (English or otherwise.) How's this as a concluding irony: Zinsser rightly points out that we don't have definite proof for Émilie/Maupertuis, that the flirtatious tone in her early letters and her having his portrait in her bedroom could be explained otherwise, and the assumption of an affair later from outside sources based on the sexist idea that a woman can't want a teacher for anything but a romance. And yet she comes up with a whole lot of assumptions here that are based on far less.

ALSO fascinating :D

when Voltaire in a letter expresses the hope of becoming her only lover, she immediately shoots that down; she always had other lovers, and he knew that, not least because some of them ended up having debts he had to help out with.

omg I have to say this is hilarious.

Historians have sugggested the young Voltaire was molested at his college by the Jesuit instructors.

You know, I think I just ignored that (and the other stuff too) because she was clearly trying to make Voltaire bisexual, and... it just really really sounded like she was trying too hard (quite a long time ago I went through a period of reading author biographies where they were arguing everyone was bi or gay; maybe some of those people actually were, but even naive trusting me found it hard to believe everyone was) and Voltaire didn't really come across like that to me anyway from what you guys were saying, even with Fritz. ~~of course, there was the additional problem with Fritz that neither of them would shut up enough to actually have sex~~

Though yeah, I didn't remember about this when you told us about the Jesuit instructors that he really liked, which I thought was awfully endearing and which I agree would falsify the hypothesis.

I looked up the relevant passage in Orieux again, and here it is once more:

"I was educated for seven years by men who kept trying unceasingly to educate the mind of youth. Since when shouldn't one be grateful to one's teachers? Nothing will extinguish in my heart the memory of Father Porée, who is dear to all who have learned from him. No one has managed to make studies and virtue more charming. His lessons were marvellous hours for us, and I wish that he'd have had a position in Paris as he'd have had in ancient Athens, and that people of every age could have participated in his lessons: I'd have gone back often to listen." (...)

He wrote this in 1746, a beautiful homage to his teachers (...) They had no more devoted student, he sent them his books, he awaited their judgement full of impatience. To Father Tournenmine, he writes: "My very dear worthy Father, is it true that you like my 'Merope'?" (...)When he isn't in Paris, he sends his friend Thiériot with his latest tragedy to Father Brumoy: "In God's name, run to Father Brumoy, to the Patres who must never become my enemies. (...) Assure them of my unchanged affection, I do owe it to them, they have educated me, and one must be a monster if one isn't grateful to those who have nourished one's mind."
His father never had a right to such a proof of his gratitude - his true fathers were those who nourished his mind; the other - or others, since he declared three candidates for his biological father - not worth talking about! (...)
And how could his teachers have forgotten him? With twelve, he was already unforgettable. He didn't often play during breaks, he talked to the teachers. They tell us that he was interested in contemporary events, or, as we would put it today, "in politics". "He enjoyed putting the great interests of Europe into his small scales," Father Porée says.

Again, it's possible that Orieux, publishing in the 1960s, either censored himself or did not know some key document (after all, he and all other biographers didn't know Voltaire had reworked his 1750 to 1753 correspondance with Madame Denis, either). And yes, every abuse victim experiences it differently, and it's possible Voltaire was in denial, or blamed just one particular teacher. But given all these positive utterings at a time where he really had no need for his teachers' approval anymore - I mean, by 1747, he was the hands down most famous intellectual of Europe, with two stints in the Bastille and half a century of life time in his repertoire, not to mention a fanboy on the Prussian throne -, I really want to know what exactly this hypothesis of Zinsser's is based on.

Edited 2020-10-17 10:27 (UTC)

*nods* Yeah, I suppose it's theoretically possible, but it just doesn't seem to jibe at all with what you've quoted here. Also, this is Voltaire, of all the people to let any kind of abuse just sit without attacking it, he... would not be even slightly the person I'd think of.

of course, there was the additional problem with Fritz that neither of them would shut up enough to actually have sex

I thought we agreed they would have to settle for hand jobs, because neither of them would let the other top, and neither would shut up long enough for a blowjob. :P Which I thought was especially funny because Selena and I both *independently* came up with the idea that they wouldn't shut up long enough for oral. It's funny cause it's true!

haha, right! :D

So, she might have been every bit as greedy for money as Orieux accuses her as having been, but she doesn't come across as stupid, weak-willed or, for that matter, eager to please.

Just based on the one bio I've read plus the quotes I've seen elsewhere, I have to agree.

Historians have sugggested the young Voltaire was molested at his college by the Jesuit instructors.

They have? Sadly, no source citation for this one from Zinsser. Orieux certainly does not suggest it, though bear in mind he published his biography in 1966.

mildred_of_midgard, you've read a more recent Voltaire bio, does this one include this speculation

Nope, I see nothing. I didn't remember it, and I rescanned the passage just now, and nothing.

Judith Zinsser, being molested by your teacher as a school boy is quite a different thing to being "initiated" as a willing partner by whoever. The former is also not saying anything about your eventual orientation.

Omg, I remember commenting on my annoyance with Bodanis over his "Frederick was gay, and Voltaire was not. With a certain amount of deft footwork, he intended to remain that way." Falling victim to a sexually predatory monarch (assuming you see Frederick as that, which I don't see a lot of evidence for, though I suppose it's possible it crossed Voltaire's mind that he might end up being expected to do more than kiss hands) doesn't make you gay!

How's this as a concluding irony: Zinsser rightly points out that we don't have definite proof for Émilie/Maupertuis...And yet she comes up with a whole lot of assumptions here that are based on far less.

Wow, yeah. When you have an axe to grind...

Nope, I see nothing. I didn't remember it, and I rescanned the passage just now, and nothing.

Okay, since this biographer was the one who informed us on the Madame Denis 50 - 53 letters and thus is up to date with the recent research, I'm assuming he'd know. So now I wonder whether the reason Zinsser doesn't provide a footnote to "historians have suggested" is that what she means is "my theory is that..."

And God yes, this assumption that you become gay from an unwanted approach, let alone molestation, is incredibly annoying.

On a lighter note: though I suppose it's possible it crossed Voltaire's mind that he might end up being expected to do more than kiss hands) doesn't make you gay!

Quite, and for those of us just joining us, here's the glorious quote for the trashy tell all memoirs again: He was accuſtomed to very singular demonstrations of tenderness to younger favourites than I, and forgetting for a moment I was not of their age and had not a fine hand, he seized it and imprinted a kiss, I took his, returned his salute, and signed myself his slave.

Okay, since this biographer was the one who informed us on the Madame Denis 50 - 53 letters and thus is up to date with the recent research, I'm assuming he'd know.

I don't trust him quite that much, but it is a definite mark against Zinsser having any source at all.

Also, something I ran across today: props to MacDonogh, 1999, for saying that "recent research has cast some doubt on the [orange peel] episode", though he gives you absolutely no indication who or why, and it's very easy to miss.

I'm starting to think his scholarship is very uneven: sometimes better than you'd expect, sometimes worse.

Just one more thing from me tonight, as I can't resist. Lady Mary has just left England to live (she thinks) with Algarotti in Italy. Hervey by now has moved past petty jealousy (helped, no doubt, by being the one who actually scored with Algarotti), they're back to being friends, he wishes her well in a letter that also illustrates how these two talked to each other.

Kensington, 3 Aug. 28/17, 1739
I recieved a Letter from you yesterday from Dijon, the third I have to thank you for since I lost one of the most agreable acquaintance I ever made, and England one of the most distinguish'd Inhabitants it ever produced ; and tho I know my Letter can not set out these four Days, yet I feel such an impatience to write to you that I can not resist indulging it. Your sending me a direction at last, makes me feel the same eagerness to write that I fancy People who have been long gag'd feel to talk ; and like those who love talking imeasurably, I fear I shall as little consider the pleasure you are likely to have in reading, as they do what their Audience has in hearing. In the first place I must for the Festivity of your first Letter; it was a sort of Insult to one who you knew was lamenting your Departure, to show you thought you had left nothing behind you worth lamenting ... [ Passage omitted ]
As to your proposing to me to follow you, unless you could give me the same motive that you have for jolting in Post- Chaises and lying in dirty Inns, I do not see I should get much by taking your Advice; if I could make myself a Bigot, I would certainly walk bare-foot, let my Beard grow , lye upon Straw by night, and wear a woollen Shirt by day. But to what purpose should I renounce my false Gods, as you call them, unless I could change them for a true one ; and may I not just as well bend my Knee to an Oinion or a Monkey where am , as put on a Turban or make a Pilgrimage to Mecca, unless I could at the same time believe the Alcoran and have Faith in Mahomet?
For You, who not only credit his Doctrine but are to enjoy his Paradise upon Earth, You are in the right to take the Pilgrim's Staff in your Hand, and travel with Shells upon your Garment; but I ,who should have nothing but the journey for my Pains, may as well stay at home, not forgetting (according to the Custom of the Country you at present inhabit) to throw upan ejaculation for the Soul of my departed Friend, and that the Purgatory you are to pass through before you enter the Gates of that Heaven your Piety deserves, may not be of long duration.

Algarotti, of course, would be God in this metaphor. Or the houri in Muslim paradise. Or the holy shrine, the goal of the pilgrimage. No pressure, Algarotti. Seriously though, I can see where Halsband got the idea about Hervey's idea of paradise from which concludes his Hervey biography, raeding this letter.

Algarotti, of course, would be God in this metaphor. Or the houri in Muslim paradise. Or the holy shrine, the goal of the pilgrimage. No pressure, Algarotti.

Algarotti: All in a day's work! Seriously, I get this all the time. Why do you think I'm the one you play "six degrees" with?

Seriously though, I can see where Halsband got the idea about Hervey's idea of paradise from which concludes his Hervey biography, raeding this letter.

Evidently!

Wow, that is an awesome Letter. :D Algarotti as God is really... something.

Also, I wish we had the Lady Mary letter with the false gods that inspired this, but I went and checked Halsband, and we don't. I suppose you would have included it if we did. ;)

Also. Halsband puts the year on the top of each page! So you don't have to flip dozens of pages to find a date, and you also don't have to flip dozens of pages back or forth to figure out what year you're in!

We have none of Lady Mary's letters to Hervey, because his son returned them to her after his death, causing her to say that Hervey was the only man she could trust everything with and her bff forever. And then the letters were destroyed, either by Lady Mary herself or by her daughter after her death. Anyway, this is why we're in luck Algarotti, being not an English gentleman, did not return Lady Mary's letters to her but evidently kept them for Byron to find in Venice decades later.

I'm sorry she burned them, but

his son returned them to her after his death, causing her to say that Hervey was the only man she could trust everything with and her bff forever.

is kind of adorable.

Hi! Just jumping in really quick to say that I have reached the height of weirdness and finished my pop art style painting of Katte (what am i doing with my life).

There's a picture here.
Acrylic paint is definitely not my new favourite medium, I would even dare to say that I hate it and it's mutual, but the result could have been worse :'D My grandma likes it, that's a start.

This is great! Thanks so much for sharing. Your grandma's right, and your new apartment is going to look amaaaazing with this kind of decor. :D

Also, it's awesome having an artist in the fandom now! And I love your blog name and the blurb on the side, I laughed so hard (in a tragic way, of course).

Hilariously, the original Katte painting is the one that

selenak found was made posthumously, commissioned by Katte's father after the execution, and painted by one of Hans Hermann's classmates from Halle. Little did either of them know that in 2020, a newfangled pop version would come into existence!

Finally, awwww, I love the bottom picture of the Fritz and Katte portraits side-by-side, and how you made them matching. Together at last. <3

Aaah, thank you! :D I am having a lot of fun with historical-ish art, so I might make some more! Half of my current sketchbook is full of powdered wigs and memes, I have to use that chaotic creative energy somewhere.

Oh, that's really interesting! I read somewhere (probably Katte Ordre und Kriegsartikel, i remember there being a footnote about Katte portraits) that the picture was finished after his death, but that it was started after his death too is an interesting new fact :D And that it was made by another Francke-Alumnus is pretty cool! I mainly chose this one because it's the only one i know that is in colour (apart from the one with his sister) and that made mapping out the colour sections a lot easier. Of course the most important thing is getting The Eyebrows™ right since that appears to be what really stood out about him to other people :'D

Half of my current sketchbook is full of powdered wigs and memes, I have to use that chaotic creative energy somewhere.

Hee! Sounds like a great plan.

i remember there being a footnote about Katte portraits) that the picture was finished after his death, but that it was started after his death too is an interesting new fact

Okay, I dug around! The portrait itself was started when he was alive and possibly finished after the execution, but it looks like there's a later note saying that it was enlarged from an original half-length to one that extended to the knee after the execution, "in order to make the depiction of the beheaded man more representative."

So it looks like at least some commissioning was done after the death. The reason we care is that we're trying to find evidence for how Hans Heinrich felt about his son's death, since FW fans keep saying he was on board with the upgraded sentence and felt it was just. We're finding increasing evidence that while he probably didn't approve of the desertion plan and would have considered some punishment just, the death sentence really upset him and he did honor his son's memory.

This book is on my to-read list, btw, as soon as my German is good enough! I mean, it's reasonably close now, it would just be very slow, and I've got a few items ahead of it to practice on before I get to it, at which point hopefully I'll be reading faster.

Of course the most important thing is getting The Eyebrows™ right since that appears to be what really stood out about him to other people :'D

Right? :P

Which reminds me, there's this painting, which as you can see Wikipedia thinks is of Henri de Catt, but it's pretty clearly the same painting that the Wust local historians have posted a head shot of in the crypt and are claiming is of Hans Hermann von Katte!

On the one hand, I would like to trust the Wust historians over Wikipedia. On the other,
- Fine eyebrows.
- Chin very oval compared to other Katte portraits.
- Does not seem to be mentioned in Kloosterhuis?

Admittedly the first two aren't definitive, and regarding the third, admittedly my German is not great, and admittedly Kloosterhuis makes mistakes (some of which I've caught, despite only having used this book as a reference and not yet having read it), but still. I trust him more than Wikipedia *or* Wust.

I'm inclined toward Catt, but would welcome more evidence in either direction.

I just checked Kloosterhuis as well and now I feel like I should attempt to find the old photos of the other Katte portraits... I recognize one of them (apart from The Yellow One and The One With His Sister) and it would be interesting to compare all of them, face wise.

Oh, I remember the de Catt portrait! My friend and I noticed it in Wust and thought it was a bit stange. I know that it's been printed and dubbed a portrait of Katte in at least one Fritz biography, but I do agree that it's probably not him.
I found a high resolution coloured version here and the museum it's in dates it to around 1763 and assumes it's de Catt. Zoomed in, the face is also just... very different from other depictions (and descriptions) of Katte.

I'm not sure where the people in Wust got that particular picture since it's not in the brochure that I bought there, but they did make some mistakes with pictures in there too (mainly mixing up some of the Menzel sketches from the illustrated biography), so they might just have stumbled upon some weird sources for pictures they use.

Zoomed in, the face is also just... very different from other depictions (and descriptions) of Katte.

I agree. These aren't photographs, granted, but the others that I've seen all look at least vaguely alike, and this is an outlier (and should not be counted? :P).

The one with his sister, for instance.

Three portraits in Fontane.

One that supposedly dates to 1726, according to the person who posted it. I would need to check this one, but I've seen the black-and-white a number of times attributed to Katte, at least.

dubbed a portrait of Katte in at least one Fritz biography

Now that you remind me, I think I saw it in Asprey, if memory serves.

I'm not sure where the people in Wust got that particular picture since it's not in the brochure that I bought there, but they did make some mistakes with pictures in there too

Oooh, interesting. Next time one of us is in Wust, we should bring this up with them!

I find it interesting that the names are so similar, and Katte used to be spelled Katt or even Catt--I wonder if someone misinterpreted it and two separate traditions started.

One that supposedly dates to 1726

That one would fit one of Kloosterhuis' descriptions (Wuster Porträt I), so I'm inclined to believe the post. He lists Katte's rank as Kornett, based off of the uniform I assume, so I guess the original could have been painted anywhere from 1724 to 1729. I think the coloured version could be taken from "Altpreußische Offiziersporträts" by Hans Bleckwenn from 2000, but I have no way to check whether that is true. I do like how the expression just changes completely from black and white to colour. Someone messed up the eyes along the way :'D

I find it interesting that the names are so similar, and Katte used to be spelled Katt or even Catt--I wonder if someone misinterpreted it and two separate traditions started

That sounds very likely, especially with the overall French speaking leading to a von Katte becoming a de Katt (which he signed at least one letter as). Couldn't fault anyone for mixing that up. At least they have different first names though, I wouldn't want to be someone having to research anyone from the Reuß family where

"All the males (...) are named Heinrich (...) plus a number. In the elder line the numbering covers all male children of the elder House, and the numbers increase until 100 is reached and then start again at 1. In the younger line the system is similar but the numbers increase until the end of the century before starting again at 1. This odd regulation was formulated as a Family Law in 1688, but the tradition of the uniformity of name was in practice as early as 1200." (Wikipedia)

Hee. And I thought all the Friedrichs and Wilhelmines in this fandom were bad!

ok this is AWESOME :D I echo mildred in saying how cool it is to have an artist in the fandom :D

I think acrylic paint always looks really cool although I can imagine it being terrible to work with (although I know basically zero about art so... it's a very vague imagining).

And like mildred I also love how the Fritz and Katte pictures are matching :D

Aaaaah, thank you so much! :DD

Acrylic paint is just super weird to me because I'm used to things that end up smooth, like watercolours and coloured pencils.

I mean, I really enjoy drawing historical stuff, so if anyone has ideas for things that could be drawn I'd like to try...? My latest work is another cursed Heinrich sketch though.

Aw, I'm amused and touched at the overly large wig and Heinrich. :)

Well, if you take comissions... how about Lehndorff?

Or Fredersdorf?

Fredersdorf! (More enthusiasm when not at work.)

That looks like it could be fun! And it would be a chance to get better at faithfully recreating facial features... I'd probably do a different style though because I don't have another canvas board or the patience for another pop art piece. Might fuck around and get some cheap oil paint to try impressionism or something :'D Or I could draw a digital piece, that usually works well with fancy clothing

Lehndorff! :P :D

Yay Heinrich! He's one of our faves in this fandom, we've read and written quite a bit about him (especially

selenak).

if anyone has ideas for things that could be drawn I'd like to try...?

Lead me not into temptation... :D I.e., I have lots of ideas, and it's awesome having an artist in the fandom now, and the hard part is choosing!

Ooh, Fritz with his dogs! I vote Fritz with his emotional support animal(s). *claps hands*

I'm replying to this one because I made a sketch of Fritz with dogs at work today :D I have an idea that might look cute, I'll do my best!

Are there any descriptions of the dogs, apart from the breed? If there aren't, I'll just do whatever with their fur, but it might be fun to make them "recognizable" :D

Fritz and Heinrich are definitely on the list! And I bought a canvas today, despite swearing off acrylic paint forever last week. I might attempt an impressionist-ish Fredersdorf portrait...? Not sure about that yet though, I feel like acrylic paint might be too liquid-y for the effect that I want. Should have gotten oil paint. But I don't know anything about oil paint and mixing colours would be even harder... I'll see how it goes :D Might end up more abstract. The Lehndorff portrait is so funky looking, I really want to do something with that too... So many possibilities!

What I've done so far is... sketch what a Dungeons&Dragons Character inspired by Wilhelmine in this dress might look like. And Wilhelmine in a uniform, because Fiat Justitia was amazing :DD

!!!!

An artist! In our fandom!

And Wilhelmine in a uniform, because Fiat Justitia was amazing :DD

OMG,

selenak, fanart! This SO AWESOME.

Are there any descriptions of the dogs, apart from the breed? If there aren't, I'll just do whatever with their fur, but it might be fun to make them "recognizable" :D

30 minutes later...

Though I know of a number of artistic depictions of Old Fritz with his greyhounds, including the one in my icon, which is my absolute favorite depiction of Fritz, I can't find any that's contemporary. The famous group portrait by Pesne of bb!Fritz with a drum, Wilhelmine, and that poor black kid in the back with the silver collar, shows what looks like a greyhound to me, but obviously it's not going to be one of the ones he had an as adult.

Biche's Wikipedia article says she was described as white, but it's citing a 19th century source that I don't know if it's reliable, and the article also cites some sources that I know *aren't* reliable, so who knows.

selenak might know a contemporary one off the top of her head that I'm not thinking of.

Regardless, I look forward to whatever you come up with.

Since Wikipedia says that Fritz had Biche painted in the concert room of Sanssouci, I attempted to find a good photo of the picture in question and I did! 1747 would fit, But Wiki quotes the Tagesspiegel and I don't know where they got it from, so I might never know whether this is actually Biche or just a random dog... Ah well, I'll see how it works out :D Digital art is forgiving, so I can just change the colours later if we unearth more information.

That statue is amazing! I've been staring at it for ten minutes, it's SO COOL :DD Gotta remember that one, maybe I can use it for a paper at some point. Do you know who the artist is? I tried googling it, but I couldn't find anything so far

First of all, I'm thrilled and awed at the same time that you drew Wilhelmine in a uniform inspired by Fiat Justitia, and would beg for a link, so I can link it with my story in turn!

Secondly: sorry, can't recall a Biche description that mentios fur collar. But chances are the Tagespiegel is right re: the painting showing Biche, because Wilhelmine did the same thing with Folichon at the Eremitage in Bayreuth (not just in the famous portrait with her which Fritz later used at the basic for the memorial statue; she also had Folichon included in a roof painting depicting the story of Chilonis in her audience room, see here.

Also, the sheer amount of female nudity in the concert room painting reminds me of my Dad during our recent Sanssouci visit eyeing all the female nudes and going "Are you sure he was gay?" Voltaire, who had no doubts in this regard, about Fritz' taste in interior decor as displayed at Sanssouci in the paintings: The subject was totally Priapian. Turtles billing, young men in the embraces of young women, nymphs beneath satyrs, cupids at lascivious sperts, people fainting with desire at beholding them, and rams and goats at similar pastimes. The supper was frequently seasononed with the same kind of philosophy; and any person who had heard the discourse, and looked at this picture, would have supposed they had caught the Seven Sages of Greece in a brothel.

I really loved the fic, I'll probably draw a proper thing eventually, until then the sketch I made is here. It's nothing grand or anything, but I hope you like it :D

I really need to go to Bayreuth at some point (when Cologne's covid reproduction rate is somewhat lower than 84...), the pictures on the website look gorgeous! And I'll definitely caption every future picture of Sanssouci as "the prettiest greek brothel you'll find in Brandenburg", this quote is great :'D

My plans for today were cancelled and thus I didn't have my friend to force to help with pose references for the dog picture, but I sketched Fredersdorf onto the canvas I got! I am happy to announce that the sketch is actually looking pretty good, which is somewhat frustrating since I spent six episodes of the X-Files painstakingly drawing Katte with the grid method to get everything right and he still doesn't look as close to the original as my 20 minute Fredersdorf sketch. To be fair, the new canvas is about a fourth the size of the other one, that makes it a little easier :'D Though now I am afraid to start mixing paint because I really don't want to ruin this sketch ._.

This is all SOOO GREEEAT!

*claps hands*

Oh, I love it! And have added a link in the footnote of my story.

Oh MAAAAAN, this is so great! I am really digging her in men's clothes :D That coat! is the BEST. I am so into her with a cravat and boots and her hair subtly different, a little more severe and less flowery.

Also illustration of my awesome giftfic, this is sooooo great :DDDD

Ooooh, this makes me think, what about Maria Theresia doing her Queen of Hungary coronation on horseback with a sword :D (I guess she wouldn't be in men's clothing / uniform but, like, if you want to AU it for that I would Not Complain :D )

(obviously you don't have to do any of my suggestions, I'm just really really excited about your art :D )

Aaah, thank you! :DD

Keep suggesting as many things as you want, honestly, I'm in a super artsy mood at the moment :D Might be because I am procrastinating on studying, but shhh...

I didn't dare to touch Fredersdorf with paint yet. I'll go to my workplace tomorrow and ask my boss and my coworker for advice, they might have a good idea as to whether I should use my acrylic paint or just buy oils ^^ It's gonna be great. Two flat pop art pieces of Fritz and Katte looking meh and a glossy thing of pretty boy Fredersdorf in the middle :'D

In the meantime I sketched out Fritz and his dogs! Well, so far it's Fritz and 2.5 dogs, dog 3 is in the middle of being constructed. I'm aiming for at least five dogs and a full background before Tuesday because that's when I'm going to my parents' place where I don't have my digital supplies. I don't usually draw animals, so the dogs might end up looking like strange giraffes, but it's going somewhere :'D Though I'll have to equalize the level of detail between Fritz and the dogs somehow, it's currently VERY obvious which one is within my artistic comfort zone.

Utterly unartistic me is in total awe. My "fanart" consists of making maps and captioning screenshots!

Strange giraffes sounds great to me! As long as they're *Fritz's* strange giraffes, I'll be happy. :D

Hee, I thought of your father when I saw that picture!

Since Wikipedia says that Fritz had Biche painted in the concert room of Sanssouci

Good catch! I was in a hurry (to get back to German studies ;)), so I didn't read the article, just skimmed looking for physical descriptions.

Digital art is forgiving, so I can just change the colours later if we unearth more information.

Hee, I see you are like us! AO3 is also forgiving, and

cahn and I periodically fix small historical points. You can't wait until you know everything there is to know before you start your creative work--at some point you just have to take the leap!

That statue is amazing! I've been staring at it for ten minutes, it's SO COOL :DD Gotta remember that one, maybe I can use it for a paper at some point

I knoooow, I looooove it.

Do you know who the artist is? I tried googling it, but I couldn't find anything so far

I don't. I may have found it back when I first tracked down this statue for my icon, but I didn't find it during a quick google yesterday.

Harro Magnussen: Der Philosoph von Sanssouci in seinen letzten Stunden (wiki, which says the marble version from 1898 is missing since WWII, but two plaster (?) ones from 1890 still exist) - the picture you linked to definitely has the wrong title.

Now who's a detective? Wow. I see Wiki has another picture with a slightly different angle, this one correctly titled; it also says this copy is in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin:

The art history picture archive my university uses produced yet another angle of the copy in Berlin :D
Can't link to it though, you'd need a login... We get a better look at the chair and the sleeping dog under it. It also supplied the size of this thing, at least I can tell you that :'D It's 70cm high and 75cm wide (measured from the back of the chair to the tip of his shoes I assume). Somehow that's way smaller than I thought. They took the image from "Ethos und Pathos - Die Berliner Bildhauerschule 1786-1914"

This one possibly?

And then there are these pictures of the Burg Hohenzollern copy.

Now who's a detective?

More detectives + more readers + an artist = MOAR FUN. \o/ (I hope Detective

gambitten comes back someday.)

There are a few angles that I've seen, e.g. this one and this one (also with the wrong title); I merely picked my favorite the first time, not knowing there was going to be such a rush! :)

mildred_of_midgard: I hope Detective gambitten comes back someday.

Guess who's back. Back again. ;)

My exams (for this year) are done! I'll be back to contributing on the weekends! But I've got some really good stuff to share today (not a weekend), which I'll get around to formatting in a big post.

gambitten!! You're back!! :DDDDDD

okay, gotta go to work now, just wanted to say that :) Looking forward to your big post!

Welcome back! I know I said this in the other thread, but it bears repeating. I always love your write-ups! I also laughed when the title of your comment changed from "more things we should be reading" to "more things we should be reading, part 1." :P :D

!!!
Thank you so much, this helps me immensely!

Thank you! That explains why it's so difficult to google, haha.

Fritz with dogs has been drawn! I posted it to my tumblr here with the lineart attached.

I took some liberties, of course, and i might change the colours later, but I hope you like the result :D

images

!!!!

OMG, I love it! How do you do it??? I'm dying of joy here. This is so much better than I was imagining. Expect lots of requests now!

Also, this totally goes with my "Temple of Friendship" fic--may I link to it?

ETA: We also need to start linking to your art in

rheinsberg!

Edited 2020-10-19 21:24 (UTC)

I'm so glad you like the way it turned out :DD I really suffered while posing the dogs, at some point the black and white one looked vaguely like a dick (to which one of my friends said "well, it is Friedrich's dog"). I would have drawn the full 11 dogs, but I ran out of pose ideas and space after dog #4 :'D
It's kiiiinda obvious which ones were drawn with a reference, but I think it turned out alright overall. I made some people cry, the highest goal of any fan artist and writer :'D

You may link it to whatever you like! :D

I made some people cry, the highest goal of any fan artist and writer :'D

I had just settled down with Lehndorff to do some reading and add commentary for

cahn's reference as I go, and now my concentration is *totally* shot, tyvm. :P

Linked! (I'll do a Rheinsberg fanart post at some point--I've put it on my to-do list.)

Lol, I was focused on the dogs, and I just noticed the potatoes. And the rose and the note that apparently someone has left.

BEST. DRAWING. EVER.

Thank you so much! :DD

I just had to include a note in remembrance of my last visit. I would have included the heart shaped potato too, but it didn't work with the perspective

So you and

selenak were both there close enough in time to see the same heart-shaped potato? Or did you just see hers via her picture? Regardless, it's a pity you two didn't have the chance to coordinate!

When I was there, someone had left a framed picture. (Just barely visible behind the flowers.)

We were, apparently! I was there on September 5th :'D

My friend and I used the heart shaped potato to weigh down our note.
We forgot to bring potatoes and wanted to leave something and after that we kinda formed a new tradition. Heinrich got the longest and prettiest letter with a little portrait which lead to a very nice conversation with some elderly tourists who asked whether it was the German translation of the writing on the pyramid.

I was there on September 5th :'D

So close! She was there August 12.

Aww! What did you put in the notes?

(I'll admit, I have a half-serious fantasy of leaving a copy of "Diffugere nives" with Katte.)

The only letter that was serious in tone was the one we left at the grave of Heinrich von Kleist... :'D

For Fritz, it was something along the lines of "Dear Friech, we drew a dog for you! Delivering greetings from Wust: Annabelle and Jana" and the one for Heinrich started with "Dearest Henri! King of our hearts and baddest bitch of Berlin!", so... Die of old age and you get a letter written in a way I write my text messages, die in a horrific way and you get a letter with tear stains. For Katte I might just buy a bouquet too, BOY am I emotionally attached to this man

Love both of them!

Die of old age and you get a letter written in a way I write my text messages, die in a horrific way and you get a letter with tear stains. For Katte I might just buy a bouquet too, BOY am I emotionally attached to this man

<3

"Dearest Henri! King of our hearts and baddest bitch of Berlin!"

<3333 Henri is the king of my heart too :D

...oh whoops, wrong Henri, but he sounds great too :D

Edited 2020-10-19 23:16 (UTC)

You got the right Henri, that line is from the letter we left in Rheinsberg! :D We also called him a peacock in that letter.

Heinrich von Kleist died tragically and my friend is as emotionally attached to him as I am to Katte, so he (and Henriette Vogel, who also died tragically and is buried there as well) got a rather heartfelt letter about how we had a wonderful day in Potsdam that could only be completed by paying him a visit as well. The visit was a bit strange. There was a child racing around the grave on a tiny bike and when we were quiet for a minute an exploding sound was heard from the lake.

While on the subject of Heinrich von Kleist: My favourite book is a historical fiction novel about a bunch of poets and Alexander von Humboldt on a secret mission against Napoleon and the author has Kleist (who might have been bi) and Humboldt (who was probably gay) have feelings for each other. Why am I mentioning this? I just remembered that Kleist tells Humboldt that he never wants to marry but instead be all the family Humboldt could ever want to have (which is a slightly changed quote from a letter he wrote) and then "calls forth the image of their most formidable compatriot, the great Friedrich, in who's heart no woman ever found as much space as his bosom friend and confidant, the Lieutenant Katte" :'D I love how the author just went as all out on the queer people in history front as he possibly could.

This book sounds familiar. Did you review it,

selenak?

It's Das Erlkönig-Manöver by Robert Löhr! It dragged me into another historical fandom that I have drawn fanart for and got me to go to my local bookstore twice to order the audiobook and pick it up. Only to then notice that the whole Kleist/Humboldt subplot and some of my favourite jokes had been cut.

I did indeed: https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1386291.html

Aha! And you even reviewed it in a post that you made after I started following you (yay Lehndorff!), so that's definitely where I'm remembering it from.

Poor Kleist. Though I got to say, I feel even sorrier for his sister Ulrike, because first your knock yourself over help your little brother throughout his life, including a stint of personally saving him from French imprisonment, and otherwise dedicate your life to him, then he writes to your mutual cousin in his last but one letter before offing himself that you were too cold, and then he writes one last letter to you saying "sorry about that bit in the letter to our cousin where I essentially blamed you for my impending suicide , I didn't mean it, truth is you did all you could und das mir auf Erden nicht mehr zu helfen war, farewell! If he hadn't tragically killed himself, you'd want to slap him with a cold fish from here to eternity for that. Well, I would.

(I still greatly enjoyed Löhr getting him laid by Humboldt in his novel, though.)

On to lighter things, I do love those letters and applaud your Heinrich salutation. :) Or, as our fellow fan Fontane put it about Heinrich in the Wanderungen: wenn er in seinen Antworten auch nicht dem Richard Löwenherz glich, der mit seinem Schwert ein zolldickes Eisen zerhieb, so glich er doch dem Saladin, der mit seiner Halbmondklinge das in die Luft geworfene Seidentuch im Niederfallen durchschnitt.

I agree, Uli is the real hero here. Are you even reading about Kleist if you DON'T want to punch him half of the time? :'D Though not half as much as I wanted to punch Fontane for his commentary on Die Marquise von O, that thing probably sparked the most rage-filled German exam I've ever had.

Oh, this is lovely! Love the nod in the title, too - reunited at last.

Thank you, thank you :DD I usually don't even title my stuff, but the opportunity was too good

AHHHHHHH wowowowowow

Fritz's face, omg, this is possibly the... first picture I have EVER seen of him smiling and happy?! (I mean, maybe there are some that exist? somewhere? that mildred will now link me to? but I am a fandom newcomer, I've only seen ones of him very serious) Which makes me happy and sad at the same time <3333

The dogs are just awesome! Okay, fine, I'm not a dog person so I guess I wouldn't be the person to ask, but they do not look like giraffes at all :P they are adorable and not even being a dog person I'm all d'awwwwww I can see why Fritz loves them so much <3333

that mildred will now link me to?

ROFL!

Aaaand, there goes another 30 minutes I could have spent generating Lehndorff commentary for you. :P

Fritz's face, omg, this is possibly the... first picture I have EVER seen of him smiling and happy?!

It definitely felt weird (in a good way) to me too! I keep staring at it in disbelief. Granted, portraiture conventions of the time had people looking serious, but...Fredersdorf and Lehndorff both look happier than Fritz in most of his pictures!

As for fanart, gosh. This is definitely the only one in color and the only one detailed enough to look anything like him, which is why it's so striking. It's certainly my favorite happy Fritz!

So there's this one, which is obviously continuing with the theme of the ONLY THING that makes Fritz happy, and is honestly what inspired my commission. (This one is my favorite, though; not only more detail, but pushes all my buttons, illustrates an episode that I wrote a fic about, and also, I'VE BEEN THERE! \o/)

Doesn't look like him.

Ditto.

Aand, going through my bookmarks led me to this, which I thought you might enjoy,

cahn. :D He's about to be smiling at the end!

But yeah, not much. People tend to gravitate toward the tragedy.

(Gotta say I love the grumpy look in this one, though.)

Okay, fine, I'm not a dog person so I guess I wouldn't be the person to ask, but they do not look like giraffes at all :P

As the (only?) resident dog person here, I concur that they don't look like giraffes! I was actually looking at them with that in mind, lol, and thinking, "Nope, no giraffes in this picture."

The white one in front I was actually admiring for the distinctive body shape of the Italian Greyhound (at least the modern breed).

Ditto.

When I read the first comment I was actually thinking "wait, have I ever drawn Fritz smiling?" and WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT, my drawing from four years ago :'DD
I just went through my 2016 art folder and apart from that one he always looks sad/pissed off.
Damn. I have to change that. More happy Fritz pictures!

The white one in front I was actually admiring for the distinctive body shape of the Italian Greyhound (at least the modern breed).

That one and the one in the back on the right were the ones where I was glued to a reference image, honestly. I could never do that when freehanding :'D Since the one in the front was going to be so very visible, really I wanted it to look right, so I found a photo that i liked and copied the shape. Overall it's pretty obvious which ones were drawn with a reference and which ones weren't... I need someone around me to get a greyhound so i can take proper photos, all angles on google are b o r i n g

WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT, my drawing from four years ago :'DD

:DD

As you can tell, I like your stuff enough to bookmark it and to recognize your name when you pop up in my fic comments!

Also, congratulations, you're responsible for 50% of smiling-and-happy Fritz? :D

That one and the one in the back on the right were the ones where I was glued to a reference image, honestly.

Yeah, it was pretty clear to me which ones were closely following an actual Italian Greyhound.

I need someone around me to get a greyhound so i can take proper photos

Hee! I agree 100%.

Aaaand, there goes another 30 minutes I could have spent generating Lehndorff commentary for you. :P

I didn't mean it as a request for you to find them for me! Just that whenever I'm like "I've never seen X," I know that it is just a matter of time before you find stuff for me :D

Awwww that other Fritz+dog one! And hee to the Katte and Fredersdorf :D (Ah, now, is it plausible Schwerin sent Fredersdorf? Should we have put that in?) :D

AHAHAHAH I love the grumpy one actually.

But also I sort of get the feeling he was probably more grumpy than smiley usually -- and the smile that's in

prinzsorgenfrei's pic is just SO sweet <3

Oh, yes, I may not be exactly a dog person but I did recognize the greyhound and liked it quite a bit :)

first picture I have EVER seen of him smiling and happy?!

In fairness, for most of art history all people of rank depicted in commissioned portraits were painted not smiling. (The Mona Lisa always excepted, if, that is, she was a commissioned portrait of a Florentine merchant's wife and not someone else or a made-up woman altogether - no idea that the latest theory is. The idea that you could depict an HRH looking other than serious is relatively recent, I believe - it was considered disrespectful and undignified.

Edited 2020-10-20 06:03 (UTC)

Awwww. That is absolutely adorable, and I love all the detail, including the dogs looking all different and the potatos on the gravestone. As for the smile, finally, at last, he is truly sans souci!

You’re incredibly talented, and I doff my hat in proper 18th century fashion.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I'm going to draw for y'all more often, this is a real ego boost :'D

Heinrich is my fave! :DDDDD I love the sketch!

What about Heinrich + Fritz together? Possibly looking suspicious and/or smug? <3 :D (Heinrich kneeling to Fritz, and rather unhappy about it, and Fritz being super smug about it?)

:DDDDDD

I've been finishing the Davidson bio of Voltaire (I stopped after Frankfurt when I first picked it up a couple months ago), and ran into some random facts, that I will collect here, because if I try to thread things, I'll never get done (I'm already not making German quota tonight, omg).

[ETA: I made German quota! I raced through 20 pages in an hour and 15 minutes, determined that if I got yelled at, it would be for as few pages as possible. :D :D :D And now I'm off to bed! I'm only slightly behind on comments now, though of course I will be more behind when I wake up. ;)]

* Davidson reminds me that the huge earthquake in Lisbon that killed 30,000 people, and left Europe reeling with the news, took place in 1755. Which means Peter Keith, who had lived there for 4 years in the 1730s, was still alive, and no doubt wondering how his old friends and acquaintances had fared. Possibly relevant for fanfic.

* As a contribution to our Six Degrees game, Benjamin Franklin met Voltaire! This was in 1778, when Voltaire returned to Paris to die.

On Monday 16 February he was visited by Benjamin Franklin, the celebrated statesman from the recently founded United States of America. ‘He has seen Mr Franklin, who brought his little grandson, and asked the old man [Voltaire] to bless him. The old man gave his blessing in the presence of twenty people, and pronounced these words for a blessing: “God and Liberty”.’

He ended up dying on May 30, so Franklin caught him right near the end.

* Remember when Voltaire was trying to support the young lady who was Corneille's poverty-stricken descendant, and he decided to produce an edition and commentary of all Corneille's plays and get all his rich friends to subscribe?

Per

selenak, Orieux reports:

Academie Francaise: Well, "Voltaire/Corneille" sounds like a must have to all literati, and God knows we're glad to have found a witty workoholic to write all the footnotes but "expensive"? With gold cut? Privately printed? Who's going to buy that?

Voltaire: Glad you asked! Dear royal pen pals: you know what to do.

Fritz: buys 200 copies.
Catherine: 200 copies for me.
MT *not a pen pal, but informed*: Fine. For the girl. 200 copies.
Marquise de Pompadour: 50 copies for me. Sorry, but my fellow won't budge, so I'm paying this out of my own money.

Per Davidson,

The king duly put his name down for 200 copies, the Tsarina Élisabeth Petrovna for 200, the Empress Maria Theresa for 100, but Frederick the Great for only six.

Hard to tell what the citation is, but it seems to be René Pomeau et al., Voltaire en son temps.

Since this was published in 1764, and the subscriptions seem to have taken out sometime between 1761 and 1763, I believe would actually believe Fritz only forked over for 6. (

cahn: Seven Years' War ends in 1763.) But I have no hard data. And none for Louis and Pompadour.

* I enjoyed Voltaire's description of what he was looking for in a tutor for the young Corneille:

If you know of some poor man who knows how to read and write, and who may even have a smattering of geography and history, or who is at least capable of learning some, and of teaching the next day what he had learned the day before, we will house him, heat him, launder him, feed him, water him and pay him, but pay him very modestly, for I have ruined myself in building châteaux and churches and theatres.

"and of teaching the next day what he had learned the day before": This is what

selenak and I do! :D

* On building churches,

By October of the following year, 1761, the new church and the new theatre at Ferney had both been built...Deo erexit Voltaire (‘Voltaire built it for God’), in which Voltaire’s name was carved on a much larger scale than the word for God.

For those who are new here, I never tire of pointing out the funerary monument for Algarotti that Fritz had commissioned. Zoom in and check out the font sizes on the carving! As a friend of mine put it, "Second billing on your own grave," lol.

* Since I'm always into heights: Voltaire was 5'6" using English measurements, 5'2" using the French units of the time. This is 167.5 cm for our European friends.

* Davidson: Never can a 65-year-old have been so busy: doing up Ferney, researching his history of Peter the Great, writing and acting plays, writing his Dictionnaire Philosophique, campaigning against L’Infâme and, on top of that, the most voluminous letter-writing.

Fritz: Try me.

:P

* Voltaire to a doctor acquaintance:

You make me love life, Sir, through the interest you deign to take in my ailments.

I immediately recognized this as a line from sick Suhm to Fritz:

When my life is odious to me, the interest you deign to take in it would be enough to make it dear to me.

Looks like we have a Rococo formula.

* In Candide the Château of Thunder-ten-tronckh was over-run by the invading Bulgars. Voltaire’s ‘Bulgars’, were in fact code for the Prussians, in an allusion to Frederick’s homosexuality: ‘Bulgars’ = bougres = buggers.

* In 1757, Tsarina Elizabeth wants a history of Peter the Great from Voltaire. He agrees, but only wants to treat Peter's reforms, not his wars or his personal life, since then he'd have to go into how he killed his son. Comments Davidson:

Voltaire’s instinct to bow and scrape to despots, even allegedly enlightened despots, remained with him for ever. Just as he did not want to tell ‘odious truths’ about Peter, so later, in the reign of Catherine the Great, he would not want to go too deeply into why her husband, Peter III, was murdered in 1762, and by whom; nor into why the imprisoned ex-Emperor Ivan VI was murdered in 1764, and by whom.

Fritz: I wish!

* Davidson's commentary in the bibliography section, which I thought would entertain

selenak:

Many books have been written about Voltaire’s life, but it is surprising, considering the interest of the subject, how few of them make for really good reading; none, so far as I am aware, can stand comparison, for example, with Boswell’s Life of Johnson. There may be three reasons for this: first, if you want to catch your Boswell, you must catch him young, and for Voltaire it is now too late...

Edited 2020-10-14 03:15 (UTC)

Re: Corneille, I‘ll check out whether the Orieux biography says where Orieux has his numbers from. It‘s interesting that they are so completely different for each participant, not just one.

Size: as tall as my mother then. Noted.

Busy 65 years olds: MT: Ahem.
Louis XIV: Excuse me. From the time after Cardinal Mazarin died to the weeks before my own death, I was a hard working monarch. Even my time for mistresses was tightly scheduled, though you wouldn’t know it from the movies. It‘s not my fault that none of my successors were as disciplined.
Cardinal Richelieu: I did not just govern, I also wrote articles and none too successful plays in between being PM and trying to outscheme everyone who wanted me dead.
Catherine: I did all that at 65 and had a vivid sex life, too, Monsieur le Cardinal.
Goethe: Since I was to German literature what Voltaire was to France‘s, and not a royal but born a middle class boy, perhaps I am the most appropriate comparison. In addition to busily writing poetry, essays and a novel at 65, I managed the Weimar theatre, was involved in the Neptunism vs Vulcanism natural history feud and kept corresponding with half of Europe. I was no longer a minister in my Duchy‘s government, but I still was a consulting advisor to Carl August, and thus also had to show up court new and then.

first, if you want to catch your Boswell, you must catch him young, and for Voltaire it is now too late...

LOL. Well, Boswell was young when first meeting Johnson (22 years), but Johnson was over 50. It‘s not a coincidence that the LIfe manages to devote a fifth of its volume to Johnson‘s first 56 years and then devotes the rest to Johnson‘s remaining life, i.e. the time when Boswell knew him. What‘s more, some statistic fans have worked out that between Boswell living most of the time in Edinburgh during these years, and being on the Grand Tour right after his initial time in London where he had met and befriended Johnson, they spend only about 200 plus days in each other‘s company all in all. (Though of course they corresponded in between.) (Also, just how much Johnson had taken to Boswell can be seen from the fact that Boswell talked the Scotland-disliking Johnson into a journey a deux to the Hebrides - where Boswell basically had Johnson all to himself, wilthout any of the other friends and followers as competition - and this years into their acquaintance.)

The artistry in Boswell‘s Life Isn‘t that‘s a well balanced biography in the modern sense, which it‘s not, but that Boswell fulfilled his intention of delivering a „Flemish“, „Rembrandt“ type of portrait of Johnson, full of vivid personal details, giving a very vivid sense of what he was like in a way biographies until then hadn‘t and which both made it a bestseller and shocked some of their contemporaries. (I.e. Boswell‘s Johnson is a moral hero and has bad hygienic habits, and we get page to to standard (for the day) admirable, biopgrahy-worthy episodes like him squaring off against Lord Chesterfield, sure, but we also get the everyday life story of him buying the oysters for his cat Hodge himself as not to turn the servants against Hodge. And Boswell is willing to present himself as the punchline to Johnson‘s joke in order to given an impression of Johnson’s conversation in a way few writers then or now would be willing to, from their first meeting („Dr. Johnson, indeed I am from Scotland, but I cannot help it“/ „That, Sir, is what I find a great many of your countrymen cannot help“) onwards.

That‘s also where Boswell‘s Macauly-solidified 19th century reputation as a kind of idiot savant of biographers comes from, the idea being he was so stupid he didn‘t know what he was writing, how silly it made him look, with the „Life of Johnson“ a happy accident. Come the 20th century and the unearthing of Boswell‘s papers, containing not just the diaries but also the various drafts and revisions of the „Life of Johnson“ and all the notes Boswell took while researching for the Life (he used his diaries as material for all they were worth in that case, sure, but he also interviewed and corresponded with whoever he could get a hold of re: Johnson for years and years, collecting material), this was no longer viable, because these papers show how carefully composed the „Life“ actually is, that far from just including every bit he could find, Boswell made selections, kept rewriting and redrafting the book for years till it had its final form despite the fact he was under huge commerical pressure, with all these other Samuel Johnson bios coming out and seemingly draining the market, and, of course, the diaries show that he was quite aware how he came across (he keeps writing memos to himself to be more dignified, more like his father or Johnson; it never works, but unaware, he was not).

And of course, that‘s the other thing you can‘t replicate about the Life, and which is why when Arthur Conan Doyle lets Holmes refer to Watson as „my Boswell“, he doesn‘t just mean the biographer/noting down of conversation and excentricities function. Just as the few Holmes stories which aren‘t narrated by Watson don‘t work so well, expecially the one narrated by Holmes himself, the Life of Johnson lives from the Johnson-and-Boswell dynamic, and Boswell himself being as much a character as Watson is to the ACD stories. There isn‘t another biographer I can think of who is at the same time such an important part of the narrative he tells. Not least because biographers are usually encouraged to do the opposite, like journalists, if they are contemporaries to their subjects - to take themselves out of the narrative, to leave their own personality and opinions out of it.

Near contemporary case of comparison: Eckermann‘s „Conversations with Goethe“. This is Goethe in his old age, and Eckermann respectfully notes down lots and lots of what the great man has to say about subjects great and small, like Boswell did with Johnson. But you get no idea of what Eckermann himself is like from this book. And of course there is no put down from Goethe of Eckermnann in it, nothing to make him look silly or wrong. Now several of Voltaire‘s servants did apparantly write memoirs - I‘ve seen quotes in Orieux, and also in the Émilie biogrpahies - but there is, presumably, a reason why these books are only known to experts now, whereas Boswell‘s biography never got out of print.

Re: Corneille, I‘ll check out whether the Orieux biography says where Orieux has his numbers from. It‘s interesting that they are so completely different for each participant, not just one.

Agreed, though the presence of Elizaveta in one and Catherine in the other suggests that Voltaire sent another request in or shortly after 1762, which makes sense.

Also, if Elizaveta is correct, then she must have been asked in 1761, which implies that Fritz was asked in 1761 (difficult breakup or no, they've resumed their correspondence, and I doubt Elizaveta gets asked years before Fritz), which was a reeeeally bad year for him war/finance-wise (hence the need for the second miracle a year later), so again, I believe 6. Maybe he bought another 200 after 1763. ;)

It is interesting that Orieux says Louis wouldn't contribute, and Davidson says he ponied up for 200.

My need for numbers to match up is bugging me!

Speaking of which...

MT: Ahem.

cahn, MT is peeved at losing on a technicality: she died at 63, extremely busy. :P

Catherine: I did all that at 65 and had a vivid sex life, too, Monsieur le Cardinal.

Rumors abounded that she died in the middle of one of her excessive sex acts (some said with a horse, the only male big enough to satisfy her appetites), but this is mostly likely (I say this because I haven't investigated the sources myself) men hating on a sexually and politically dominant woman.

Cardinal Richelieu

Died at 57, according to Wikipedia. Perhaps it's more impressive that he managed to cram that much activity into just 57 years!

(Our Yuletide nominee the Duc, however, lived to be 92, albeit I'm not seeing evidence that he was extremely busy for the latter few decades.)

LOL. Well, Boswell was young when first meeting Johnson (22 years), but Johnson was over 50.

Weird, I took that to mean Boswell was young, but you're right, it parses better if Johnson is the one who's young. I probably parsed it that way because I knew Boswell was young and Johnson wasn't.

Anyway, Johnson in his 50s is still younger than Voltaire at 316, which is what he would have been in 2010. ;)

he keeps writing memos to himself to be more dignified, more like his father or Johnson; it never works, but unaware, he was not

I saw this in The Club, and thought it was funny.

What‘s more, some statistic fans have worked out that between Boswell living most of the time in Edinburgh during these years, and being on the Grand Tour right after his initial time in London where he had met and befriended Johnson, they spend only about 200 plus days in each other‘s company all in all. (Though of course they corresponded in between.) (Also, just how much Johnson had taken to Boswell can be seen from the fact that Boswell talked the Scotland-disliking Johnson into a journey a deux to the Hebrides

And statistics fans have further worked out that a quarter of those were on the Hebrides trip! (Everything I know, I know from one book, but it was an interesting book. ;)

Actually, to quote the numbers more precisely:

It has been calculated that, all told, he and Johnson were in each other’s company just 425 days during a friendship that lasted twenty-one years, and fully a quarter of those days were during a single journey they took together.

Okay, got my Orieux copy again, and checked the: the Corneille subscriptions. He doesn't use footnotes (there's an extensive bibliograhy at the end, though), alas, but I reread the passage, I could figure out the divergence on Louis XV. and Fritz at least, which was a misunderstanding of mine. In a text about Voltaire in his old age, I automatically tend to assume that "the King" = Fritz if there's no further designation given. But to Orieux the Frenchman, "the King", no further designation given, is automatically "the King of France".

Here's the relevant text passage, literally: The King subscribes 200 copies, Catherine II. imitates him in this, the Empress does the same, Voltaire himself takes a hundred, the Marquise du Pompadour 50, Choiseul likewise. The noble lords don't abstain, their friends follow their example, headed by the English nobility. Voltaire offers to a free copy of one of his to the literati who can't afford to subscribe. He's Voltaire at his best.

(Since he's also been Voltaire at his worst, bickering with Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the previous chapter.)

While this explains Louis and Fritz (who does not get mentioned at all by Orieux if "the King" is Louis), we're still left with Catherine vs Elisaveta. Given the date, I assume the following: whoever Orieux' source was just said "the Czarina", and when doing his write up he assumed this would be Voltaire's declared fan Catherine without keeping in mind she wasn't on the throne yet. After all, events and people outside of France can be his weak spot, see also Fredersdorf as Fritz' secretary, "Marie-Christine" instead of Elisabeth Christine, Lessing (aka great German writer of the enlightenment, playwright and essay writer, who as a young man was Voltaire's translator in the Hirschel trial and got very disilluioned about him) as a subsequently famous for his poetry), staging and acting in Voltaire's plays keeping Fritz' brothers from scheming against him, and so forth.

In a text about Voltaire in his old age, I automatically tend to assume that "the King" = Fritz if there's no further designation given. But to Orieux the Frenchman, "the King", no further designation given, is automatically "the King of France".

Aahhh. That makes sense. See, I assume "the King" = Louis, unless Voltaire is living in Prussia at the time (or England, I suppose), or unless the subject at hand is Fritz.

Given the date, I assume the following: whoever Orieux' source was just said "the Czarina", and when doing his write up he assumed this would be Voltaire's declared fan Catherine without keeping in mind she wasn't on the throne yet.

Well...he started in 1761, but the work wasn't published until 1764, which means it could be either or both. If I were drumming up money, I would do it as often as I could, and if my fan ascended the throne during the process, I would make a special request just to her.

staging and acting in Voltaire's plays keeping Fritz' brothers from scheming against him, and so forth.

Haha, yes. Somebody's been reading Fritz's Political Testament(s).

Fritz: Didn't work, anyway. Heinrich showing up in St. Petersburg without giving me a chance to micromanage and Fritzplain, tsk. Can you believe it?

Catherine: I did all that at 65 and had a vivid sex life, too, Monsieur le Cardinal.

I loved all of these, but this was the one that I found most hilarious :D Go Catherine!

And Boswell is willing to present himself as the punchline to Johnson‘s joke in order to given an impression of Johnson’s conversation in a way few writers then or now would be willing to, from their first meeting („Dr. Johnson, indeed I am from Scotland, but I cannot help it“/ „That, Sir, is what I find a great many of your countrymen cannot help“) onwards.

Ah! Yes, this makes a lot of sense (and is really cool).

(he keeps writing memos to himself to be more dignified, more like his father or Johnson; it never works, but unaware, he was not).

This is also super endearing :D

And I see what you're saying about how Johnson as a character is so important.

Voltaire’s instinct to bow and scrape to despots, even allegedly enlightened despots, remained with him for ever. Just as he did not want to tell ‘odious truths’ about Peter

Given his 1730s letters to Fritz and his evolving awareness of just how bad Peter's bad side was, this strikes me as having less to do with awe of despots and more to do with not wanting to confront the fact that his problematic fave is problematic. Possibly not wanting to glorify that kind of behavior, but also just super uncomfortable with admiring the guy. Think of all the Fritz depictions that stop with 1730. ;)

More fun from today's Davidson reading:

* Voltaire gets accused of selling illegal books. He writes a letter:

"Who, me?? I would never do such a thing! I am a poor, innocent, harmless old man. I deserve your pity!"

Davidson, pulling no punches: It is a pitiful, wretched letter, full of lies and half-truths, pathetic denials and abject snivelling; it is very Voltaire. For if Voltaire was spiritually bold, he was not personally brave at all.

* Voltaire in 1766, in trouble with the law (see above), wants to start up a colony of exiled philosophes in...Cleves. Fritzian territory, in other words. He went as far as trying to get other philosophes involved, telling them how great living in Fritz territory was and how supportive of this project Fritz would be and how much they could accomplish in a place with a free press, instead of groveling before the censors in Paris.

Diderot was the first to say, "I'll take my chances with the censors, thanks." prompting an indignant response from Voltaire.

...Looks like Fritz wasn't the only one with delusions of utterly bother-free visits from his ex?

Given his 1730s letters to Fritz and his evolving awareness of just how bad Peter's bad side was, this strikes me as having less to do with awe of despots and more to do with not wanting to confront the fact that his problematic fave is problematic.

This. Also, he had already written a biography of Peter's enemy, Charles of Sweden, and the same Fritz who in his Voltaire correspondance of the 1730s is very Peter critical complains to Henri de Catt in the 1760s that Voltaire has been really unfair to Peter in the Charles biography. (Haven't looked it up again, but I think it's in the same passage where he complains about Voltaire not valueing the art of war.

...Looks like Fritz wasn't the only one with delusions of utterly bother-free visits from his ex?

Look, Kleves holds sentimental memories! It's where they first met! :)

More seriously, it's also far, far away from Berlin and Potsdam, and Fritz wasn't likely to show up there more than once a year at most, if at all. But yes, it's still Voltaire being delusional. (Orieux agrees.) Considering he had told all of Europe his version of how things went down at Frankfurt (as opposed to Kleve, not Prussian territory at all but a free HRE city), no wonder Diderot was all "thank but no thanks".

Look, Kleves holds sentimental memories! It's where they first met! :)

The hand-kissing! The pulse-taking! :D

More seriously, it's also far, far away from Berlin and Potsdam

And close to the Netherlands, Peter Keith would like to point out. (Wesel being in Cleves/Kleve, for our American friends.)

While we're pulling numbers from Davidson, he tells me the the nude statue by Pigalle was expected to cost between £12,000 and £15,000, and Fritz subscribed £4,800. Not bad! I see what your priorities are, Fritz. :P

They had thought of limiting the subscription to men of letters, with the inscription To the living Voltaire, by men of letters his compatriots, but then they decided to open the list to anybody, in the hope that the great and the good from all over Europe would want to contribute.

Voltaire was flattered but embarrassed. ‘It is not likely, my dear philosopher,’ he wrote to d’Alembert, ‘that it will be To the living Voltaire; it will be To the dying Voltaire, for I am coming to my end. It would not be bad if Frederick joined the list of subscribers; it would save the generous men of letters some money, of which they do not have much. In any event, he owes me some reparation.’

I'm sure Catherine could have helped save the men of letters some money too, but I see Voltaire's mind goes straight to his ex.

Apparently nobody wanted the statue: it stayed in Pigelle's studio until after Voltaire's (and Madame Denis'?) death, then it went to Madame Denis' family, then they gave it to the Académie Française, where it languished until 1962, when the Louvre finally put it on display.

I say you all are missing your chance to put it up next to the Antinous statue. :P

* Oh, I'd meant to share this one a long time ago, it's from young Voltaire, writing to his mistress back in 1724, trying to get her to come visit him while he was sick:

Unfortunately, he went on to make matters worse with a graphic description of his latest affliction: ‘Come back to Paris as soon as possible, I beg you. You will find me with a horrible scabies which covers the whole of my body. Fortunately, I know you have enough virtue and friendship to put up with a poor leper like me. When you return, we shall not kiss, but our hearts will speak.’

Davidson comments: Unsurprisingly, she stayed in Normandy, and Voltaire remained alone and ill.

I'm sorry, but I laughed.

Unsurprisingly, she stayed in Normandy, and Voltaire remained alone and ill.

HAHAHAHA. Oh Voltaire, never change.

The old man gave his blessing in the presence of twenty people, and pronounced these words for a blessing: “God and Liberty”.’

Voltaire is so cool <3

and pay him, but pay him very modestly, for I have ruined myself in building châteaux and churches and theatres.

hahahahaha Voltaire!

"and of teaching the next day what he had learned the day before": This is what [personal profile] selenak and I do! :D

And both of you are so good at it too! (The skill of abstracting and summarizing information, plus doing it entertainingly, is a skill!)

Now I'm currently pressed for time, so I could only dip into the Seckendorff bio for particular points of interest. Which is how I found out that it seems to have this structure:

Vol.1 and Vol.2: Seckendorff the warrior
Vol. 3 and Vol.4: Seckendorff the envoy

Bear in mind he wasn't one after the other, but all intermingled, so our author covers the same years in different volumes. I found this out when I stared in disbelief at the biography, early on, jumping from Seckendorff campaigning in the early 1720s to Seckendorff campaigning in the mid 1730s. However, the "envoy" volumes also jump from Seckendorff in the early to mid 20s - Poland and Saxony - to the 1730s (hawking the Pragmatic Sanction all over Europe), with his time in Berlin with FW conspiciously avoided. Now I realise a biographer publishing in 1792-1794 (later volumes) doesn't have access to the Vienna state archive where Seckendorff's reports are, but since one of the aims of the biography is to show how noble Seckendorff was slandered by Fritz, it would help to say something about that era.

It also means I really am postponing a proper reading of this biography, because my interest in Seckendorff's various military campaigns through the decades is limited. Which isn't to say my brief exploration didn't bear (hopefully) entertaining fruit. Because our biographer has a decidedly different take on various VIPs of the time than especially 19th century historians will have:

Biographer, re: Seckendorff in the War of Polish Succession campaign, with everyone at Philippsburg: So, get this. Seckendorff's great mentor Eugene is unfortunately senile and dragging his feet. Seckendorff is trying to compensate and doing his best, but not helped by the evilest man of Prussia scheming against him. You'll all have heard of him, some of my readers might even have still met this monster, his very name should call loathing and contempt...

*drumroll*

....Leopold von Anhalt-Dessau, aka The Old Dessauer. Seething with jealousy because FW liked Seckendorff so much, he schemed and schemed against our hero. These two could not be more different. The Old Dessauer was an enemy of all culture, while our hero, though a military man, still liked his books. The Old Dessauer was also a brute. Those brutal punishments for Prussian soldiers we've all heard off, the beatings of soldiers at the slightest perceived offense? He came up with that. Granted, his drilling made the Prussian army what it is today, but I think that might have been managable without also inventing a brutality cult. In short: the old Dessauer was scum, he did everything to make Seckendorff's life miserable and to blame him for how the Philippsburg thing went down, which I spend the next twenty pages of disproving, and he did it all out of jealousy. And yeah, the "philosopher of Sanssouci" also slandered my guy in his writings, but we're all clear on his motive here, aren't we, though I for one will not investigate that era of their lives in this biography.

Then there's the biographer's take on Seckendorff post 1740:

So, after years and years of Habsburg service, our hero was blamed for the failures of the Russian-Austrian Turkish war and locked up at Graz. When MT ascended to the throne, she got him out of there, but can you blame him for not sticking around in Vienna after that? You cannot. Instead, he offered his services to the House of Wittelsbach and became Karl Albrecht's campaign manager, err, fiield marshal and supreme commander. Given that Karl Albrecht, aka Charles VII., was now the next Emperor, this was consistent, not disloyal - he still served the Emperor, and the Habsburgs had no right to expect anything of him anyway. Sooooo, after a good start we all know Karl Albrecht's cause didn't exactly florish, and yes, Fritz keeps bitching about our hero in his memoirs and blames him for that, but that's more slander. Seckendorff did his best, even against that war criminal Austrian Trenck. Once Karl Albrecht was dead, his negotiating skills came into play again as he was instrumental in negotiating between MT and Maximilian and concluded the Treaty of Dettingen, and sure, Bavaria didn't emerge as the stellar victor there, what with Max agreeing to vote for Franz Stephan as Emperor and giving up any claim of his line to the imperial throne in exchange for getting Bavaria back, but my point is, it was the best that could be done, and Fritz sure as hell wasn't in business for Wittelsbach interests in the second Silesian War, no matter what he claimed. Now this treaty would and should have made for a great final chapter, but instead of letting my guy enjoying his old age, SOMEONE got all vengeful on a worthy old man.

Biographer on Seckendorff getting kidnapped and relased in the 7 Years War:

Awful. Just awful. Fritz used the pretense of our hero entertaining a correspondance with MT and various people at the Viennese court. This actually wasn't entirely wrong, he did, but look, naturally a man of Seckendorff's experience and years would want to offer some free advice to MT, I mean, she did get him out of prison that one time, and what do you mean, that didn't stop him from signing on to Team Wittelsbach thereafter? Anyway, that correspondance wasn't the real reason, as we all know. . He got dragged to Magdeburg on Fritzian orders. Now Seckendorff had been called Papa by FW's younger kids, being the kindly benevolent man he was, and they all adored him, I swear, so he thought Prince Heinrich might help, and had Major X ask Heinrich for his aid. Heinrich said he'd do his best to ensure Seckendorff would stay in comfort at Magdeburg and that Major X had access to him, but for some mysterious reasons every time X showed up at Magdeburg the commander there didn't seem to have gotten the message that he was supposed to provide free access at all.

(Lehndorff: has no problem visiting Seckendorff in Magdeburg, though is not a military man with Seckendorffian loyalties. Definitely is not under the impression Heinrich called Seckendorff Papa.)
(Biographer: would probably be shocked to learn that Heinrich was informed by Fritz of the Seckendorff kidnapping scheme beforehand and did not disagree at all.)

Anyway, then MT insisted on exchanging Moritz von Anhalt-Dessau, son of that Most Evil Man Of His Time, for Seckendorff, otherwise he'd have surely died in prison which must have been Fritz' intention when kidnapping him.

(Seriously, our biographer doesn't even consider the possibilitiy Fritz might have planned for just this exchange. Granted, he doesn't have access to the Fritz/Heinrich correspondance, but given the timing of the kidnapping, it would have seemed obvious to me.)

So does our biographer for any flaw of his hero? Actually, yes, he does. His preface draws this character portrait:

Like Alexander, like Caesar, like his example and protector, the immortal Eugene, (Seckendorff) had no particular distinguishment in his facial traits or figure, though he was of middle height and stood straight. His manner of speaking was unpleasant, as he used to talk through his teeth and nose at the same time. His face, which wasn't beautiful anyway, was furtherly somewhat disfigured through a pronounced lower lip. But these insignifciant features could be full of expression when the emotion of one of the most vivid and receptive souls that ever were formed them, and this harsh voice could be captivating when pronouncing tones of lovely applause, of soft encouragement or of thundering persuasion. (...)
He loved cleaniliness and order above all; whereas he despised luxury. This dislike for splendour and his thriftiness at times bordered on making him a miser. But even the greatest envy will have to concede to him that he was always incorruptible, and supported many worthy charities.

One has maligned him due to his love of wine. It can't be denied that he liked to drink; however, since he could weather a lot, he rarely, and in his later years never, fell into disgusting complete drunkenness. Field Marshal Grumbkow, the favourite of Friedrich Wilhelm, was an amazing drinker, and often seduced (Seckendorff) into it. However, since (Seckendorff) often managed to extract secret information from Grumbkow when Grumbkow was blazingly drunk, and achieve results from the King over joyful cups for which he'd have asked in vain while sober, one should forgive him these diplomatic debaucheries. He always kept his head enough to note down an exact report of the King's conversation when returning home from the Tobacco Parliament.

We then get informed Seckendorff was a hard worker whose immense amount of papers would fill entire libraries and a good Christian who despite being in the service of a Catholic monarch remained true to the Protestant faith, and the biographer tells an anecdote about M T s Dad suggesting that maybe he should convert, while MT s mother the first Elisabeth Christine of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (herself a converted Protestant) says he should not. Seckendorff then says: How should my Emperor be able to trust me if I betray the faith of my fathers? and Emperor Charles relents.

After thus praising Seckendorff as a great Christian and good Protestant, the biographer regretfully adds:

(Seckendorff) had a high opinion of chastity, and in this regard let his morals push him to a harshness towards others which may indeed be lamented, but for which his education and the spirit of the era may be to blame. A dwarf who had served him for many years loyally and honestly hit on the bad idea of conducting an affair with a tall and plumb woman which was proven through that slut getting pregnant; this happened during the Field Marshal's later years at Meuselwitz. His lord, not content with this unequal couple having been given a church penance by their community, ordered the little lover to be put into a prison where the wretched creature expired after only a few years.

At which point my sympathy for Seckendorff's stint as a prisoner in Magdeburg is below zero. The preface also praises his personal bravery in battle and tries to sell us on Seckendorff as a truth-to-power teller, which clashes with the earlier description of his persuasiveness. Re: his education, the biographer says that while he could write and speak several languages, he wasn't perfect in any of them, as evidenced by his Latin correspondance with a preacher, and finishes his introducing character portrait with a pot shot at "the sage of Sanssouci" whom the reader has to admit about hearing all these good things about Seckendorff was BIASED, okay?

Meanwhile, I wish someone had rescued that poor dwarf.

Vol.1 and Vol.2: Seckendorff the warrior
Vol. 3 and Vol.4: Seckendorff the envoy

Aaahh, okay. I had noticed 1-2 were continuous narrative, and 3-4 seemed to be mostly envoy-related documents, which is how I concluded 1-2 were the bio and 3-4 the supporting documentation. Splitting it chronologically was not what I expected!

However, the "envoy" volumes also jump from Seckendorff in the early to mid 20s - Poland and Saxony - to the 1730s (hawking the Pragmatic Sanction all over Europe), with his time in Berlin with FW conspiciously avoided.

Also not what I was expecting. Come on, those are the best years! Zomg.

(hawking the Pragmatic Sanction all over Europe)

"Like demented insurance salesmen" in the memorable phrasing of Asprey.

You'll all have heard of him, some of my readers might even have still met this monster, his very name should call loathing and contempt...

*drumroll*

Wow, okay.

cahn, this reason this is so striking is that the Alte Dessauer gets mentioned with total respect in most of the sources

selenak and I are reading. While nothing I've read about about him--BFF of FW, introducer of either the goose step or cadenced marching, depending on the source, fake smoker at the Tobacco Parliament (hey, he and Seckendorff had one thing in common!), recipient of FW's hunting dogs upon his death, things like that--makes him one of my faves, this kind of attitude is definitely not what I'm used to seeing. I guess Wilhelmine, maybe.

It also means I really am postponing a proper reading of this biography, because my interest in Seckendorff's various military campaigns through the decades is limited.

Don't blame you! James Keith's memoirs are also heavily military and *also* don't include the Fritz period, but also they're shorter, in English, and cover two Jacobite campaigns that I'm more interested in, so I'm keeping them in mind, though I have no immediate plans to read them. The Russian stuff might be of more interest to us in this fandom.

This actually wasn't entirely wrong, he did, but look, naturally a man of Seckendorff's experience and years would want to offer some free advice to MT, I mean, she did get him out of prison that one time, and what do you mean, that didn't stop him from signing on to Team Wittelsbach thereafter?

*snort*

(Lehndorff: has no problem visiting Seckendorff in Magdeburg, though is not a military man with Seckendorffian loyalties. Definitely is not under the impression Heinrich called Seckendorff Papa.)

*even more snorting*

Anyway, then MT insisted on exchanging Moritz von Anhalt-Dessau, son of that Most Evil Man Of His Time

Who Wikipedia tells me died of blood poisoning (from his wound in the battle in which he was captured--Hochkirch) soon after his release from captivity. What bad luck!

Like Alexander, like Caesar, like his example and protector, the immortal Eugene, (Seckendorff) had no particular distinguishment in his facial traits or figure

I laughed so hard.

Guess what? Like Alexander, like Caesar, like the immortal Eugene, I too have no particular distinguishment in my facial traits or figure! Or, in the words of Eddie Izzard, "Leonardo da Vinci invented the helicopter...that did...not...work. And so did I!"

Field Marshal Grumbkow, the favourite of Friedrich Wilhelm, was an amazing drinker, and often seduced (Seckendorff) into it.

Huh. The take on this I've always seen is that Seckendorff, who knew that Grumbkow was vulnerable to influence when drunk, used to encourage Grumbkow to drink in order to take advantage of him, and had to drink more than he wanted to in order to keep up. Which is not exactly different from what this author is saying, but with a slightly different slant.

Do we know how this guy is related to Seckendorff?

Meanwhile, I wish someone had rescued that poor dwarf.

With you.

Well, thank you for taking one for the team and dipping into this for us! I now know to side-eye any quotes or claims based on it (and in what way to side-eye it, which is more important).

Also, I enjoyed you using the "advancing the cause of Seckendorff" line I came up with in a sexual context--never has a line been more appropriate in a different context.

Oh,

cahn! When I was doing historical beta for you and you wanted the quote from Fritz on how slimy Seckendorff was, and I racked my brain and my sources and drew a complete blank...I didn't check Wikipedia. Which I did just now, looking for Prince Moritz, and lo and behold:

He was sordidly scheming; his manners were crude and rustic; lying had become so much second nature to him that he had lost the use of the truth. He was a usurer who sometimes appeared in the guise of a soldier, and sometimes in that of a diplomat.

I'm sure Selena won't mind if you tweak that line in "How I Survived Christmas" accordingly. Sorry for the beta fail!

Edited 2020-10-18 02:21 (UTC)

Come on, those are the best years! Zomg.

I know, right? The very years Seckendorff will remain known for when most people won't have heard of the various succession wars other than the Austrian one anymore.

Yes, that's why the anti-Old Dessauer outburst was so unusual and striking. If I ever find the time, I'll translate some of the passage for you, because I did not exaggarate. Mind you, discounting personal animus, one bit I found fascinating was the (roughly contemporary) critique of the brutality of Prussian army training included here. It's a good reminder - like Ulrich Bräker's memoirs - that by no means everyone at the time drank the cool-aid, and it wasn't until the later 19th century that the rest of Germany had adopted the Prussians as role models in this regard, too. Something else that was unusual not just in terms of what came later was that the biographer has no animus against the French. At all. Granted, this is before Napoleon crosses the Rhine, ends the HRE for good and reorders the German principalities, but the 7 Years War already had brought on a lot of proto national poetry along "Go Fritz! Kick French ass!" post Rossbach, and the 1770s and 1780s had seen the explosion in German literature specifically rejecting the French models now (and instead going SHAKESPEARE IS SO MUCH COOLER), which not always came with literary arguments but also sometimes with "booh on the French" ones. But this biographer on the contrary at one point includes a flash forward beyond Seckendorff's life time to say how much the French army, now newly inspired by patriotism and no longer led by overpromoted nobility, recently amazed everyone. (This would be the allied armies aiming to restore the monarchs getting their backsides kicked by the revolutionary army of France.) If you're not Heinrich, this is not a common attitude to take in the 1790s.

(Unless our writer has as sneaking sympathy for the French Revolution and hopes it will spread, but that's not visible otherwise, what with all the talk about what a good Christian Seckendorff was.)

Biographer settling the "Seckendorff: Hot or not?" question with an Eddie Izzard sketch: I know, that's why I translated the statement. :)

Do we know how this guy is related to Seckendorff?

Haven't seen it mentioned anywhere in the passages I skimmed. However, since one of the few critiques he makes on his subject is that Seckendorff wasn't always appreciative enough of all the hard work his devoted nephew (that's the diarist) did after him in Berlin, and on that occasion says said nephew was one of the best, most noble people who ever lived, I'm tempted to assume he might have been this man's son.

Fritz quote on Seckendorff: this is of course the very quote which Seckendorff himself brings up when Lehndorff visits. (Which is in March 1759, if you want to look it up yourself now.) "He can't forgive the King calling him an ursurer in his memoirs. 'At least', he claims, 'I haven't been one towards the King, whom I've given 1500 Ducats which I never saw again.'"

Fritz quote on Seckendorff: this is of course the very quote which Seckendorff himself brings up when Lehndorff visits. (Which is in March 1759, if you want to look it up yourself now.) "He can't forgive the King calling him an ursurer in his memoirs. 'At least', he claims, 'I haven't been one towards the King, whom I've given 1500 Ducats which I never saw again.'"

This is awesome. I am looking forward to this :D

reason this is so striking is that the Alte Dessauer gets mentioned with total respect in most of the sources

ahahaha, thank you for this!

The take on this I've always seen is that Seckendorff, who knew that Grumbkow was vulnerable to influence when drunk, used to encourage Grumbkow to drink in order to take advantage of him, and had to drink more than he wanted to in order to keep up. Which is not exactly different from what this author is saying, but with a slightly different slant.

*nods*

He was sordidly scheming; his manners were crude and rustic; lying had become so much second nature to him that he had lost the use of the truth. He was a usurer who sometimes appeared in the guise of a soldier, and sometimes in that of a diplomat.

Ah! Excellent, thank you! (I still haven't put in the fistulas -- I have been busy lately :P One of these days I promise I'll go back and edit these.)

since one of the aims of the biography is to show how noble Seckendorff was slandered by Fritz

This writeup was hilarious!

Seckendorff did his best, even against that war criminal Austrian Trenck.

...okay, I find Trenck hilarious whenever he shows up, just for starters --

(Lehndorff: has no problem visiting Seckendorff in Magdeburg, though is not a military man with Seckendorffian loyalties. Definitely is not under the impression Heinrich called Seckendorff Papa.)

Hehhhhhh.

But these insignifciant features could be full of expression when the emotion of one of the most vivid and receptive souls that ever were formed them

This was sure Something :D Probably my favorite line, lol. Tell us how you really feel, biographer!

However, since (Seckendorff) often managed to extract secret information from Grumbkow when Grumbkow was blazingly drunk, and achieve results from the King over joyful cups for which he'd have asked in vain while sober, one should forgive him these diplomatic debaucheries.

Ha!

Meanwhile, I wish someone had rescued that poor dwarf.

Yeah. Okay, that part wasn't funny. :(

We're having a Lehndorff readalong omg yay!! *happy dance*

Okay, so first observation is this is FULL of names of people I don't know, and names of people that I do know, at least passively, and that

cahn might not.

Second observation is that the prose is way easier than Wilhelmine, but the lack of connected narrative makes for less context. Both are as I expected going into this, and the latter is the reason I wanted to postpone this until after I'd read some technically more difficult works.

* 1751, May 14: Fräulein v. Beauvrai is there, along with her cousin, Fräulein v. Katt.

Fräulein v. Katt! I don't suppose we know who she is?

* 1751, May 20: Lehndorff says his brother is under Arrest.

Um, do we know why?

1751, July: Fest des Trimalchio

Classics alert! Trimalchio is a very rich character from the Satyricon, a Roman novel by Petronius. A good chunk (and a part that gets referred to a lot) of the Satyricon is given over to a lavish banquet he hosts. Wikipedia reminds me:

Trimalchio is known for throwing lavish dinner parties, where his numerous servants bring course after course of exotic delicacies, such as live birds sewn up inside a pig, live birds inside fake eggs which the guests have to "collect" themselves, and a dish to represent every sign of the zodiac.

...I wonder how much of this AW reproduced!

* 1751, November 11: La Mettrie dies. Lehndorff reports that he did not remain true to his god-denying principles and called on God and all the saints before he died.

Now, *my* sources (which I forget what, if any, are primary) say that this rumor was going around, and Fritz was very upset, and he researched it, and found that it was all slander made up by his enemies, who don't want to believe anyone could be an atheist on their deathbed. Fritz was very relieved to find it wasn't true.

Maybe Fritz was lied to, but I'm willing to believe Lehndorff is repeating the rumors that Fritz was so upset about hearing and that they may not have been true.

For context, La Mettrie was a materialist philosopher, who had taken refuge at Fritz's court because the French censors didn't want to hear anything about how humans didn't have immortal souls and the like, and Fritz made him royal reader. So this was important to Fritz.

Note that Voltaire is not the only one Fritz worries about recanting on his deathbed, and while this may not solely be due to Katte's recantation, I still think that must have made an impression on Fritz. (I mean, it was supposed to, just not the way it did. ;))

1751, December 6: The Duke of Anhalt dies: this is the oldest surviving son of the Old Dessauer.

1751, December 6: Prussian Count Rothenburg dies; Fritz cries like a child. Rothenburg is the one who Fritz reported to Wilhelmine died in his arms, and he was heartbroken. Biche also dies at this time, I think within 24 hours of Rothenburg. Whom I'm just now realizing is supposed to be the one who gave Biche to Fritz! Weird, I always knew and commented on their near simultaneous deaths, but had failed to make the gifting connection.

Wait a sec. I just checked the chronology, and it says Rothenburg died December 29. According to Trier, Fritz's letter to Wilhelmine on Biche is December 29, and on Rothenburg is December 30, and he says "died yesterday" of Rothenburg. However, the dates on the letters are in parentheses with notes on the dates of Wilhelmine's replies, suggesting maybe the dates are reconstructed. Or maybe Lehndorff's diary, which, now that I look at it more closely, has several paragraphs, consisting of various entries, following a date marker of December 6, is a collection of things that happen in December, which he doesn't give us specific dates. I bet that's what it is.

(See, this is why it takes me so long to comment on what I read. So much research!)

* 1752, January 18: Lehndorff describes a marriage by saying the husband is stone blind, which is an advantage for the wife, since she's really ugly. Lol.

* 1752, April: Lehndorff points out that this one woman squints horribly. I can't decide whether Peter's really was as mild as Lehndorff says, or if he just got used to it because he liked Peter, because this poor lady is proof that Lehndorff does mind some squints. In any case, as

selenak pointed out, it's good that Lehndorff could get used to a squint, since Heinrich got one later in life!

* 1752, April: Lehndorff goes to Meseberg, which belongs to Count Hermann Wartensleben, and is really pretty.

Reminder: Unless there are more than one in the vicinity of Berlin, Meseberg is the "Kaphengst must have been *spectacular* in bed" estate.

Hermann Wartensleben must be the oldest surviving son of Grandpa Wartensleben, and thus Katte's uncle.

* 1752, May 10: Grumbkow--not our Grumbkow! He died in 1739.

* 1752: Ich mache mit den Prinzen eine kleine Reise nach Friedrichsfelde, die nicht gut endigt; wir kehren gehörig benebelt zurück.

Google wants "gehörig benebelt" to be "in a good mood", but that feels like a non sequitur. German speakers help us out? Given that "benebelt" means "foggy" (which I'm pleased to have figured out on my own, although kind of cheating via Latin)...tipsy, maybe? In the sense of "in high/good spirits" that's often used in English as a euphemism for "good mood with chemical assistance"?

Or are they just really in a good mood after their trip that didn't end well?

* 1752, September: Cocceji and Barbarina, overview, in case anyone needs reminding on how that went down:

Meanwhile, in 1749:

Cocceji, son of Prussian official: Barbarina, I love you! Will you accept my marriage proposal on the open stage?

Barbarina: Experience has taught me that I can get away with murder, so yes! I accept your Fritz-contract-violating proposal on the open stage.

Barbarina: Hey, Fritz. I want to go to London with my lover. How about it?

Fritz: You have a contract, missy. Cocceji, that's prison for you.

Barbarina: *escapes to London* [Someone made it!]

Fritz: *pardons Cocceji like a good enlightened monarch and lets Barbarina come back, thus proving she can get away with murder*

Barbarina: *promptly marries Cocceji in secret*

Fritz: OMFG. You give them an inch and they take a mile. Okay, watch this. I'm going to be nice and make you governor, Cocceji...of a city way out in the middle of nowhere in Silesia, far from that Hollywood lifestyle your wife is used to living.

Cocceji: *is authoritarian and unfaithful*

Barbarina and Cocceji: *separate after only a few years, eventually get divorced*

* 1752, November 10: I noticed while looking for something else that in keeping with "rubbish soaps" and "Cape stallion", Google has decided to translate Heinrich's boyfriend Reisewitz as "travel jokes."

* 1752, November 12: Maupertuis is pleased with a defense of him, and the principle of least action. Lehndorff reports that "it is believed that it is a very illustrious writer who took over his defense."

If it's not obvious, this is Fritz's "anonymous" pamphlet, retaliating against Voltaire's recent "anonymous" pamphlet, which Voltaire will retaliate against with another "anonymous" pamphlet, which Fritz will retaliate against by having it confiscated and burned, which Voltaire will retaliate against by reworking his entire correspondence with MD and fooling us all for 200+ years.

* 1752, November 17: Lehndorff saying that if Heinrich had been born a shepherd, he would have been the delight of his little village--I can hear

cahn saying, "Endearing!" :)

That's all I have time to comment on, but I'm planning to read some more before bed. I mostly wanted to put some things out there that might help clarify things for

cahn.

ETA: Read up through the end of 1752. I don't have time to resummarize Maurice de Saxe, whom we've talked about a bit, but in November 1750, you'll run into a famous military commander in French service who dies, and that's Maurice. He's famous enough that I had read some of his work during my military history phase in high school, though don't quiz me on the details 20 years later. ;)

Edited 2020-10-18 03:37 (UTC)

Fräulein v. Katt - no idea, but as Hans Herrmann's sisters were all married at that point, she must have hailed from another branch of the family.

1751, May 20: Lehndorff says his brother is under Arrest.

Um, do we know why?

No, and since it doesn't appear to have been serious - his brother is fine the other times he's mentioned, until he dies - , I see two likely possiblities, both typical for young noblemen:

a) he did the same thing Heinrich did a year earlier, i.e. stole away from his regiment to spend the night in Berlin, and got the same punishment, i.e. twelve hours arrest. Or something like that. Heinrich wasn't unique in this regard, and it was a bigger deal with him because he was suppposed to be in charge, and also of course because he was Fritz' brother.

b) somewhat more serious, he fought a duel. If so, then without a lethal ending for the other party, or Lehndorff would have mentioned it, but even though, duelling was technically forbidden, though simultanously regarded as a matter of honor, hence only the slap on the wrist type of arrests as punishments.

Now, *my* sources (which I forget what, if any, are primary) say that this rumor was going around, and Fritz was very upset, and he researched it, and found that it was all slander made up by his enemies, who don't want to believe anyone could be an atheist on their deathbed. Fritz was very relieved to find it wasn't true.

Your sources are Voltaire in his trashy tell all memoir: La Mettrie died from having eaten a pasty stuffed with truffles, after a very hearty dinner at the table of Lord Tyrconnel, Envoy from France. It was pretended he had been confessed before his death. The King was exceedingly vexed by this, and took care to be exactly informed concerning the truth of the assertion; they assured him it was an atrocious calumny, for La Mettrie had died as he had lived, abjuring God and physicians. His Majesty was convinced, an dimmeditely composed his funeral oration, which was read, in his name, at a public sitting of the Academy, by Darget his secretary.

Now this is Voltaire, and he might have made the part up where Fritz was reassured, but honestly, in the context of the trashy tell all he has nothing to gain by doing so.

Meseberg: nope, this is the same place which Heinrich will later buy for Kaphengst.

Benebelt: tipsy, though "dazed" is probably a better translation, because the implication isn't that they were giddily drunk but that they were already transitioning to the hangover state.

Travel jokes! LOL. BTW, without looking it up, I seem to recall the passage where Lehndorff writes about Reisewitz' first financial misadventures and Heinrich's reaction was censored in the original volume but shows up in Volume 2, Lehndorff Unplugged.

Maurice de Saxe: I see his English wiki entry mentions he corresponded with his half sister Orzelska, which reminds me Lady Mary met her when she first arrived in Italy on her Algarotti quest. They socialized. It was a small Rokoko world!

Maurice de Saxe, funnily enough, first became known to me not in a Fritzian context but because he was the ancestor of George Sand.

Heinrich the shephard quote: aw, yes. BTW, I don't know what google makes of it, but it's obvious who P.H. and H. are, right?

If you're looking for some of the most fervent 1752 quotes, they were originally censored and thus ended up in volume 2, but what is in volume 1 is already devoted enough.

Edited 2020-10-18 08:34 (UTC)

Duel: Makes sense, thank you!

Now this is Voltaire, and he might have made the part up where Fritz was reassured, but honestly, in the context of the trashy tell all he has nothing to gain by doing so.

Meh, I was hoping there was a better source, but I'm not finding it in Trier. Well, I agree, Voltaire probably would have been more likely to report that Mettrie did recant (and to mock him for it) if he did, than the reverse. Also, lol at "God and physicians." Voltaire reeeeally has a way with words.

Benebelt: tipsy, though "dazed" is probably a better translation, because the implication isn't that they were giddily drunk but that they were already transitioning to the hangover state.

I was so close! Thank you for adding the missing piece of nuance.

If you're looking for some of the most fervent 1752 quotes, they were originally censored and thus ended up in volume 2, but what is in volume 1 is already devoted enough.

I knoooow, this is why Lehndorff 2 is on my list, but I can't quite handle the font yet, and I'll be surprised if Google can handle it well enough that I'll be able to give

cahn a translation. :(

It's OK -- I would love to read it if there were a good font, but if not I will just be happy with you reading it :)

Reading along with your notes is GREAT :D Thank you for the detailed notes!

The prose is way easier than any of the other nonfiction we've read, not least because you're on to something with the short paragraphs being much easier :P Though I contend it's not just because the paragraphs are shorter (though that is definitely part of it) but because the short journal entries are things like "Visited with Frau So-and-so." If reading this doesn't drum into my head the German for "visit" and "with," I think I'm beyond hope.

Lehndorff describes a marriage by saying the husband is stone blind, which is an advantage for the wife, since she's really ugly. Lol.

ahahaha I got a kick out of that too.

Lehndorff points out that this one woman squints horribly.

It also sounded like everyone was kind of annoyed that she was replacing someone they really liked? So maybe everyone was a bit inclined to be a bit BEC about her to begin with.

in keeping with "rubbish soaps" and "Cape stallion", Google has decided to translate Heinrich's boyfriend Reisewitz as "travel jokes."

LOL! Thank you for clearing that up :)

If it's not obvious, this is Fritz's "anonymous" pamphlet

Ah, thank you, because at first when I saw "illustrious writer" I immediately thought Voltaire, and then I was puzzled because wasn't Voltaire on the other side??

Voltaire: It was a natural mistake to make, given the writing ability of all the other parties involved.

Lehndorff saying that if Heinrich had been born a shepherd, he would have been the delight of his little village--I can hear [personal profile] cahn saying, "Endearing!" :)

:) I am afraid that the permanent consequence of having asked for endearing stories about FW is that I am always looking for whether any given character is endearing or not :) (On a scale from 1 to 10, Lehndorff is a 10, and FW is 1, and everyone else scales in between.)

What does Se. mean before the honorific? I assume Seiner?

Edited 2020-10-19 05:01 (UTC)

Yes, or Seine, as the grammatical case might be. In English, you usually to my knowledge use HRH - His/Her Royal Highness - German sources youse Se. Kgl. for His Royal and then Highness or Majesty. Or they use the French, i.e. S.A. for Son Altesse. (I got thrown by this a bit when first reading some German-translated Voltaire letters which do not also bother to adjust the letters.

BTW, you can tell that Lehndorff while not quite as much a snob as Wilhelmine tends to me is still wedded to a 18th century sense of rank and formalities, because even years and years and years into the relationship(s), he writes sometimes the full "his highness the most serene Prince Heinrich"/"his highness Prince Heinrich" (or for AW and Ferdinand, too), which is, of course, why it's really telling about his emotional state when it's just "H." or, going totally extreme, "my H."

Oh, and another thing: between "Cape Stallion" and "Travel Jokes", I suppose Heinrich's other boyfriend Lamberg might show up as "Lamb Mountain"? Not to mention the upcoming arrival of Chalk Remorse?

It's usually Seine Majestät in our text.

BTW, you can tell that Lehndorff while not quite as much a snob as Wilhelmine tends to me is still wedded to a 18th century sense of rank and formalities

Oh, I've definitely been noticing the not-quite-as-snobby-as-Wilhelmine remarks, and that works both ways, as you say: observe the formalities toward your superiors, be snide toward your inferiors.

Oh, and I meant to say, I see what you mean about Lehndorff being a possible candidate for Ravenclaw instead of Hufflepuff.

Oh, and another thing: between "Cape Stallion" and "Travel Jokes", I suppose Heinrich's other boyfriend Lamberg might show up as "Lamb Mountain"? Not to mention the upcoming arrival of Chalk Remorse?

OMG, I laughed so hard. Alas, Ctrl-f reveals neither. But it's not too late to change that with my algorithms! :D

:D Thank you! Also I am extremely pleased that now I know enough German (still very little!) to figure out something like that! Ooh, I've never seen the S.A. (though of course I've seen HRH).

WELL.

Reading along with your notes is GREAT :D Thank you for the detailed notes!

You said this, and I was like, "Great, I'll make more notes as I go along, and I'll read at the computer because my computer time isn't quite as limited!"

But SOMEONE had to go and post an amazing drawing of Fritz and dogs, and naturally, I spent the whole evening LOOKING at it instead of reading. :P

And THEN, when I *was* reading, I got distracted by doing detective work instead.

So as liveblogging goes, it was a success, as meeting German quota goes, it was a failure. :P

And not because the German's difficult, because...

The prose is way easier than any of the other nonfiction we've read, not least because you're on to something with the short paragraphs being much easier :P Though I contend it's not just because the paragraphs are shorter (though that is definitely part of it) but because the short journal entries are things like "Visited with Frau So-and-so."

Yep, it's definitely not just the paragraphs, but also the short, repetitive, often telegraphic sentences, which I fully expected from my flipping through it during the last month. I actually put together the machine translation of Krockow (double portrait of Fritz and Heinrich) this weekend, because Lehndorff isn't giving me the kind of German practice I need, and I was planning to do them in conjunction.

AND THEN I didn't even meet German quota today. :P

So, please yell at me, and I'm going to have to not liveblog tomorrow.

But for now, here's what I came up with. As usual, if I spot Google doing something weird and potentially confusing, I'll tell you about it, but I do not have time to read the English translation alongside the German. I only glance at it now and again.

1752, September: Pesne is the court painter who did a number of the paintings you're familiar with in this fandom.

1752, November 10: Bielfeld: Middle class friend of Fritz who gave the speech when Fritz became a Freemason. Fritz appointed him tutor to his younger brothers when he became King. He wrote a bunch of books (Lehndorff will explain some but not all of this in a later entry).

1753, February 18: Life was so great for the patriarchs, who kept their families in a permanent state of total dependence on them and living in fear of their violence! Yeah, I'm sure it was great for the patriarchs. (I get that Lehndorff's saying he misses his family, but what a way to say it.)

1753, March 4: Marschall has the pox, not the leaves.

1753, March 11: More Katte family drama! Marschall has the pox, dies, and all the property that his grandmother saved for 86 years, in hopes of making him happy, now goes to some Katte, whom she despised.

*an hour later*

Well, I *was* trying to figure this out, but then I got side-tracked by "pictures of Fritz smiling and looking happy." Now I've closed 24 tabs of Marschalls and Kattes, and 6 of Fritz pictures, and I'm going back to reading.

...I'm never making quota at this rate. :P

What I found was:

We had already figured out that the Staatsminister Katt is Heinrich Christoph, son of Heinrich Christoph (Hans Heinrich's brother). Wikipedia tells me he was the successor to Samuel von Marschall, but 1) that was a political appointment, 2) Samuel died in 1749.

I had been wondering if Samuel had a last male heir who died in 1753, but no, his heir lived until 1805. (He and Lehndorff's Marschall both had the title Legationsrat.) Samuel was from East Prussia, like our Marschall, and two of his sons were "Domherr in Havelberg", where Havelberg is near Katte territory. Samuel's wife--

Oh, interesting, in 1741/1742, Heinrich Christoph von Katte was appointed Kammerdirektor of Küstrin. Which was Hille's job. Ooh, yes, Hille died in 1740. Timing lines up.

So...a Katte cousin gets Hille's job almost immediately after Fritz becomes king. Coincidence?

Well, I hope he wasn't close to Hans Hermann (his brother Ludolf is supposed to have been), since imagine working every day where your favorite first cousin WAS BEHEADED.

Anyway, Samuel's wife was a Borstell, and the Borstells seem to hail from Bismarck territory, which is very very near Katte territory (which is why the two families keep intermarrying). Hmm. There is a Borstell in the Katte family tree, but only in the 1500s.

GAH. I'm not quite there, and I said I was going back to reading FORTY-FIVE minutes ago.

Bad Mildred!

*closes 10 more tabs*

A few minutes later...

*closes another 5 that somehow opened, they proliferate on their own, I swear*

1753, March 16: It's 1753 and the Abbe de Prades is already suspected of being an informer? (

cahn, it wasn't until 1757 that Fritz locked him up. Oh, and he's the original le roi m'a dit, we only tease Catt by calling him that (because we know he so was)).

Lehndorff: Well, all these intellectuals Fritz collects are terrible people, but I guess they have a purpose, since he's an exhausted and stressed workaholic who needs some entertaining conversations.

Also Lehndorff (earlier): The people I like are great, but whenever Fritz appears, for some reason they freeze up and become completely boring until he leaves.

1753, March 20: Lehndorff's hopes about his cousin are fading, and he's seeing the property he was expecting disappear into the hands of his rival. So the One Who Got Away still isn't married yet!

Good lord, what is taking so long?

1748: The fatal fraternal duel.
1749[?]: Lehndorff's proposal, according to the label on the box containing the relevant papers in the Saxon archives
1751: When Lehndorff was supposed to marry his cousin, according to a diary entry later in the 1750s.
1753: His hopes are fading.
1755: The marriage to Ludolf von Katte, according to Kloosterhuis.

This entry means "Lovers" is wrong, in that she's not married when Lehndorff talks to Peter at Heinrich's wedding in mid-1752. I was going for the 1751 date, as you know.

1755 is looking more plausible! But that's still another two years. I will keep my eyes peeled.

See, it's good to reread things a year later! Especially if the person doing the rereading is me and has to read them very slowly in order to understand them at all. ;)

Btw, no names are mentioned, just "cousin" and "rival", so this is why this entry neither turned up in our searches, nor jumped out at you when you were reading,

selenak.

1753, March 24: "All my hopes are gone!" Nothing to do now but patiently endure fate (and complain to all my friends who are loyal enough to share my pain).

So it sounds like things are getting pretty final with Ludolf!

Same day: I make the acquaintance of Abbe Cristiani, an Italian, but one so dumb that he could take on the dumbest Pomeranian. !!

See, this is why it's so impressive that Fredersdorf, from the backend of Pomerania, with no education, managed to catch up so quickly. ;)

1753, March 30: Google translates Autodafé as "car dairy." It actually gets it if you paste it into the browser! But not so much in the API, I guess.

1753, April 3: The Queen's ladies don't come to AW's party, which annoys him. Sounds like him. :P

Sophie was married in 1751, though, so she wouldn't be one of them, if I'm not mistaken.

Oh, I forgot to mention earlier,

cahn (see, I'm more thorough when I'm on the computer, but also more easily distracted :P), when Fräulein v. Pannwitz gets married to Herr v. Voß, that's the one AW was in love with, not to be confused with Fräulein v. Pannwitz the FW puncher (who we determined was her father's sister).

1753, April 14: The Margravine of Ansbach is Fritz's sister, of whom

selenak recently wrote:

Ansbach brother in law: in addition to this, he was also yet another lousy husband I am reminded of Fritz‘ unexpectedly touching reaction in a letter to Heinrich when his Ansbach sister died:

My dearest brother,

It is the heartbroken with pain that I write to you today. I have just learned of the death of our poor and unhappy sister in Ansbach. This comes back, my dear brother, to what I have been telling you lately, that what is left of our family is shaking up their sleeves. I have always thought of going to Ansbach to see my poor sister again; I never could find the moment. She was a very good and honest person, whose heart was full of integrity. I confess to you, my dear brother, that this distresses me so much, that I will put off another day to answer you.

Friederike Luise had once been a spirited girl whose cheeky telling FW that the food he gives his children is lousy triggered the occasion where he threw with the plates at Wilhelmine and Fritz; she was the first to get married, and by the time she died, she was an utterly depressed lonely woman hardly able to talk anymore.

Per Wikipedia:Even on the trip to Ansbach in June 1729 [when she was FOURTEEN] for her wedding, Luise Friederike was suffering from symptoms of the metabolic disease porphyria. She suffered from nausea, vomiting and faintings during which she was "dead as it seemed". Her spouse claimed she was lame and had bad teeth. Initially, he would not sleep with her. Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia commented on the marriage in February 1732 in these terms: "My sister and her husband the Ansbacher hate each other like fire." (»... ma soeur d'Anspac et son mari qui se Mr. haïssent comme le feu. ") At a window in the family room of the Ansbacher Residenz, she scratched this plea with a diamond in the glass:" Je souffre sans oser le dire. " (I suffer without daring to say it.)

When her 4-year-old son died in 1737:

The Margrave and the whole court blamed Friederike Louise for his death. She separated from her spouse and lived more and more in the seclusion of [her estate] Unterschwaningen, which she expanded artistically. Friederike Louise did not return to Ansbach until she became a widow in 1757. Her unhappiness was further compounded by the refusal of her surviving son to see or acknowledge her.

1753, April 15: Ankunit = "Ankunft" = "arrival"

1753, April 28: Only you can prevent forest fires, AW! (He sets some trees on fire to see what will happen, a conflagration starts up quickly, everyone's afraid for the whole park, but then the trees burn down and it doesn't spread.)

Oh, this is great, their reactions while the fire is raging:

Heinrich: *only cares about saving everyone else* <-- Lehndorff sparkly hearts

AW: How on earth am I going to explain this?

Reisewitz: loses his head, dumps water on his boyfriend Heinrich instead of on the fire, which gave it time to spread. I guess that shows some priorities!

Bielfeld: *brave Sir Robin bravely ran away*

This whole episode is dying for crackfic!

Oh, and Lehndorff, of course: I totally kept my cool and observed everyone else's reactions, yes sir, I did.

Ooh, later that day:

Lehndorff talks to Countess Bentinck, when he learns Fritz is mad at her, he regrets that this means he won't be able to hang out with her any more, because prudence dictates you not make friends with people the great and powerful are mad at, especially when they're guilty of having worked against the interests of the King.

1753, April 30: Fritz goes to the bathroom, lol, Google. He goes to the *baths*.

1753, May 1: "The saddest day of my life." The previous saddest day of his life was when Marschall died of the pox. Today it's because Heinrich is going to be at Oranienburg and Rheinsberg for a few weeks.

Oh, Lehndorff, never change. :D

Omg, it continues. The tears, the speechlessness, the broken heart, the vows of eternal devotion, the sleeplessness!

I know you've told us about this very episode,

selenak, but it really is something reading it for oneself.

Oh, right, and now he's hiding behind a house at Heinrich's departure because he can't bear to face him I REMEMBER THIS. LOL forever.

OMG, now it's the line where pagans would have made him a god and now everyone just builds altars to him in their hearts. Wow, this was all from one entry. This is amazing. (Btw, when you reminded me of this line,

selenak, I snuck a reference into "Lovers" at T-2 days before the collection went live. :D)

1753, May 3: Here we are visiting the Podewils in the village of Fredersdorf again, because that's not confusing AT ALL. :P

Okay, I have to stop, it's my bedtime. It's been a wild ride, but I have to keep my sleep together so I can do Yuletide this year!

OKAY CONSIDER YOURSELF YELLED AT. YOU ARE HERE TO DO GERMAN NOT TO DO RESEARCH OR LOOK AT PICTURES OF DOGS ~~even if they are really cute and awesomely drawn dogs~~. YOU HAD A QUOTA AND YOU DID NOT MAKE IT.

but I feel bad about yelling at you because I love your notes so much! Can you maybe do the ones where you explain to me what's going on without the research? Cause I am not going to understand what's going on otherwise -- which isn't all that bad, Lehndorff is still a sweetie and still sparkly hearts -- but...

But I really like the idea where you read more of something else to do the actual German practice and maybe read less of this per day! The other reason I like you reading less of this per day (besides that it would be easier for you to liveblog/annotate) is because it is too easy for your German practice... which means... whose German practice is it actually excellent for? :D Seriously... my German has gotten noticeably better in even the last couple of days, because Lehndorff is so repetitive and sometimes formulaic (though mostly because my German is so very shaky and incomplete that it's pretty easy to improve it). I don't usually try to translate his longer musings, just the very formulaic ones right now :) ) But if I have to keep up with you, I don't have time to go through the German at the slow pace I need to!

OK, I've made good headway on this (lol forever to him being confused about Voltaire and Fritz, that's all of us Lehndorff) and I'll do more of it tomorrow :)

THANK YOU

Yeah, I went to bed last night thinking we're going to have to figure out something different for this readalong.

First of which was, I meant to say this but was in a hurry and forgot:

But if I have to keep up with you, I don't have time to go through the German at the slow pace I need to! Can you maybe do the ones where you explain to me what's going on without the research?

Not if I'm at a computer, no. :P Believe me, I wasn't researching Staatsminister Katte and Marschall because I thought *you* were so interested. Looking things up is a compulsion with me. I can make the best resolutions to limit my googling, and it just. Does. Not Work. It's like gambling or gaming are for some people: it's an addiction for me.

But let's try the weekday/weekend split? Let me know much you think you can do in a week, and I'll let you know if I think I can comment that in a weekend.

Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 19

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Yuletide

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Peter Keith

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Seckendorff

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Stratemann

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Stratemann - Küstrin poetry

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Oster Wilhelmine readthrough

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Wilhelmine stars in an episode of Scooby Doo

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