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)
Re: All About Algarotti
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)