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)

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!

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.)

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)

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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)

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