cahn | Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 19

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Yuletide nominations:

18th Century CE Federician RPF
Maria Theresia | Maria Theresa of Austria
Voltaire
Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Ernst Ahasverus von Lehndorff
Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen | Henry of Prussia (1726-1802)
Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758)
Anna Amalie von Preußen | Anna Amalia of Prussia (1723-1787)
Catherine II of Russia
Hans Hermann von Katte
Peter Karl Christoph von Keith
Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf
August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia (1722-1758)

Circle of Voltaire RPF
Emilie du Chatelet
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson (Madame de Pompadour)
John Hervey (1696-1743)
Marie Louise Mignot Denis
Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu
Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis
Armand de Vignerot du Plessis de Richelieu (1696-1788)
Francesco Algarotti

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

cahn

Okay, this is fascinating, thank you so much for this!

I find she ends up going to the other extreme and simply asssuming the worst with just about everything Voltaire ever said about Émilie.

Right?? I definitely noticed she didn't like Voltaire at all, though since I had no other frame of reference for Voltaire at the time, I was willing to be convinced that he was Bad News :) Once you had done some of your Voltaire writing (both salon and fic), it was rather more clear to me that there was rather some bias on her part.

The thing is, Voltaire isn't subtle when he's quarrelling with people. And when he argued with Émilie about Leipniz and Newton, the whole world knew it because he published an essay about it. So you really don't have to look for hidden messages.

HAHAHAHAHA point taken.

I can't see another reason but Émilie as to why he'd stay in touch with Saint-Lambert, which took a conscious effort of doing under these circumstances.

Ooh, that's a good point, thank you.

Heavy on the scientific side but lucidly written - the author even had the chance to read Émilie's original manuscript of her Principia translation, and describes it - and the description of Émilie's life is neither as romantisizing as Bodanis nor as defensive and feeling in need to rescue Émilie from Voltaire as Zinsser.

This sounds... Very Relevant to my interests. :D

Laura Bassi.

Grundy and Zinsser: Who?

I laughed out loud, because this was also my reaction :)

The part about Graffigny is also very cool. Yeah, clearly way more interesting than Zinsser or Bodanis were willing to give her credit for.

From:

selenak

Laura Bassi: sounds really cool, and I can't believe no one before Arianrhod mentioned her in the books we've read, especially since Arianrhod also points out that Émilie during the 1740s was voted as an honorary member into the Academia di Bologna, where Bassi taught, and they were both in the same field of science. As for Francoise de Graffigny, here I think the same issue as with Madame Denis applies, i.e. biographers of Émilie approached the supporting cast with certain clichés in their minds and didn't look beyond that. So a younger sexual rival has to be stupid and weak-willed, and an older woman who goes from admiring to critical has to be a conventional society lady.

Having googled some more, I see that Madame Graffigny is very much worth exploring. (And another illustration why you don't want to be a woman in the 18th century.) She got married to her abusive husband at age 17; they were both from Lorraine, which is a crossover plot point later. Several dead children and much marital brutality later, due to all his gambling debts she got him to sign a document obliging him to leave Lorraine and give her authority to handle the family's finances. A few years later, she achieved a legal separation. But all the debts he'd made still were also hers, and so she was really glad to find a place at the court of...

*drumroll*

Elisabeth Charlotte d'Orleans, Duchess Dowager of Lorraine, as in, daughter of Philippe and Liselotte, mother of Franz Stephan. (BTW, Franz Stephan showing up as "Francois-Etienne" in the English wiki entry threw me for a moment before I realised.) This was a happy time for her, and she also met a dashing officer named Leopold Desmarets, thirteen years her junior, whom she fell in (requited) love with. When FS gave up his dukedom so he could marry MT in 1737, this meant Madame Graffigny lost her patroness (since FS' mother, too, left Lorraine and didn't bring all her ladies-in-waiting with her) and had nowhere to go until finding a new job with the Duchesse de Richelieu in 1738 (wife of the BFF of Voltaire and Émilie). Which is how she ended up in Cirey in 1738, and the thirty-odd letters she wrote during her time there is why she ended up in the Voltaire and Émilie biographies.

Now, according to her English wiki entry, what happened was:

The first few weeks at Cirey seemed like a wonderful dream come true. Voltaire read from his works in progress and joined in performances of his plays. The hostess, Émilie, showed off her estate, her furnishings, her clothes and jewelry, and her formidable learning. There were constant visitors, including luminaries like the scientist-philosopher Pierre Louis Maupertuis. The conversation ranged over every topic imaginable, always enlivened by Voltaire's sparkling wit.

Yet trouble was brewing. Voltaire read from his scandalous burlesque poem about Joan of Arc, La Pucelle. Émilie intercepted a letter from Devaux which mentioned the work, leapt to the false conclusion that her guest had copied a canto and circulated it, and accused her of treachery. For a month after that, Françoise de Graffigny was a virtual prisoner at Cirey, until her lover Desmarest passed through en route to Paris and took her on the final leg of her journey.

I swear, that poem really was nothing but trouble. Anyway, you can see where the later Émilie-critical descriptions came from, and it had nothing to do with Graffigny being a disapproving society matron. As for her own artistic efforts, she started out trying to write as early as 1733, but didn't go into print until 1745. By then, the Duchess had died, but Madame Graffigny had managed to establish a well-frequented salon and become the centre of a circle in Paris, and by subletting the house she'd rented to support herself. Her big bestseller "Peruvian Letters" was published in 1747, and by 1748 there were already 14 editions - it really was one of the biggest bestselling books of the time. She died peacefully in 1758, of a stroke while playing cards with three old friends.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Laura Bassi: sounds really cool, and I can't believe no one before Arianrhod mentioned her in the books we've read

Dissertation author: slander!

More seriously, Bassi doesn't get a lot of page time in the dissertation, but enough that I remembered her name and knew facts about her from my reading of it.

Émilie biographers, of course, have no excuse.

*searches*

Okay, Bodanis doesn't mention her at all, but Zinsser gives two passing mentions, including acknowledging that they were both members of the Academy of Sciences in Bologna and that Bassi used one of Émilie's books in her classes. Bassi gets far more page time in the Algarotti dissertation (I wouldn't be surprised if this is because dissertation author is heavily leaning on Italian sources, and Émilie biographers more French sources.)

I swear, that poem really was nothing but trouble.

Evidently!

(BTW, Franz Stephan showing up as "Francois-Etienne" in the English wiki entry threw me for a moment before I realised.)

Hee. Not as much as Hans Heinrich as "John Henry" once threw me. ;)

Anyway, all very interesting women, worthy of more research, my kingdom for more time.

From:

cahn

Laura Bassi and Madame Graffigny both sound really interesting! In particular I'm very happy to see that Mme. Graffigny and her situation were rather more complex than the biographies were giving her credit for. Thank you for introducing me to them :D (And now I'm really side-eyeing the Émilie bios, but whatever.)

I swear, that poem really was nothing but trouble.

Ha, yes!