Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 20

[cahn]

Yuletide signups so far:
3 requests for Frederician RPF, 2 offers
2 requests for Circle of Voltaire RPF, 3 offers !! :D :D

(I am so curious as to who the third person is!)

Comments

Re: Lehndorff readalong

[mildred_of_midgard]

To wit: the word used here is "Vetter", which means male cousin.

Oh, damn, you're right! *facepalm* That's embarrassing. The problem is they're the same in English, so in my head it comes out the same. ;)

But yes, you're also right that the -e would be easy to miss in French, and given the timing (even though it's a little bit later than we had guessed, it's still earlier than 1755), I think this makes the most sense as the du Rosey cousin(e).

ETA: In conclusion, it's good that a non-fluent German is rereading last year's salon material, not only because I go slowly, but because I make possibly felicitous mistakes! (I mean, it's improbable that in the early 1750s he lost the wealth of 2 cousins, one male and one female, to a hated rival, right?)

which he always indicates as such)

Indeed, and cahn, I often deleted these, because interpolations like this confuse Google--as you've noticed, it works best with continuous text. Ditto for the missing endnotes (there are still random stray numbers that you'll notice), which I'm trying to compensate for. ;)

Besides, I'm sure you guessed that Mr. "Beautiful as an angel in his riding pants" kept staring at soaked to the skin Heinrich. "Kept my cool", hah. Yeah, he was "observing", alright. I'd call it drooling.

ROFL. That's it, somebody's got to write crackfic. I notice *two* of you requested Heinrich for Yuletide, so plenty of opportunities. :P

Speaking of Fredersdorf the village vs Fredersdorf the person, did you notice the reference to Fredersdorf's fiancee near the end of 1752?

Of course!

Re: Lehndorff readalong

[selenak]

I mean, it's improbable that in the early 1750s he lost the wealth of 2 cousins, one male and one female, to a hated rival, right?

*nods* My thinking precisely, and yes, your slow and methodic reading continues to yield amazing results!

re: Missing endnotes - can sometimes be illuminating, though, as when Lehndorff, in the middle of the "worst day of my life/what a man/in pagan times they'd have made him a god!" outbursts mentions that he went home and "wrote a sad letter to a certain person". The footnote says this was Countess Bentinck, whom he not a page earlier has cautioned himself to end hanging out with because she's in Fritz disgrace. Clearly, being in the pining-for-Heinrich club together overrode courtier caution. :)

(Btw, if you're wondering how Schmidt-Lötzen knew this was Countess Bentinck, remember that older Lehndorff at some point in his mid 60s evidently went through his early diaries and added some clarifying remarks like that.)