I'm not wedded to the "Fredersdorf is sick" hypothesis, but I'm going to play devil's advocate here.
I could believe both, except that I think Fritz could pass off being worried for Fredersdorf being sick to Camas as being a good feudal lord concerned for a faithful servant
Worried, yes. Making sure Fredersdorf is taken care of, sure. Having stress-related illness, that's as bad as colic, because of it? I suspect the reaction would be similar to this one letter I saw, probably in the Fairchilds servants book: a noble teenage boy, maybe about 14 years old, has just had his tutor/governor/whatever taken away. Several months later, he writes to his father, begging for his tutor back, because he can't be happy without him. The boy is clearly having stress-related illness and depression from the separation from the guy who'd been parenting him for the last several years. The father writes an uncomprehending letter back that the son's filial regard for his tutor does them both honor, but it's time to move on.
I suspect losing sleep over your valet falls into the same category. You were the one who said Fritz couldn't write to anyone about Fredersdorf's death even after the guy had publicly been first minister for 15 years and Lehndorff was calling him the Prussian Pompadour, because Fritz didn't have a vocabulary for how much Fredersdorf had meant to him! Fredersdorf also never seems to have come up in the Fritz/Wilhelmine letters, granted that the complete correspondence hasn't been published.
Not least because I don't think Fredersdorf's health problems had kicked in yet, though I could be wrong about this.
They don't need to have; it's the 18th century. Do we know when Fredersdorf had smallpox? Or any number of other infectious diseases?
And the thing is, by the later 1730s, Fritz definitely wasn't hiding that Fredersdorf wasn't an exchangeable servant to him; see Bielfeld's description of Fredersdorf
I would be very surprised if Fritz wasn't trying to keep it at least partly on the down low as long as FW was alive. Bielfeld lived at Rheinsberg, and I have definitely read, though I forget where now, that many or all of his letters were composed later in life. That's why when I reported him writing in 1740 that Fritz would someday be called great, I said I didn't know if that was written with the benefit of hindsight.
Okay, Carlyle definitely says the letters were not sent through the post office but were written after the fact. I don't know if a more reliable source says that or if modern scholarship has weighed in. But given what some of the people in our fandom have gotten up to, Bielfeld's letters could be anywhere from Catt-like self-insert fanfic, to Lady Mary redacting her letters for publication by removing repetition and creating a narrative. I just don't know.
But I wouldn't put somebody who authored and sold a book of his own letters in his own lifetime, in 1763 to boot, i.e. right after Fritz had won the Seven Years' War and this book was guaranteed to sell, up there with Preuss collating letters from the Prussian archives after Fritz's death, in terms of evidence that a given passage was written in the year the passage is claimed to have been written.
Even if the Fredersdorf passage is totally genuine, Bielfeld writing in October 1739 (almost the exact time the "rising sun" ceiling was painted), and staying at Rheinsberg and being a Freemason in the Rheinsberg lodge with both Fritz and Fredersdorf (assuming Bielfeld can be trusted on that), is far from the same as Camas corresponding long-distance with Fritz in January 1736, in terms of their respective insights into Fritz's relationship with Fredersdorf.
Now, it could be a friend's STD and/or (the friend's) gambling debts, certainly! Or something else we haven't thought of. But if you're right that Fritz couldn't talk about Fredersdorf's death even after a publicly known relationship that had lasted over 25 years, talking about Fredersdorf's illness after 5 years, when he must have been trying not to let FW catch on, must have been at least as difficult.
Re: Fritz Mystery Affliction January 1736
I could believe both, except that I think Fritz could pass off being worried for Fredersdorf being sick to Camas as being a good feudal lord concerned for a faithful servant
Worried, yes. Making sure Fredersdorf is taken care of, sure. Having stress-related illness, that's as bad as colic, because of it? I suspect the reaction would be similar to this one letter I saw, probably in the Fairchilds servants book: a noble teenage boy, maybe about 14 years old, has just had his tutor/governor/whatever taken away. Several months later, he writes to his father, begging for his tutor back, because he can't be happy without him. The boy is clearly having stress-related illness and depression from the separation from the guy who'd been parenting him for the last several years. The father writes an uncomprehending letter back that the son's filial regard for his tutor does them both honor, but it's time to move on.
I suspect losing sleep over your valet falls into the same category. You were the one who said Fritz couldn't write to anyone about Fredersdorf's death even after the guy had publicly been first minister for 15 years and Lehndorff was calling him the Prussian Pompadour, because Fritz didn't have a vocabulary for how much Fredersdorf had meant to him! Fredersdorf also never seems to have come up in the Fritz/Wilhelmine letters, granted that the complete correspondence hasn't been published.
Not least because I don't think Fredersdorf's health problems had kicked in yet, though I could be wrong about this.
They don't need to have; it's the 18th century. Do we know when Fredersdorf had smallpox? Or any number of other infectious diseases?
And the thing is, by the later 1730s, Fritz definitely wasn't hiding that Fredersdorf wasn't an exchangeable servant to him; see Bielfeld's description of Fredersdorf
I would be very surprised if Fritz wasn't trying to keep it at least partly on the down low as long as FW was alive. Bielfeld lived at Rheinsberg, and I have definitely read, though I forget where now, that many or all of his letters were composed later in life. That's why when I reported him writing in 1740 that Fritz would someday be called great, I said I didn't know if that was written with the benefit of hindsight.
Okay, Carlyle definitely says the letters were not sent through the post office but were written after the fact. I don't know if a more reliable source says that or if modern scholarship has weighed in. But given what some of the people in our fandom have gotten up to, Bielfeld's letters could be anywhere from Catt-like self-insert fanfic, to Lady Mary redacting her letters for publication by removing repetition and creating a narrative. I just don't know.
But I wouldn't put somebody who authored and sold a book of his own letters in his own lifetime, in 1763 to boot, i.e. right after Fritz had won the Seven Years' War and this book was guaranteed to sell, up there with Preuss collating letters from the Prussian archives after Fritz's death, in terms of evidence that a given passage was written in the year the passage is claimed to have been written.
Even if the Fredersdorf passage is totally genuine, Bielfeld writing in October 1739 (almost the exact time the "rising sun" ceiling was painted), and staying at Rheinsberg and being a Freemason in the Rheinsberg lodge with both Fritz and Fredersdorf (assuming Bielfeld can be trusted on that), is far from the same as Camas corresponding long-distance with Fritz in January 1736, in terms of their respective insights into Fritz's relationship with Fredersdorf.
Now, it could be a friend's STD and/or (the friend's) gambling debts, certainly! Or something else we haven't thought of. But if you're right that Fritz couldn't talk about Fredersdorf's death even after a publicly known relationship that had lasted over 25 years, talking about Fredersdorf's illness after 5 years, when he must have been trying not to let FW catch on, must have been at least as difficult.