The grammar is ambiguous and could in theory mean the correspondence is between Peter and the cabinet, but I doubt it; the way it reads to me is that this is indicating letters between Peter and Fritz, filed under "secret cabinet" type of documents, with the description "Jugendfreund" added by later librarians to make it clear which Keith this one is, so yes, it definitely means "Jugendfreund of Fritz".
Wilhelmine also said he had black eyebrows and a swarthy complexion (which I would expect her to remember a little better), so you may be right that blond may not have reflected his real-life hair color.
Not sure, but isn't there at least one other contemporary source - Pöllnitz? - who backs her up on the black eyebrows and swarthy complexion?
I'm also reminded of this:
Richard III: is portrayed as dark haired in painting and description - and not just negative Tudor era descriptions but positive ones, including one by a German merchant, Nikolaus von Popelau, who met him a year before his death. This means both Traditionalists and Ricardians agree on describing him as dark haired, usually as the only dark haired one in a blonde family. (We don't actually know that all the other York siblings were blondes, just that oldest brother Edward IV was.)
Skeleton found in Leicester parking lot: is analyzed by science, which among other things has scientists declare that Richard was blond.
Everyone: ???? No way!
(Sharon Penman in her blog said that a lot of people are blond as children and then their hair darkens to brunet, which was true for my father as well - he's white blond on his photos age 2 and age 3, and had dark brown hair later. -, so I believe it.)
Thanks for clarifying that it was ambiguous in the way I thought it was ambiguous.
so yes, it definitely means "Jugendfreund of Fritz".
Yes, what I meant was a point about anaphora: Of course it's Fritz's Jugenfreund, but if you write just "Jugendfreund", it makes it more likely to me that Fritz is the author of the letters ("Fritz" being understood), whereas if you write "Jugendfreund of Fritz", it makes it more likely that Fritz wasn't the author ("whose Jugenfreund?" needing to be spelled out). If I were to write to Peter, you could label my letters "to the Jugenfreund of Fritz Peter Keith," but if you found a letter from me to "Jugenfreund Peter Keith," you would assume it was to *my* Jugenfreund.
But since "of Fritz" is referred to earlier in the headings, that makes it totally ambiguous to me.
But given that the surrounding correspondence in this section is at least partially and possibly mostly/entirely correspondence with Fritz, I agree that this is most likely Fritz and Peter.
And now I *really* need these letters. Preuss! What were you doing when you could have been publishing those letters for me??
Seriously, off the top of my head, the only Keith-related letters from the 1740s and 1750s I can think of are these:
- From Fritz to his contact in Hanover, ordering him to find Peter but keep it under wraps (I still wonder why). - From Peter's mother to Fritz going, "Um? My son? Can he come home now?" - From Jordan to Fritz, talking about Peter's desire to join the army, and his engagement. - From Fritz about Peter as proposed envoy.
We've got one from Peter's son in the 1800s that's somewhat historically inaccurate. There's supposedly one Fritz wrote to Peter circa 1730 talking about how great it was going to be when he was king, the one Peter supposedly tried to show him, though this is extremely word of mouth. And of course FW writes letters about Peter in 1730. But I really don't think we have anything to or from Peter, unless I'm either forgetting something or just don't know about it because I haven't read Kloosterhuis (but I did search for every instance of "Keith" repeatedly).
So a letter to or from Peter would be *extremely* interesting (though it might break my heart if Fritz is being awful, but I will cling to my semi-substantiated fannish belief that things got better in the 1750s).
Not sure, but isn't there at least one other contemporary source - Pöllnitz? - who backs her up on the black eyebrows and swarthy complexion?
Funny, I had written "Wilhelmine and Pöllnitz," but decided to delete "and Pöllnitz", because it made it look like we have two sources, when, thanks to my textual analysis, I'm not sure they count as independent. They are way too similar. And I'm pretty sure I checked and Pöllnitz was nowhere near Berlin in the late 1720s and early 1730s, so if he got his information from Wilhelmine, that would make sense. Though now that I compare the two passages, I see that Wilhelmine doesn't actually say Katte was short.
Wilhelmine: deux sourcils noirs lui couvroient presque les yeux; son regard avoit quelque chose de funeste, qui lui présageoit son sort; une peau basanée et gravée de petite vérole
Pöllnitz: Il étoit d'une taille au dessous de la médiocre, fort gravé de la petite vérole, & basané, avec des sourcils épais qui lui donnoient une physionomie funeste
My conclusion based on this passage as a whole is that either they conferred (perhaps when Pöllnitz visited her in the 1740s), or else we have a situation like Thiébault, where a 19th century editor decided to flesh Pöllnitz's text out with reference to W's now published memoirs.
Which reminds me, we should see if we can track down the different drafts of W's memoirs at some point, because from Oster I got the impression that the 1739 one was actually published separately. It would be interesting to do a compare and contrast, especially for reference to how she talks about Fritz before he becomes king and when they're not having their big fallout.
(Sharon Penman in her blog said that a lot of people are blond as children and then their hair darkens to brunet
Oh, yeah, that's a thing. I remember looking up the biological details when I was studying genetics, though I've since forgotten them. I just remember that some gene or genes get activated or deactivated during adolescence, and that's why the hair darkens.
I well believe Katte was blond as a child even if he was darker haired when he got older. (Happened to my dissertation advisor as well.) But that would be unrelated from his hair being blond in his grave, which either means it stayed blond after he became an adult, or got bleached by the adventures his corpse went through. With Richard, of course, the scientists would have been sequencing his genome and drawing conclusions based on it, since no hair survived in the grave.
(I read a bunch of Sharon Kay Penman back in the day, but when I tried picking her up recently, after reading some Richard III biographies and the story of the discovery of his skeleton, I discovered she now fell into the category of my brain's sudden and unexpected reluctance to read fiction after about 2010. That's distinct from my lack of interest in most literature, which is lifelong, and is why Candide isn't on my list, though some of Voltaire's treatises are--like the Calas one!)
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Fritz's height
Date: 2021-01-31 07:53 am (UTC)Wilhelmine also said he had black eyebrows and a swarthy complexion (which I would expect her to remember a little better), so you may be right that blond may not have reflected his real-life hair color.
Not sure, but isn't there at least one other contemporary source - Pöllnitz? - who backs her up on the black eyebrows and swarthy complexion?
I'm also reminded of this:
Richard III: is portrayed as dark haired in painting and description - and not just negative Tudor era descriptions but positive ones, including one by a German merchant, Nikolaus von Popelau, who met him a year before his death. This means both Traditionalists and Ricardians agree on describing him as dark haired, usually as the only dark haired one in a blonde family. (We don't actually know that all the other York siblings were blondes, just that oldest brother Edward IV was.)
Skeleton found in Leicester parking lot: is analyzed by science, which among other things has scientists declare that Richard was blond.
Everyone: ???? No way!
(Sharon Penman in her blog said that a lot of people are blond as children and then their hair darkens to brunet, which was true for my father as well - he's white blond on his photos age 2 and age 3, and had dark brown hair later. -, so I believe it.)
Re: Fritz's height
Date: 2021-01-31 02:07 pm (UTC)so yes, it definitely means "Jugendfreund of Fritz".
Yes, what I meant was a point about anaphora: Of course it's Fritz's Jugenfreund, but if you write just "Jugendfreund", it makes it more likely to me that Fritz is the author of the letters ("Fritz" being understood), whereas if you write "Jugendfreund of Fritz", it makes it more likely that Fritz wasn't the author ("whose Jugenfreund?" needing to be spelled out). If I were to write to Peter, you could label my letters "to the Jugenfreund of Fritz Peter Keith," but if you found a letter from me to "Jugenfreund Peter Keith," you would assume it was to *my* Jugenfreund.
But since "of Fritz" is referred to earlier in the headings, that makes it totally ambiguous to me.
But given that the surrounding correspondence in this section is at least partially and possibly mostly/entirely correspondence with Fritz, I agree that this is most likely Fritz and Peter.
And now I *really* need these letters. Preuss! What were you doing when you could have been publishing those letters for me??
Seriously, off the top of my head, the only Keith-related letters from the 1740s and 1750s I can think of are these:
- From Fritz to his contact in Hanover, ordering him to find Peter but keep it under wraps (I still wonder why).
- From Peter's mother to Fritz going, "Um? My son? Can he come home now?"
- From Jordan to Fritz, talking about Peter's desire to join the army, and his engagement.
- From Fritz about Peter as proposed envoy.
We've got one from Peter's son in the 1800s that's somewhat historically inaccurate. There's supposedly one Fritz wrote to Peter circa 1730 talking about how great it was going to be when he was king, the one Peter supposedly tried to show him, though this is extremely word of mouth. And of course FW writes letters about Peter in 1730. But I really don't think we have anything to or from Peter, unless I'm either forgetting something or just don't know about it because I haven't read Kloosterhuis (but I did search for every instance of "Keith" repeatedly).
So a letter to or from Peter would be *extremely* interesting (though it might break my heart if Fritz is being awful, but I will cling to my semi-substantiated fannish belief that things got better in the 1750s).
Not sure, but isn't there at least one other contemporary source - Pöllnitz? - who backs her up on the black eyebrows and swarthy complexion?
Funny, I had written "Wilhelmine and Pöllnitz," but decided to delete "and Pöllnitz", because it made it look like we have two sources, when, thanks to my textual analysis, I'm not sure they count as independent. They are way too similar. And I'm pretty sure I checked and Pöllnitz was nowhere near Berlin in the late 1720s and early 1730s, so if he got his information from Wilhelmine, that would make sense. Though now that I compare the two passages, I see that Wilhelmine doesn't actually say Katte was short.
Wilhelmine: deux sourcils noirs lui couvroient presque les yeux; son regard avoit quelque chose de funeste, qui lui présageoit son sort; une peau basanée et gravée de petite vérole
Pöllnitz: Il étoit d'une taille au dessous de la médiocre, fort gravé de la petite vérole, & basané, avec des sourcils épais qui lui donnoient une physionomie funeste
My conclusion based on this passage as a whole is that either they conferred (perhaps when Pöllnitz visited her in the 1740s), or else we have a situation like Thiébault, where a 19th century editor decided to flesh Pöllnitz's text out with reference to W's now published memoirs.
Which reminds me, we should see if we can track down the different drafts of W's memoirs at some point, because from Oster I got the impression that the 1739 one was actually published separately. It would be interesting to do a compare and contrast, especially for reference to how she talks about Fritz before he becomes king and when they're not having their big fallout.
(Sharon Penman in her blog said that a lot of people are blond as children and then their hair darkens to brunet
Oh, yeah, that's a thing. I remember looking up the biological details when I was studying genetics, though I've since forgotten them. I just remember that some gene or genes get activated or deactivated during adolescence, and that's why the hair darkens.
I well believe Katte was blond as a child even if he was darker haired when he got older. (Happened to my dissertation advisor as well.) But that would be unrelated from his hair being blond in his grave, which either means it stayed blond after he became an adult, or got bleached by the adventures his corpse went through. With Richard, of course, the scientists would have been sequencing his genome and drawing conclusions based on it, since no hair survived in the grave.
(I read a bunch of Sharon Kay Penman back in the day, but when I tried picking her up recently, after reading some Richard III biographies and the story of the discovery of his skeleton, I discovered she now fell into the category of my brain's sudden and unexpected reluctance to read fiction after about 2010. That's distinct from my lack of interest in most literature, which is lifelong, and is why Candide isn't on my list, though some of Voltaire's treatises are--like the Calas one!)