cahn | Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 23

cahn

aaaaaand it's time for a new discussion post! :D (you guys are so fast!)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

mildred_of_midgard

er überall, wo er das Bildnis S. M. sah, auf die Stühle kletterte, um es zu küssen.

WHAT? I remembered the kissing, but I totally missed or forgot that it was 1) more than once, 2) involved chair-climbing! Okay, yeah, that's totally syphilis. If it was just kissing a miniature in a small group of people, I was privately thinking that might be political hypocrisy (what else is new among politicians?), but this is crazy.

BTW, I take it this Yorke is the general who'll later fight the Yankee tax dodgers in the revolutionary war?

Uuhhh, good question. My American Revolution-fu is weak (studied it in school but never outside of school), but I don't remember a General Yorke. Wikipedia doesn't either. Perhaps you're thinking of the battle of Yorktown, where we tax-dodgers defeated Cornwallis?

If, like I said, it wasn't Fritz himself.

When we found that Fritz talked about it with Mitchell, my estimate of the odds that he talked about it with Voltaire and/or Catt went way up. (Plus, like you reminded me I said, lol, they've both got a very Fritz-centric POV in their accounts.) Mind you, while it's possible Fritz talked about it with Catt, Catt copies Voltaire nearly word-for-word in a different passage that's critical of Fritz, so I'm still inclined to think either Catt read Voltaire or we have another sneaky meddling editor on our hands. When I get to French, I want to read both Voltaire and Catt and see if I can spot other similarities.

Edited Date: 2021-02-05 02:49 pm (UTC)

From:

selenak

A curse on meddling editors; as if Catt‘s own embellishments weren‘t enough! Still, him having read Voltaire is pretty much a given, and if Fritz didn‘t bring up Katte to him - but did with both Mitchell and Voltaire - it would be all the more reason for Catt to crib that passage, given all the emphasis on him being the instant confidant. Otoh, speaking of Catt, this reminds me that Fredersdorf gets edited out of the memoirs while being mentioned at one point in the diary, to wit, in the story of bathing Voltaire getting a visit by il consigliere (or, in the memoirs version, by the Abbé de Prades). Now Catt doesn‘t mention Fritz telling him anything about his backstory with Fredersdorf in either version, but then Catt never met Fredersdorf and only became Fritz‘ reader after Fredersdorf was dead, so it might not have occured to him that this could have been used as further evidence of him being the greatest confidant.

Anyway, pov is a clue, hence also my suspicion that Catt got the account of FW‘s return of terror in the August of 1730 which in the memoirs he gives to Fritz when he actually heard it in Heinrich’s camp while Fritz was at Kunersdorf either from Heinrich directly or from someone (Kalckreuth, or another member of Heinrich‘s entourage) who got it from Heinrich, because the version in the diary is narrated from Heinrich‘s pov and focuses on the terror of the children as they hide after FW cuts loose on Wilhelmine, and the lady in waiting coming to the rescue, not, like Wilhelmine‘s version of the same event, on FW yelling accusations and threats against Fritz and herself. And if we combine „description of Katte‘s execution in Voltaire‘s memoirs narrated from Fritz‘ pov“ with „Voltaire‘s description of Fredersdorf meeting Fritz at Küstrin in the same book contains a bit more factoids than that of other contemporaries“, the conclusion that Fritz could have, in one of those times when they were really getting along, bared his soul to Voltaire about the Küstrin experience is pretty seductive.

(Though I still think Algarotti is the most plausible alternate source on Fredersdorf if that didn‘t happen. And of course Voltaire‘s version of the execution, whoever he got it from, is still embellished as hell, what with the watching FW.)

Yorke or Yorktown - you‘re right, I probably associated Yorktown.

Hanbury Williams: yes, miniature kissing would have struck me as a gesture to acknowledge the changed political realities, too. But not repeated chair climbing and (larger) portrait kissing! Note that the Poniatowski biography „The Last King of Poland“ which I read for my Yuletide story and which basically shares Poniatowski‘s very positive view of CHW does not mention this, either. Btw, Williams shows up in Mitchell‘s correspondence a couple of times, mostly after his death because Mitchell got stuck with getting Williams‘ leftover luggage home that travelled after him home to England. As far as I recall, Mitchell‘s take on Williams was basically „poor guy, I didn‘t know him well“ and with one more close correspondent an added „but honestly, he wasn‘t a good envoy even before that happened“. (Doesn‘t surprise me, given their very different takes on Fritz in particular and Prussia in general.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

A curse on meddling editors; as if Catt‘s own embellishments weren‘t enough!

I mean, it's *probably* not what happened here, but I'm just traumatized by the time I systematically demonstrated that Thiebault was copying Wilhelmine's account, and then discovered we had a doctored version of T's memoirs. But no, I just remembered that Catt's memoirs were edited by Koser, so surely he was not incorporating Voltaire. So I take that back: I think we have evidence that Catt read Voltaire and incorporated at least one of his lines into his memoirs. Will let you know if I find more similarities when the time comes.

it would be all the more reason for Catt to crib that passage, given all the emphasis on him being the instant confidant

This makes sense, yes.

Anyway, pov is a clue, hence also my suspicion that Catt got the account of FW‘s return of terror in the August of 1730 which in the memoirs he gives to Fritz when he actually heard it in Heinrich’s camp while Fritz was at Kunersdorf either from Heinrich directly or from someone (Kalckreuth, or another member of Heinrich‘s entourage) who got it from Heinrich

Agree completely.

the conclusion that Fritz could have, in one of those times when they were really getting along, bared his soul to Voltaire about the Küstrin experience is pretty seductive.

Yep, that makes sense to me. But yes about the inevitable Voltaire embellishment, of course. I was reading the MT bio the other day, and discovered/was reminded that it was *Voltaire* who introduced baby Joseph in her arms during her appeal to the Hungarians. I'd misremembered that the problem was that she was pregnant and he wasn't born yet, but it turns out that he was actually a baby, just not present at the appeal to the Hungarians. Voltaire couldn't resist introducing family members to spice up an already exciting scene, it seems.

But not repeated chair climbing and (larger) portrait kissing!

Zomg, no!

Oh, speaking of different takes on Hanbury-Williams, Horowski is big on him being a surrogate father figure to Poniatowski, whereas Asprey says sth to the effect of, "At twenty-two, Stanislaus was allegedly a virgin (though there was talk about his relationship with his fifty-year-old mentor)." And I thought, "Well, Selena did say he was Poniatowski's Suhm!" :P

From:

selenak

So he was, and certainly after Catherine Williams is the most crushed upon person in the memoirs, but I do think it remained platonic, not least because to my knowledge there are no other possibly m/m relationships in Poniatowski's life which were gossiped about, and as he had more than his share of enemies and was gossipped about a lot, that's saying something. Also his relationship with Catherine demonstrates that Poniatowski was a) willing to take insane risks when in love and b) despite good intentions, failing at discretion. I doubt he'd have managed to keep a boyfriend secret. And, for what it's worth, he never had syphilis, when Williams was already infected (and had infected his wife) the first time he and Poniatowski met. So the way it came across to me was like young (18, I think) Stanislaus arriving in Berlin as an unhappy, shy nerd ("overeducated" is term used in two books I'ver read) who as the youngest son of a big family hever got much attention from Dad and meets CHW who comes across as a man of the world who has lots of time and affection for him in this city where Stanislaus doesn't know anyone, and provides him with the social savoir faire (dancing, gambling, chit chat) that Poniatowski has from this point onwards. It's not a question of wanting either a Dad or an erastes, he might have wanted a bit of both in the state he was in, but without being conscious of the second. Let's not forget, the same young man is a bit shocked at all the forwardness of the Berlin ladies and their Voltaire mania. (Little does he know...)

As for CHW, that homoerotic poem the authors of the Fritz of Wales & Hervey essay quote is pretty drastic and explicit, so he definitely was acting bi in his younger years, and Poniatowski was a beautiful man (so both Catherine and Lehndorff testify!). Otoh, Williams was also old enough to look for a son/protegé figure. And if he wanted an in to one of the big influentual political families of Poland, for whatever reason, who were, lest we forget, VERY Catholic, infecting their offspring with syphilis was not the way to do it. So even if his feelings weren't just paternal, he probably restrained himself.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I don't disagree, *but*, I'm just going to point to this. ;)

selenak: Btw, did you notice in the earlier write up that Lehndorff mentions Kaphengst having "the French sickness" courtesy of several theatre people?

Fritz: No surprise there. Clearly, that's yet another reason why I told Heinrich to dump him. Heinrich would be dead already if I didn't try to look out for his health out of the goodness of my fraternal heart.

Heinrich: There are ways of having sex with someone who has STD which allow you to remain safe. As someone who actually does get laid on a regular basis would know. I would like to point out here that even the most unflattering accounts of me never accuse me of a) having STD myself, or b) impotence.

(I have never stopped laughing over that last sentence of Heinrich BURN, btw.)

From:

selenak

LOL, well, that's true enough, so I suppose it comes down to whether or not we believe Poniatowski himself who was quite explicit on the point that flirtations not withstanding, he was a virgin until Catherine.