We will quote from a memoir of Gian Gastone in the Biblioteca Moreniana at Florence :
What memoir is this? This can't be a memoir that Gastone himself wrote in the third person, right? Presumably another party, who? (Someone who definitely had some juicy gossip...)
He would entertain a dozen dissolute boys to sumptuous dinners, and one by one he would call them by the names of his most prominent men of state. With these he would hold his nightly conference
Yeah, Gian Gastone is... very much a mixed bag :P
When the Grand Duke was informed, his delight was unbounded . He summoned his hectic young heroes, and wished them to render him a full account of their adventure. He lauded their courage, and made them bountiful amends.
Geesh. This does have a ring to me of the sort of delight in the unorthodox that grandfather Ferdinando had (and that honestly I really enjoyed about your description of him), except taken way, WAY too far. Ugh.
Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
What memoir is this? This can't be a memoir that Gastone himself wrote in the third person, right? Presumably another party, who? (Someone who definitely had some juicy gossip...)
No, not GG! He hated writing. At one point, an ambassador reported:
Often His Highness cannot bring himself merely to sign a letter already written by his secretary, who has told me with much feeling that many letters His Highness receives, even from distinguished personages, are left unanswered, because he refuses to sign them.' This was not due to cunning, he observed, but to a peculiar horror ofhis writing -table.
The guy, unsuccessfully, tried to get GG to take up writing as a hobby so that he would tone it down with the prostitutes and gambling.
What Acton says about the memoir is this (it's a bit complicated):
Bibliotechina Grassoccia, a rare series of volumes published by the Giornale di Erudizione in Florence, edited by Filippo Orlando and Giuseppe Baccini, contains brief accounts of the following, drawn from an unpublished MS in the Moreniana entitled Storia della nobile e reale casa de' Medici: ... Vita di Gio. Gastone I Settimo ed ultimo Granduca della R. Casa de Medici, con la lista dei provvisionati di Camera , dal volgo detti i Ruspanti. 1886.
(Of this a translation by Harold Acton, with introduction by Norman Douglas, was privately printed for subscribers by G. Orioli, Lungarno Corsini, Florence, 1930.)
I had already tried to find that volume: the 1886 one is available online, in fairly poor font which makes me less than optimistic about OCR + Google Translate, and the 1930 translation "privately printed for subscribers" means only 365 copies were printed, which means you will pay hundreds of dollars for one bound in red leather and gilt edged pages and signed by the authors, which is not at all what we're after here.
So I dropped that line of investigation. If I learn Italian, I might try the 1886 one, but. Someone still has to learn German and French. :P
Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
Presumably Acton meant Gian Gastone when, talking about the Medici portraits in the preface, he talks about it all culminating in "a terrible senile lust". Though the House of Bourbon still would like you to know it's unfair to blame this on them.
Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
Presumably Acton meant Gian Gastone when, talking about the Medici portraits in the preface, he talks about it all culminating in "a terrible senile lust".
Also older brother Ferdinando! Though not a reigning duke, he was one of the final Medici, and he died insane from syphilis. Gian Gastone would like you to know that even if his brain was often severely impaired by alcohol abuse, he remained compos mentis until his dying hour. No senility for him.
Though the House of Bourbon still would like you to know it's unfair to blame this on them.
(Have now found 3 consecutive Spanish Bourbon kings who were faithful to their wives, although I'm admittedly not *sure* Ferdinand VI was.)
Speaking of Ferdinand VI, he who may have inherited mental illness from his father Philip V, this is from Spanish wiki:
He had great fears of dying or drowning and was abandoning business and hunting. [...] The last document he signed is one month after the death of his wife and the king's last dispatch with Minister Wall was in early October 1758, "standing and talking." [...] The king stopped talking, and was reducing his meals to the point that he was not eating. Manias made an appearance, and shortly afterward, he locked himself in a room where there was little room for a bed, where he spent his last months.
During that time he was aggressive - "he has very strong impulses to bite everyone," wrote the infant Luis to his mother Isabel de Farnesio - and to calm him they gave him opium; he tried to commit suicide on several occasions and asked the doctors for poison or firearms from members of the royal guard; He danced and ran in his underwear, pretended to be dead or, wrapped in a sheet, a ghost. Every day he was thinner and paler, which was added to the laziness in his personal hygiene. He did not sleep on the bed but on two chairs and a stool.
Other than the bipolar hypothesis, Wikipedia tells me the other speculative diagnosis is right frontal lobe syndrome, with epileptic seizures.
So if the Spanish Bourbons and Italian Medici of the 18th century had anything in common, it was cases of mental illness and neurological deterioration, but neither seems to be inheriting theirs from the French Bourbons!
Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
He is such a mixed bag! I keep finding things to like, but then I have to think, "But the--! And the--! Ugh." :P
Geesh. This does have a ring to me of the sort of delight in the unorthodox that grandfather Ferdinando had (and that honestly I really enjoyed about your description of him), except taken way, WAY too far. Ugh.
Indeed. And this reminded me of another set of entertaining Medici anecdotes from Acton, namely a way in which Gian Gastone resembled his uncle Francesco Maria, the hardpartying playboy Cardinal who ate, drank and fucked his way to an early death.
Francesco Maria:
His servants robbed him, and he knew it, but it did not trouble him: he almost encouraged their pilferings. At Easter he would summon them all to assemble, from the major-domo to the stable boys, and beg his pardon on their bended knees. Afterwards, half in fun, half in earnest, he would harangue them thus: ‘Now then, accomplished knaves that you are, run quickly and confess. As for me, I absolve you from all your robberies and present you with what you have taken.'
This ceremony was repeated every year, and there is little doubt that the scoundrels took advantage of it. Once he was seen to deposit two rolls, each containing a thousand gold louis, in a drawer of his writing table. When he looked there again, he found two rolls of silver money in their stead. This amused him vastly. Evidently, he observed, the gold had undergone the transmigration taught by Pythagoras. Hence forth he would believe in that wondrous philosophy. Again, when the villa was closed for the night, the Cardinal consigned two large boxes of his finest chocolate to the porter before retiring to bed. These were to be despatched on the morrow to some of his Roman friends. Next morning the porter discovered the boxes half empty, and raised an outcry that alarmed the entire household. The Cardinal appeared on the scene and asked what the noise was about. 'And is that a reason to despair?' he exclaimed when he was told. 'Take the rest of the chocolate and calm yourself, you booby.'
[Mildred: Well, at least no Jews got beaten!]
Never a day went by but something disappeared, especially when the rooms were full of gamblers, and the dissolute, deft-fingered young men who formed his Court and were allowed the free range of his domain. The Cardinal gave strict orders that he was not to be disturbed by any tales of what was missing.
Now Gian Gastone:
Amongst other family instincts Gian Gastone had inherited that of acquisition. He lacked his brother Ferdinando's connoisseurship, however, and much worthless bric-à-brac was palmed off on him by the antiquaries at exorbitant prices, from which Giuliano pocketed a correspondingly high percentage. The Grand Duke usually consulted his favourite about these purchases, and it sufficed his darling dissembler to praise the stuff and say it was beautiful, making a show of much marvel, for him to be seized with an overweening desire to possess it'.
A propitious moment was chosen to tempt the Grand Duke, generally when he had left 'the dull shore of lazy temperance'. Like his uncle, Cardinal Francesco Maria, he seems to have taken a perverse pleasure in being cheated. He bartered the objects already in his possession: the dealers offered him theirs for fabulous prices, underrating the value of those they took in exchange. Time would elapse, and they would return with the latter, as if the Grand Duke had never set eyes on them before. He bought them just the same. One day he recognized a snuffbox which had been brought back to him in this way. His only remark as, mildly surprised, he purchased it, was: 'Faith, who dies not is often to be met again!'
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Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
We will quote from a memoir of Gian Gastone in the Biblioteca Moreniana at Florence :
What memoir is this? This can't be a memoir that Gastone himself wrote in the third person, right? Presumably another party, who? (Someone who definitely had some juicy gossip...)
He would entertain a dozen dissolute boys to sumptuous dinners, and one by one he would call them by the names of his most prominent men of state. With these he would hold his nightly conference
Yeah, Gian Gastone is... very much a mixed bag :P
When the Grand Duke was informed, his delight was unbounded . He summoned his hectic young heroes, and wished them to render him a full account of their adventure. He lauded their courage, and made them bountiful amends.
Geesh. This does have a ring to me of the sort of delight in the unorthodox that grandfather Ferdinando had (and that honestly I really enjoyed about your description of him), except taken way, WAY too far. Ugh.
Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
No, not GG! He hated writing. At one point, an ambassador reported:
Often His Highness cannot bring himself merely to sign a letter already written by his secretary, who has told me with much feeling that many letters His Highness receives, even from distinguished personages, are left unanswered, because he refuses to sign them.' This was not due to cunning, he observed, but to a peculiar horror ofhis writing -table.
The guy, unsuccessfully, tried to get GG to take up writing as a hobby so that he would tone it down with the prostitutes and gambling.
What Acton says about the memoir is this (it's a bit complicated):
Bibliotechina Grassoccia, a rare series of volumes published by the Giornale di Erudizione in Florence, edited by Filippo Orlando and Giuseppe Baccini, contains brief accounts of the following, drawn from an unpublished MS in the Moreniana entitled Storia della nobile e reale casa de' Medici:
...
Vita di Gio. Gastone I Settimo ed ultimo Granduca della R. Casa de Medici, con la lista dei provvisionati di Camera , dal volgo detti i Ruspanti. 1886.
(Of this a translation by Harold Acton, with introduction by Norman Douglas, was privately printed for subscribers by G. Orioli, Lungarno Corsini, Florence, 1930.)
I had already tried to find that volume: the 1886 one is available online, in fairly poor font which makes me less than optimistic about OCR + Google Translate, and the 1930 translation "privately printed for subscribers" means only 365 copies were printed, which means you will pay hundreds of dollars for one bound in red leather and gilt edged pages and signed by the authors, which is not at all what we're after here.
So I dropped that line of investigation. If I learn Italian, I might try the 1886 one, but. Someone still has to learn German and French. :P
Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
Also older brother Ferdinando! Though not a reigning duke, he was one of the final Medici, and he died insane from syphilis. Gian Gastone would like you to know that even if his brain was often severely impaired by alcohol abuse, he remained compos mentis until his dying hour. No senility for him.
Though the House of Bourbon still would like you to know it's unfair to blame this on them.
(Have now found 3 consecutive Spanish Bourbon kings who were faithful to their wives, although I'm admittedly not *sure* Ferdinand VI was.)
Speaking of Ferdinand VI, he who may have inherited mental illness from his father Philip V, this is from Spanish wiki:
He had great fears of dying or drowning and was abandoning business and hunting. [...] The last document he signed is one month after the death of his wife and the king's last dispatch with Minister Wall was in early October 1758, "standing and talking." [...] The king stopped talking, and was reducing his meals to the point that he was not eating. Manias made an appearance, and shortly afterward, he locked himself in a room where there was little room for a bed, where he spent his last months.
During that time he was aggressive - "he has very strong impulses to bite everyone," wrote the infant Luis to his mother Isabel de Farnesio - and to calm him they gave him opium; he tried to commit suicide on several occasions and asked the doctors for poison or firearms from members of the royal guard; He danced and ran in his underwear, pretended to be dead or, wrapped in a sheet, a ghost. Every day he was thinner and paler, which was added to the laziness in his personal hygiene. He did not sleep on the bed but on two chairs and a stool.
Other than the bipolar hypothesis, Wikipedia tells me the other speculative diagnosis is right frontal lobe syndrome, with epileptic seizures.
So if the Spanish Bourbons and Italian Medici of the 18th century had anything in common, it was cases of mental illness and neurological deterioration, but neither seems to be inheriting theirs from the French Bourbons!
Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
He is such a mixed bag! I keep finding things to like, but then I have to think, "But the--! And the--! Ugh." :P
Geesh. This does have a ring to me of the sort of delight in the unorthodox that grandfather Ferdinando had (and that honestly I really enjoyed about your description of him), except taken way, WAY too far. Ugh.
Indeed. And this reminded me of another set of entertaining Medici anecdotes from Acton, namely a way in which Gian Gastone resembled his uncle Francesco Maria, the hardpartying playboy Cardinal who ate, drank and fucked his way to an early death.
Francesco Maria:
His servants robbed him, and he knew it, but it did not trouble him: he almost encouraged their pilferings. At Easter he would summon them all to assemble, from the major-domo to the stable boys, and beg his pardon on their bended knees. Afterwards, half in fun, half in earnest, he would harangue them thus: ‘Now then, accomplished knaves that you are, run quickly and confess. As for me, I absolve you from all your robberies and present you with what you have taken.'
This ceremony was repeated every year, and there is little doubt that the scoundrels took advantage of it. Once he was seen to deposit two rolls, each containing a thousand gold louis, in a drawer of his writing table. When he looked there again, he found two rolls of silver money
in their stead. This amused him vastly. Evidently, he observed, the gold had undergone the transmigration taught by Pythagoras. Hence forth he would believe in that wondrous philosophy. Again, when the villa was closed for the night, the Cardinal consigned two large boxes of his finest chocolate to the porter before retiring to bed. These were to be despatched on the morrow to some of his Roman friends. Next morning the porter discovered the boxes half empty, and raised an outcry that alarmed the entire household. The Cardinal appeared on the scene and asked what the noise was about. 'And is that a reason to despair?' he exclaimed when he was told. 'Take the rest of the chocolate and calm yourself, you booby.'
[Mildred: Well, at least no Jews got beaten!]
Never a day went by but something disappeared, especially when the rooms were full of gamblers, and the dissolute, deft-fingered young men who formed his Court and were allowed the free range of his domain. The Cardinal gave strict orders that he was not to be disturbed by any tales of what was missing.
Now Gian Gastone:
Amongst other family instincts Gian Gastone had inherited that of acquisition. He lacked his brother Ferdinando's connoisseurship, however, and much worthless bric-à-brac was palmed off on him by the antiquaries at exorbitant prices, from which Giuliano pocketed a correspondingly high percentage. The Grand Duke usually consulted his favourite about these purchases, and it sufficed his darling dissembler to praise the stuff and say it was beautiful, making a show of much marvel, for him to be seized with an overweening desire to possess it'.
A propitious moment was chosen to tempt the Grand Duke, generally when he had left 'the dull shore of lazy temperance'. Like his uncle, Cardinal Francesco Maria, he seems to have taken a perverse pleasure in being cheated. He bartered the objects already in his possession: the dealers offered him theirs for fabulous prices, underrating the value of those they took in exchange. Time would elapse, and they would return with the latter, as if the Grand Duke had never set eyes on them before. He bought them just the same. One day he recognized a snuffbox which had been brought back to him in this way. His only remark as, mildly surprised, he purchased it, was: 'Faith, who dies not is often to be met again!'
GG seems to have had a wry sense of humor.