...by Matthew Dennison. A very readable and recent biography of Queen Caroline. Dennison would get the Horowski seal of approval: he spells all the German names correctly (which is a true challenge in the case of the Countess of Schaumburg-Lippe-Bückeburg), is aware that the Countess of Kielsmansegg was G1's half sister, not mistress, and while sympathetic to his main subject is able to investigate her less than stellar sides as well. (Though he thinks Wilhelmine has no idea what she's talking about with her powerhungry-as-Agrippina comparison, since she never met Caroline.) This is especially notable in the description of the increasingly toxic breakdown of the (non-)relationship between Caroline and her oldest son, but more about this in a moment.
The bibliography is impressive. (No books in German, but he's read all the English translations of Sophie's various correspondences he got his hands on, for example, as well as translated into English or French biographies.) I haven't come across an immediately noticable error save one, and because he's so good otherwise, I'm now actually confused and uncertain whether he could have been right. In every book except for this that I've read touching on the English Marriage Project, the cousin intended for Fritz (of Prussia) is named as Amelia/Emily. Dennison says it was her older sister Anne, and that Fritz of Wales and Anne as the oldest were intended for their counterparts Wilhelmine and Fritz of Prussia, also the oldest surviving kids. Like I said - I've always read that it was Amelia. I mean, even her wiki entry claims she kept a miniature of Fritz. And the famous letter Fritz was talked into writing to Caroline about vowingn to only marry her daughter I recalled as naming Amelia as well, but now I'm not sure anymore. Miiiiiiildred - could it have been Anne? (Until her marriage to yet another William of Orange, that is.)
On to the life of Caroline. Her father, the Margrave of Ansbach, already had several sons when remarrying Caroline's mother, so that marriage was seen as a love match Alas he died just a few years later, and Caroline's mother could not handle widowhood at all, hence Caroline's education being neglected to the degree that she had to teach herself how to write and read. (Dennison gives a few examples for the fact she was never able to spell well in any of the languages she spoke - German, French and English - despite being a passionate reader and lover of scholarly debates - which was the long term result.) Her mother eventually married again, another widower, which was social step up and a human step down, for her second husband Johann Georg was the older brother of August the Strong, Prince Elector of Saxony before him. Johann Georg had a mistress, Magdalen Sybille, aka Billa, whom he had no intention of giving up and insited on being treated as the true spouse. Her mother, Ursula, had been his father's mistress as well, and the question mark as to whether or not Billa could have been his half sister didn't seem to bother him. (One can see the family resemblance to August.) Billa eventually got infected by smallpox and died, Johann Georg, who had insisted on being with her, also got infected and died, and August the Strong started his ascendancy to the throne by putting about a hundred Bill-related people on trial for corruption and her mother Ursula for witchcraft (she'd been massively unpopular, so this was a cheap popularity gesture, and one of the last prominent witch trials).
What all this meant for Caroline was that she kept being shuffled between courts in her childhood: her mother's, her older half brother's at Ansbach (said older half brother, btw, eventually produced the son who'd marry Wilhelmine's and Fritz' sister Friederike, the first of the siblings to get married, and make her miserable), her stepfather's - and always in between the one of Sophie Charlotte and F1 in Berlin. The full name of Caroline's dad had been von Brandenburg-Ansbach, as the Margraves of Ansbach were an offshot of the Hohenzollern, too, so F1 was the ultimate overlord of the family, so to speak, and had offered her a home to stay. Caroline first did this at eight, but more long term and for years as a teenager, where, says Dennison, she adopted Sophie Charlotte - whom Dennison refers to by her family nickname of Figuelotte, presumably to cut down the number of Sophies and Charlottes in this book - as a life long heroine and role model.
Sidenote: this made me recall my puzzlement at Hervey claiming that Caroline told him Figuelotte had been "a silly, shallow woman", as opposed to G2 admiring her. Dennison - who quotes a lot from Hervey on other matters - never mentions this one. He does quote many positive and admiring statements from Caroline about Figuelotte from her own letters to back up his claim of Figuelotte - who was the first to encourage Caroline's hunger for books and to provide her with education and who had created the first intellectual court in Berlin - as her heroine. Now, could the letters have been for show and Caroline voiced towards Hervey her true feelings? Sure. But I suspect that Hervey, who self confessedly tuned out whenever G2 and Caroline talked about their German relations and couldn't be bothered to memorize who was related to whom, simply confused Prussian queens, and the one whom Caroline had been uncomplimentary about was in fact her sister-in-law Sophia Dorothea. (With whom she lived in Hannover close-up between marrying G2 and SD marrying FW.) After all, Caroline was writing positive things about the late Figuelotte even when she herself was Queen and the late Sophie Charlotte had probably been forgotten my many, i.e. when there was no profit to claim the connection.
Through Figuelotte, Caroline also attracted the attention of Sophie of Hannover. (BTW, Dennison chronicles Sophie's changing emotions about Caroline - first very positive - she definitely wanted her for grandson G2 - , then cooling off after the marriage, than positive again , but doesn't quote or explain the letter from Sophie to SD where she refers to Caroline as a habitual liar. I was hoping he'd explain the occasion and/or lie, but no. His explanation for the cooling off period on Sophie's part is that she was mourning for her then very recently dead daughter, had been hoping Caroline would be a second Figuelotte, which of course no one could have been, was disappointed and held it against her, with relationships improving again once Sophie had worked through her immediate grief. For Caroline's part, she seems to sincerely have attached herself to Sophie and learned a lot from her. One of Dennison's proofs for this is that after Sophie had died, Caroline started to correspond with Liselotte, and an intense correspondence it was, too, twice weekly, according to Liselotte. The two of them had never met, and all they shared was Sophie; also, Sophie's death was quickly followed by Queen Anne's, which meant Caroline became Princess of Wales and moved to Britain, so it wasn't like she didn't have other things to do, while Liselotte was an old widow without political influence (yes, she was the mother of the French Regent, but no one thought Philippe II consulted her about politics), so writing to her was most likely out of the genuine need to have a maternal confidant whom the Sophies had previously filled. With the caveat that how we present ourselves in letters isn't necessarily how we're perceived in person, Dennison adds it's also worth noting down that Liselotte - who in her long life at Versailles had experienced all types of people - quickly took to Caroline and considered her both smart and engaging.
But back to Caroline, young princess of tiny Ansbach with no big heritage (remember, product of second marriage) hanging out a lot at Berlin. She was a youthful beauty by the standards of her age - bright blond hair, white, luminous skin, a good figure which only later would get heavy, but would almost to the end be perceived as voluptous -, and an impressive conversationalist. Given the lack of a dowry, the amazing thing is that her first proposal should come from a very impressive source - young Archduke Charles, future Dad of MT. Now, this proposal and Caroline's eventual refusal became quickly the stuff of legend, and in later years it cemented her standing as a Protestant heroine - the princess who had "scorned an empire for her faith" - so it's worth pointing out, as Dennison does, that when Charles proposed, he wasn't the Emperor yet, nor was it all that likely he'd be. He was the second son of the Emperor, there was no reason to assume his older brother Joseph wouldn't produce heirs, and the best he could hope for was being King of Spain. This still made him a likely monarch to be when proposing to Caroline and as Habsburg, he was pretty much the best she could hope to get in the marriage market. She wavered at first. Figuelotte and Sophie were conspiciously neutral about the prospect, which made Dennison wonder whether Figuelotte wanted Caroline for her son FW while Sophie wanted her for grandson future G2 already, but neither prospect was voiced, so he says it's also possible that they didn't, or that Figuelotte also thought G2 was a better match but didn't say so because FW was her son. They were neither encouraging nor discouraging about the Habsburg match, and Team Vienna did sent a Jesuit to convert Caroline, but talks with Father Orban had the opposite effect on her: they likely as not made her decide that no, becoming Queen of Spain wasn't worth this, she'd rather stay a Protestant, thanks, Charles.
It was an audacious gesture for a minor German princess - as I said, looking at the logistics of the time, it wasn't likely she could have hoped for a better proposal -, but it would pay off in dividends for the rest of her life, and not just because Sophie used it to sell her son on a Caroline/future G2 match.
Speaking of the Georges: in order to make it always clear who is who, Dennison calls G1 George Louis both before and after his becoming King, and G2 George Augustus (ditto). Why was Caroline's attachment to the Protestant faith a good selling point to convince George Louis she could make a good match for his son, despite the lack of a dowry? Because at this point, the prospect of the British succession became increasingly real. Cousins William and Mary had produced no living offspring. Cousin Anne's children had all died. And the reason why the ca. 50 people between Sophie and Anne were disqualified from the succession in the eyes of Protestant England was that they were all Catholics. Now, George Louis and Sophie cunningly let young George Augustus believe this was all his idea, and he went through that romantic undercover mission where he under a pseudonym showed up at Ansbach (Caroline after Figuelotte's death had gone to her half brother's court) and fell in love at first sight. But there was a lot of stage management behind the scenes there.
As we've learned in the Schnath edited correspondence, F1 was miffed about this because he'd been toying with the idea of a Caroline/FW match (Dennison assumes, though F1 would deny it later), and if Morgenstern is to be believed, young FW was heartbroken. But Dennison thinks Caroline didn't consider him even for a microsecond, and I'm with him there. Otoh, Dennison also thinks George Augustus did know FW was interested in Caroline and that this - like the rejected Habsburg proposal - heightened her allure in his eyes. Then again, by the evidence of their remaining lives together, he was well and truly smitten. He adored her and would do so till her dying day and beyond, ordering that after his own burial the parting wood between their coffins would be lifted so that their dust could mingle.
Was Caroline felt is harder to say. Dennison doesn't think it was all power hunger and calculation that made her become the perfect wife to G2. On the one hand, he didn't share some of her most important interests - notably books (G2 liked music but not reading, and Caroline could only read when he was sleeping or otherwise not requiring her company) -, he could be petty, and his ego required constant massaging. Dennison along with Hervey thinks that while G2 clearly liked sex, his open preference for his wife over his mistress demonstrates that he mostly took a maitresse because a) it's what Kings post Louis XIV did, and b) people were noting his uxoriousness and making jokes that it was Caroline who was wearing the pants in the marriage, so taking a mistress was supposed to show he was the boss. Given such scenes as the one where when his mistress, Henrietta Howard, as lady-in-waiting was dressing his wife:
G2: *snatches the hankerchief covering Caroline's shoulders while her hair was being dressed* : Because you have an ugly neck yourself, you love to hide the Queen's!"
and the thirty pages love letters he wrote to Caroline from Hannover when not with her, his British subjects were less than convinced by this strategem of his.
On the other hand: after a childhood and youth as the poor relation with ever changing guardians, a husband who, whatever other faults he had, really is constant in his conviction that you are the best, sexiest, most wonderful woman on the planet and loves you - let's not forget, George Augustus, whose mother had disappeared into captivity when he was 11 and whose father was famouly a cold fish to almost anyone other than his mistress and illegitimate kids even before that frosty attitude would devolve into father/son warfare later, was something of a love starved teen himself - may have been someone made for Caroline in more ways than by eventually making her Queen. Among their contemporaries there was the wide spectrum of "she adores him, too" to "totally faking it for power's sake!" in how their marriage was seen from her side.
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
And the famous letter Fritz was talked into writing to Caroline about vowingn to only marry her daughter I recalled as naming Amelia as well, but now I'm not sure anymore. Miiiiiiildred - could it have been Anne? (Until her marriage to yet another William of Orange, that is.)
I'm only two paragraphs into your write-up because I had to stop here and do some detective work. Because whaaaaat?
I recall Amelia being named in that letter too! Yep, Mitchell--admittedly reporting decades later, but you wouldn't expect him to get it wrong--names Amelia when he has Fritz saying he shouldn't have written that letter.
Oncken definitely quotes from primary sources naming Amelia. One is Hotham, and one--I think, my German isn't quite up to reading as quickly as I'm being forced to right now, I'd get it if I slowed down--Reichenbach. That's in addition to Oncken's summaries of primary sources naming Amelia.
Koser also names Amelia. Once in a direct quote from a letter from Seckendorff to Eugene, which is in Förster. Yep, there it is, right there in Förster, July 1733, when the English decided they wanted the marriage after all, just as Fritz was getting married to EC: "que le Roy d'Angleterre donnera la main au marriage de Son Altesse Royale avec la Princess Amelie."
Also, Wilhelmine certainly thinks it's Amelia, and I'd think she would know! Even writing 10-20 years later, she's not likely to forget the double marriage project. [ETA: Yep, she's another source for the famous letter. She quotes from a followup letter at length, and reports Fritz writing, "I have already pledged my word of honor to your majesty never to marry any other but the princess Amelia your daughter."]
So I'm going to go with it being Amelia and resume reading your write-up.
I didn't know this, though! According to Wikipedia:
In 1725, a potential marriage contract between Anne and King Louis XV of France was considered.
1725, for those of you who need chronology reminders, is the year the seven-year-old Spanish princess who was supposed to marry Louis was sent back in favor of getting him married to someone who could start making babies sooner, and the Spanish sent the French princess back in return. The fact that a royal marriage was considered between France and England is also related to the part where England and France were allies between 1716 and 1731, unusually so.
Maybe Dennison is confusing the marriage to Louis XV that didn't happen with the marriage to Fritz that didn't happen?
Edited 2021-07-27 23:42 (UTC)
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Maybe, and thank you for reassuring me I wasn't misremembering everything! I also assume he has it from the Anne biography listed in his bibliography. However, his bibliography also includes Wilhelmine's memoirs, so even if he thought Wilhelmine had gotten it wrong, he had to know there was an alternative narration out there.
BTW, more anecdotes/details I forgot to include in my write up:
a) As we know from the Lady Mary bios, Caroline's support of Lady Mary in the inocculation campaign was instrumental. Reminder: Lady Mary returned from Turkey having learned about inocculation against smallpox and having had her son inocculated there. In Britain, she also inocculated her daughter (who'd still been a newborn baby in Turkey, hence too young, which caused a huge controversy and many attacks until Caroline (herself a smallpox survivor, like Mary) decided to have her own children inocculated as well. (Other than Anne, who had just survived smallpox, too, and had a scarred face to show for it.) What we hadn't known before: Caroline was cautious enough - like MT - to test this out on other people first, in her case on ten prisoners volunteering against the promise of a pardon. (Nine survived, but the one who died had been sick already.) Then she had her kids inocculated. (Including Fritz of Wales - a doctor travelled to Hannover to repeat the procedure on him.)
b) Voltaire dedicated the Henriad to Caroline, which tells you something about her reputation as an art patroness at this point. His dedication says that as Henri IV was protected by an English Queen - Elizabeth I - he could think of no one more suitable than the future Queen of England to protect his epic.
c) Caroline wasn't jealous of Henrietta Howard on account of G2 - she knew she had the upper hand there - but she did resent that Henrietta Howard became a sought after patroness as well and was prefered by both Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope.
(c1 - I had forgotten, but the book reminded me again - the Liliputians from "Gullivers Travels" would have been understood by Swifts contemporaries as a satire on all the small German principalities, especially Hannnover.)
d) Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough and Anne's ex-Favourite had been in disgrace along with her husband until the Hannover succession, so Caroline thought it was a good idea to appoint her as one of the ladies of the bedchamber. (Marlborough = popular hero) As part of her "win over the Brits" campaign. However, Sarah being Sarah, she was incurably snobbish and refered to Caroline as a "little German princess" and "Madam Ansbach". Caroline then nicknamed the Churchills "the Imperial family".
e) Like I said, Caroline milked the propaganda value of her rejection of Charles' proposal for the rest of her life. Never more entertainingly (to me) than when the Archbishop of Canterbury after her coronation thought he needed to explain CoE theology to her some more (despite Caroline having converted along with G2 years earlier), and Caroline retorted: "Does he really believe I do not understand Protestantism, I, who rejected an Empire for it?"
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
I haven't found time to reply yet, but the book sounds great, and I've ordered it on your recommendation. And I do plan to reply! (German is coming along well, Zweig is perfect.)
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
That's really good to know - Zweig today and the whole concept of biographie romancee isn't everyone's cup of tea anymore, I know that, but I hoped you'd like him, since I do love most of his books, and besides, he writes beautiful German. As you're learning the language, getting exposed to a true master in it can't be wrong. :)
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
I'd been meaning to say, I'll be needing some more biographies romancées of people I'm interested in, when I finish this one! Is there one of Catherine the Great? There needs to be one of Catherine the Great!
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
There needs to be, but if there is a good one, I haven't read it yet. The Catherine biographies I read for Yuletide last year never rose above avarage. That said, I haven't read the Robert Massie one, which is supposed to be good, and also I seem to recall Simon Montefiore wrote one specifically about her and Potemkin which also got good reviews.
Re: biographies romancées, I can only repeat my reccommendation for Zweig's Fouché.
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Have downloaded the two Catherine Kindle samples and will check them out, thank you!
Fouché: I've had the Kindle sample since you recommended it, but the thing is...German is enough of a struggle for me still, that I have to be excited enough about the content to keep picking up the book and repeatedly engaging in the struggle, hour after hour, day after day. If you can get me excited to learn more about Fouché, I'll give the book a try! But right now I have no feelings about him either way, and Wikipedia is not exactly helping.
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
However, his bibliography also includes Wilhelmine's memoirs, so even if he thought Wilhelmine had gotten it wrong, he had to know there was an alternative narration out there.
Since he is an English speaker, is it possible that he had the bowdlerized version of the memoirs and that bit was taken out? (I don't have time to look right now.)
Caroline wasn't jealous of Henrietta Howard on account of G2 - she knew she had the upper hand there - but she did resent that Henrietta Howard became a sought after patroness as well and was prefered by both Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope.
Hee, that's awesome.
(c1 - I had forgotten, but the book reminded me again - the Liliputians from "Gullivers Travels" would have been understood by Swifts contemporaries as a satire on all the small German principalities, especially Hannnover.)
Oh, I think I remember learning about this in Brit Lit class! Of course, at the time I had no historical context for it, so it didn't really register.
Never more entertainingly (to me) than when the Archbishop of Canterbury after her coronation thought he needed to explain CoE theology to her some more (despite Caroline having converted along with G2 years earlier), and Caroline retorted: "Does he really believe I do not understand Protestantism, I, who rejected an Empire for it?"
LOL Caroline, way to milk it :D
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Bowlderized version: I don't have the time to check it, either, but I think the identity of Fritz' envisioned bride-to-be made the cut, since anything to do with English matters was of interest to an English translation readership.
Caroline and Henrietta Howard (later Lady Suffolk) (& G2): the entire relationship is its own kind of odd. Like I said, Henrietta mainly wanted a job that would protect her against her husband. And to be fair, Caroline did that whenever Charles Howard tried to re-insert himself in his wife's life (with an eye to the money she now earned). And when George Augustus became Prince of Wales, some nobles thought cultivating his mistress was a good idea (which also was financially rewarding and got you lots of presents and invites), since usually the mistress has more influence than the wife - only not in this case. (Sir Robert Walpole, otoh, from the get go had the right instinct, cultivated Caroline instead and became PM.) On the downside, G2 had two main subjects, German genealogy and military tales, especially but not only his glorious six months as Young Hannover Brave. And droned on about them since he couldn't think of anything else to talk about with his mistress, other than sex. And made no secret of prefering his wife. As soon as Charles Howard finally had died, Henrietta declared she had enough, retired as mistress and married a nice guy from the gentry. (She was over 40 at this point and half deaf, but still pretty and clever, and had accumulated a nice funding, so that worked out well.) Caroline, who had treasured the time G2 spent with his mistress as her prefered reading hours, was most put off and wrote a tart letter Lady Suffolk (as she was then) going on about how at their age, Henrietta should be past behaving like the heroine of a novel. But Lady Suffolk ignored this.
Caroline had another reason than her suddenly cut short leisure time, which was that she knew G2 wasn't in love with Henrietta Howard, whereas now that he was sans mistress there was the chance he'd come across someone he actually would care for. And sure enough, on his next visit to Hannover, he did, one Countess Wallmoden, who even got pregnant and had a kid by him and became his next official mistress. Whom he described en detail in his letters to Caroline (well enough she could paint the lady's portrait, as she snarked to Hervey), because Caroline was his best friend in addition to his wife and of course he had to tell her about his exciting new mistress, there were no secrets between them. That was G2 for you.
(He did care about Wallmoden more than about Suffolk and after Caroline's death had her come from Hannover to Britain, but she never was a true rival in terms of his affections, either. Like I mentioned in the write up, G2 said about Caroline long after her death he never met a woman fit to buckle her shoe, and he arranged for his funeral so that their dust would mingle because he wanted to be with Caroline always.)
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Caroline, who had treasured the time G2 spent with his mistress as her prefered reading hours, was most put off and wrote a tart letter Lady Suffolk (as she was then) going on about how at their age, Henrietta should be past behaving like the heroine of a novel. But Lady Suffolk ignored this.
This is fantastically hilarious and rather makes me like Caroline even more.
(There's a joke about physicists that goes a little like that -- the punchline being that the physicist likes to have both a wife and a mistress because the wife thinks the physicist is with the mistress and the mistress thinks the physicist is with the wife, and meanwhile the physicist can sneak off and do physics...)
Whom he described en detail in his letters to Caroline (well enough she could paint the lady's portrait, as she snarked to Hervey), because Caroline was his best friend in addition to his wife and of course he had to tell her about his exciting new mistress, there were no secrets between them. That was G2 for you.
OMG! G2, on the other hand... *facepalm* On the other hand, I suppose Caroline's practical side was probably at least a little reassured by knowing G2 thought of her as a best friend. I guess. And at least she had more time to read :P (That being said, it is hilarious. G2!)
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
(There's a joke about physicists that goes a little like that -- the punchline being that the physicist likes to have both a wife and a mistress because the wife thinks the physicist is with the mistress and the mistress thinks the physicist is with the wife, and meanwhile the physicist can sneak off and do physics...)
Lol, I've heard this joke about engineers, and I've always loved it. The architect prefers a wife for the stability she represents, the artist a mistress for the passion, and the engineer a wife and a mistress so he can go to the office and get some work done.
And at least she had more time to read :P
Win-win-win for everyone except the person who's currently having to listen to G2 talk. :P
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Bowlderized version: I don't have the time to check it, either, but I think the identity of Fritz' envisioned bride-to-be made the cut, since anything to do with English matters was of interest to an English translation readership.
Indeed, it did. It's Amelia all the way!
On the downside, G2 had two main subjects, German genealogy and military tales, especially but not only his glorious six months as Young Hannover Brave.
LOLOL forever. I mean. My 10 weeks as a member of the Classics faculty at UCLA is emphasized in any summary of my career all out of proportion to its duration. :P
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Maybe, and thank you for reassuring me I wasn't misremembering everything
I was reassuring myself, as well! I knew all the modern bios have it that way, but I had go to chase down primary sources to make sure it wasn't another case of Robert Keith.
(c1 - I had forgotten, but the book reminded me again - the Liliputians from "Gullivers Travels" would have been understood by Swifts contemporaries as a satire on all the small German principalities, especially Hannnover.)
Ahhh, thank you for this! *If* I ever learned this, it was before I had any context on the HRE or small German principalities, so I promptly forgot it.
Caroline then nicknamed the Churchills "the Imperial family".
Lol, yeah, I can see it.
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Dennison would get the Horowski seal of approval: he spells all the German names correctly (which is a true challenge in the case of the Countess of Schaumburg-Lippe-Bückeburg)
Lol, I laughed! (I certainly wouldn't be able to manage it :P )
and the question mark as to whether or not Billa could have been his half sister didn't seem to bother him. (One can see the family resemblance to August.)
Hee! Indeed.
With the caveat that how we present ourselves in letters isn't necessarily how we're perceived in person, Dennison adds it's also worth noting down that Liselotte - who in her long life at Versailles had experienced all types of people - quickly took to Caroline and considered her both smart and engaging.
Huh, that's neat, I'm glad they had that correspondence. (And ha, yes to letters vs. in person, though I suppose it's probably not so easy to fake being smart even over letters :P )
It was an audacious gesture for a minor German princess - as I said, looking at the logistics of the time, it wasn't likely she could have hoped for a better proposal -, but it would pay off in dividends for the rest of her life
This is fascinating!
Now, George Louis and Sophie cunningly let young George Augustus believe this was all his idea, and he went through that romantic undercover mission where he under a pseudonym showed up at Ansbach (Caroline after Figuelotte's death had gone to her half brother's court) and fell in love at first sight. But there was a lot of stage management behind the scenes there.
Like MT! Clearly the takeaway here is that managed marriages work rather better than forced marriages :P
But Dennison thinks Caroline didn't consider him even for a microsecond, and I'm with him there.
But what's not to love! I mean besides EVERYTHING
may have been someone made for Caroline in more ways than by eventually making her Queen.
Yeah... I mean, I don't think it's mutually exclusive for Caroline to be a) thinking in a practical way about George's strengths as a husband (and maybe being annoyed by his weaknesses) and maybe not being particularly head-over-heels for him, and b) being genuinely fond of him.
*Usual horror at the idea of living in the past, ESPECIALLY as a woman*
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Lol, I laughed! (I certainly wouldn't be able to manage it :P )
None of her British contemporaries could, so she shows up as the Comtesse de Picbourg, and historians took a while till they figured out this was the same lady who in Hannover chronicles is the Countess of Schaumburg-Lippe-Bückeburg. Incidentally, she was the one who critiqued the English ladies' posture as crouching and almost fearful instead of standing straight and, well, "Brust raus", whereupon the indignant Brits said an English lady is a lady due to titles and manners, not by displaying her bosom.
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Yeah... I mean, I don't think it's mutually exclusive for Caroline to be a) thinking in a practical way about George's strengths as a husband (and maybe being annoyed by his weaknesses) and maybe not being particularly head-over-heels for him, and b) being genuinely fond of him.
Yeah, that's plausible! Something similar may have been the case for Philip V's doting wives who exercised a fair (but debatable) amount of power.
*Usual horror at the idea of living in the past, ESPECIALLY as a woman*
In the famous words of G2 when Fritz proposed visiting: "NO NO NO DO NOT WANT."
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
I enjoyed this, and as I said, have the book on order! (When I will find time to read it is another question, but at least we can look things up in it at need.)
Her mother, Ursula, had been his father's mistress as well, and the question mark as to whether or not Billa could have been his half sister didn't seem to bother him. (One can see the family resemblance to August.)
Uh, yes.
But I suspect that Hervey, who self confessedly tuned out whenever G2 and Caroline talked about their German relations and couldn't be bothered to memorize who was related to whom, simply confused Prussian queens, and the one whom Caroline had been uncomplimentary about was in fact her sister-in-law Sophia Dorothea.
Ahhh, yes, this makes sense! I mean, the Sophias are hard to keep straight! I keep meaning to draw out a genealogy for cahn. I'll see if I find time this weekend.
Given the lack of a dowry, the amazing thing is that her first proposal should come from a very impressive source - young Archduke Charles, future Dad of MT.
Do you know where his motivations fell on the personal - political continuum? This proposal isn't something I had known about (or at least remembered).
ordering that after his own burial the parting wood between their coffins would be lifted so that their dust could mingle.
I had forgotten this, but it made me "aww" the first time and it made me "aww" again this time.
G2: *snatches the hankerchief covering Caroline's shoulders while her hair was being dressed* : Because you have an ugly neck yourself, you love to hide the Queen's!"
and the thirty pages love letters he wrote to Caroline from Hannover when not with her, his British subjects were less than convinced by this strategem of his.
Ahahaha, yeah, I can see that. :D
was something of a love starved teen himself - may have been someone made for Caroline in more ways than by eventually making her Queen.
That does make sense, yes.
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Do you know where his motivations fell on the personal - political continuum? This proposal isn't something I had known about (or at least remembered).
Well, at first it seems to have been political, given that Leipniz, none other, first suggests the idea of such a match when Charles is all of thirteen years old (and Caroline is fifteen) in 1698) to Benedicta of Brunswick-Lüneburg, a lady who was both cousin to Figuelotte and the aunt of Charles. This then remains super hush hush and Caroline has no idea until the idea gets revived again five years later when Charles is en route to claim Spain (well, as in he doesn't, but you know, HE DID NOT KNOW THAT!), and Caroline receives a breathless letter she's to visit her maternal aunt the Duchess of Weissenfels AT ONCE. Which she does, and where she meets young Charles who is now eighteen and as presentable as can be expected. They talk for five hours, he really likes her and tells his aide-de-camp people back at home should go ahead and negotiate for the match, he's proposing, while continuing his travels.
Given whom Charles would end up marrying - original EC - and that she was also a Protestant princess (who did agree to being converted), I would say that the Habsburgs were ready to freshen up the gene pool did want a princess from one of the Protestant principalities because they expected trouble from Louis re: Spain, the French had a nasty habit of teaming up with some of the German princes against the HRE rulership, and it probably seemed a good idea to strengthen ties there ahead of time. Caroline might not have had a large dowry, but she had good connections due to both Brandenburg/Prussia and Hannover (due to Figuelotte sort of adopting her) and Saxony, in the sense that her late mother had been miserably married there to the previous Elector, granted, but August the Strong did have some sympathy for his late sister-in-law and had granted her a good pension for her remaining years, and sent Caroline some nice presents now and then. Added to which was Caroline being a beauty, with parents who both had produced various children (important, that), and a good reputation, all of which are good factors, and who knows, young Charles might really have been smitten. But I do think strengthening ties between the imperial house and the Protestant principalities was the basic idea.
G2 being uxurious: it's slightly mentioned in Sophie's letters but can be missed there - when Caroline got smallpox, George Augustus remained at her side and caught it as well. This is how her stepfather had died (only her stepfather had caught it from his mistress, not wife), which must have been on everyone's mind, so it was both a courageous and devoted thing of future G2 to do.
I think I quoted the famous lampoon about their marriage which was sung shortly after their coronation in London when reviewing Hervey's memoirs (because of course Hervey quotes it): "You may strutt, dapper George, but 'twill all be vain;/We know 'tis Caroline, not you, that reign."
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
As promised, a hastily scribbled visual for keeping the Sophias straight.
I tried to limit it to people we've talked about in salon, though Liselotte's dad snuck in so I could add her. (Worse, to fit them neatly on the page, I had to make him look younger than Sophia of Hanover, when he was actually older--much so. As we know, she was the baby.)
I debated whether to include Sophia Dorothea, sister of Fritz, who married one of the Schwedt cousins, but we haven't talked about her much, and I figured another SD would just confuse things.
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Thank you! <3 I feel like this combined with selenak's writeup of the Winter Queen book (...I know it had another title about Mary Queen of Scots or something, but, like, Winter Queen is such a better title) is getting everything slightly more straight for me! (There are STILL too many Sophias, though :P )
(Heh, "Sophia" was actually one of the main contenders for what we would have named E, only it happened to be the most popular name THAT year as well!)
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The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
The bibliography is impressive. (No books in German, but he's read all the English translations of Sophie's various correspondences he got his hands on, for example, as well as translated into English or French biographies.) I haven't come across an immediately noticable error save one, and because he's so good otherwise, I'm now actually confused and uncertain whether he could have been right. In every book except for this that I've read touching on the English Marriage Project, the cousin intended for Fritz (of Prussia) is named as Amelia/Emily. Dennison says it was her older sister Anne, and that Fritz of Wales and Anne as the oldest were intended for their counterparts Wilhelmine and Fritz of Prussia, also the oldest surviving kids. Like I said - I've always read that it was Amelia. I mean, even her wiki entry claims she kept a miniature of Fritz. And the famous letter Fritz was talked into writing to Caroline about vowingn to only marry her daughter I recalled as naming Amelia as well, but now I'm not sure anymore. Miiiiiiildred - could it have been Anne? (Until her marriage to yet another William of Orange, that is.)
On to the life of Caroline. Her father, the Margrave of Ansbach, already had several sons when remarrying Caroline's mother, so that marriage was seen as a love match Alas he died just a few years later, and Caroline's mother could not handle widowhood at all, hence Caroline's education being neglected to the degree that she had to teach herself how to write and read. (Dennison gives a few examples for the fact she was never able to spell well in any of the languages she spoke - German, French and English - despite being a passionate reader and lover of scholarly debates - which was the long term result.) Her mother eventually married again, another widower, which was social step up and a human step down, for her second husband Johann Georg was the older brother of August the Strong, Prince Elector of Saxony before him. Johann Georg had a mistress, Magdalen Sybille, aka Billa, whom he had no intention of giving up and insited on being treated as the true spouse. Her mother, Ursula, had been his father's mistress as well, and the question mark as to whether or not Billa could have been his half sister didn't seem to bother him. (One can see the family resemblance to August.) Billa eventually got infected by smallpox and died, Johann Georg, who had insisted on being with her, also got infected and died, and August the Strong started his ascendancy to the throne by putting about a hundred Bill-related people on trial for corruption and her mother Ursula for witchcraft (she'd been massively unpopular, so this was a cheap popularity gesture, and one of the last prominent witch trials).
What all this meant for Caroline was that she kept being shuffled between courts in her childhood: her mother's, her older half brother's at Ansbach (said older half brother, btw, eventually produced the son who'd marry Wilhelmine's and Fritz' sister Friederike, the first of the siblings to get married, and make her miserable), her stepfather's - and always in between the one of Sophie Charlotte and F1 in Berlin. The full name of Caroline's dad had been von Brandenburg-Ansbach, as the Margraves of Ansbach were an offshot of the Hohenzollern, too, so F1 was the ultimate overlord of the family, so to speak, and had offered her a home to stay. Caroline first did this at eight, but more long term and for years as a teenager, where, says Dennison, she adopted Sophie Charlotte - whom Dennison refers to by her family nickname of Figuelotte, presumably to cut down the number of Sophies and Charlottes in this book - as a life long heroine and role model.
Sidenote: this made me recall my puzzlement at Hervey claiming that Caroline told him Figuelotte had been "a silly, shallow woman", as opposed to G2 admiring her. Dennison - who quotes a lot from Hervey on other matters - never mentions this one. He does quote many positive and admiring statements from Caroline about Figuelotte from her own letters to back up his claim of Figuelotte - who was the first to encourage Caroline's hunger for books and to provide her with education and who had created the first intellectual court in Berlin - as her heroine. Now, could the letters have been for show and Caroline voiced towards Hervey her true feelings? Sure. But I suspect that Hervey, who self confessedly tuned out whenever G2 and Caroline talked about their German relations and couldn't be bothered to memorize who was related to whom, simply confused Prussian queens, and the one whom Caroline had been uncomplimentary about was in fact her sister-in-law Sophia Dorothea. (With whom she lived in Hannover close-up between marrying G2 and SD marrying FW.) After all, Caroline was writing positive things about the late Figuelotte even when she herself was Queen and the late Sophie Charlotte had probably been forgotten my many, i.e. when there was no profit to claim the connection.
Through Figuelotte, Caroline also attracted the attention of Sophie of Hannover. (BTW, Dennison chronicles Sophie's changing emotions about Caroline - first very positive - she definitely wanted her for grandson G2 - , then cooling off after the marriage, than positive again , but doesn't quote or explain the letter from Sophie to SD where she refers to Caroline as a habitual liar. I was hoping he'd explain the occasion and/or lie, but no. His explanation for the cooling off period on Sophie's part is that she was mourning for her then very recently dead daughter, had been hoping Caroline would be a second Figuelotte, which of course no one could have been, was disappointed and held it against her, with relationships improving again once Sophie had worked through her immediate grief. For Caroline's part, she seems to sincerely have attached herself to Sophie and learned a lot from her. One of Dennison's proofs for this is that after Sophie had died, Caroline started to correspond with Liselotte, and an intense correspondence it was, too, twice weekly, according to Liselotte. The two of them had never met, and all they shared was Sophie; also, Sophie's death was quickly followed by Queen Anne's, which meant Caroline became Princess of Wales and moved to Britain, so it wasn't like she didn't have other things to do, while Liselotte was an old widow without political influence (yes, she was the mother of the French Regent, but no one thought Philippe II consulted her about politics), so writing to her was most likely out of the genuine need to have a maternal confidant whom the Sophies had previously filled. With the caveat that how we present ourselves in letters isn't necessarily how we're perceived in person, Dennison adds it's also worth noting down that Liselotte - who in her long life at Versailles had experienced all types of people - quickly took to Caroline and considered her both smart and engaging.
But back to Caroline, young princess of tiny Ansbach with no big heritage (remember, product of second marriage) hanging out a lot at Berlin. She was a youthful beauty by the standards of her age - bright blond hair, white, luminous skin, a good figure which only later would get heavy, but would almost to the end be perceived as voluptous -, and an impressive conversationalist. Given the lack of a dowry, the amazing thing is that her first proposal should come from a very impressive source - young Archduke Charles, future Dad of MT. Now, this proposal and Caroline's eventual refusal became quickly the stuff of legend, and in later years it cemented her standing as a Protestant heroine - the princess who had "scorned an empire for her faith" - so it's worth pointing out, as Dennison does, that when Charles proposed, he wasn't the Emperor yet, nor was it all that likely he'd be. He was the second son of the Emperor, there was no reason to assume his older brother Joseph wouldn't produce heirs, and the best he could hope for was being King of Spain. This still made him a likely monarch to be when proposing to Caroline and as Habsburg, he was pretty much the best she could hope to get in the marriage market. She wavered at first. Figuelotte and Sophie were conspiciously neutral about the prospect, which made Dennison wonder whether Figuelotte wanted Caroline for her son FW while Sophie wanted her for grandson future G2 already, but neither prospect was voiced, so he says it's also possible that they didn't, or that Figuelotte also thought G2 was a better match but didn't say so because FW was her son. They were neither encouraging nor discouraging about the Habsburg match, and Team Vienna did sent a Jesuit to convert Caroline, but talks with Father Orban had the opposite effect on her: they likely as not made her decide that no, becoming Queen of Spain wasn't worth this, she'd rather stay a Protestant, thanks, Charles.
It was an audacious gesture for a minor German princess - as I said, looking at the logistics of the time, it wasn't likely she could have hoped for a better proposal -, but it would pay off in dividends for the rest of her life, and not just because Sophie used it to sell her son on a Caroline/future G2 match.
Speaking of the Georges: in order to make it always clear who is who, Dennison calls G1 George Louis both before and after his becoming King, and G2 George Augustus (ditto). Why was Caroline's attachment to the Protestant faith a good selling point to convince George Louis she could make a good match for his son, despite the lack of a dowry? Because at this point, the prospect of the British succession became increasingly real. Cousins William and Mary had produced no living offspring. Cousin Anne's children had all died. And the reason why the ca. 50 people between Sophie and Anne were disqualified from the succession in the eyes of Protestant England was that they were all Catholics. Now, George Louis and Sophie cunningly let young George Augustus believe this was all his idea, and he went through that romantic undercover mission where he under a pseudonym showed up at Ansbach (Caroline after Figuelotte's death had gone to her half brother's court) and fell in love at first sight. But there was a lot of stage management behind the scenes there.
As we've learned in the Schnath edited correspondence, F1 was miffed about this because he'd been toying with the idea of a Caroline/FW match (Dennison assumes, though F1 would deny it later), and if Morgenstern is to be believed, young FW was heartbroken. But Dennison thinks Caroline didn't consider him even for a microsecond, and I'm with him there. Otoh, Dennison also thinks George Augustus did know FW was interested in Caroline and that this - like the rejected Habsburg proposal - heightened her allure in his eyes. Then again, by the evidence of their remaining lives together, he was well and truly smitten. He adored her and would do so till her dying day and beyond, ordering that after his own burial the parting wood between their coffins would be lifted so that their dust could mingle.
Was Caroline felt is harder to say. Dennison doesn't think it was all power hunger and calculation that made her become the perfect wife to G2. On the one hand, he didn't share some of her most important interests - notably books (G2 liked music but not reading, and Caroline could only read when he was sleeping or otherwise not requiring her company) -, he could be petty, and his ego required constant massaging. Dennison along with Hervey thinks that while G2 clearly liked sex, his open preference for his wife over his mistress demonstrates that he mostly took a maitresse because a) it's what Kings post Louis XIV did, and b) people were noting his uxoriousness and making jokes that it was Caroline who was wearing the pants in the marriage, so taking a mistress was supposed to show he was the boss. Given such scenes as the one where when his mistress, Henrietta Howard, as lady-in-waiting was dressing his wife:
G2: *snatches the hankerchief covering Caroline's shoulders while her hair was being dressed* : Because you have an ugly neck yourself, you love to hide the Queen's!"
and the thirty pages love letters he wrote to Caroline from Hannover when not with her, his British subjects were less than convinced by this strategem of his.
On the other hand: after a childhood and youth as the poor relation with ever changing guardians, a husband who, whatever other faults he had, really is constant in his conviction that you are the best, sexiest, most wonderful woman on the planet and loves you - let's not forget, George Augustus, whose mother had disappeared into captivity when he was 11 and whose father was famouly a cold fish to almost anyone other than his mistress and illegitimate kids even before that frosty attitude would devolve into father/son warfare later, was something of a love starved teen himself - may have been someone made for Caroline in more ways than by eventually making her Queen. Among their contemporaries there was the wide spectrum of "she adores him, too" to "totally faking it for power's sake!" in how their marriage was seen from her side.
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
I'm only two paragraphs into your write-up because I had to stop here and do some detective work. Because whaaaaat?
I recall Amelia being named in that letter too! Yep, Mitchell--admittedly reporting decades later, but you wouldn't expect him to get it wrong--names Amelia when he has Fritz saying he shouldn't have written that letter.
Oncken definitely quotes from primary sources naming Amelia. One is Hotham, and one--I think, my German isn't quite up to reading as quickly as I'm being forced to right now, I'd get it if I slowed down--Reichenbach. That's in addition to Oncken's summaries of primary sources naming Amelia.
Koser also names Amelia. Once in a direct quote from a letter from Seckendorff to Eugene, which is in Förster. Yep, there it is, right there in Förster, July 1733, when the English decided they wanted the marriage after all, just as Fritz was getting married to EC: "que le Roy d'Angleterre donnera la main au marriage de Son Altesse Royale avec la Princess Amelie."
Also, Wilhelmine certainly thinks it's Amelia, and I'd think she would know! Even writing 10-20 years later, she's not likely to forget the double marriage project. [ETA: Yep, she's another source for the famous letter. She quotes from a followup letter at length, and reports Fritz writing, "I have already pledged my word of honor to your majesty never to marry any other but the princess Amelia your daughter."]
So I'm going to go with it being Amelia and resume reading your write-up.
I didn't know this, though! According to Wikipedia:
In 1725, a potential marriage contract between Anne and King Louis XV of France was considered.
1725, for those of you who need chronology reminders, is the year the seven-year-old Spanish princess who was supposed to marry Louis was sent back in favor of getting him married to someone who could start making babies sooner, and the Spanish sent the French princess back in return. The fact that a royal marriage was considered between France and England is also related to the part where England and France were allies between 1716 and 1731, unusually so.
Maybe Dennison is confusing the marriage to Louis XV that didn't happen with the marriage to Fritz that didn't happen?
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
BTW, more anecdotes/details I forgot to include in my write up:
a) As we know from the Lady Mary bios, Caroline's support of Lady Mary in the inocculation campaign was instrumental. Reminder: Lady Mary returned from Turkey having learned about inocculation against smallpox and having had her son inocculated there. In Britain, she also inocculated her daughter (who'd still been a newborn baby in Turkey, hence too young, which caused a huge controversy and many attacks until Caroline (herself a smallpox survivor, like Mary) decided to have her own children inocculated as well. (Other than Anne, who had just survived smallpox, too, and had a scarred face to show for it.) What we hadn't known before: Caroline was cautious enough - like MT - to test this out on other people first, in her case on ten prisoners volunteering against the promise of a pardon. (Nine survived, but the one who died had been sick already.) Then she had her kids inocculated. (Including Fritz of Wales - a doctor travelled to Hannover to repeat the procedure on him.)
b) Voltaire dedicated the Henriad to Caroline, which tells you something about her reputation as an art patroness at this point. His dedication says that as Henri IV was protected by an English Queen - Elizabeth I - he could think of no one more suitable than the future Queen of England to protect his epic.
c) Caroline wasn't jealous of Henrietta Howard on account of G2 - she knew she had the upper hand there - but she did resent that Henrietta Howard became a sought after patroness as well and was prefered by both Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope.
(c1 - I had forgotten, but the book reminded me again - the Liliputians from "Gullivers Travels" would have been understood by Swifts contemporaries as a satire on all the small German principalities, especially Hannnover.)
d) Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough and Anne's ex-Favourite had been in disgrace along with her husband until the Hannover succession, so Caroline thought it was a good idea to appoint her as one of the ladies of the bedchamber. (Marlborough = popular hero) As part of her "win over the Brits" campaign. However, Sarah being Sarah, she was incurably snobbish and refered to Caroline as a "little German princess" and "Madam Ansbach". Caroline then nicknamed the Churchills "the Imperial family".
e) Like I said, Caroline milked the propaganda value of her rejection of Charles' proposal for the rest of her life. Never more entertainingly (to me) than when the Archbishop of Canterbury after her coronation thought he needed to explain CoE theology to her some more (despite Caroline having converted along with G2 years earlier), and Caroline retorted: "Does he really believe I do not understand Protestantism, I, who rejected an Empire for it?"
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Re: biographies romancées, I can only repeat my reccommendation for Zweig's Fouché.
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Fouché: I've had the Kindle sample since you recommended it, but the thing is...German is enough of a struggle for me still, that I have to be excited enough about the content to keep picking up the book and repeatedly engaging in the struggle, hour after hour, day after day. If you can get me excited to learn more about Fouché, I'll give the book a try! But right now I have no feelings about him either way, and Wikipedia is not exactly helping.
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Since he is an English speaker, is it possible that he had the bowdlerized version of the memoirs and that bit was taken out? (I don't have time to look right now.)
Caroline wasn't jealous of Henrietta Howard on account of G2 - she knew she had the upper hand there - but she did resent that Henrietta Howard became a sought after patroness as well and was prefered by both Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope.
Hee, that's awesome.
(c1 - I had forgotten, but the book reminded me again - the Liliputians from "Gullivers Travels" would have been understood by Swifts contemporaries as a satire on all the small German principalities, especially Hannnover.)
Oh, I think I remember learning about this in Brit Lit class! Of course, at the time I had no historical context for it, so it didn't really register.
Never more entertainingly (to me) than when the Archbishop of Canterbury after her coronation thought he needed to explain CoE theology to her some more (despite Caroline having converted along with G2 years earlier), and Caroline retorted: "Does he really believe I do not understand Protestantism, I, who rejected an Empire for it?"
LOL Caroline, way to milk it :D
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Caroline and Henrietta Howard (later Lady Suffolk) (& G2): the entire relationship is its own kind of odd. Like I said, Henrietta mainly wanted a job that would protect her against her husband. And to be fair, Caroline did that whenever Charles Howard tried to re-insert himself in his wife's life (with an eye to the money she now earned). And when George Augustus became Prince of Wales, some nobles thought cultivating his mistress was a good idea (which also was financially rewarding and got you lots of presents and invites), since usually the mistress has more influence than the wife - only not in this case. (Sir Robert Walpole, otoh, from the get go had the right instinct, cultivated Caroline instead and became PM.) On the downside, G2 had two main subjects, German genealogy and military tales, especially but not only his glorious six months as Young Hannover Brave. And droned on about them since he couldn't think of anything else to talk about with his mistress, other than sex. And made no secret of prefering his wife. As soon as Charles Howard finally had died, Henrietta declared she had enough, retired as mistress and married a nice guy from the gentry. (She was over 40 at this point and half deaf, but still pretty and clever, and had accumulated a nice funding, so that worked out well.) Caroline, who had treasured the time G2 spent with his mistress as her prefered reading hours, was most put off and wrote a tart letter Lady Suffolk (as she was then) going on about how at their age, Henrietta should be past behaving like the heroine of a novel. But Lady Suffolk ignored this.
Caroline had another reason than her suddenly cut short leisure time, which was that she knew G2 wasn't in love with Henrietta Howard, whereas now that he was sans mistress there was the chance he'd come across someone he actually would care for. And sure enough, on his next visit to Hannover, he did, one Countess Wallmoden, who even got pregnant and had a kid by him and became his next official mistress. Whom he described en detail in his letters to Caroline (well enough she could paint the lady's portrait, as she snarked to Hervey), because Caroline was his best friend in addition to his wife and of course he had to tell her about his exciting new mistress, there were no secrets between them. That was G2 for you.
(He did care about Wallmoden more than about Suffolk and after Caroline's death had her come from Hannover to Britain, but she never was a true rival in terms of his affections, either. Like I mentioned in the write up, G2 said about Caroline long after her death he never met a woman fit to buckle her shoe, and he arranged for his funeral so that their dust would mingle because he wanted to be with Caroline always.)
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
This is fantastically hilarious and rather makes me like Caroline even more.
(There's a joke about physicists that goes a little like that -- the punchline being that the physicist likes to have both a wife and a mistress because the wife thinks the physicist is with the mistress and the mistress thinks the physicist is with the wife, and meanwhile the physicist can sneak off and do physics...)
Whom he described en detail in his letters to Caroline (well enough she could paint the lady's portrait, as she snarked to Hervey), because Caroline was his best friend in addition to his wife and of course he had to tell her about his exciting new mistress, there were no secrets between them. That was G2 for you.
OMG! G2, on the other hand... *facepalm* On the other hand, I suppose Caroline's practical side was probably at least a little reassured by knowing G2 thought of her as a best friend. I guess. And at least she had more time to read :P (That being said, it is hilarious. G2!)
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Lol, I've heard this joke about engineers, and I've always loved it. The architect prefers a wife for the stability she represents, the artist a mistress for the passion, and the engineer a wife and a mistress so he can go to the office and get some work done.
And at least she had more time to read :P
Win-win-win for everyone except the person who's currently having to listen to G2 talk. :P
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Indeed, it did. It's Amelia all the way!
On the downside, G2 had two main subjects, German genealogy and military tales, especially but not only his glorious six months as Young Hannover Brave.
LOLOL forever. I mean. My 10 weeks as a member of the Classics faculty at UCLA is emphasized in any summary of my career all out of proportion to its duration. :P
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
I was reassuring myself, as well! I knew all the modern bios have it that way, but I had go to chase down primary sources to make sure it wasn't another case of Robert Keith.
(c1 - I had forgotten, but the book reminded me again - the Liliputians from "Gullivers Travels" would have been understood by Swifts contemporaries as a satire on all the small German principalities, especially Hannnover.)
Ahhh, thank you for this! *If* I ever learned this, it was before I had any context on the HRE or small German principalities, so I promptly forgot it.
Caroline then nicknamed the Churchills "the Imperial family".
Lol, yeah, I can see it.
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Lol, I laughed! (I certainly wouldn't be able to manage it :P )
and the question mark as to whether or not Billa could have been his half sister didn't seem to bother him. (One can see the family resemblance to August.)
Hee! Indeed.
With the caveat that how we present ourselves in letters isn't necessarily how we're perceived in person, Dennison adds it's also worth noting down that Liselotte - who in her long life at Versailles had experienced all types of people - quickly took to Caroline and considered her both smart and engaging.
Huh, that's neat, I'm glad they had that correspondence. (And ha, yes to letters vs. in person, though I suppose it's probably not so easy to fake being smart even over letters :P )
It was an audacious gesture for a minor German princess - as I said, looking at the logistics of the time, it wasn't likely she could have hoped for a better proposal -, but it would pay off in dividends for the rest of her life
This is fascinating!
Now, George Louis and Sophie cunningly let young George Augustus believe this was all his idea, and he went through that romantic undercover mission where he under a pseudonym showed up at Ansbach (Caroline after Figuelotte's death had gone to her half brother's court) and fell in love at first sight. But there was a lot of stage management behind the scenes there.
Like MT! Clearly the takeaway here is that managed marriages work rather better than forced marriages :P
But Dennison thinks Caroline didn't consider him even for a microsecond, and I'm with him there.
But what's not to love! I mean besides EVERYTHING
may have been someone made for Caroline in more ways than by eventually making her Queen.
Yeah... I mean, I don't think it's mutually exclusive for Caroline to be a) thinking in a practical way about George's strengths as a husband (and maybe being annoyed by his weaknesses) and maybe not being particularly head-over-heels for him, and b) being genuinely fond of him.
*Usual horror at the idea of living in the past, ESPECIALLY as a woman*
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
None of her British contemporaries could, so she shows up as the Comtesse de Picbourg, and historians took a while till they figured out this was the same lady who in Hannover chronicles is the Countess of Schaumburg-Lippe-Bückeburg. Incidentally, she was the one who critiqued the English ladies' posture as crouching and almost fearful instead of standing straight and, well, "Brust raus", whereupon the indignant Brits said an English lady is a lady due to titles and manners, not by displaying her bosom.
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Yeah, that's plausible! Something similar may have been the case for Philip V's doting wives who exercised a fair (but debatable) amount of power.
*Usual horror at the idea of living in the past, ESPECIALLY as a woman*
In the famous words of G2 when Fritz proposed visiting: "NO NO NO DO NOT WANT."
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Her mother, Ursula, had been his father's mistress as well, and the question mark as to whether or not Billa could have been his half sister didn't seem to bother him. (One can see the family resemblance to August.)
Uh, yes.
But I suspect that Hervey, who self confessedly tuned out whenever G2 and Caroline talked about their German relations and couldn't be bothered to memorize who was related to whom, simply confused Prussian queens, and the one whom Caroline had been uncomplimentary about was in fact her sister-in-law Sophia Dorothea.
Ahhh, yes, this makes sense! I mean, the Sophias are hard to keep straight! I keep meaning to draw out a genealogy for
Given the lack of a dowry, the amazing thing is that her first proposal should come from a very impressive source - young Archduke Charles, future Dad of MT.
Do you know where his motivations fell on the personal - political continuum? This proposal isn't something I had known about (or at least remembered).
ordering that after his own burial the parting wood between their coffins would be lifted so that their dust could mingle.
I had forgotten this, but it made me "aww" the first time and it made me "aww" again this time.
G2: *snatches the hankerchief covering Caroline's shoulders while her hair was being dressed* : Because you have an ugly neck yourself, you love to hide the Queen's!"
and the thirty pages love letters he wrote to Caroline from Hannover when not with her, his British subjects were less than convinced by this strategem of his.
Ahahaha, yeah, I can see that. :D
was something of a love starved teen himself - may have been someone made for Caroline in more ways than by eventually making her Queen.
That does make sense, yes.
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Well, at first it seems to have been political, given that Leipniz, none other, first suggests the idea of such a match when Charles is all of thirteen years old (and Caroline is fifteen) in 1698) to Benedicta of Brunswick-Lüneburg, a lady who was both cousin to Figuelotte and the aunt of Charles. This then remains super hush hush and Caroline has no idea until the idea gets revived again five years later when Charles is en route to claim Spain (well, as in he doesn't, but you know, HE DID NOT KNOW THAT!), and Caroline receives a breathless letter she's to visit her maternal aunt the Duchess of Weissenfels AT ONCE. Which she does, and where she meets young Charles who is now eighteen and as presentable as can be expected. They talk for five hours, he really likes her and tells his aide-de-camp people back at home should go ahead and negotiate for the match, he's proposing, while continuing his travels.
Given whom Charles would end up marrying - original EC - and that she was also a Protestant princess (who did agree to being converted), I would say that the Habsburgs
were ready to freshen up the gene pooldid want a princess from one of the Protestant principalities because they expected trouble from Louis re: Spain, the French had a nasty habit of teaming up with some of the German princes against the HRE rulership, and it probably seemed a good idea to strengthen ties there ahead of time. Caroline might not have had a large dowry, but she had good connections due to both Brandenburg/Prussia and Hannover (due to Figuelotte sort of adopting her) and Saxony, in the sense that her late mother had been miserably married there to the previous Elector, granted, but August the Strong did have some sympathy for his late sister-in-law and had granted her a good pension for her remaining years, and sent Caroline some nice presents now and then. Added to which was Caroline being a beauty, with parents who both had produced various children (important, that), and a good reputation, all of which are good factors, and who knows, young Charles might really have been smitten. But I do think strengthening ties between the imperial house and the Protestant principalities was the basic idea.G2 being uxurious: it's slightly mentioned in Sophie's letters but can be missed there - when Caroline got smallpox, George Augustus remained at her side and caught it as well. This is how her stepfather had died (only her stepfather had caught it from his mistress, not wife), which must have been on everyone's mind, so it was both a courageous and devoted thing of future G2 to do.
I think I quoted the famous lampoon about their marriage which was sung shortly after their coronation in London when reviewing Hervey's memoirs (because of course Hervey quotes it): "You may strutt, dapper George, but 'twill all be vain;/We know 'tis Caroline, not you, that reign."
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
Lol, I laughed, because it's a good idea! But I see what you're saying about the ties between the imperial house and Protestant principalities.
so it was both a courageous and devoted thing of future G2 to do.
Okay, future G2 is not my fave, but that is rather sweet.
(because of course Hervey quotes it)
HA, of course he does!
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
I tried to limit it to people we've talked about in salon, though Liselotte's dad snuck in so I could add her. (Worse, to fit them neatly on the page, I had to make him look younger than Sophia of Hanover, when he was actually older--much so. As we know, she was the baby.)
I debated whether to include Sophia Dorothea, sister of Fritz, who married one of the Schwedt cousins, but we haven't talked about her much, and I figured another SD would just confuse things.
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach - I: Cinderella
(Heh, "Sophia" was actually one of the main contenders for what we would have named E, only it happened to be the most popular name THAT year as well!)