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".
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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.