Caroline: ? Sophie (I'm not making this up, she really said this): Look at it this way: It will improve his English.
HA.
So there was a disruption of this particular relationship from the get go. Also, while paying lip duties to believing in the highest calling for a woman being a wife and mother, she even according to an admiring and sympathetic observer had a perference for "settling points of controversional divinity" (Caroline was very much interested in philosophical and religious debates and later would be involved in a big Leipniz vs Newton and Clarke clash) over child play.
This is where Caroline started getting really interesting for me. Not least because I've had some experience in
a) not bonding with one of my children right after birth, and if I had then been separated from that child for years on end, I... well, I made a lot of fun of Caroline back when you were telling us about Lord Hervey's memoirs, but now I can really viscerally see how that could so easily have happened
b) My church culture does a lot of that "highest calling being a wife and mother" thing (fortunately my actual family never did, they were much more of the "yeah, get educated and get a career" variety) and I do feel that being a mother is important to my identity, and at the same time I am, um, not so into child play. To be fair, I know very few mothers who actually enjoy doing quite as much of it as their kids like to :P -- but anyway, so, yeah, suddenly Dennison (and you) are humanizing her a lot more for me.
(Dennison points this may have been true but was also the only thing she could do in the long term, as G2 would not have forgiven her siding with Dad against him, and he was the one she lived with and who would survive G1.)
Maaaan. Caroline. I am so into (well, reading about) women who do the "right" thing (or at least the dramatic thing!) which also happens to be the coldly practical thing, and Caroline seems like she is the master of it! (But also, ugh!)
I can really viscerally see how that could so easily have happened
While I never had kids, same here. Like I said, maybe it still could have been avoided if Fritzchen had grown up with his parents (well, at least in a royal family kind of way), but this initial experience plus so many years separately plus the difficulty that most designated successors in monarchies tend to be at odds with the ruling monarch really wrecked any chance of closeness, and that was before the arguments started.
BTW, Dennison also is very clear on the fact that Caroline convincing herself that Fritz of Wales was impotent really had no factual or even gossipy basis other than her wishful thinking, because she wanted beloved younger son William to become King so badly.
FW: I, on the other hand, would have been full of joy if Wretched Son had ever deigned to give me a grandchild, so I really don't understand where all the criticism comes from!
I am so into (well, reading about) women who do the "right" thing (or at least the dramatic thing!) which also happens to be the coldly practical thing, and Caroline seems like she is the master of it!
She was, and figuring out the degree in which many of her actions were calculation vs genuine feeling (it usually according to Dennison was a mixture of both) was most frustrating for her opponents. In the case of the big G1 vs G2 showdown, her involvement really made all the difference in public opinion. In an age where fathers are by default right (unless they kill their sons a la Peter the Great or kill their sons' lovers a la FW), most people would probably have sided with G1 otherwise. After all, he was King AND the head of the House, so his changing the identity of the godfather would have been seen as his prerogative, and G2 carrying the argument about it well into the baptism and quarelling with the new godfather as terrible manners.
But since none of this had been Caroline's fault, forbidding her to see her children came across as petty, cruel and monstreous, and suddenly everyone was on team Caroline and George Augustus. (Liselotte wrote to her half sister that George Louis had been a cold fish in Germany already, but it seemed the English air had turned him into stone.)
Another example of where it's impossible to tell whether Caroline's motivation were more strategy or mere genuine feeling was the big Leipniz vs Newton (and Jeremy Clarke) clash. Leipniz, due to his years of association with Sophie and Sophie Charlotte, and his having been patronized by House Hannover since decades, and given the fact that he'd been of personal service to Caroline (he'd written her refusal letter to Archduke Charles for her - you bet that Caroline did NOT want this particular letter to laying her open to ridicule for her spelling, handwriting etc.), had a claim on her loyalty, on the one hand. On the other, siding with a German scientist against God of British Science Newton would have gone against all she was hoping to achieve in winning the Brits over and would have inevitably resulted in her being accused of siding with him only due to German bias. Otoh - she might also have found Newton simply more convincing. In any event, she wrote diplomatic letters with Leipniz but sided with Newton; her diplomacy must have been good enough for Leipniz not to feel himself betrayed, though, as he continued to be nice about her in his letters to other people.
FW: I, on the other hand, would have been full of joy if Wretched Son had ever deigned to give me a grandchild, so I really don't understand where all the criticism comes from!
HA.
(it usually according to Dennison was a mixture of both)
Yeah, that sounds very plausible, and I think that's very cool.
In any event, she wrote diplomatic letters with Leipniz but sided with Newton; her diplomacy must have been good enough for Leipniz not to feel himself betrayed, though, as he continued to be nice about her in his letters to other people.
Oh, that's actually really neat -- I feel like the icky bit about the whole Leipniz/Newton thing was how everyone was kind of their worst selves about it all, and it's rather nice to find someone who wasn't.
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Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach- II: People Manager
Date: 2021-07-29 05:24 am (UTC)Sophie (I'm not making this up, she really said this): Look at it this way: It will improve his English.
HA.
So there was a disruption of this particular relationship from the get go. Also, while paying lip duties to believing in the highest calling for a woman being a wife and mother, she even according to an admiring and sympathetic observer had a perference for "settling points of controversional divinity" (Caroline was very much interested in philosophical and religious debates and later would be involved in a big Leipniz vs Newton and Clarke clash) over child play.
This is where Caroline started getting really interesting for me. Not least because I've had some experience in
a) not bonding with one of my children right after birth, and if I had then been separated from that child for years on end, I... well, I made a lot of fun of Caroline back when you were telling us about Lord Hervey's memoirs, but now I can really viscerally see how that could so easily have happened
b) My church culture does a lot of that "highest calling being a wife and mother" thing (fortunately my actual family never did, they were much more of the "yeah, get educated and get a career" variety) and I do feel that being a mother is important to my identity, and at the same time I am, um, not so into child play. To be fair, I know very few mothers who actually enjoy doing quite as much of it as their kids like to :P -- but anyway, so, yeah, suddenly Dennison (and you) are humanizing her a lot more for me.
(Dennison points this may have been true but was also the only thing she could do in the long term, as G2 would not have forgiven her siding with Dad against him, and he was the one she lived with and who would survive G1.)
Maaaan. Caroline. I am so into (well, reading about) women who do the "right" thing (or at least the dramatic thing!) which also happens to be the coldly practical thing, and Caroline seems like she is the master of it! (But also, ugh!)
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach- II: People Manager
Date: 2021-07-29 01:50 pm (UTC)While I never had kids, same here. Like I said, maybe it still could have been avoided if Fritzchen had grown up with his parents (well, at least in a royal family kind of way), but this initial experience plus so many years separately plus the difficulty that most designated successors in monarchies tend to be at odds with the ruling monarch really wrecked any chance of closeness, and that was before the arguments started.
BTW, Dennison also is very clear on the fact that Caroline convincing herself that Fritz of Wales was impotent really had no factual or even gossipy basis other than her wishful thinking, because she wanted beloved younger son William to become King so badly.
FW: I, on the other hand, would have been full of joy if Wretched Son had ever deigned to give me a grandchild, so I really don't understand where all the criticism comes from!
I am so into (well, reading about) women who do the "right" thing (or at least the dramatic thing!) which also happens to be the coldly practical thing, and Caroline seems like she is the master of it!
She was, and figuring out the degree in which many of her actions were calculation vs genuine feeling (it usually according to Dennison was a mixture of both) was most frustrating for her opponents. In the case of the big G1 vs G2 showdown, her involvement really made all the difference in public opinion. In an age where fathers are by default right (unless they kill their sons a la Peter the Great or kill their sons' lovers a la FW), most people would probably have sided with G1 otherwise. After all, he was King AND the head of the House, so his changing the identity of the godfather would have been seen as his prerogative, and G2 carrying the argument about it well into the baptism and quarelling with the new godfather as terrible manners.
But since none of this had been Caroline's fault, forbidding her to see her children came across as petty, cruel and monstreous, and suddenly everyone was on team Caroline and George Augustus. (Liselotte wrote to her half sister that George Louis had been a cold fish in Germany already, but it seemed the English air had turned him into stone.)
Another example of where it's impossible to tell whether Caroline's motivation were more strategy or mere genuine feeling was the big Leipniz vs Newton (and Jeremy Clarke) clash. Leipniz, due to his years of association with Sophie and Sophie Charlotte, and his having been patronized by House Hannover since decades, and given the fact that he'd been of personal service to Caroline (he'd written her refusal letter to Archduke Charles for her - you bet that Caroline did NOT want this particular letter to laying her open to ridicule for her spelling, handwriting etc.), had a claim on her loyalty, on the one hand. On the other, siding with a German scientist against God of British Science Newton would have gone against all she was hoping to achieve in winning the Brits over and would have inevitably resulted in her being accused of siding with him only due to German bias. Otoh - she might also have found Newton simply more convincing. In any event, she wrote diplomatic letters with Leipniz but sided with Newton; her diplomacy must have been good enough for Leipniz not to feel himself betrayed, though, as he continued to be nice about her in his letters to other people.
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach- II: People Manager
Date: 2021-07-31 05:55 am (UTC)HA.
(it usually according to Dennison was a mixture of both)
Yeah, that sounds very plausible, and I think that's very cool.
In any event, she wrote diplomatic letters with Leipniz but sided with Newton; her diplomacy must have been good enough for Leipniz not to feel himself betrayed, though, as he continued to be nice about her in his letters to other people.
Oh, that's actually really neat -- I feel like the icky bit about the whole Leipniz/Newton thing was how everyone was kind of their worst selves about it all, and it's rather nice to find someone who wasn't.