Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 30
Sep. 8th, 2021 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnIn which, despite the title, I would like to be told about the English Revolution, which is yet another casualty of my extremely poor history education :P :)
Also, this is probably the place to say that RMSE opened with three Fritz-fics, all of which I think are readable with minimum canon knowledge:
The Boy Who Lived - if you knew about the doomed escape-from-Prussia-that-didn't happen and tragic death of Fritz's boyfriend Hans Hermann von Katte, you may not have known about Peter Keith, the third young man who conspired to escape Prussia -- and the only one who actually did. This is his story. I think readable without canon knowledge except what I just said here.
Challenge Yourself to Relax - My gift, I posted about this before! Corporate AU with my problematic fave, Fritz' brother Heinrich, who's still Fritz's l'autre moi-meme even in corporate AU. Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with the corporate world and the dysfunctions thereof.
The Rise and Fall of the RendezvousWithFame Exchange - Fandom AU with BNF fanfic writer Voltaire, exchange mod Fritz, and the inevitable meltdown. (I wrote this one and am quite proud of the terrible physics-adjacent pun contained within.) Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with fandom and the dysfunctions thereof :P
Also, this is probably the place to say that RMSE opened with three Fritz-fics, all of which I think are readable with minimum canon knowledge:
The Boy Who Lived - if you knew about the doomed escape-from-Prussia-that-didn't happen and tragic death of Fritz's boyfriend Hans Hermann von Katte, you may not have known about Peter Keith, the third young man who conspired to escape Prussia -- and the only one who actually did. This is his story. I think readable without canon knowledge except what I just said here.
Challenge Yourself to Relax - My gift, I posted about this before! Corporate AU with my problematic fave, Fritz' brother Heinrich, who's still Fritz's l'autre moi-meme even in corporate AU. Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with the corporate world and the dysfunctions thereof.
The Rise and Fall of the RendezvousWithFame Exchange - Fandom AU with BNF fanfic writer Voltaire, exchange mod Fritz, and the inevitable meltdown. (I wrote this one and am quite proud of the terrible physics-adjacent pun contained within.) Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with fandom and the dysfunctions thereof :P
Re: Catherine the Great: smallpox
Date: 2021-09-14 02:54 pm (UTC)ETA: And from August, his reaction to the news of Catherine's plan in a letter to envoy Solms - who had told him that Catherine planned to inoculate her son but wanted to try it on herself first: I was extremely astonished to learn from your despatch of the 9th of this month the resolution which the Empress of Russia took to have herself inoculated with smallpox. Given the age of her imperial majesty, such an operation seems to me very dangerous, and by the tender interest which I take in the conservation of this great princess, I wish and I hope that the doctor will not undertake it.
And then Catherine apparently heard about this via Tschernytschew, not directly from Fritz, at least until he wrote to her after the fact to congratulate her on everything going well. But yeah, his objection was mostly to inoculation of an adult person here, not in general.
Re: Catherine the Great: smallpox
Date: 2021-09-14 03:20 pm (UTC)Re: Catherine the Great: smallpox
Date: 2021-09-14 11:43 pm (UTC)he even mentions Lady Montagu as proof in the first letter, since he says she inoculated her kids but not herself (is that true?).
What Selena said, plus the fact that I think it was the fact that she'd had such a bad experience with smallpox that made her really notice that the Turkish women she was bathing with didn't have scars. I mean, maybe she would have anyway! The people around her would have gotten sick and often died even if she'd gotten lucky. But the effects on her must have been something she was self-conscious about, or at least needed some time and effort to stop being self-conscious about. (I mean, from being praised for your beauty, to almost dying, to being relentlessly praised for your beauty despite extensive scarring and no eyelashes...in a society like that, she can't not have been hyperaware of her appearance, and then there's the whole almost dying part. People who have read her letters and bio can weigh in, though.)
Re: Catherine the Great: smallpox
Date: 2021-09-15 09:04 am (UTC)As Isabel Grundy points out, Algarotti in "Newton for Ladies" pays homage to Lady Mary by giving as one of the examples of science being of use to women the fact that thanks inocculation, Englishwomen can now preserve their beauty the way Turkish women have.
Voltaire in "Letters concerning the English" (first published in English (!) in 1733, then in French in 1734) credits Lady Mary and Caroline (i.e. the future Queen) with introducing inocculation. To quote Grundy:
He takes a riddling, paradoxical tone, not so much praising England for itself as sniping at priest -ridden and benighted France. When he calls the Turks a sensible people, he implies a contrast with his countrymen. He showers paradoxes: that the Circassians value female education, but only for a career in the sex trade ; that good girls and bad girls are socially constructed. He attributes inoculation , a giant step for humankind, directly to Lady Mary and Princess Caroline-- partly in order to anatomize the reasons why France cannot produce women like them.* Even so he sees them as acting out of mother- love and self- interest, less noble motives than disinterested public spirit. Though he gets a few details wrong (he thinks Lady Mary's son was born in Turkey ), he seems to have read her relevant Embassy Letter, if not the whole work.
(Reminder, the Embassy letters were not published until after Lady Mary's death decades later, and she didn't give the manuscript its final form until her old age in Italy, but as Voltaire had met her in England when being in exile there, and knew several people of her circle, he could have been shown her actual letters with the relevant description. Also, 1733 -i.e. the year where this "why France can't produce women like Lady Mary and Caroline" statement is published - in a neat irony is the year where he meets and falls in love with Émilie.)
Fritz had definitely read Voltaire's Letters concerning the English, and most probably Algarotti's Newton for Ladies, so that's probably where he has his inocculation intel (and Lady Mary intel) from. Again, I'd like to think Algarotti didn't gossip about her, especially not to a sharp tongued guy like Fritz prone to indiscretion about things not military or political secrets, because while Algarotti wasn't erotically interested in her, he kept those letters (and several of her poems and translations) and must have been aware she'd completely bared her heart to him and how vulnerable that had made her.
Going through old posts, I also saw that one of the few references to Lady Mary's altered-by-smallpox looks from someone who wasn't an admirer-turned-hater like Pope or a plain hater like Horace Walpole comes from Hervey in the frenzy of jealousy directly after Algarotti's first visit to England and his departure. If you'll recall, this had been something that surprised me when reading the Hervey and Lady Mary bios side by side after already being familiar with the sorry triangle tale via Mildred's write up. Because her letters make it so evident Hervey was the clear winner in the struggle for Algarotti and that she'd never had a chance there, learning that for Hervey, this was by no means so clear (until Algarotti's second visit) and he was incredibly jealous in the initial phase was startling. As Halsband says, at the same time when Lady Mary casts herself as a left Dido, Hervey writes a letter casting her as a victorious Caesar who came, saw and conquered (Algarotti), simply because Algarotti spent his last evening in London with her and not with him, but had lied to Hervey about the reason when declining his invitation. To quote from Halsband's Hervey bio:
Instead of resenting Algarotti's duplicity he resented Lady Mary's having benefited by it. Her physical charms were far inferior to her intellectual ones, he reminds him. 'How fortunate you are then to be gone! The absence that brings sadness to every other Lover will fulfill your Happiness, for she will speak to your Eyes & not appear before them; she will not destroy with her countenance the impression she will make by her mind. But I am speaking too much of her,' he checks himself, 'now I must say a word about myself. I cannot say anything, however, on this Subject but what you already know, that is to say that I love you with all my Heart, & I beg you never to forget the affection Ihave for you,nor to let the affection you have for me grow weaker.'
Born into such a society, where a woman's looks are prized before any other quality she may or may not possess, I'm pretty sure Lady Mary would have noticed the scar-free skin of the Turkish women in any case, but after her own experience, as Mildred says, with a personal intensity and immediacy.
Re: Catherine the Great: smallpox
Date: 2021-09-18 05:06 am (UTC)Oh, ha, nice :D
learning that for Hervey, this was by no means so clear (until Algarotti's second visit) and he was incredibly jealous in the initial phase was startling.
Wow, yeah, thanks for reminding me of this!
Re: Catherine the Great: smallpox
Date: 2021-09-18 12:38 pm (UTC)And yet: he kept not only those letters but some of her poetry (hand written, remember, since Lady Mary didn't publish in her life time under her own name; poetry from gifted nobility like her and Hervey was circulated in hand written copies in their social environment. And he wrote a poem for her which she kept. So I hope he at the very least found her truly interesting. (That he reopenened relationships when he was middle aged and she was old in Italy would augur for it.)
Algarotti and Lady Mary
Date: 2021-09-19 06:02 pm (UTC)Yep, agree. And let's not forget the chronology: it was almost immediately after he left England for the second time that she decided to move to Italy to be with him, got there, and discovered that he wasn't there, nor did he have any intention of joining her. :/
At least she discovered she liked Italy; I'm glad she had that, at least. And yes, the fact that they were friends at the end of their lives augurs well.
Hervey/Algarotti/Mary (Re: Catherine the Great: smallpox)
Date: 2021-09-22 04:37 am (UTC)<3 Yes! My headcanon is that, love triangle aside, he does super think she's cool, and this is evidence for it :D (Although, man. HERVEY.)
I do have some sympathy for Algarotti in that situation ... he at the very least shouldn't have done things like letting her pay for his (second) journey to England anymore.
Yes on both counts! My headcanon for Algarotti is that he's a nice guy who just... can't say no. (...I know someone like this at work, and yeah, sometimes it would Really be better if he just said no to begin with.)
Re: Hervey/Algarotti/Mary (Re: Catherine the Great: smallpox)
Date: 2021-09-22 08:31 pm (UTC)please people who weren't Fritzbe everything to everyone?Re: Hervey/Algarotti/Mary (Re: Catherine the Great: smallpox)
Date: 2021-09-23 06:26 am (UTC)Re: Hervey/Algarotti/Mary (Re: Catherine the Great: smallpox)
Date: 2021-09-23 04:00 pm (UTC)