18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 36

[cahn]

Starting a couple of comments earlier than usual to mention there are a couple of new salon fics! These probably both need canon knowledge.

felis ficlets on siblings!

Siblings (541 words) by felisnocturna
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great, Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf, August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia (1722-1758), Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758)
Summary:

Three Fills for the 2022 Three Sentence Ficathon.

Chapter One: Protective Action / Babysitting at Rheinsberg (Frederick/Fredersdorf, William+Henry+Ferdinand)
Chapter Two: Here Be Lions (Wilhelmine)

Unsent Letters fic by me:

Letters for a Dead King (1981 words) by raspberryhunter
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen (1726-1802)
Characters: Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen | Henry of Prussia (1726-1802)
Additional Tags: Epistolary, Love/Hate, Talking To Dead People, Canonical Character Death, Dysfunctional Family
Summary:

Just because one's king and brother is dead doesn't mean one has to stop writing to him.

Comments

Mary Ann Costello

[selenak]

Okay, I could read it sooner than expected, and before my trip next week, here are a few impressions:

Firstly, you know, all the German sources quoting Guy Dickens on the Hohenzollern family had left me with the idea he was called, well, first name Guy, last name Dickens. He was not. He was, in fact, (Lt. Col.) Melchior Guy-Dickens. His marital history is one of extremes. As a young man, he married a Huguenot lady twice his age who died as the result of giving birth to Mary Ann's mother Mary and later, he married a fifteen years old half his age. Go figure. Anyway, while Melchior Guy-Dickens is busy in the diplomatic service and recording FW's parenting methods for posterity, he's told that the daughter he fathered while stationed in Ireland and left with a couple called Smith once he got posts elsewhere had died, while little Mary is told her father is dead my the Smiths. Why the Smiths would do this remains a mystery. (Maybe they wanted to keep Mary around.) But! Once Mary becomes marriable, a notorious gambler with good looks named Jordan Costelllo enters the scene, one of many no good incompetent men in this saga. Only this one happenes to know Mary is the daughter of the very much alive Melchior Guy-Dickens, thinks that means she has an inheritance and sweeps her off her feed. Then he delivers the happy news, and claims Mary's inheritance from her Dad, and gambles it away. This leaves our heroine, Mary Ann, growing up first with contantly arguing parents (her mother having long since fallen out of love with Jordan, understandably so) , and then being sent to live with now retired Gramps Guy-Dickens in England in the hope that she either charms him into coughing up more money or makes a brilliant match on the marriage market (as opposed to anything she can get in Ireland).

Melchior has children from his second marriage who are less than enthused at the idea of Melchior hitting it off too well with his granddaughter, which he does, and so encourage the marriage idea. After a succession of possible matches whom Mary Ann does not like, they land her with George Canning (the elder). George Canning is the rebellious, moody son of a tyrannical Dad, wrote some anti-royalist poetry and good at offending the wrong people, and also he thinks Mary Ann is her grandfather's heir. She's not. They end up, you guessed it, in dire straits. He dies soon, and if that's not bad enough, Mary Ann's parents have now moved from Ireland to England in the expectation she'll support them. Also, old Melchior has gone senile and is totally under the control of his daughter. (At least that's what Mary Ann said decades later in recounting her life.) For a while, Mary Ann has an ally in her brother-in-law, Stratford "Stratty" Canning. (Her biographer thinks, based on Mary Ann's later one novel, there was some unspoken tenderness between them, but apparantly marrying your sister in law would have been illegal in 18th century GB, and so Stratty marries a resolute young lady named Merihabel instead.

So Mary Ann, with two children (one of whom will die soon, the other is future PM George Canning (the younger)) and useless parents as well as herself to support, needs a job. She does not want to be a governess, or a paid companion for some lady. But she's young and pretty, and the great Garrick, the greatest actor of the age, offers to launch her as an actress in a production of a melodrama titled "Jane Shore" besides him. That she decided on this option (and not the more respectable jobs of companion or governess) seals her fate, and will always be held against her by Merihabel and Stratty, who end up raising her son George from the time George is four years old. This doesn't happen immediately once Mary Ann starts her stage career, it has to be said. First, Mary Ann's debut and subsequent roles, most in today forgotten plays as the romantic ingenieu, don't result in a "Star is born" scenario. She's pretty and smart (which will serve her long term), and later she'll pick up some stage technique, but her voice isn't strong enough (and not yet stage trained), and while her debut is received friendly, a subsequent play has her booed relentlessly. (That she didn't run off stage in tears says something about her, too.) In this situation, the next shady male character appears. This one, Mr. Reddish, is actually a good actor, but also prone to quarrel with other actors, plus he happens to keep quiet he's already married. Instead, he wooes Mary Ann under the pretense of wanting to marry her, she goes to Scotland with him, he fesses up to his marital state, and she has to live with him sans marriage (though she uses the Mrs. Reddish name) because she's already pregnant. When her next kid, Sam, is born, and Merihabel hears young George refer to "the player's brat" as his brother, she and Stratty decide action is called for. And that's when George ends up with them. He and Mary Ann won't see each other again until George is sixteen, though they correspond via letter.

Mary Ann tours the provinces (and Ireland) with Reddish the Rake (not London, they're burned there because of Mary Ann getting booed off stage and Reddish having pissed everyone off), and discovers she actually has a talent for management. In terms of her stage life, these are fairly successful years - she smooths things over between Reddish and the other ensembles, chooses easy roles for herself and star roles for him, and they're doing mostly well (she also becomes pregnant repeatedly, thus having even more dependents). Then Reddish has a complete mental breakdown and ends up in the asylum, leaving Mary Ann even worse off than George Canning the older left her, because now she has multiple kids, still her useless parents to cope with, and she's eight years older. The one thing she now has which she didn't then is stage technique and experience. She does get other acting jobs, but still, when a seemingly respectable draper from Bristol proposes, she says yes and wants to retire into financial safety and marriage. Except, as it turns out, said guy, Mr. Hunn, is a stage fan who wants to be an actor. He sells his business and insists Mary Ann get him engagments like she got Mr. Reddish. Except Mr. Hunn has zero talent and gets booed off stage. Unlike Mary Ann, he doesn't rally after that. Instead, he blames her, has affairs, and produces more kids with her. (Around this time, Mary Ann reads Mary Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Women" and goes THIS THIS THIS!!!! in her letters about it.)

And that's when now sixteen years old George meets his mother again. Young George hadn't been told why he didn't live with his mother anymore for years, but eventually, his aunt and uncle said it was because she chose to be an actress and live in sin with a player. Still, no one objected to letters, and he built up a romantic image of her based on his few memories. When he meets her, she's far older than he remembers, and of course looks like a woman with multiple pregnancies behind her and who had to be the main breadwinner for a large family for many years did. Also, she's effusive, with grand gestures. He is, as he'll later admit, disgusted and shocked by the sight of her and secretly decides two things: a) he'll never, ever live with her, and b) he will dutifully support her and rescue her from this life.

George is a clever (top marks) child, ambitious youngster turning into a clever, ambitious man, and his relationship with his mother is the bleeding core of the book. Were this a Dickens novel, he would either be a complete bastard cutting her off completely, or a good son providing her with love and care and company, or possibly first one, then the other. In real life, George works his way up the political ladder (not easy even for a brilliant young man, because first of all, he starts out with no money and few connections, and second, the few he has are Whig connections - because of his dead father the moody anti-royalist -, and George, not least due to the French Revolution, becomes a firm Tory instead. And while he's doing that, he both intensifies his correspondence with his mother (they end up writing to each other once a week without fail through the years, and he doesn't miss it no matter the political crisis) and keeps her at a distance in terms of actual meetings. She's very proud of him and at first believes that once he's able to afford it, they'll live together, not least because one of his arguments to convince her to say goodbye to the theatre for good is that'll hurt his career. (This, btw, isn't something he invented. Even decades later, "son of an actress" was used as a slight against him by his enemies.) And she's absolutely shattered to find out that not only does he not want to live with her once he's in a position to do so, he does not want her in his life (the letters aside), full stop.

When he gets married, he doesn't want her to meet his wife. When he has children of his own, he doesn't want her to meet them. Now, on all these cases, he eventually relents, because Mary Ann is nothing if not obdurate, and their life long struggle where she wants love and attention and he wants to provide money and otherwise a distance (with thousands of letters as his compromise) might be uneven in terms of power, but she's not without weapons. One of the efficient rethorical blows she lands is when she tells him his late father couldn't stand the historical figure of King James VII and I. (son of Mary Stuart, first Stuart monarch to rule England, remember, aka Alan Cumming on Doctor Who), because James "shook the hand of Elizabeth when it was red with the blood of his mother" and when the late George Canning the older (according Mary Ann) was told that King James must have objected to his mother's sins he said "he should have been her son and defender, not her judge!" Hint, hint.

Anyway, there's the occasional personal meeting after all (both between George and his mother, and between George's wife and his mother, and eventually even between some of the grandkids and his mother), but not many. Financially, she's at last secure (he got her a government pension, which provides his enemies with material as well. Also, Mary Ann's other kids (remember them?), both the illegitimate ones by Reddish and the legitimate ones by Hunn keep wanting George to help them in their respective careers. He's less than thrilled and pointedly refers to the male ones as "my mother's sons", not "brothers" as he used to say as a four years old to the horror of his aunt, but he does come through when push comes to shove. The other kids seem to have resented both that he's Mum's favourite and that they sooner or later would grovel to him in the hopes of advancement anyway. (His youngest brother, Frederick, wrote him an obscene letter at age 12. George saw it as a prank and just ignored it, but he wasn't warm with adult Frederick, either.)

Mary Ann ends up living in Bath (another compromise; George didn't want her in London, but Bath was fashionable enough not to be the provinces, and full of interesting people, plus visiting from London the few times he did it was easy), and didn't quite live long enough to see George as PM, though she saw him achieve all the other offices before that. Like parents with less dramatic background, she chided him on his rare visits if he didn't stay long but was in ecstasies if he prolonged a visit without any prompting, and never stopped offering advice on anything from childcare to politics in her letters. (Her letters were long and emotional; his were, with a very few exceptions when he was angry with her because, say, she had shown one of his letters around in Bath, good humored and bantering, fun to read but never passionate.) Ironically, they died within six months of each other (he wasn't PM long). Our author thinks he might have caught the fatal cold on his trip to Bath to attend her funeral. Throughout the book, she tries to be fair to both Mary Ann and George in terms of their relationship. (George as a politician, she sums up by saying that it's impossible, even centuries later, not to be impressed by his rhethoric, wit and intelligence, nor not to be appalled by some of the use he made of it, like defending the Peterloo Massacre. Also, this is very much a biography written in our present, because unlike earlier biographies of similar 18th and 19th century figures I've read, it constantly keeps slavery in mind. George consistently voted against slavery through his entire career - he was a protegé of Pitt's and knew Wilberforce - , but he also wasn't above profiting from monetary sources that came from overseas plantations and thus inevitably involved slavery, not least since he represented the Liverpool district, and Liverpool was one of the biggest slave trading places until it was abolished.

All in all, a readable book, if inevitably full of real life frustrations. Mary Ann doesn't really fit into various tropes - she never completely failed nor ever hit the big time as an actress, her three known romantic relationships (with George Canning the older, Reddish the Rake and Hunn the Wannabe Actor) all ended badly, and while the one novel she wrote between acting hints that she might have had feelings for her brother-in-law and he for her, this, too, ended badly and he was instrumental in raising her son to judge her (though she tried her best to blame his wife for this). Her younger children thought it was unfair she favored George and, like her parents, the majority of them were dependent on her far beyond their childhood, and George never gave her the emotion she wanted from him or allowed her to be part of his life the way she had hoped he would, though he gave her just enough of his time and attention (all those letters!) to keep her hoping one day, he would come around to more than the occasional visit. At the same time: she survived. She did not have to prostitute herself. She did not want to be anyone's servant (hence her refusal to become a governess or companion once her first husband had died), and she never did. And for someone who doesn't seem to have had a natural acting gift, but had the discipline to learn and the stamina to continue even after having lived through the frightening experience of an entire theatre boo and hiss at you, she had a respectable bread winning career in the business for fifteen years, not just the two or three a pretty face alone could have gotten her. Would she have traded with Emma Hamilton, who had both an affectionate marriage (Sir William) and a great requited passion (Nelson), not to mention the social climb from zero to envoy's wife, friend of a Queen, but also had the complete fall, loneliness and self destructive death in alcoholic exile? I don't think so.

ETA: Link for possible further use: Grandpa Melchior Guy-Dickens' surviving papers are all listed here, and thus it looks like the Hohenzollern related letters are most likely to be found in the correspondence with one Thomas Robinson from 1730 to 143.)

Re: Mary Ann Costello

[mildred_of_midgard]

all the German sources quoting Guy Dickens on the Hohenzollern family had left me with the idea he was called, well, first name Guy, last name Dickens. He was not. He was, in fact, (Lt. Col.) Melchior Guy-Dickens.

I was going to talk about that! I also thought that, but I was also confused, because I've seen it written Guy-Dickens, Guydickens, and even Guydikkens (in German). (I read more diplomatic history than you do. ;))

Then this book called his daughter Mary Guy-Dickens, which made it clear it was a family name!

he married a Huguenot lady

I was going to say, there are a lot of Huguenots in England and Ireland in this story, which reminded me of how surprised we were that the Huguenot Society of Ireland and England published the Deschamps memoirs, and were so confident of their audience's French that they didn't even bother translating. You and I agreed we hadn't realized so many Huguenots went to the British Isles, and this book made me go, "There they are!"

apparantly marrying your sister in law would have been illegal in 18th century GB

Per Wikipedia, the Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act of 1907 made one kind of sister-in-law marriage legal, and the Deceased Brother's Widow's Marriage Act the other kind in 1921.

But also per wiki, you could kind of get away with it before 1835, as "a marriage within the prohibited degrees was not absolutely void but it was voidable at the suit of any interested party."

discovers she actually has a talent for management.

This is really cool! Especially since she continued acting despite not being a natural at it.

Around this time, Mary Ann reads Mary Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Women" and goes THIS THIS THIS!!!! in her letters about it.

THIS! Yes, that was neat to see her reacting to a more famous woman of the period, and how much Wollstonecraft's work (I should really reread it, it's been too long) resonated.

"he should have been her son and defender, not her judge!" Hint, hint.

Hee!

Like parents with less dramatic background, she chided him on his rare visits if he didn't stay long but was in ecstasies if he prolonged a visit without any prompting

Uh, yep, that sounds familiar.

She did not have to prostitute herself. She did not want to be anyone's servant (hence her refusal to become a governess or companion once her first husband had died), and she never did.

In a set of bad options (I'm sure she would have preferred a non-acting career), I'm glad she was able to stay true to her priorities, at least. 

Would she have traded with Emma Hamilton, who had both an affectionate marriage (Sir William) and a great requited passion (Nelson), not to mention the social climb from zero to envoy's wife, friend of a Queen, but also had the complete fall, loneliness and self destructive death in alcoholic exile? I don't think so.

Yeah, that makes sense, and is really interesting, because Emma's the obvious comparison here.

Thanks for this write-up!

Re: Mary Ann Costello

[selenak]

Guy-Dickens: it's a good thing we haven't used him in Frederician fiction yet, so we don't have to edit anything. Also, Melchior! In an age where so many people have the same first name, that's a gift from the writerly heavens.

Btw, George Canning's the moody depressed husband of Mary Ann's father was a very authoritarian control freak, and his children either were rebelling or terrified and cowed by him, so I was wondering whether, depending on how compos mentis he still was, Melchior Guy-Dickens had a sense of deja vu about the family his granddaughter had married into...especially since his own had the reverse dynamics, i.e. his children were taking charge of him. (With the caveat that this is how Mary Ann tells the story decades later when explaining to son George why she had to become an actress and why Gramps didn't leave her enough of his money ot make that unnecessary.

Huguenots: and in freaking Ireland, no less!

I loved the Mary Wollstonecraft detail, too, which is why I included it. Coming across a female contemporary reader's reaction, not something written centuries later, was pretty exciting.

(Not quite the same thing, but years ago when reading Vincent Van Gogh's letters to his brother Theo I was also thrilled to come across his reading Jane Eyre and Villette by "Currer Bell". Vincent had no idea either who Currer Bell really was, or that she was a woman, or that he was reading a future classic, he's just writing to his younger brother about two novels he likes.

Uh, yep, that sounds familiar.

Reminded me of one of my grandmothers, too.

Re: Mary Ann Costello

[mildred_of_midgard]

Guy-Dickens: it's a good thing we haven't used him in Frederician fiction yet, so we don't have to edit anything. Also, Melchior! In an age where so many people have the same first name, that's a gift from the writerly heavens.

Lol and lol! Very true on both counts. Somebody should write more 1730 fic so we can use Melchior. :P

Huguenots: and in freaking Ireland, no less!

Well, Ireland was not a bad place to be a Protestant in this period!

cahn: Ireland in this period consists of an oppressed Catholic majority and a dominant Protestant minority.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, various laws were passed banning Catholics from attending university, holding office, voting in parliamentary elections, serving in the army, practicing law, etc. etc. In Dublin, where the Smiths and little Mary were living, Protestants were even the majority.

What surprises me is that they're still speaking (or at least reading) French in 1990! Translate your primary sources for the rest of us, Huguenots!

Vincent had no idea either who Currer Bell really was, or that she was a woman, or that he was reading a future classic, he's just writing to his younger brother about two novels he likes.

Really! I would not have guessed. The Brontes had already been outed during their lifetimes, and Gaskell's Life was published shortly after Charlotte's death.

Bronte/Van Gogh footnote

[selenak]

Vincent to Theo:

“ I don’t know if you ever read English books. If so, then I can highly recommend Shirley by Currer Bell, the author of another book, Jane Eyre. This is as beautiful as the paintings of Millais or Boughton or Herkomer. I found it at Princenhage6 and read it in three days, even though it’s quite a thick book.”

The whole letter: https://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let170/letter.html#translation

He remained a fan. That letter is from relatively early in his painting career. Whereas this is much, much later:

Read in any case L’amour and La femme and, if you can get hold of it, My wife and I and Our neighbours by Beecher Stowe. Or Jane Eyre and Shirley by Currer Bell. Those people can tell you many more things much more clearly than I can.

https://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let187/letter.html

Re: Bronte/Van Gogh footnote

[cahn]

Aww, that's cool! Those are neat letters, especially the second <3

Re: Bronte/Van Gogh footnote

[selenak]

For more on the Van Gogh brothers and fictional depictions of same, see here.

Re: Mary Ann Costello

[cahn]

ahhhhhh thank you as always for these amazing writeups!

he's told that the daughter he fathered while stationed in Ireland and left with a couple called Smith once he got posts elsewhere had died, while little Mary is told her father is dead my the Smiths. Why the Smiths would do this remains a mystery.

WOW. That is super weird!

When her next kid, Sam, is born, and Merihabel hears young George refer to "the player's brat" as his brother, she and Stratty decide action is called for. And that's when George ends up with them. He and Mary Ann won't see each other again until George is sixteen, though they correspond via letter.

Aaaaaaah. I see why they felt that way, and yet! Aaaaaaaah.

Except, as it turns out, said guy, Mr. Hunn, is a stage fan who wants to be an actor. He sells his business and insists Mary Ann get him engagments like she got Mr. Reddish. Except Mr. Hunn has zero talent and gets booed off stage.

Oh noooooo. Poor Mary Ann :(( She sounds extremely resilient and possibly with a really bad guy picker.

(Around this time, Mary Ann reads Mary Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Women" and goes THIS THIS THIS!!!! in her letters about it.)

I should think so! :(

He is, as he'll later admit, disgusted and shocked by the sight of her and secretly decides two things: a) he'll never, ever live with her, and b) he will dutifully support her and rescue her from this life.

Man, I feel so hard for so many people in this story (except of course for all of Mary Ann's guys) -- I feel like, they don't always maybe have the "right" reaction, but they have super understandable reactions! I do love that one of his reactions is "have to get my mom out of this!"

And while he's doing that, he both intensifies his correspondence with his mother (they end up writing to each other once a week without fail through the years, and he doesn't miss it no matter the political crisis) and keeps her at a distance in terms of actual meetings.

ngl, this gives me a lot of Feelings! Poor George and Mary Ann :(

All in all, a readable book, if inevitably full of real life frustrations.

*nods* Although I think the frustrations make it really fascinating! A lot of people with good intentions often doing things that might be good in some ways but also hurting each other (except, again, for Mary Ann's guys, the jerks).

Her younger children thought it was unfair she favored George and, like her parents, the majority of them were dependent on her far beyond their childhood

I THINK I SEE YOUR PROBLEM, Mary Ann's children! (I suppose George was also the only one who got out, due to Merihabel and Stratty, and who's to say that another of her children might not have done at least marginally better than they actually did, under the same circumstances? But...)

At the same time: she survived. She did not have to prostitute herself. She did not want to be anyone's servant (hence her refusal to become a governess or companion once her first husband had died), and she never did. And for someone who doesn't seem to have had a natural acting gift, but had the discipline to learn and the stamina to continue even after having lived through the frightening experience of an entire theatre boo and hiss at you, she had a respectable bread winning career in the business for fifteen years, not just the two or three a pretty face alone could have gotten her. Would she have traded with Emma Hamilton, who had both an affectionate marriage (Sir William) and a great requited passion (Nelson), not to mention the social climb from zero to envoy's wife, friend of a Queen, but also had the complete fall, loneliness and self destructive death in alcoholic exile? I don't think so.

<33333 I'm quoting this whole thing because I love it. That makes a lot of sense, and I'm glad at least that she got to live on her own terms.

Re: Mary Ann Costello

[selenak]

That is super weird!

Isn't it just? In a way, the reverse of what the Thenardiers are doing to Fantine in Les Miserables - they're fleecing her by constantly pretending Cosette is at death's door and they're having all these expenses, when really they're exploiting her as child labor. Whereas the Smiths forego the financial benefit - because Melchior Guy-Dickens paid for his daughter's upkeep, of course, when he still thought she was alive - so they can keep her.

She sounds extremely resilient and possibly with a really bad guy picker.

Seriously. It's as if she had an unerring instinct for picking Mr. Wrongs. (Which alas played into the narrative George was told as to why she couldn't be trusted with raising him.) She must have felt at some points as if it was her lot in life to clean up after incompetent men. Which was probably yet another reason why George was her favourite - he was super competent! (And even if not providing just what she wanted from him, did help her for a change.)

Although I think the frustrations make it really fascinating! A lot of people with good intentions often doing things that might be good in some ways but also hurting each other (except, again, for Mary Ann's guys, the jerks).

That's true, and it's to the biographer's credit that she doesn't take the easy route of, say, vilifying Stratty and Merihabel but lays out their reasons for acting as they did as well.

I THINK I SEE YOUR PROBLEM, Mary Ann's children! (I suppose George was also the only one who got out, due to Merihabel and Stratty, and who's to say that another of her children might not have done at least marginally better than they actually did, under the same circumstances? But...)

Quite. Youngest son's Frederick's wife Emma blamed Mary Ann's preference as well as George himself for Frederick developing lots of hang-ups never getting quite the career in the navy he thought he could have had, but Frederick (the one who at age 12 had sent George an obscene letter) did get a commission and then managed to piss off a lot of people, and when he expected George to bail him out of this, George refused, which makes it sound like Frederick's fault to me. Otoh, daughter Mary wanted to become an actress, which had the predictable result of:

Mary Ann: NO WAY.
George: NO WAY. Even if I have to pay for her wedding to a respectable citizen.
Mary Ann: You're getting married to a respectable guy instead.
Mary the younger: FINE. But I just know I could have had a great career and will blame Mom and George for not having it.

Meanwhile, Lord Grey, whom the tea is named after, the first time it dawned on him George might actually make PM:

the son of an actress is, ipso facto, disqualified from becoming Prime Minister".

George: Watch me.

That makes a lot of sense, and I'm glad at least that she got to live on her own terms.

That's how I feel. Of course there's much in her life which she would have wanted to have happened differently. But within all the lemons she was dealt, she did manage some lemonade, and she never gave up.

Re: Mary Ann Costello

[cahn]

Which was probably yet another reason why George was her favourite - he was super competent! (And even if not providing just what she wanted from him, did help her for a change.)

I mean -- yeah! I'm not a fan of parents playing favorites, but when one of your kids is super competent and helps you out, and the others are all dependent on you, then, uh, i can hardly blame you.

That's true, and it's to the biographer's credit that she doesn't take the easy route of, say, vilifying Stratty and Merihabel but lays out their reasons for acting as they did as well.

Yay! I'm glad to hear that.

did get a commission and then managed to piss off a lot of people, and when he expected George to bail him out of this, George refused, which makes it sound like Frederick's fault to me.

Ooooof. Yeah. *facepalm*