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cahnI'm trying to use my other account at least occasionally so I posted about my Yuletide gifts there, including the salon-relevant 12k fic that features Fritz, Heinrich, Voltaire, Fredersdorf, Saint Germain, Caroline Daum (Fredersdorf's wife), and Groundhog Day tropes! (Don't need to know canon.)
Pope Gregory vs Henry IV: the Byzantine version
Date: 2023-02-01 04:34 pm (UTC)This Robert was Norman by descent, of insignificant origin in temper tyrannical, in mind most cunning, brave in action, very clever in attacking the wealth and substance of magnates, most obstinate in achievement, for he did not allow any obstacle to prevent his executing his desire. His stature was so lofty that he surpassed even the tallest, his complexion was ruddy, his hair flaxen, his shoulders were broad, his eyes all but emitted sparks of fire, and in frame he was well-built where nature required breadth, and was neatly and gracefully formed where less width was necessary. So from tip to toe this man was well-proportioned, as I have repeatedly heard many say. Now, Homer says of Achilles that when he shouted, his voice gave his hearers the impression of a multitude in an uproar, but this man's cry is is said to have put thousands to flight. Thus equipped by fortune, physique and character, he was naturally indomitable, and subordinate to nobody in the world. Powerful natures are ever like this, people say, even though they be of somewhat obscure descent.
And this is Anna explaining how Robert's rise was aided by a certain Pope and barbarian Emperor simultanously duking it out:
Meanwhile, an event occurred which is worth relating, as it, too, contributed to this man's reputation and good fortune. For I hold that the fact that all the rulers of the West were prevented from attacking him, tended very materially to the barbarian's successful progress. Fate worked for him on all sides, raised him to kingly power, and accomplished everything helpful to him. Now it happened that the Pope of Rome [*Gregory VII] had a difference with Henry, King of Germany [Henry IV], and, therefore, wished to draw Robert into an alliance, as the latter had already become very notable and attained to great dominion. (The Pope is a very high dignitary, and is protected by troops of various nationalities.) The dispute between the King and the Pope was this: the latter accused Henry of not bestowing livings as free gifts, but selling them for money, and occasionally entrusting archbishoprics to unworthy recipients, and he also brought [34] further charges of a similar nature against him. The King of Germany on his side indicted the Pope of usurpation, as he had seized the apostolic chair without his consent. Moreover, he had the effrontery to utter reckless threats against the Pope, saying that if he did not resign his self-elected office, he should be expelled from it with contumely. When these words reached the Pope's ears, he vented his rage upon Henry's ambassadors; first he tortured them inhumanly, then clipped their hair with scissors, and sheared their beards with a razor, and finally committed a most indecent outrage upon them, which transcended even the insolence of barbarians, and so sent them away. My womanly and princely dignity forbids my naming the outrage inflicted (in them, for it was not only unworthy a high priest, but of anyone who bears the name of a Christian. I abhor this barbarian's idea, and more still the deed, and I should have defiled both my pen and my paper had I described it explicitly. But as a display of barbaric insolence, and a proof that time in its flow produces men with shameless morals, ripe for any wickedness, this alone will suffice, if I say, that I could not bear to disclose or relate even the tiniest word about what he did. And this was the work of a high priest. Oh, justice! The deed of the supreme high priest! nay, of one who claimed to be the president of the whole world, as indeed the Latins assert and believe, but this, too, is a bit of their boasting. For when the imperial seat was transferred from Rome hither to our native Queen of Cities, and the senate, and the whole administration, there was also transferred the arch-hieratical primacy. And the Emperors from the very beginning have given the supreme right to the episcopacy of Constantinople, and the Council of Chalcedon emphatically raised the Bishop of Constantinople to the highest position, and placed all the dioceses of the inhabited world under his jurisdiction.
Re: Pope Gregory vs Henry IV: the Byzantine version
Date: 2023-02-04 05:36 am (UTC)What did he do to Henry's ambassadors??
(It turns out listening in the car is a great move, because I am in the car either dropping off or picking up kids a LOT these days. I got to hear about Theophanu and Adelheid and am at Otto III! Although for the next two weeks I won't have the car with the decent sound system, so though I will probably be able to listen a bit more, I will probably retain even less than is my wont with podcasts.)
Re: Pope Gregory vs Henry IV: the Byzantine version
Date: 2023-02-04 02:19 pm (UTC)That one is the Byzantine podcast, so you now have two podcasts to listen to. ;)
I am so far behind on the podcast, but I'm hoping to finish up my Barbarossa-period reading this weekend, and then I can start listening, bring myself up to Frederick II, and then fall behind again as I start reading along.
It turns out listening in the car is a great move
Awesome! I'm delighted I stumbled on this podcast, I've now gotten three people hooked!
Re: Pope Gregory vs Henry IV: the Byzantine version
Date: 2023-02-04 02:45 pm (UTC)Anyway, if I had to guess, Anna is insinuating the ambassadors got castrated. Which, like I said, I don't recall happening, but who knows? Maybe I missed something.
Re: Pope Gregory vs Henry IV: the Byzantine version
Date: 2023-02-04 02:49 pm (UTC)I'm intrigued that this is how a Byzantine writer presents the tale,
Agreed, it is interesting that this is how the Byzantines, gougers-of-eyes and removers-of-noses, tell it. ;)
Re: Pope Gregory vs Henry IV: the Byzantine version
Date: 2023-02-04 03:12 pm (UTC)Crusaders: *besiege Nicea, fight skirmishes, win skirmisches*
Alexios: *negotiates with Turkish garnison*
Turkish garnison, which includes the wife and children of the Sultan: *surrenders to the Emperor*
Alexios: Rejoice, we can take the city without further bloodshed! Nicea, location of the very first Christian Synod, is once again part of the Byzantine Empire!
Crusaders: But - we wanted to sack it!
Alexios: No way. Nicea has been in Turkish hands for only 20 years. Most of the people inside are former countrymen of mine. No sacking. Thanks, fellows, and have some gold from me for your kind efforts, but I got it from here.
Crusaders: Can we at least ransom the Sultana?
Alexios: Nope. The Sultan is going to stay around. He's my enemy today, but tomorrow I might need him against the Normans. For example. So I'm going to host the Sultana and her kids in the palace for a few weeks and then send her home free of ransom.
Crusaders: What kind of Christian Emperor are you anyway?
Mind you, that's the Empire in a post crisis state where Alexios knows he has to rebuild a lot, and at peak power, who knows what would have happened, but still. Mutilation is something you do to your high profile competition, not to envoys, if you're a
ByzantineRoman Emperor.You might even do it to your own child, though, which is what Romanos I. Lekapenos did with his illegitimate son Basil, to ensure he would not be a danger to his legitimate offspring. The irony is that Basil - who grew up to be one of the most powerful eunuch officials of the Byzantine Empire and managed to serve and survive several Emperors in a row - did not betray Romanos, but his legitimate sons did.
Re: Pope Gregory vs Henry IV: the Byzantine version
From:Re: Pope Gregory vs Henry IV: the Byzantine version
Date: 2023-02-04 02:26 pm (UTC)But note,
nay, of one who claimed to be the president of the whole world, as indeed the Latins assert and believe, but this, too, is a bit of their boasting. For when the imperial seat was transferred from Rome hither to our native Queen of Cities, and the senate, and the whole administration, there was also transferred the arch-hieratical primacy.
The refusal of the Byzantines to acknowledge the Germans as emperors was a big deal in foreign policy and definitely hampered the Crusades.
Re: Pope Gregory vs Henry IV: the Byzantine version
Date: 2023-02-04 02:50 pm (UTC)This is also why when Otto (I) wanted a Byzantine princess for his son, as in, an Emperor's daughter, Nikephoros Phokas was all "NO WAY, German" and John Tsimitskes (his nephew, who murdered and replaced him and then scapegoated Theophano the older, with whom he may or may not have had an affair, but whom definitely took the fall for him) a few years later was more diplomatic and did send a bride, but Theophanu the younger was his niece, not his daughter, plus hadn't been born in the purple at all, what with both Nikephoros and John being military ursurpers.
Rohan genealogy
Date: 2023-02-04 08:01 pm (UTC)1. The Rohan whose thugs beat up Voltaire, leading to one of Voltaire's stints in the Bastille and his exile to England.
2. The Rohan who was duped in Marie Antoinette's affair of the necklace.
3. The Rohan whose wife had an affair with Bonnie Prince Charlie.
4. The Rohan who had an affair with Bonnie Prince Charlie's illegitimate daughter.
Okay, #3 was not asked in email, but she was the first Rohan(-by-marriage) I learned about, so I had to include her. I did look up how they were all related toward the beginning of salon, because I had the same question, but I've since forgotten, so here goes again.
...
Believe it or not, 2-4 are brothers! 1 is a from a different branch entirely, and I hope you appreciate all the copy-pasting and forgive any errors. ;)
1. Married Henri Chabot, founded the Rohan-Chabot line.
2. Had his thugs beat up Voltaire.
Re: Rohan genealogy
Date: 2023-02-04 08:33 pm (UTC)Did not know about that mistress of BPC (who appears also to have been his cousin), nor the guy his daughter had an affair with! But then, I haven't yet read the McLynn biography of BPC, which I will no doubt inevitably do some day...
Re: Rohan genealogy
Date: 2023-02-04 08:37 pm (UTC)Did not know about that mistress of BPC (who appears also to have been his cousin), nor the guy his daughter had an affair with! But then, I haven't yet read the McLynn biography of BPC, which I will no doubt inevitably do some day...
BPC's mistress is pretty well known (she also shows up in Outlander, which I realize you haven't read), but Clementina's affair is very obscure. It came as a surprise to me to learn about it in the last few years (slightly before salon?), and it might not be in McLynn.
What I would really like to read is The Stuarts' Last Secret: The Missing Heirs of Bonnie Prince Charlie, published in 2002 (I left Jacobite fandom in 2001), by Peter Pininski, who discovered, to his surprise, that Clementina had had an affair and illegitimate children, and that he was their descendant. (No, he is not claiming the throne, he seems very sane.) You can read about it here.
Re: Rohan genealogy
Date: 2023-02-05 07:06 am (UTC)Re: Rohan genealogy
Date: 2023-02-05 01:56 pm (UTC)Re: Rohan genealogy
Date: 2023-02-08 08:40 pm (UTC)Re: Rohan genealogy
Date: 2023-02-05 07:10 am (UTC)FW and Robespierre: Soulmates?
Date: 2023-02-05 07:37 am (UTC)But what they share is wanting to completely change the society they're born into, not just by altering a few laws but by going for the mentality itself, the willingness to live an austere life style as an example, the increasing willingness to, when seeing people falling short of the ideal of Virtue/Protestant Christianty, resort to more and more brutal methods to enforce the ideal, while also being deeply hurt people refuse to acknwoledge it's all done out of love, and aren't grateful. Krockow, as you might recall, provides a few quotes from FW and Robespierre respectively and invites the reader to guess who said what. So basically, I can see his case that Robespierre is what FW might have become if being born into a bourgeois French family at that point in time, and convertely, FW Robespierre as he might have been when born as the sole son of the first Prussian King with access to absolute power from the get go.
Okay, except for the tall soldiers. I don't think Robespierre would have been into them. Also, he didn't have a Tiny Terror Maximilien phase, i.e. didn't share FW's physical brutality from early childhood onwards, though then again, if FW had been born the son of an Arles notary, not a prince, and one of several children, not in effect an only child (the half sister from F1's first marriage doesn't really count, as she was much older and already dead before FW had finished growing up), he might have learned more self discipline for his temper from the start?
Re: FW and Robespierre: Soulmates?
Date: 2023-02-05 02:13 pm (UTC)Anyway, yes, that is an interesting comparison!
So basically, I can see his case that Robespierre is what FW might have become if being born into a bourgeois French family at that point in time, and convertely, FW Robespierre as he might have been when born as the sole son of the first Prussian King with access to absolute power from the get go.
Yeah, I could see that. They definitely have the fanaticism in common!
The other difference that comes to mind is that FW doesn't seem nearly as eloquent as Robespierre. Do you think FW could have gotten as far as he did without the ability to *make* people do what he wanted? Or do you think feelings were running high enough during the French Revolution that he could have been a successful demagogue just by having strong enough opinions? I think, uh, recent events show that a politician doesn't have to be particularly articulate to get people to follow them.
Or am I underestimating FW or, conversely, overestimating Robespierre?
Re: FW and Robespierre: Soulmates?
Date: 2023-02-05 04:36 pm (UTC)"The surprising closeness shows a basic pattern of revolutionary thought and action; taking all the differencces in cause and goals into account, it still always aims at the children of light fighting against the children of darkness in a decisive battle. Injustice is supposed to be replaced with justice, lies with truth, vice and luxury through naturalness and simplicity, in short, Evil by Good. This is how Martin Luther thunders against Popery, how the faithful Puritans in the great English Revolution attack their King and deliver him to his execution, that's what Rousseau says. Always and in a central place, it also concerns education - even if it's education to dictatorship and tyranny: if Old Adam can't be replaced by a New Man, everything has been in vain."
FW doesn't seem nearly as eloquent as Robespierre
That is certainly true. Otoh, Robespierre was a trained lawyer; if FW had gone through the same training and his livelihood had depended on it, who knows, he might have been better than he was at speaking. (Let's not forget, FW was able to make Wusterhausen into a self sustaining estate at age 10. (Or was it 12? One of the two, or he got it as a present when he was 10 and by the time he was 12 it was self sustaining and exporting. This is not something his teachers or his royalty status did for him. If he was motivated to learn something, he did.) Also, Robespierre, while a good public speaker, wasn't as far as I know the type of orator to seduce/urge the masses into immediate action; that was more Danton's thing. Robespierre's brand of charisma also wasn't the instantly-chummy/devoted/slain-by-admiration kind of thing which Fritz had (and again, Danton, and Camille Desmoulins), but he did have force of personality, and whoever was devoted to him remained so. It's difficult to say if FW without being royalty and having the according power would have been able to win anyone over, because it was never put to the test, but he had hardcore convictions, a very emotional way of voicing them, boundless energy and a stupendous work ethic, and that certainly would have come in handy.
Fritz's nose
Date: 2023-02-05 04:01 pm (UTC)It's a mixed bag. The arguments are mostly weak, there's uncritical reliance on Voltaire's memoirs and Burgdorf for Fritz's sex life, etc. but it does present new-to-me quotes as well as an interesting comparison of the Fritz portraits.
In the spirit of "I read (okay, skimmed) it so you don't have to," the author's main argument is:
- Fritz almost never sat for portraits, so people were relying on an audience of a few minutes or a glimpse of him during a military parade review.
- Contemporaries (including himself) described Fritz as unattractive, and his death mask shows a hooked nose, but every portrait painter straightens out the nose and pretties him up.
- The only accurate portrayal of him is by William Hogarth, a satirical British painter who never met him, and who was caricaturing him and thus was willing to depict the brown skin and hooked nose. The author has written a whole paper (that I have not read) arguing that the flutist in Marriage A-la-Mode: The Toilette is actually Fritz! Contrary to the usual interpretation that it's G3's music teacher. The rest of the article will assume that the author's conclusion is fact.
- Hogarth's source may have been Georg Friedrich Schmidt, a Prussian engraver who was living in Paris and working on a portrait of Fritz in 1743, at the time Hogarth came to Paris. Now, Schmidt absolutely depicted Fritz in an idealized style, but the article author thinks he may have admitted to Hogarth in person that it was idealized and in what way. And he may have told Hogarth Fritz was gay, as Schmidt may have been gay himself (the evidence presented by the author is about as weak as for the rest of his claims) and may have had an intimate relationship with Fritz (the evidence presented is that one person implied they were both gay)!
So, two things we already knew, and two speculations. Admittedly, I haven't read the author's article in which he makes the case for the identification of Fritz in Hogarth (and he seems to be a Hogarth specialist), but nothing about this article puts me in a hurry to check out his other work (though I admit to being mildly curious).
I'm not going to pick apart everything that's wrong with this article (spoiler: almost everything), but here are some quotes. They're unfortunately from secondary sources, but sometimes secondary sources allow a determined detective to trace them back to the original (or lack thereof), so I'm collecting them here for future reference:
Commenting to the Marquis d’Argens, he remarked: “There is so much talk about the fact that we terrestrial kings are made in the image of God. Then I look in the mirror and am obliged to say to myself: How unlucky for God!” Cited by Gisela Groth, “Wie Friedrich II. wirklich aussah”, Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung, 14 November 2012.
And when he was asked by Pesne to be available for a portrait intended for the Russian Tsarina Elizabeth, the artist received the negative reply that he should “only paint a handsome young man, it will be fine that way”. See Schieder, “Die auratische Abwesenheit des Königs”, 333.
When a marriage between the crown prince and the English princess Amalie was considered and the English royal family wanted a portrait of Frederick, his father said that Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, the wife of King George II, should have a large monkey painted for her because that was Frederick’s likeness. See Hildebrand, Das Bildnis Friedrichs des Großen 96; Kunisch, Friedrich der Große: Der König und seine Zeit 27.
When he sent one of these unloved portraits to his nephew, Prince Frederick Augustus of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, who had ordered it for his masonic lodge, he recommended to place the picture in the garden as an alternative to a scarecrow. Letter dated 30 January 1777. See Emil Knorr, “Friedrich der Große als Freimaurer”, Hohenzollern-Jahrbuch, 3 (1899), 122. See also Schieder, “Die auratische Abwesenheit des Königs”, 331; Kluxen, Bild eines Königs, 24.
The fact that the king had an extremely distinctive nose long before his death, which some contemporaries apparently made fun of, is also indicated by the following biting remark made by him about himself: “My nose may be large, but it’s not for dancing around.” Allgemeine Zeitung, no. 362 (28 December 1854), 5784.
Even Denis Diderot was sure that Frederick the Great had not touched a single woman and did not sleep with his wife. See Morris Wachs, “Diderot’s ‘Parallèle de César et de Frédéric’”, in Otis Fellows/Diana Guiragossian (eds.), Diderot Studies, 14 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1971), 259–65. T
Significantly, in July 1750, the king wrote to Darget: “Mes hémorroïdes saluentaffectueusement votre v…” (“My hemorrhoids affectionately greet your cock.”) See Ursula Pia Jauch, Friedrichs Tafelrunde& Kants Tischgesellschaft: Ein Versuch über Preußen zwischen Eros, Philosophie und Propaganda (Berlin: Matthes & Seitz,2014), 318n28.
A few works that might be worth checking out:
Klaus Büstrin, “‘Ich habe gemeinet, du häst mihr lieb’: Friedrichs enge Beziehungen zu seinem Kammerdiener Fredersdorf”, Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten, 1 September 2012; the article on Fredersdorf in Anna Eunike Röhrig, Mätressen und Favoriten: Ein biographisches Handbuch (Göttingen: MatrixMedia Verlag, 2010).
Norbert Schmitz, Der italienische Freund: Francesco Algarotti und Friedrich der Große(Hannover: Wehrhahn Verlag, 2012); Ursula Pia Jauch, “Eros zwischen Herr und Knecht: Friedrich der Grosse und FrancescoAlgarotti im Land der Lust”, in Bernd Sösemann (ed.), Friedrich der Große in Europa – gefeiert und umstritten (Stuttgart:Franz Steiner Verlag, 2012), 59–70; Wolfgang Nedobity, “Frederick’s Swan: Francesco Algarotti and the Expression of Desire”, SSRN [Social Science Research Network] Electronic Journal, July 2012, 1–5
Finally, a couple quotes about Fritz memorabilia that amused me with reference to recent salon purchases:
Less well-heeled contemporaries can buy Frederick mugs in souvenir shops and on the Internet, apparently with whatever likeness they want — just as one imagines his Old Fritz personally.
And travel bags with Menzel's Flute Concert! (For those who don't know, that's what I got
And for childlike persons there is Frederick on horseback as a Playmobil figure.
Selena, guess that makes you a childlike person. Better than Montesquieu's take on Bavarians, at least?
Question for
Re: Fritz's nose
Date: 2023-02-05 04:44 pm (UTC)Even Denis Diderot was sure that Frederick the Great had not touched a single woman and did not sleep with his wife.
Diderot, who went out of his way NOT to meet Fritz, ever, and presumably didn't even know EC's name? I'd be very surprised if his intel on Fritz' sex life was based on more than Voltaire's pamphlets. Young Münchow would like to protest that there was marital sex in Rheinsberg, he wrote a letter to the papers including this intel, and he was there as a page, while Diderot was not. Manteuffel adds that while Fritz reminds him of Hadrian, and in retrospect the prostitutes didn't report anything of interest, he's pretty sure there were some (female) prostitutes, since La Chetardie bribed them first.
This essay writer sounds like a soulmate of Burgdorf of "Die Liebe des Königs war tödlich" fame, alright. This said, the Algarotti and Fredersdorf essays sound like they're worth checking out.
Re: Fritz's nose
Date: 2023-02-06 12:08 am (UTC)Do you happen to have a source for that? Or just "The Schönhausen people say so"?
Diderot, who went out of his way NOT to meet Fritz, ever, and presumably didn't even know EC's name? I'd be very surprised if his intel on Fritz' sex life was based on more than Voltaire's pamphlets.
Yeah, I mean, the whole section is good evidence that Europe thought that Fritz was gay. Which is relevant to whether Hogarth would include him in a depiction of "homosexual depravity"! But much less so to anything about Fritz's actual sex life.
This essay writer sounds like a soulmate of Burgdorf of "Die Liebe des Königs war tödlich" fame, alright.
He couldn't even convince me that Fritz was gay, and I'm already convinced Fritz was gay! :P
This said, the Algarotti and Fredersdorf essays sound like they're worth checking out.
Yeah, that's my main interest in this article, that and tracking down the quotes at some point. And the comparison of portraits was interesting (even if I often came to different conclusions).
Okay, I have to share one of the most entertaining of the many egregious aspects of this essay:
Voltaire's claim that Fritz exclusively bottomed is taken at face value, and footnoted with statistics.
According to recent surveys, 21.8% of all homosexuals prefer the passive part in sexual intercourse. 7.1% of them even state that they are fixated on the passive role. 43.4%, on the other hand, are not determined in their sexual behaviour and like both the active and passive role in anal sex. See Thomas Hertling, Homosexuelle Männlichkeit zwischen Diskriminierung und Emanzipation: Eine Studie zum Leben homosexueller Männer heute und Begründung ihrer wahrzunehmenden Vielfalt (Münster, Hamburg, Berlin, Vienna, London: LIT Verlag, 2011), 198. This may not have been much different in the 18th century.
I mean. The readers of Voltaire's memoirs and pamphlets are not going to find themselves thinking, "Oh, I see, Fritz likes to bottom. I've read the Kinsey report, and that all checks out." !!!
The author doesn't seem to realize that Voltaire's claim was AN INSULT. It's like the opposite of the people who claim the only evidence that Fritz was gay was Voltaire trying to slander him with all this talk of bottoming.
This is what I mean when I say "I read this essay so you don't have to."
Re: Fritz's nose
Date: 2023-02-06 07:26 am (UTC)Not the Schönhausen people, the Schönhausen plaque next to the painting. It did occur to me Ziebura might have included this detail in the pictorial part of her "Kein Mitleid mit den Frauen" book, but I don't have a physical copy with me. Also, here is a guided Instagramm tour through the palace - haven't watched it yet, so I can't say whether it includes the Fritz portrait bit, but it might.
Voltaire's claim that Fritz exclusively bottomed is taken at face value, and footnoted with statistics.
ROTFLOL. I mean. Does the author think Voltaire, in selfless dedication to research, interviewed hot hussars and pages on the subject? Is he familiar at all with the grand tradition of sexual insults in the "you're the bum boy!" vein from Cicero's Philippica against Mark Antony downwards? (Suddenly it occurs to me he might take Cicero literally, too...)
Re: Fritz's nose
Date: 2023-02-06 11:39 am (UTC)The author doesn't seem to realize that Voltaire's claim was AN INSULT.
Wow, this is truly hilarious. : D
Re: Fritz's nose
From:Re: Fritz's nose
Date: 2023-02-06 01:55 am (UTC)A young man, just twenty-eight years old, comes out of the historical semi-darkness, with a bright blue-grey gaze on his pretty, girlish face. His overly slender appearance enchants both women and men, one of whom sighs at the sight of him: "I could not have failed to fall in love with him if I had been of a different sex..."
Now, first of all, all the paintings and eyewitness descriptions that I'm aware of, and I believe his own words, have him plump at this stage, not overly slender. And the pretty, girlish face that enchants everyone is news to me. He has beautiful eyes, but that's it!
I'm definitely going to have to track down a better Struensee bio at some point, but in the meantime this one makes up in entertainment what it lacks in accuracy, and is good German practice.
Re: Fritz's nose
Date: 2023-02-06 07:16 am (UTC)(Meanwhile, you know who does get described as handsome in face and figure in the 1730s? FS on his grand tour, by Hervey, Hervey's wife and other English folk who don't have anything to gain by being complimentary about the Duke of Lorraine/ possible future Emperor if married to MT (which he wasn't yet, but which was in the air as a good chance). Especially Hervey, who as a rule is incredibly bitchy about German princes, not only but primarily those who are currently occupying the British throne. And Hervey, who was good looking himself, was, dare I say, a connoiseur of male beauty. (He'd totally mod "Queer Eye for the 18th Century Guy", wouldn't he?)
(So no one has to look it up, here is Hervey's steadfastly improving opinion on visiting FS, from the Hervey biography:
Hervey carefully and dispassionately observed him. 'a pretty figure of a man', he reported to Stephen (Stephen Fox, Hervey's lover), tho low and rather thick, ill made & worse dressed. He wears his own hair, has a very handsome face, like the King of France, but a more sensible, more lively & more good natured countenance. He seems very easy & very well bred.'(...)
Hervey's first favourable impression was strengthened: the more he saw the Duke the more he liked him. 'He is very well bred, with more nicety, more ease and more more constant presence of Mind than any Body I ever met & has the most beautiful, most sweet & most sensible Countenance I ever beheld.'
(...) The day before leaving, (Franz Stephan) walked in Kensington Gardens in the morning with the Queen and her suite (including Hervey) until it began to rain. They all returned to St. James at full gallop in open chaises, wet to the skin and bespattered with mud like stage-coached postillons. On 8 December he boarded his yacht at Greenwich, 'regretting and regretted'. Hervey, who too easily observed the flaws of everyone he met, could find none in this paragon: he still thought him handsome, cheerful, sensible, well bred and obliging: 'Never any Body had the good Fortune of pleasing to universally.' The Duke's departure, he told Lord Bateman, had 'put the town in universal mourning: it is the Fashion for the Women to cry.' He was not exaggarating, for he had evidence close at hand. 'The Duke of Lorraine has carried the hearts of all our fine ladies away with him', Lady Stratford wrote (more than two weeks later); 'Lady Hervey has cried every day since his departure and says she can't enjoy anybody's company now that agreeable creature is gone.
Now that is a reliable contemporary "he's hot!" report. :)
Re: Fritz's nose
From: