cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 40

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I'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.)

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From:

selenak

No interpretation suggestions, just a few observations.

1.) I'm glad he got the pension from Caroline in the first place (and stand by my fictional interpretation as to why she might have been motivated to help him), but not surprised it wasn't continued after her death. (She died in 1737, so if he was owed three years of pension in 1740 when Fritz ascended to the throne, the payment must have stopped with her death exactly.) Peter might have been able to win a great many people on a personal level when interacting with them, but he was still without any big connections once Caroline was gone, and I can just see some court official deciding that yeah, no, let's use this as a saving item.

2.) There is something very sad in "I hope that my conduct has not rendered me unworthy" - because methinks it does reveal Peter being seriously afraid that having helped Crown Prince Fritz the way he did makes him look bad to King Fritz.

3.) Peter signing himself "Keith" is very era typical - i.e. just the use of the family name - , but given the sheer number of other Keiths in Fritz' life, I think one can make the case Fritz probably did not think of him as "Keith" the way Katte was "Katte". Or was Peter the primary Keith, Keith Prime, and the rest of the Keiths were the Keiths-plus-other-name?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

She died in 1737

Ahh, you're right! I knew she had died in the late 1730s, but I had forgotten the exact year. Okay, then, yeah, somebody decided to save on that expense after she died, and Peter had no other sufficient connections. :/ Poor Peter.

methinks it does reveal Peter being seriously afraid that having helped Crown Prince Fritz the way he did makes him look bad to King Fritz.

Awww, yes. I wasn't sure what conduct he was referring to, since we know so little about the late 1740s [ETA: except that Fritz thought he was intriguing with the Brits, and we don't know that Peter *didn't* find this out], but yes, you're right that the most likely candidate is the 1730 conduct. Again I say, poor Peter. I'm glad we know Fritz gave him some money in 1750, both because his pension got taken away and because FRITZ.

I think one can make the case Fritz probably did not think of him as "Keith" the way Katte was "Katte". Or was Peter the primary Keith, Keith Prime, and the rest of the Keiths were the Keiths-plus-other-name?

My guess? George was Mylord Marischal (the name by which he's usually known), James was Field Marshal Keith, Peter was Lt. Col. Keith or maybe Stallmeister/Écuyer/Equerry Keith, especially as there was at least one other Lt. Col. Keith that I know of in the early 1750s.

Checking the correspondence on Trier, I see a lot of "mon cher mylord" and "le maréchal Keith", so that corroborates my first two guesses. The letters we have where Fritz refers to Peter just say "Keith", but those are also 1740 and 1742, before the brothers Keith came along. Oh, wait, there's the 1747 letter, but 1) still no brothers Keith until later in the year, 2) that's in response to a letter about Peter, so which Keith it is goes without saying. So I don't think we know what name Fritz thought of Peter by in 1750.

Edited Date: 2023-01-08 08:20 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

(and stand by my fictional interpretation as to why she might have been motivated to help him

Forgot to mention, I stand by it so much that it's in a footnote in my essay as a possible explanation!