What does she mean about how they don't understand how to wean children? Don't you just start feeding them solid food? Did her older one die of food poisoning or something?
Honestly, I have no idea. The one thing I know about 17th and 18th century noble child rearing that was damaging to small children doesn't apply to this case, because the kid was living with Liselotte in the same household if she could see him in the evening. Because what a lot of nobles and rich burghers who wanted to be elevated to nobility did was basically hand over the baby to the wetnurse (often a farmer's wife) to rear him or her in the countryside for the next three years. Now, the problem here was that in a country where the population is steadily getting poorer, the wetnurses get tempted to accept not just one baby but several in order to make more money, and sometimes even hire even more poor sub wetnurses. (And let's not forget, all these women have their own babies, too, that's why they can be a wetnurse!) So there isn't enough milk for any of the babies, who get fed with water to make up for the missing milk instead. => lots of dead children. But like I said, this might apply if you're a noblewoman, a Countess de This and That, who is lucky if she can get a room in overcrowded Versailles, not if you're Madame with your own royal residence Saint-Cloud and with the wetnurse being directly under your and your staff's supervision. There's an earlier letter from 1774 when Liselotte is pregnant with child No.2, the future Regent, and talks about child No.1, the doomed oldest boy (at this point not yet ill, where she describes ihm in a way that shows she sees a lot of him, so even if there is a wetnurse and a governess and maids and what not, she clearly was in the nursery a lot:
Regarding my little Rauschenblattenknechtchen - this is a German Baroque term I've never come across before but which she uses for babies occasionally, literally "Whisperyleavesservant", which makes no sense - he deserves the name by deed and is a terrible savage, laughs a lot and wants to be carried from one place to the next, will only now after Easter get a frock because in this country, they have the children wrapped up an awfully long time; then we will see whether he'll learn to walk soon or whether he won't. He doesn't have a single tooth yet. Please, write to me how much Milady-Kent-Powder one could give him if, which God may prevent, he has a fever once he teethes? How much is too much? Because he's less than a year. Thanks be to God, he is a cheerful child, but can't do much yet but piss the way the eleventh Prince ( one of her Hannover cousins) did when he was that age. Enough now of him. Regarding the other little madcap, who is halfway on his way by now, he's causing me a lot of bother, for I'm sick as a dog every day after the meals, for two full hours.
"Wrapped up" vs frock I take to refer to diapers vs clothing, only what was done back then weren't diapers in the way we know them, but the babies being literally tightly wrapped up:
You can see why doing this for up to a year didn't strike Liselotte as very healthy.
Re: weaning in particular, though, like I said, I don't know something that could apply in Liselotte's circumstance. I don't know what Milady-Kent-Powder is, either.
The funny thing is, it turns out that babies really do like to be wrapped tightly like this for sleep, so -- just for sleep -- it's actually something that I did with my own kids -- I had a bunch of velcro swaddles like this, and they were MAGIC. But I wouldn't have wrapped my kids like this when they were awake and up to a year! (I think it was actually just a few months until the arms came out -- once the kid could roll over.)
I don't know exactly what Liselotte's talking about, but I know of a relevant passage from Horowski, about how James II's son (future "James III" to Jacobites and father of BPC) almost died. Remember that he's the "warming pan baby," i.e. everyone wants to believe that he's not really the son of James and his wife.
A cynical contemporary wrote that the people would not believe in the authenticity of this child unless he died, and for a horrible few weeks it seemed as if the hypothesis might be put to the test. The king's personal physicians had just found out that milk was extremely dangerous for babies and had to be replaced with a combination of bread soup and sweet white wine, which was then labeled "Dr. Goddard's Drops" - a product made from sal ammoniac, dried snakes and a hanged man's skull. Only after the intervention of the Pope, Louis XIV and the Queen did the well-meaning and unsuspecting doctors finally agree to prescribe the milk of a well-born woman for the month-and-a-half-year-old prince (that the Queen could breastfeed herself, would not have occurred to anyone) before they then had to agree to the replacement of this lady by the evidently more competent wife of a tiler.
Now, judging by Louis XIV's reaction, this is *not* what they were doing at the French court, but it does tell you something about the state of medicine and royal babies at the time. Never underestimate 18th century medical incompetence!
(I endorse your time machine and encourage you to yell at doctors galore, and the people who listen to them!)
On that note, reminder that "milk is actually bad for babies!" was a story evidently still making the rounds in the 1780s because that's what non-royal, non-noble Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart believes when becoming a Dad according to his letters to Leopold, and he has to be collectively talked out of his idea of child nourishment by his wife and mother-in-law.
and had to be replaced with a combination of bread soup and sweet white wine, which was then labeled "Dr. Goddard's Drops" - a product made from sal ammoniac, dried snakes and a hanged man's skull.
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Re: Bourbon Brothers
What does she mean about how they don't understand how to wean children? Don't you just start feeding them solid food? Did her older one die of food poisoning or something?
Re: Bourbon Brothers
Regarding my little Rauschenblattenknechtchen - this is a German Baroque term I've never come across before but which she uses for babies occasionally, literally "Whisperyleavesservant", which makes no sense - he deserves the name by deed and is a terrible savage, laughs a lot and wants to be carried from one place to the next, will only now after Easter get a frock because in this country, they have the children wrapped up an awfully long time; then we will see whether he'll learn to walk soon or whether he won't. He doesn't have a single tooth yet. Please, write to me how much Milady-Kent-Powder one could give him if, which God may prevent, he has a fever once he teethes? How much is too much? Because he's less than a year. Thanks be to God, he is a cheerful child, but can't do much yet but piss the way the eleventh Prince ( one of her Hannover cousins) did when he was that age.
Enough now of him. Regarding the other little madcap, who is halfway on his way by now, he's causing me a lot of bother, for I'm sick as a dog every day after the meals, for two full hours.
"Wrapped up" vs frock I take to refer to diapers vs clothing, only what was done back then weren't diapers in the way we know them, but the babies being literally tightly wrapped up:
You can see why doing this for up to a year didn't strike Liselotte as very healthy.
Re: weaning in particular, though, like I said, I don't know something that could apply in Liselotte's circumstance. I don't know what Milady-Kent-Powder is, either.
Re: Bourbon Brothers
Re: Bourbon Brothers
A cynical contemporary wrote that the people would not believe in the authenticity of this child unless he died, and for a horrible few weeks it seemed as if the hypothesis might be put to the test. The king's personal physicians had just found out that milk was extremely dangerous for babies and had to be replaced with a combination of bread soup and sweet white wine, which was then labeled "Dr. Goddard's Drops" - a product made from sal ammoniac, dried snakes and a hanged man's skull. Only after the intervention of the Pope, Louis XIV and the Queen did the well-meaning and unsuspecting doctors finally agree to prescribe the milk of a well-born woman for the month-and-a-half-year-old prince (that the Queen could breastfeed herself, would not have occurred to anyone) before they then had to agree to the replacement of this lady by the evidently more competent wife of a tiler.
Now, judging by Louis XIV's reaction, this is *not* what they were doing at the French court, but it does tell you something about the state of medicine and royal babies at the time. Never underestimate 18th century medical incompetence!
(I endorse your time machine and encourage you to yell at doctors galore, and the people who listen to them!)
Re: Bourbon Brothers
Re: Bourbon Brothers
AGH!