![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnLast post, we had (among other things) Danish kings and their favorites; Louis XIV and Philippe d'Orléans; reviews of a very shippy book about Katte, a bad Jacobite novel, and a great book about clothing; a fic about Émilie du Châtelet and Voltaire; and a review of a set of entertaining Youtube history videos about Frederick the Great.
Charles Hanbury-Williams Tells It All: I
Date: 2023-03-18 12:58 pm (UTC)Now, just how much an impending disaster Charles Hanbury-Williams' tenure in Berlin would be was in hindsight predictable from how during his previous post - as envoy in Saxony, where he must have been the only one to find the Saxons didn't party enough for him though he was impressed by all the splendor, he already wrote some hostile comments about Fritz the lying liar and begged Newcastle & Fox not to send him to Berlin, but no such luck. Meanwhile, Horace Walpole, Lady Mary hater, notable Richard III defender and as "Courtiers" told me bff with Molly Lepell, Lady Hervey, in her later life, was a big fan of the guy, almost in Poniatowski proportions, and wrote:
Sir Charles Williams is the present ruling star of our negotions. His letters are as much admired as ever his verses were. He has met the Ministers of the two angry Empresses, and pacified Russian savageness and Austrian haughtiness. He is to teach the Monarch of Prussia to fetch and carry, unless they happen to treat in iamibcs, or begin to settle the lmits of Parnassus instead of those of Silesia.
....Yeah. No prizes for guessing this won't happen. Good lord, Brits.
It took eons before Fritz ever received hiim, but in the meantime, he met the rest of the envoys and the entire royal family. One big immediate problem was that there were a lot of Jacobites around, not just both brothers Keith but also the current French Ambassador, Lord Tyrconnel, who was an Irishman who due to siding with Team Stuart had gotten his father's estates forfeit.
A heavy man. Those that know him say he has sense, but he is very new in business and, I believe, ignorant of our trade. The false title he assumes, and which his wife is very fond of, makes it almost impossible for us to converse together.
(H-W at this point still did not speak any German - though he employed a secretary from Hannover who did -, and was still working on his French, so you'd think English speaking expatriates would be good know, but not if they're Jacobites.)
He meets both Queens, SD and EC, and thinks EC looks like her brother the Duke of Brunswick (Charlotte's husband) and still has a fine figure. SD, as G2's sister, welcomes him warmer than anyone else, but he's not much impressed by her and later will say so in greater detail. Otoh, he does take a shine to Amalie (still living with Mom): Handsome nad more agreeable than anything I have seen in Berlin." (The biographer here adds a footnote saying this description of Amalie conflicts with the one given by Newcastle writing to Titley in Copenhagen of Amalie that: "I am informed this princess is disagreeable in her person, ill-natur'd, proud, and wiht all these qualities a coquette." (Lehndorff, of course, could tell you that both descriptions are true - see his own various takes on Amalie - , Williams, but as your later letter on EC will show, you don't notice Lehndorff exists.)
While visiting SD, H-W is also presented to AW and wife Luise.
AW: He speaks with great modesty and sweetness. But as on the one side he has not the parts or the quickness of the King, so on the other he has not that contempteous insolence with which H(is) P(russian) M(ajesty) speaks to everyone.
SD: The Queen-Mother talked a great deal to me about England, about hte late King, about religion and about everything in the world; and at last told me she was afraid I should think her a great talker, which I answered by telling her two great lies at once. The one was that I did not think so at all; the other was that I was charmed whenever I heard her open her mouth. H.M. repied that my conversation was so agreeable to her that she did not know how to rise from table. With these compliments we finished the supper.
Luise he likes. Sure two such amiable Princesses as she and the Queen deserve a better fate, for the P(rince) of P(russia) likes every woman better than his wife.
Can't argue with you there, Charles Hanbury-Williams.
Count Finckenstein, who during this time is appointed Deputy-Minister for Foreign Affairs and will be the one whom Fritz during his one week breakdown will together with Heinrich entrust the Kingdom to in the 7 Years War: He has very much the air of a French petit maitre manqué, and is extremely affected in everything he says and does. (...) Count Fink, as everybody called him, is very like the late Lord Hervey, and yet his face is the ugliest I ever saw.
The highlight and most consedquential event for H-W is of course meeting young Poniatowski, but he doesn't know that yet. As many an envoy, he collects anecdotes, like when he meets a Madame Brandt, former mistress of the Elector of Cologne (note to
When she came back to Berlin laden with these bijoux she was stopped at the gates; and the CustomHouse officers insisted she should pay duty for them, upon which she presented a ptetition to the late King, to beg H.M. to remit that duty. The King debated the matter at his Tabacgie, and after almost all the hard-hearted company had declared against the lady, the King said that they ought to consider that what was proposed to be taxed had been earned by the sweat of the lady's own body, and that what was gained in that manner ought to be exempt from all duty. He therefore ordered that the lady should have her good sdelivered back duty free.
ZOMG. What has gotten into you, FW? This sounds more like a Fritzian than like a FW act. FW avoidingn the chance to make cash and call someone a whore? But if he heard it from the lady herself...
As Newcastle has instructed H-W to avoid George Keith, Earl Marischal, HW when George Keith introduces himself while they're at the same social occasion is very cold and put on a sullen dignity and eat my pudding, and held my tongue.
Otoh, when he finds himself at a gathering with James Keith and James' Finnish mistress Eva, he ends up drinking with both of them until two in the morning. Another Scot called Hume "of very suspicious principles" shares gossip about the Brothers Keith with H-W:
Hume told Sir Charles that the Prince of Wales was an intmate correspondence with the King of Prussia, and that he had promised to assist the Earl Marischal, when he came to the throne. The two brothers, he hadded, had formerly lived together, but had quarrelled through the idiosyncrasies of their respective mistresses. Consequently, the Earl Mrischal, whose lady was 'a Turk unbaptised', had moved to another house.
(Sidenote: It's news to me Fritz and Fritz of Wales exchanged letters. Also, the only Turkish lady I'm aware of was the one whom James had rescued as a girl and whom George then took as his ward after James' death and whom Boswell met during his mid 1760s journey. Methinks Hume fleeced H-W for false gossip.)
When Fritz finally returns from Silesia, H-W meets him at a levée or rather intends to, because Fritz doesn't bother to come as far as the room where H-W stands. (The biographer is as indignant as H-W.) But Voltaire is here, and H-W decides that since he, too, is a poet, he might as well call upon V. Before meeting him, H-W had reported the following gossip about Voltaire to Newcastle:
About four days ago, Mr. Voltaire, the French poet, arrived at Potsdam from Paris. The King of Prussia had wrote to him about htree months ago to desire him to come to Berlin. Mr. Voltaire answered His Prussian Majesty, that he would always be glad of an oppportunity of throwing himself at His Majesty's feet, but at that time he was not in circumstances to take so long a journey; upon which the King of Prussia sent him back word he would bear his expenses. But Mr. Voltaire, not caring to trust the King of Prussia, would not leave Paris till His Prussian Majesty had sent him a bill of exchange upon a banker in that town for 4,000 Reichstaler, and he did not begin the journey till he had actually received the money. All that I now write your Grace was told me by the Princess Amalie.
So H-W invites himself over at Voltaire's
Found out by that vain, talkative Frenchman the reason why the King of Prussia had been so generous to him; for his has given hm the gold key of Chamberlain, the Order of Merit, and 5, 000 Taler per annum for life, two of which are to revert to a niece of his after he dies, for her life. This poet's chief business is to correct, and in some places totally alter, the King of Prussia's miscellaneous poems, which he has lately printed under the following title, Ouevres melées du Philosophe de Sans Souci, and his vanity could not help showing them to me. The works are printed with the largest margin I ever saw; and that margin in some polaces is filled up entirely with Voltaire's own handwriting. He gave me his new tragedy of Catiline to read.
H-W is also present at the performance where Voltaire plays Cicero, Heinrich plays Catiliine and Ferdinand and Amalie play minor roles, but says no one other than Voltaire could act. (Ouch.) When Henry Fox (brother of Stephen Fox the beloved of Lord Hervey, used to be also friends with Hervey, now tight friends with H-W who hates Hervey) sends H-W a copy of "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" by Gray, H-W shows this work of English poetry to Voltaire, and gets a letter from Voltaire back written in English, which among other things shows Voltaire's still great fluency in English:
Sir, I return you with many thanks the gloomy but noble copy of verse you was pleased to lend me for some days. I think a Muse would be better inspired in your house than in a churchyard, and your conversation would be more useful to me than the prose and the poetry of all your priests. Pray, Sir, do not forget me, when you write to my Lord Chesterfield and to Mr. Forx; and tell my Lord Chesterfield that King Frederic writes in another way than King James. He is not so great a Divine, but, by God, he is every way a better scholar.
That's James VI and I. of Scotland and England Voltaire is referring to, and his book on hunting witches. About the rest of the Sanssouci Round Table, H-W writes to Lord Chesterfield (he of the famous Letters to his Son, ancestor of Zeithain's fictional narrator and married to Katte's supposed one time crush Petronella:
There are at present but two sorts of inhabitants in this town, soldiers and wits. The first of htese bodys, consisting of fourteen thousand, is too great to send you a list of their names. But the latter, which is made up of the choice and master spirits of the age, is as follows. The King, Rex idem et Vates, Voltaire, Maupertuis, Algarotti, D'ARgens, D'Arget, D'Arnoud, La Mettrie and Pöllnitz. These are the nine he-Muses that adorn this German Parnassus, for no female is allowed to approach this court. Males wash the linen, nurse the children, make and unmake the beds. I may, more at my leisure, send you the historical anecdotes of all the above-mentioned geniuses, the various intrigues they form, the lies they tell, the villainies they commit, the verses they make and deny afterwards, and those they own though they did not make them. I hope it will prove amusing to you, becuase I can't imagine any more entertaining than a faithful narration of the civil wars of nine jealous wits.
Chesterfield replies: Of your nine male Muses, I know but two personally, Voltaire, who is undoubtedly a poet, though one would hardly think so by the bargain he has made for himself, than which Peter Walters or Lord Bath could not have made better. The other is my friend Algarotti, whom you and I both knew here many years ago as a led wit of the late Lord Hervey's, but whom I always considered as having but just parts and reading enough to make him a consummate coxcomb. What I have read of Marquis d'ARgens is below mediocrity, as what I have read of La Metrie is below either wit or philosophy. (...) Voltaire and Maupertuis, by what littlet I know of the latter, will, I think, be your chief companions. Voltaire has certainly parts and genius, Maupertuis has certainly knowledge.
Yeah, no. H-W meets all of the gang only rarely, though Voltaire when things with Fritz go south is just nice enough as to secure himself a possible British getaway, though H-W leaves first in the end. Writes the biographer:
Of Pöllnitz; "that worst of authors', Sir Charlers aid that he had written stupid Memoirs and had changes his relgion seven times. With Algarotti, however, he was soon on good terms. They had mutual friends to talk of, to wit, Fox and Chesterfield. 'My compliments to Voltaire,' wrote Fox on December 9. 'I knew Algarotti too when he was in England and liked him, though I never thought his parts comparable to the others. But indeed I can form no good judgment of him, for I never saw him but in Lord Hervey's company, which was as a false light to a picture, his Lordship's affection mix'd so with and gave such a clour to all conversation that he joined in.
Re: Charles Hanbury-Williams Tells It All: I
Date: 2023-03-18 04:13 pm (UTC)Good lord. Acton had less trouble with his Medici's venereal disease in 1932!
where he must have been the only one to find the Saxons didn't party enough for him
Hahaha, wow. I guess he was expecting August the Strong?
He is to teach the Monarch of Prussia to fetch and carry
Lol forever. Good luck with that!
Can't argue with you there, Charles Hanbury-Williams.
I had the same thought. :/
ZOMG. What has gotten into you, FW? This sounds more like a Fritzian than like a FW act. FW avoidingn the chance to make cash and call someone a whore?
?! The guy who made Ariane's mother pay for her illegitimate children?
Okay, I was looking her up to see if maybe this was actually Fritz and something got confused, and two things:
1. Remember when we had the great debate over who helped Fritz with the alleged STD treatment? At least one author (no source given, of course), claims it was Suhm!
[ETA: Found our debate! I thought we had discussed Suhm as a candidate, but couldn't remember. Looks like we left him as a possibility, but not the most likely one. Since I don't consider this book super accurate anyway, just based on skimming the Madame Brandt section, I'm not taking it as evidence that this either happened (Zimmermann as the source!) or that Suhm was involved...but I really really want to know what the source is for Suhm's involvement!]
2. Check it out, Selena: https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/ostwaldh/galante/chap011.html
According to that author, Luise von Brandt was at Rheinsberg and Fritz really liked her, although not as much as she liked him (she wanted to seduce him, his admiration was platonic). They had corresponded since 1736. She corresponded with Voltaire and Fritz wrote about her to Voltaire. In summer 1738, she had an affair with the Elector of Cologne, who was supposed to have given her a bunch of jewels upon her departure.
It was she who he chose to restore the good reputation of the fair sex frequenting Rheinsberg when a female member of the Prussian court society, perhaps Frau von Wrech, sent Voltaire an "incomprehensible epistle" in the spring of 1738 which, was, in the words of the Crown Prince, "a masterpiece of extravagance," and whose style showed only too clearly that the authoress, "a heroic Don Quixote in aesthetic terms," was on rather tight terms with common sense. "Please don't judge all our ladies by that rehearsal," Friedrich wrote to his poet friend at the time. 'On the contrary, be sure that there are some among them whose wit and face would not strike you as damnable. I must expressly say a few words in their favour, for they add an unspeakable charm to social intercourse; they are, completely disregarding gallantry, an indispensable necessity of social life, and without them all conversation comes to an end.”
Do you remember a Luise von Brandt from Fritz's correspondence with Voltaire? Or from anything else? Her name rings a bell, but not in a Rheinsberg context...
Huh, okay, looking in Trier, I do see Fritz saying that Madame de Brandt had written to Voltaire in June 1738 and Fritz was dying to know what Voltaire had written back.
My curiosity is very great to know what you will have replied to Madame de Brandt; all I know is that there are lines contained in your reply; please let me know.
And yeah, here's a September 1738 letter from Fritz to Camas, praising her:
I have just received your letter with the unintelligible epistle of our very obscure beautiful spirit. In truth, it is a masterpiece of extravagance, and I had difficulty in imagining that the lady whom you name me is the author of it. She goes to look for Voltaire two hundred leagues from her to spout paradoxes and a contradictory portrait of her person. Her comrade would certainly have acquitted herself better; she writes nicely, and without all that affectation and rigmarole of our new fine spirit. Madame de Brandt has a talent for expressing herself gracefully. You notice very well the conformity of the painted complexion of the Frenchwomen and the adulterated taste of our Germans. I wish we could barter happily one for the other; we would definitely win.
To Wilhelmine, about Madame de Brandt's husband, apparently, in February 1738:
M. de Brandt has just arrived; he is one of our gang, so that, with his help, we can begin new tragedies.
Oh, and Preuss says to see Other Seckendorff, so here goes. From 1736:
14th. The Devil tells me that yesterday the wife of Chamberlain Brand confided in him of her passion for the Prince Royal and of the two letters he had written to her by La Morian, to which they would kindly respond in a way that struck a chord with him. little more than gratitude. The Devil undertakes to correct the draft of her answer, she sends it to him, he turns it in his own way, with which she is charmed and sends it off. The aim of La Brand is to grant the last favor to the Prince Royal so that he may bring Prince Henry to marry his sister the Kamecke. The Devil tells him, that the last will never arrive &c.
Two pages later,
The Devil shows me the continuation of his correspondence with La Brand, who is at present at Cunnersdorf. She ingenuously confesses to him all her intrigue with Junior, which so far has come to nothing.
Huh!
So I'm supposed to believe that FW gave a notoriously sex-positive woman, whom Fritz liked, a pass on giving him money and on being called a whore? Well, if Hanbury-Williams says he got this from the horse's mouth...is it possible she lied?
Also, Selena, does the part that you didn't quote us say that he heard it from her? My only reading of your quote is that he heard it *about* her. But of course I don't have access to the book itself (although now I want to).
Methinks Hume fleeced H-W for false gossip.
I mean, I've always H-W's info about Berlin was notoriously bad, nothing you've told us here inclines me to revise that opinion...maybe the info he's heard about FW not making Madame Brandt pay duties is bad too.
The other is my friend Algarotti, whom you and I both knew here many years ago as a led wit of the late Lord Hervey's, but whom I always considered as having but just parts and reading enough to make him a consummate coxcomb.
This was news to me!
what I have read of La Metrie is below either wit or philosophy.
Didn't Fritz say La Mettrie was great company as long as you avoided reading anything he'd written?
'I knew Algarotti too when he was in England and liked him, though I never thought his parts comparable to the others. But indeed I can form no good judgment of him, for I never saw him but in Lord Hervey's company, which was as a false light to a picture, his Lordship's affection mix'd so with and gave such a clour to all conversation that he joined in.
Very interesting to see everybody's takes on Algarotti--and Hervey!
Re: Charles Hanbury-Williams Tells It All: I
Date: 2023-03-18 06:09 pm (UTC)Maybe, though mostly I think it's the lack of party life after 10 (Vienna) or 11 pm (Dresden), which is apparently just when Hanbury-Williams gets going...
?! The guy who made Ariane's mother pay for her illegitimate children?
IKR? I was boggled. But otoh, the phrasing doesn't make it clear whether H-W heard this from Madame Brandt herself. He describes meeting her, that she's witty and hot, and then he says "there is this story...", but that could also mean he heard it from someone else.
In summer 1738, she had an affair with the Elector of Cologne, who was supposed to have given her a bunch of jewels upon her departure.
Okay, that makes it even less likely FW was so nice. I mean, by the start of 1739, he was so ill and in such a terrible mood that Wilhelmine heard in Bayreuth he wanted to change the succession and Fritz writes no, but that he has much to suffer.
Interesting about La Brandt. The text you linked says that Lehndorff mentions her as very promiscous, so we can check there as well.
Didn't Fritz say La Mettrie was great company as long as you avoided reading anything he'd written?
Yes, though I'm speculating Chesterfield's diapproval might also have to do with La Mettrie's idea of the human body as a machine and his actual atheism. (As opposed to Fritz and Wilhelmine's deism, which is not atheism, sheesh, H-W.)
Re: Charles Hanbury-Williams Tells It All: I
Date: 2023-03-18 09:14 pm (UTC)Hahaha, oh, Hanbury-Williams. Maybe *that's* why he liked Elizaveta's court more??
But otoh, the phrasing doesn't make it clear whether H-W heard this from Madame Brandt herself.
Ahh, okay. Then I'm going to assume it never happened and he got the story from someone else. Given how unpopular this guy was making himself, we have to entertain the possibility that at least one or two people went, "Let's see what kind of nonsense we can get him to believe!" Note that this happens to anthropologists all the time, when white people go visit indigenous peoples and tell everyone they're there to make notes on the local way of life.
Indigenous people: "...Okay!"
Okay, that makes it even less likely FW was so nice.
I had the exact same thought! That timing is highly implausible.
The text you linked says that Lehndorff mentions her as very promiscous, so we can check there as well.
Ah, Schmidt tells me she's Bella Dea's mother!
There's a passage where Lehndorff finds her more laughable than ever, as nothing is more off-putting than a woman of 48 with a 26 year old daughter still trying to play the young and frivolous girl.
Then a later one when she's 54 and still going out on conquests and causing a scene that makes everyone laugh. She pretends to faint when the Duke of York speaks, in hopes of thus being able to achieve her goal, but instead he takes the faint seriously and makes her go outside and get some fresh air.
Lol.
Then in 1769, Lehndorff hasn't hear about her for a while, until Fritz invites her to a dinner, but Fritz finds her so "rusted" that Lehndorff thinks she probably won't be invited to one again.
Also in that text I linked:
Friedrich himself will hardly have made a complaint against the beautiful woman on his own initiative. Such moral impulses were not in his nature. After his imprisonment in Küstrin he was no more selective in his erotic activities than Prince Eugen or old Dessauer.
So *someone* thinks Eugene was having sex all over the place, since that passage doesn't sound like it's talking about his days in France. Also funny that the author picks Eugene and Dessauer, who came up recently in regards to their conversation about elderly Eugene's erections or lack thereof.
Yes, though I'm speculating Chesterfield's diapproval might also have to do with La Mettrie's idea of the human body as a machine and his actual atheism.
Yeah, I assume that's the philosophy part of what he meant by "either wit or philosophy," and that Fritz cares mostly about the lack of wit. :P
(As opposed to Fritz and Wilhelmine's deism, which is not atheism, sheesh, H-W.)
True in the technical sense, but keep in mind "atheist" has had a second, more imprecise meaning for centuries, namely "person who does not behave in a god-fearing way," i.e. "person who doesn't act like there's a God they have to fear." It can even be used of believing and practicing Christians in that sense.
Re: Charles Hanbury-Williams Tells It All: I
Date: 2023-03-19 02:52 pm (UTC)Though the pick of Dessauer is odd in that context as well, because he famously married his apothocary's daughter for love, and I don't think I've heard of him taking mistresses thereafter. Then again, he did ask Eugene on that subject. Maybe there were differentl rules for campaigns, and Old Desssauer, who hasn't met Eugene since the Battle of Malplaquet, when he and FW were youngsters and Eugene was in his prime, is asking based on what he remembers from that era?
Re: Charles Hanbury-Williams Tells It All: I
Date: 2023-03-25 11:14 pm (UTC)Maybe there were differentl rules for campaigns
But that's entirely possible too!
Re: Charles Hanbury-Williams Tells It All: I
Date: 2023-03-18 06:02 pm (UTC)(and one Frenchman, three guesses who and the first two don't count)
LOLOLOL!
with cryptic remarks like "he knew he'd done her an injury" (but if I hadn't known what this was about, I would have assumed it referred to his cheating or emotional enstrangement)
Oh. MAN. Yeah.
AW: He speaks with great modesty and sweetness. But as on the one side he has not the parts or the quickness of the King, so on the other he has not that contempteous insolence with which H(is) P(russian) M(ajesty) speaks to everyone.
Aw, I love this, AW <3
which I answered by telling her two great lies at once.
HAHAHAHA H-W!
Luise he likes. Sure two such amiable Princesses as she and the Queen deserve a better fate, for the P(rince) of P(russia) likes every woman better than his wife.
<3333333 We all love you, Luise!
ZOMG. What has gotten into you, FW? This sounds more like a Fritzian than like a FW act. FW avoidingn the chance to make cash and call someone a whore? But if he heard it from the lady herself...
Yeah, this really doesn't sound like FW!
that vain, talkative Frenchman
heeee, I can't exactly disagree...
The works are printed with the largest margin I ever saw; and that margin in some polaces is filled up entirely with Voltaire's own handwriting.
LOL FOREVER
I am so amused by this description of Voltaire's betaing!
He is not so great a Divine, but, by God, he is every way a better scholar.
Aw, Voltaire and Fritz! "Fritz is a pain and I hate betaing his stuff, but at least he doesn't write about witch hunting!"
I may, more at my leisure, send you the historical anecdotes of all the above-mentioned geniuses, the various intrigues they form, the lies they tell, the villainies they commit, the verses they make and deny afterwards, and those they own though they did not make them.
AHAHAHAHA this is... such a great description. I will have to remember it.
'I knew Algarotti too when he was in England and liked him, though I never thought his parts comparable to the others. But indeed I can form no good judgment of him, for I never saw him but in Lord Hervey's company, which was as a false light to a picture, his Lordship's affection mix'd so with and gave such a clour to all conversation that he joined in.
Like Mildred, I also find these descriptions fascinating!
Re: Charles Hanbury-Williams Tells It All: I
Date: 2023-03-18 06:04 pm (UTC)I could totally see you working this into a fic! "The verses they make and deny afterwards" LOLOLOL!
Re: Charles Hanbury-Williams Tells It All: I
Date: 2023-03-18 06:29 pm (UTC)I am so amused by this description of Voltaire's betaing!
Me too, and it reminds me again of one of the anecdote collectors (or maybe a biographer? both?) said that surely, Voltaire invented or at least majorly exaggarated having to beta Fritzian writings, surely he only beta'd once or twice, if ever, and well, we actually have a scan of a Voltaire beta'd Fritz page online somewhere. He beta'd, alright.
Aw, Voltaire and Fritz! "Fritz is a pain and I hate betaing his stuff, but at least he doesn't write about witch hunting!"
Yep, that's why I included this. Chesterfield wrote to H-W: "Why are not all Kings authors? It would keep them at least so long, as they say of children at school, out of harm#s way. I have read with great attention the works of our great James the First, and am convinced that if he had not been so bad an author, he would have been a much worse King. He contended himself with talking and writing, justly conscious of his ability in each; whereas his son, who thought exactly like him and not one jot better, would be doing truly; and we all know what he did. (
Titley
Date: 2023-03-21 09:12 pm (UTC)Continuing with the theme of snarky descriptions by modern historians, I have to give you Michael Roberts' description of an episode from Titley's career, recounted in British Diplomacy and Swedish Politics. Titley, you may recall, was a sickly minister who hung out in Copenhagen representing Britain but didn't do much active negotiating any more. When Goodricke showed up, bursting with energy, Bernstorff, Moltke, and others found it more useful to talk to him, even though he was just the minister to Sweden unavoidable detained in Copenhagen.
The two British princesses, Louise and Caroline Mathilde, were both married to the Danish heir during Titley's time, but I have a feeling most of the actual negotation was done by the Danish ambassador in London.
Anyway, at one point, this happens to Titley:
Towards the end of November [1765] Walter Titley, the British minister to Denmark, was startled to receive from the office a dispatch dealing with matters of policy, and enjoining positive action. Such a thing had not happened to him for some years... Long experience had convinced Titley of the unwisdom of being too busy (he complained on one occasion of one of his diplomatic colleagues that he was "always negotiating"), but the shock of receiving instructions of any but the most formal and trivial nature shook him out of his ordinary comfortable habits, and produced an initiative which those instructions had certainly not enjoined.
Titley: So, Bernstorff, does Denmark have any engagements that might preclude an alliance with England?
Bernstorff, privately thinking "Where on earth did this come from?": Uh, no, but we do have a foreign policy that involves getting sucked into other countries' wars, which is the most likely outcome of an alliance with England. Other than that minor detail, though, nothing specific. Why do you ask, out of curiosity?
*crickets*
Bernstorff: Does anyone know where Titley went?
Other minister: Back to his country house, 40 miles away from Copenhagen, where he spends most of his time.
Bernstorff: Well, yeah, we're all kind of used to that, but for a minute there he was acting like he wanted to negotiate something? And then he disappeared. Was he offended? Did his government send him counter-orders?
The answer, of course, was neither the one nor the other: it was probably only that after this unwonted burst of energy Titley had felt the need for a period of recuperation.
The snark is worthy of Voltaire.