cahn

Last 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.

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From:

selenak

Wilhelmine visits, and thus we get a H-W written portrait of her:

She is a lady above playing at cards, qu ne fait point de noeuds, detests all rural amusements, has got the better of all human fashions except that of doing mischief, loves metaphysics and hates ... - there is a Bitch Royal for you. Besides all this, she is an atheist, and talks about fate and destiny and makes jokes of a future state. She peaks of dying as of going to dinner, and says, if she was condemned to die the next day, she would not sleep a bit the worse for it. She wishes very much she could look into futurity and read the Book of Fate. She thinks all time lost that is not spent with books, or with such people as she has heard other people say are learned. She looks upon beauty as a thing which does not tend to make people agreeable; but says that wit and good sense are all we ought to admire in them; that they are never quite perfect unless they are learned; and that she may be in that number she passes her whole time between conversing with her brother's beaux esprits and writing volumes with her own hands, and being read to, for as she has weak eyes, she cannot read herself anymore. I am told that is very amusing to hear books of metaphysics read to her by her Maids of Honour, and French poetry by her German pages, so that those who read do not understand one word of what they are reading. But she that is read to pretends to be mightily edified by the lecture. She has a most sovereign contempt for her husband, who is a very good sort of Prince, but much addicted to those passions which brutes enjoy equally with man, but who knows nothing of Descartes or Sir Isaac Newton: and as she cannot bear such low company, she won't return to Bayreuth, but pretends to be sick, in order to stay at Berlin to converse with the master spirits of the age. At supper conversation never stood still for the 20th part of a second. H.R.H's conversation exceeded any comedy of Molière. I never met witha woman so learnedly ignorant or so seriously foolish in all my life. She went to bed at 11 o'clock; and I came home laughing all the way in the coach by myself.

(A footnote paraphrases another remark of H-W on Wilhelmine where he says she pretends to be able to write books, but of course someone like her never could, it's all pretense and wannabe intellectualism. One wonders what he'd think about the fact his poetry is forgotten while her trashy memoirs are still in print...)

First time I hear of "contempt for her husband", or Wilhelmine being unable to read anymore. The rest isn't that different from Lehndorff's description during the same visit, though with considerably more malice. No idea what ... - mean, whether this is biographer censorship or H-W himself. So instead of making firmer friends and gaining useful contacts, H-W finds himself ever more distanced from the people he did meet (I wonder why...) and his reports get accordingly more bitchy:

Nothing can make a worse figure than I do at this court. Shun'd and avoided by everybody; most people having orders not to visit me; the common civilities that are paid to other Ministers not paid to me. Hardly a house that dares to let me in, look'd upon as a dangerous spy and an enemy to HIs Prussian Majesty's views, and treated accordingly.

And now for the big letterly explosion. Our biographer tells us this rant on why Fritz sucks, sucks, sucks, is so "outspoken as to be partly unpublishable", because clearly he agrees with Georg Schnath on the tender sensibilities of 1920s readers. Still, what we get is:

Now for a little about the completest Tyrant that God ever sent for a scourge to an offending people. I had rather be a post horse, with Sir J. Hind-Cotton on my back, than his First Minister, or his brother, or his wife. He has abolished all distinctions. There is nothng here but an absolute Prince and a People, all equally miserable, all equally trembling before him, and all equally destesting his iron governoment. There is not so much dstance between your footman and you, or between an English soldier and his captian, or between a curate and a Bishop, as there is between the King of Prussia and his immediate successor, the Prince of Prussia, who dares not go out of Berlin one mile without his Tyrant's leave, nor miss supping every night wiht his Mamma upon any account. Another of his brothers is at this moment sent into banishment to a country town; and the third is in frequent danger of being put in irons, for daring in conversation sometimes to have an opinion of his own. It is knokwn that Princess Amalie has a mind to be married to the Duke of Deux Ponts. But he, Nero, told her the other day, that shemust never marry. And his reason is that she is to be the Abbess of Quedlinburg, which is worth about 5000 pounds per annum. He will have her spend that money in Berlin. Besides that, he does not care to pay her her fortune, which is not quite 20,000. He does not even allow her the interest of it, but gives her, to find herself in everything, 340 per annum, and not a shilling more. He serves his brothers in the same manner. The Prince has 20,000 per annum; but the King thinks that is too much, though he has a wife and two sons, and t herefore allows him but 10,00 per annum.
He makes a great rout with his Mother; but people that know him well, know he does not love her, and that the duty he has accustomed himself to pay her makes Berlin disagreeable to him; and therefore it is that he resides so much in Potsdam. All the outward show of respect to his Mother is a homage that he pays to himself through the belly that bore him. She is an old gossip, with all the tittle-tattle of that sort of people, and she is reckoned to have a large share of ill nature.
One would think that the wretched life that the King and Queen-Mother led under the late King of Prussia's reign (for he used one like a dserter in everything but shooting him, and the other like a kitchen wench), would have taught them humanity. Instead of which, they seem only to have learnt the art of making those under them as miserable now as they themselves were formerly.
The least that passes in a private family must undergo the royal inspection. And he keeps several persons at Berlin, who daily write him journals of all that passes there, and send them to Postdam. And at the head of this tribe of newswriters is Her Sacred Majesty, the Queen-Mother.
Children here are literally born to slavery; for they are marked at their birth, and the parents are obliged to produce certificates of their deaths or the children (I mean male ones, for he has nothing of any sort to do with female ones), at foruteen years of age, in order to be made soldiers.
NO man can sell an estate, marry a child, go out of the country or go out of his town, without special leave; not even Count Podewils himself, who mast have special permission from the King every tme he goes to his own country house. (...)
The thing His Prussian Majesty has in the greatest abhorrence is matrimony. No man, however great a favourite, must think of it. If he does, he is certain never to be preferred.
There are many persons in this country in want, by being obliged to pay money that they raised for the King while Prince Royal, and which he hever has repayed them. The wretched Queen, his wife, is in the number. He allows her about six thousand pounds a year to keep her court, out of which she is obliged to pay her whole establishment, her table, her stables, and five hundred pounds a year interest for money that she borrowed for him while Prince, at the time when no one would lend him a halfpenny. It is amelancholy sight to see this Queen. She is a good woman, and must have been extremely handsome. It is impossible to hate her; and though his unnatural tastes won't let him live with her, common humanity ought to teach him to permit her to enjoy her esparate state in comfort. Instead of this, he never misses an ooportunity of mortifying this inoffensive, oppressed Queen. And the Queen-Mothe assists her dearly beloved son in this, to the utmost of her power, by never showing her common civility, or ever hardly speaking to her.
But it is not only matrimony that His Prussian Majesty has an eversion to. He hates in general to see people happy. For his sway is founded on vexation, and in oppression is his throne established. HIs inhmanity extends to the dsturbing happy lovers. The Empress' late Minister here had for some time been well with a most amiable lady of this place. Upon the Tyrant's hearing of this, he sent her am essage to forbid her seeing her lover any more.
(...) (H-W complaints that Berlin has no social life since he never gets invited anywhere anymore.)
The one place that is open is the courts of the two Queens. If you go to the Queen-Mother, you are asked to supper and seated over against Her Inquisitive Majesty, who puts you to the question all supper-time. If you go to the Queen-Consort, there is nobody there but four stiff-rump ladies that are invited to play with the Queen, and half a dozen maids of honour. (Like I said, H-W evidently did not notice Lehndorff's existence.) Their two Majesties vye with one another who shall have the handsomest maids, in order to fill their court the better by it. There is a little decency kept up at the Queen--Consort's, but the Prussian Nero himself says that, 'La Cour de ma Mère est le Bordell de mes frères,' and the pretty Princess Amalie, being forbid to marry, begins to be of the maids of honour party...

This outburst comes shortly before H-W and Prussia are finally put out of each other's misery and he gets transferred. I find the whole rant fascinating in its mixture of good points and complete inaccuracies. Also, want to take any bets that he had a crush on Amalie and that she must have vented at him at least once about Fritz not paying her her dowry? ((Ulrike had the same problem, she is still trying to get AW to get Fritz to pay her remaining dowry in the mid 1750s) I guess the brother banished to a provincial town is Ferdinand getting Fritz' old post at Ruppin, and the brother daring to have his own opinion now and then is Heinrich. EC providing Fritz with money directly is news to me, though I think I recall she begged for him with FW more than once. And of course it's very much not true he didn't pay his (monetary) debts back, or that no one else would lend him money. (All those volumes of the Life of Prince Eugene...) But anyway, you can see why C-W was prized by those who liked him like Catherine and Poniatowski as raconteur full of humor whle those who couldn't stand him (tout Berlin, by the end) thought he was a self important self obsessed prick. Useful for "no one but Voltaire ever accused Fritz of being gay" people: H-W writing about Fritz' "unnatural tastes". Though I have to say, coming from a man who wrote the following lines, which you definitely won't find quoted in this biography, it's a case of pot and kettle:

Come to my Breast, my Lovely Boy!
Thou Source of Greek & Roman Joy!
And let my Arms entwine 'ye;
Behold my strong erected Tarse,
Display your plump, & milk-white Arse,
Young, blooming, Ligurine!

Otoh, his sympathy for EC and Luise is symphathetic, though again, given how he treated his own wife, pot, kettle.

Edited Date: 2023-03-18 01:13 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

First time I hear of "contempt for her husband", or Wilhelmine being unable to read anymore.

Same on both counts!

I had rather be a post horse, with Sir J. Hind-Cotton on my back

I recognize this from MacDonogh, who footnotes it, "Sir John Hynde-Cotton, Jacobite MP and evidently a very fat or cruel baronet."

I would assume fat based on the specific language of "on my back". His wikipedia article doesn't make it totally clear, but he is certainly fat (although not immensely so), and if you assume either the painter does the usual thing and tone it down a bit, and/or he's put on some more weight in the 10 years after that portrait was made, I'm going to say Wikipedia probably supports my guess.

He makes a great rout with his Mother; but people that know him well, know he does not love her, and that the duty he has accustomed himself to pay her makes Berlin disagreeable to him; and therefore it is that he resides so much in Potsdam. All the outward show of respect to his Mother is a homage that he pays to himself through the belly that bore him.

Wow. That last line especially is scathing.

One would think that the wretched life that the King and Queen-Mother led under the late King of Prussia's reign (for he used one like a dserter in everything but shooting him, and the other like a kitchen wench), would have taught them humanity. Instead of which, they seem only to have learnt the art of making those under them as miserable now as they themselves were formerly.

Yeah, that is how the cycle of abuse often works. :/

Also, I note that the Brits shoot their deserters, apparently.

Like I said, H-W evidently did not notice Lehndorff's existence.

Lehndorff, meanwhile: *is hanging out with the Divine Trio*

I'm just saying, there may have been a reason. :P EC did have to scold him for not showing up to his actual job enough!

From:

selenak

First time I hear of "contempt for her husband", or Wilhelmine being unable to read anymore.

Same on both counts!

My current theory is that "Wilhelmine can't read anymore and has to use her pages and maids to read poetry and metaphysics to her" was a joke she made that H-W took to be the literal truth, and the idea she has contempt for her husband was based similarly on her saying something like "oh, he's happy in Bayreuth, enjoying the country life" in reply to a question why he didn't come with her. She definitely wasn't pretending to be sick during what turned out to be her last visit home. It's even mentioned in the Fritz/Frederdorf letters, as well as in the Fritz/Wilhelmine correspdonedence and some other eyewitness reports.

Wow. That last line especially is scathing.

No kidding. I mean, I am ready to believe that Fritz' feelings for his mother were more mixed than he ever admitted to himself, though nowhere near as much as those of his sisters. I wouldn't be surprised if somwhere in his subconscious, there lurked some blame for the whole English Marriage project disaster, encouraging him to write that letter to Caroline, and making it impossible to please her and FW at the same time. But he did love her, and of call her children, she was the most affectionate to him.

Yeah, that is how the cycle of abuse often works. :/

Very true. I'm curious, btw, as to who told H-W that FW treated SD "like a kitchen wench". I mean, he was controlling and emotionally abusive, absolutely, but if I recall how kitchen wenches were treated in that time and age and compare this to FW's treatment of SD, I have to say that is a bad comparison.

Lehndorff, meanwhile: *is hanging out with the Divine Trio*

I'm just saying, there may have been a reason. :P EC did have to scold him for not showing up to his actual job enough!

True enough, but if H-W spent his time either at SD's court or at EC's because few other people wanted to talk to him, then surely at some point he must have met Lehndorff. :) And what about Wartensleben the sugar hoarder, and EC's other chamberlain, Müller the chronic gambler?

From:

cahn

She thinks all time lost that is not spent with books, or with such people as she has heard other people say are learned.

Gosh, he's got it in for her, hasn't he.

One would think that the wretched life that the King and Queen-Mother led under the late King of Prussia's reign (for he used one like a dserter in everything but shooting him, and the other like a kitchen wench), would have taught them humanity. Instead of which, they seem only to have learnt the art of making those under them as miserable now as they themselves were formerly.

Well. That bit is pretty accurate :P

Though I have to say, coming from a man who wrote the following lines, which you definitely won't find quoted in this biography, it's a case of pot and kettle:

LOLOLOL umm yeah.

From:

selenak

Gosh, he's got it in for her, hasn't he.

Definitely. Exposing "phoneys" who just PRETEND to be intellectual seems to have been a hobby of his, see the other times he does this. Bearing in mind his Eton education left him with not very good French - he's still apologizing to Catherine in his letters some years later that he had to basically relearn once he started being an envoy - and of course no German at all, so I bet Wilhelmine spoke better French than he did and since he brings up she spoke very quickly, he probably only understood half of it anyway. But I suspect he might have been additionally motivated to satirize her by the fact she was evidently Fritz' favourite sister. All this said, there are certainly similarities to Lehndorff's description of her during the same time, including the "she considers every day that is not spend with books wasted" - it's just that Lehndorff (while remarking on Wilhelmine using too much make up and "building altars to the King" and being something of a snob) has no doubt she really is that smart, which he finds somewhat intimidating. (He also years later when visiting Bayreuth after her death thinks she has awesome taste and grieves she's gone and this is a ghost town.)