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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.
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!