Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 42

[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.

Comments

Re: Charles Hanbury-Williams Tells It All: I

[selenak]

Any description of Hervey at this point has to also be considered in the light of all Whigs, including his beloved Fox brothers, being majorly pissed of at him because of what he did in his last year of life. (Reminder: Robert Walpole, after three decades of being de facto PM, finally was dismissed by G2. Now party loyalty would have demanded that all ministers resigned with him. But Hervey, who finally finally had gotten the serious cabinet job he always fancied, wanted to keep it, so didn't resign, and thus crossed the house to the Tories. G2 dismissed him anyway. Hervey returned to secret memoirs writing and then dying. This said, as opposed to the Foxes who were very close indeed with Hervey for the majority of his life (reminder: he at first crushed on Henry, who wasn't gay and made that clear but also remained a friend, and then met Henry's brother Stephen, who quickly gained Love Of His Life status), H-W had already bashed him in earlier times, siding with (Alexander) Pope against Lady Mary and Hervey in the big feud where Pope attacked them both. (He also wrote a none too good poem about how Lady Mary and Hervey were but flies to Pope's Domitian, which I'll quote elsewhere.)

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. (cahn, the son is Charles I.) Of course, Chesterfield ignores that James' witchhunting book did great harm to many an executed "witch".