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

[mildred_of_midgard]

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...

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

[selenak]

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.

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

[mildred_of_midgard]

Yeah, I remember thinking no affairs for Dessauer came to mind, but then that they wouldn't necessarily for me, I don't know him that well, so I let it go. But if you don't either, then who knows. That text I linked to doesn't seem inspiringly reliable, so it's entirely possible neither Eugene nor Dessauer is based in anything real.

Maybe there were differentl rules for campaigns

But that's entirely possible too!