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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:

mildred_of_midgard

We of salon are now in the possession of:

1. The Peter Keith protocols from 1730. It's possible all have been published already, but maybe not, and even if we learn nothing new, the cool factor cannot be beat.

2. The Leining-Fredersdorf correspondence. I have sent

prinzsorgenfrei the first 5 pages already with a request for a transcription of the part that's in the box bill project. I notice, browsing through, that Leining continues to correspond with Fredersdorf and to address him as "Monsieur et tres chere compere" until July. In one early letter, he's "Monsieur mon tres chere ami et tres chere compere." Maybe this is how you address your predecessor who has just been dismissed and is dying of disgrace, but I think MAYBE NOT. :P

I can see Glasow's name in one of the pages I've requested a transcription of, I'm very excited!

3. The letter informing Fritz of Algarotti's death, the one that Preuss didn't see fit to publish because it wasn't by Fritz or Algarotti. The handwriting is going to be a bit of a struggle, I think I would need to work through it word by word, but I was able to make out a bunch of consecutive words just by staring at them, so I think it can be done.

4. The thing I was MOST hoping for: the letter informing Fritz of Suhm's death, the one that Preuss didn't see fit to publish because it wasn't by Fritz or Suhm, is included in this batch of Fritz-Suhm correspondence (I thought it might be, but I wasn't sure), AND, Nicolas Suhm has lovely, Peter Keith-like handwriting!! I have already sight-read this letter. :D It was actually even easier than Peter, or maybe Peter just gave me some necessary practice.

Unfortunately, Nicolas' letter didn't include what I most wanted, a description of Suhm's symptoms so I could take a guess at what he died *of*, or at least write historically accurate fanfic, but at least I know that that information *isn't* lingering in this unpublished letter, which is the next best thing. Furthermore, I got two interesting tidbits out of what he did write.

One, Suhm, when he realized he was dying, wrote to his brother Nicolas asking him if he could come to Warsaw and see him before he died. Unfortunately, Nicolas did everything he could to get there in time, but when he got to Warsaw, he discovered Suhm had died THE DAY BEFORE.

Omg, that poor guy: he wants to join Fritz, but he's "shipwrecked in harbor," to use his own phrase, and then he wants to see his brother one last time before he dies, but his brother arrives ONE DAY too late. :(

Two, the good news is, I think we have more evidence that Suhm's kids (and therefore his sister Hedwig) were living in St. Petersburg with him and traveled with him to Warsaw. Nicolas writes:

Je fais conduire le corps du défunt en Saxe, pour ou je parts avec sa famille, a fin d'y regler les affaires de ces orphelins et les menner sans delais a Berlin

I am having the body of the deceased taken to Saxony, for which I am departing with his family, in order to settle the affairs of these orphans there and take them to Berlin without delay.

I think "pour ou" and "ces" means he's setting out from Warsaw to Saxony with the kids in tow, not that he's going to Saxony to meet the kids there. This would be consistent with the one (1) mention of kids I saw in Suhm's Fritz correspondence, that he had a "child in each hand" when crossing the dangerous rivers on the way to St. Petersburg.

This is the other thing I wanted to know for fanfic purposes. It's possible some of the later, harder-to-read correspondence asking about pensions and stuff will make it 100% clear, but for now, I'm going with the interpretation that Suhm, his sister, and his kids all lived together as a family until his death. Which at least means he had the *most* important people with him when he died.

Sadly, Suhm himself, possibly because he's in terrible health--I only have the letters from his final journey from St. Petersburg to Warsaw--has terrible handwriting. Fortunately, the letters are mostly published, so I'm planning to compare Preuss's transcription against the letters and see if I can figure out if he left anything interesting out (I'm pretty sure I've seen some ellipses). If I get the hang of Suhm's handwriting, who knows, I might order more letters, as there are more batches in the catalogue.

Wheeeee!

A future order has been placed requesting Peter Keith genealogy-related documents, and the unpublished Lt. Groeben letters.

More updates when Prinzsorgenfrei and I have deciphered more!

Edited Date: 2023-03-20 06:20 pm (UTC)

From:

selenak

Hooray for everything!

I notice, browsing through, that Leining continues to correspond with Fredersdorf and to address him as "Monsieur et tres chere compere" until July. In one early letter, he's "Monsieur mon tres chere ami et tres chere compere." Maybe this is how you address your predecessor who has just been dismissed and is dying of disgrace, but I think MAYBE NOT. :P

It does sound unlikely. What intrigues me is the French address. Is it just the address and the rest is in German (which is how Wolfgang Mozart often corresponded with Dad Leopold), or is the entire letter in French? If the later, it would be a strong indicator that Fredersdorf did learn French at least well enough to exchange professional letters in it with people not Fritz, and that would make Fritz writing to him exclusively in German even more of an affectionate gesture and remarkable than it already is.

AND, Nicolas Suhm has lovely, Peter Keith-like handwriting!!

Good for him (and us)!

I think "pour ou" and "ces" means he's setting out from Warsaw to Saxony with the kids in tow, not that he's going to Saxony to meet the kids there.

Same here. And yes, that means that while Suhm doesn't see his brother or Fritz again, he does have his children (and very likely sister) with him when he dies. As I said elsewhere, I'm unsurprised they don't come up in the Fritz correspondence more often, between the Fritz need to be the emotional priority and the practice of editors to cut out to them irrelevant family stuff is the family members aren't famous royals, see also the first volume of Lehndorff's diaries vs the rest.

What was Nicholas Suhm's day job?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

What intrigues me is the French address. Is it just the address and the rest is in German (which is how Wolfgang Mozart often corresponded with Dad Leopold), or is the entire letter in French?

It intrigued me too! But no, it's just the address that's in French. If the entire letter had been, I would have said so immediately (and I would have begun trying to read the letter). What few words I can make out are in German, and there are too many umlauts in the rest for French.

Speaking of deciphering, I made some headway yesterday on the Algarotti letter. Everything I can read off the top of my head is Fritz flattery: we're sad Algarotti died, of course, but the most important thing is that Algarotti was a Fritz fan, and so is the guy writing this letter to the "Alexander of the North". By the end of the letter, we're still discussing Fritz's exploits in war, so I'm guessing the middle bit that I can't read without a lot more effort than I've put in yet is a case of "second verse, same as the first." I haven't found anything interesting about Algarotti, though of course I will keep trying and report back if I find anything.

Keep in mind it's May 1764, meaning one year after Fritz won the Seven Years' War and acquired a lot of fanboys across Europe.

he does have his children (and very likely sister)

Since he tells Fritz she's been acting as a mother to them and to treat her as his widow, I'm assuming she's with them, yeah.

I'm unsurprised they don't come up in the Fritz correspondence more often, between the Fritz need to be the emotional priority

His Weasleys they are not!

and the practice of editors to cut out to them irrelevant family stuff is the family members aren't famous royals

Yeah, this is what I'm hoping: that interesting stuff about Suhm got cut, and that I'm able to master his handwriting well enough to figure it out and tell salon about it.

And lol, yes, my archive-ordering is very boyfriend-oriented: Peter Keith, Fredersdorf, Algarotti, Suhm, and this mysterious Lt. Groeben. :D

What was Nicholas Suhm's day job?

Mostly envoy! Though in 1740, he's Legationsrat in the secret cabinet, then he'll go back to being an envoy. It runs in the family: their father Burchardt was an envoy too.

Edited Date: 2023-03-21 02:17 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Same here. And yes, that means that while Suhm doesn't see his brother or Fritz again, he does have his children (and very likely sister) with him when he dies. As I said elsewhere, I'm unsurprised they don't come up in the Fritz correspondence more often

I just got confirmation that I wasn't crazy when I thought it was at least a possibility for an envoy to leave his family back home. I just read that Goodricke, the British envoy to Sweden I've been telling you about, didn't see his wife for eleven years between when he set out for Stockholm and when she came to join him. And St. Petersburg seems like especially a place where you might not drag your whole family. Mind you, I still think the evidence is Suhm did! But at least it wasn't out of the question that he might not have.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, this is interesting. I haven't found anything Preuss omitted from the published Suhm letters, but I do seem to have a different copy of one letter than the one he published: the one where Suhm congratulates Fritz on becoming king. Nothing seems bowdlerized, just different phrases are used to say the same thing, even beyond modernizing the spelling and grammar. I know that a lot of the time when someone's letters are published, there's the draft they made and kept in their own drawers, and then the one they sent, so there are multiple variants of some letters out there, or in many cases, only one survives. I'm not sure why Preuss and I are looking at different copies of this letter, but at least I know it's theoretically possible.

I also note that Fritz's response is written in very neat (better than Suhm's!) handwriting in the upper right hand corner of the Suhm letters, which makes me think that he handed the letter to a secretary and dictated the response. Actually, I seem to recall some historian (Hamilton?) saying that all his Suhm letters after he became king were written by secretaries, so, yeah, that's what it has to be.

I'm also disappointed that this batch from the archives doesn't include all the letters Suhm wrote during this period, just a selection. For instance, it doesn't include the final, dying letter!

Still, I'm getting the hang of his handwriting (it's not that bad once you get used to it, I just can't eyeball it), which is why I'm able to tell that what I have is not what Preuss wrote, so someday I might order all the Suhm letters in the catalogue and see if I can find any omitted goodies for salon.

Who has amazing handwriting, though, is sister Hedwig! (Or Hädevig, as she spells it.) I developed a theory with Peter Keith that when you're someone who doesn't normally write to the king, but you need to ask him for money or another favor, you use your absolute best penmanship, whereas if you're just chatting with the king (or calling him Alexander of the North, etc.), you use your whatever handwriting. So far, Peter, Nicolas, and Hedwig are bearing out this theory.

And if you're the king, you can write in "good luck figuring out what I mean" handwriting (seriously, the Hedwig letter has scribbled marginalia that I can barely make out a single character of), and if you work in the chancery or whatever it was called and write all day for a living, your handwriting degenerates in much the same way that flight attendant speak is one long garble telling you to buckle your seatbelt and check for emergency exits.

Anyway. My boss keeps telling me he will fight for me to get a month off work if I want one, but what I really want do with a month off work involves archival research in Germany and London, so I would first need to improve my 18C handwriting and spelling comprehension abilities, and honestly some more French and German reading comprehension, and some German listening comprehension would help, and of course no back pain, so I can sit in libraries and archives and read. And of course, my unwillingness to travel until Covid is much less of a thing, particularly Long Covid. So it might be a while. But just think how much fun it would be!

In the meantime, doing this much remotely and building up my skills slowly is fun. :D

Off to build up some Danish skills. No history yet, but fairy tales are getting noticeably easier!

Edited Date: 2023-03-22 01:42 am (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Update: I have officially gotten the hang of Suhm's handwriting, so the next time I'm so inspired, I intend to order as many of his letters as I can get my hands on, and we'll see if Preuss left out anything interesting! (I assume he published all of Fritz's letters, and thus I don't need to worry about *his* handwriting.)