cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 45

Unfortunately, there was then at Berlin a King who pursued one policy only, who deceived his enemies, but not his servants, and who lied without scruple, but never without necessity.

(from The King's Secret - by Duke de Broglie, grand-nephew of the subject of the book, Comte de Broglie, and grandfather of the physicist) )

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

remember, I read that biography as well when doing my research for my Yuletide story

I don't think I knew you had read it! I'm not seeing it in salon when I search Zamoyski or in your author's notes.

You must have seen this part, then:

During a gathering at the Primate's, the conversation turned to the unfortunate topic of kings who had been forced into exile and obliged to support themselves, and Stanisław said that he should be extremely embarrassed if he were put to the trial, as he knew no way of earning his livelihood. 'Excuse me, Sir,' said Repnin, 'Your Majesty is still a very good dancer.' 'What should we think if we heard an ambassador tell our king, "If all trades fail, your Majesty may turn dancing-master?" noted the shocked English diplomat.

(

cahn, Repnin is the Russian envoy to Poland, and he is *awful* to Poniatowski, to make sure no one respects Poniatowski enough that P can gather a following that might lead to Poland being independent of Russia.)

selenak, this anecdote reminded me of your favorite story about Friedrich II Hohenstaufen:

When the Great Khan Batu sent messages demanding European rulers to surrender to him or die, and promising that if they did surrender he’d find offices at court for them (this was during the biggest expansion of a the Mongol Empire, when they had already reached the Danube, so no, he wasn’t kidding), Frederick quipped back that if needs must he did have some skills as a falconer.

"Das Jahrhundert der Könige" as I recall is Poniatowski friendly as well

Yes, I remember it that way too, and that chapter is on my list of things to reread.

From:

cahn

'Excuse me, Sir,' said Repnin, 'Your Majesty is still a very good dancer.' 'What should we think if we heard an ambassador tell our king, "If all trades fail, your Majesty may turn dancing-master?" noted the shocked English diplomat.

haha, this is great.

Are we talking about The Last King of Poland? And more to the point, should I read it once I've finished Massie? :)

(And, if the answer is yes, could I get an e-copy once I've bought a hard copy? It doesn't look like it's available in e-copy as far as I can tell from amazon, and I have now found that nonfiction works quite a bit better for me in e-copy.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

That's the book I'm talking about; I'm assuming it's the book Selena's talking about.

Whether you should read it next depends on what you're looking for. If you're looking for a very engaging and accessible bio, Mike Duncan's Lafayette. If a slightly less outstanding but still very readable bio, Blanning. If you really want to know more about Poniatowski, then this one is fine, it's just not something I would go out of my way to recommend for its engaging style. It's certainly informative and readable.

If you do end up buying a copy, let me know, and yes, I'm happy to pass on my digitized copy for reading (there is indeed no Kindle and I had to order a book and scan it). There is one digital copy on archive.org, but I kind of hate the interface, and I think maybe you want to read without internet access?

Btw, remember how Poniatowski wrote this self-portrait:

I would be content with my figure if I was an inch taller and had more beautifully shaped legs, not such a pronounced beak of a nose, less hips, a sharper gaze and more pronounced teeth.

and Lehndorff wrote:

He is the most charming and witty man his kingdom has to offer, and he has a nice figure besides.

and Selena wrote:

See, Lehndorff is deeply appreciative of your legs and hips just as they are, P!

? Well, per Zamoyski, Hanbury-Williams agreed with Poniatowski, I'm afraid:

Williams opined in a pen-portrait composed a couple of years later. He considered that while 'the head is fine', his face was a little too pale, that his hips are too wide and his leg not well turned'. But he pointed out that Stanisław was extremely clean, dressed well, and looked like a lord. 'He has contrived to improve on all the good things that Nature has given him and to correct or hide all that was not to his advantage, and as a result can pass for a handsome man,' Williams affirmed. 'He is not built to dance well, yet he dances well.'

Also, I guess we're all in agreement about the dancing!

From:

selenak

LOL, well, Lehndorff is the guy who called Heinrich beautiful. (Also, given his own handicap, persumably his standard as to legs was a bit looser? Then again, presumably Poniatowski got his male figure standards from Hanbury-Williams, the later being his mentor and all? Either way, 18th century portraits make it hard to tell if anyone has good legs, because fashion - other than in riding clothes or military uniform - didn't emphasize them, plus of course there was flattery. I mean, Poniatowski's official coronation portrait was this:

Whereas this more symbolic (hourglass indeed!) and melancholic portrait doesn't show his legs at all:

Edited Date: 2023-08-07 02:42 pm (UTC)

From:

cahn

It will never not be hilarious to me that hot or not? is a total thing with everyone! Even when they're writing their self-portraits!

LOL, well, Lehndorff is the guy who called Heinrich beautiful.

LOL, I had this same reaction!

Though I then thought that he doesn't call Heinrich beautiful until he falls for him, right? So maybe one should take his response to Poniatowski more at face value?

Ha, his legs do look good in that portrait. Though I must confess this is all more thinking about legs than I usually do!

From:

selenak

Though I then thought that he doesn't call Heinrich beautiful until he falls for him, right?

True.

So maybe one should take his response to Poniatowski more at face value?

Yes and no. Yes in that he wasn't in love with Poniatowski, though clearly he was charmed and thought him hot, no in that Lehndorff was always a bit bedazzled by a crown. Except in EC's case, obviously; or if he ever was, he didn't yet write diaries at the time. My point being that royalty at least initially gets a bonus from him, and this was the first time he met Poniatowski while the later was King of Poland. (Though he had met him many years before in Berlin and remembered it, back when 19 years old Poniatowski was miserable and Hanbury-Williams was furiously humiliated and miserable and they adopted each other. Remember, H-W actually hung out at EC's court and mentioned she and Luise deserved better from their respective husbands in his reports.) (H-W never mentions Lehndorff; Lehndorff mentions H-W only in the "finally he's gotten transferred" sense and later when the news of H-W having gone insane and having become a Fritz stan hits the court; Lehndorff's write-up does include remembering how H-W "was always our enemy" back in the day. So I'm assuming young P and Lehndorff didn't really interact, but Poniatowski mentions the Queen and her little court in his memoirs, too, so he did undoubtedly present himself.

Though I must confess this is all more thinking about legs than I usually do!

Legs make it into practically every historic "hot or not?" write up, though. Well, I guess not anymore when we're talking female legs in the 19th century, because there diplomats would have been terribly disrespectful and immoral to mention a Queen's looks below the waistline, and even above, but 18th century and before envoys and travellers definitely had to mention whether someone's legs were shapely, both for men and women. (And if they were Voltaire, they made cracks like Fritz' liking for Barbarina possibly being connected to her strong Ballerina legs, hint, hint.)

Going back a bit further in time, Catherine de' Medici was never described as pretty, but one of the few physical attributes even hostile sources grant were attractive about her when she was young were her legs, which everyone was in a position to notice because Catherine was a good rider and impressed her father-in-law by keeping up with him during the hunt. (She is also credited for introducing the female saddle to France, which if you only see the female saddle as more cumbersome than the male version might puzzle you, but (aristocratic) women in France before that era didn't ride on saddles like the men did, they practically were put in little boxes carried by patient steeds.

(Whether Catherine was really the first person to ride with this particular saddle in France is disputed, but she certainly helped making it popular for the ladies for the next few centuries, and it was a way to ride at the same speed which the men did.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

It's also worth mentioning that Elizaveta and Catherine the Great both liked cross-dressing, as men's clothes showed off their well-formed legs and women's did not.

From the bio of the Chevalier d'Eon, some commentary on the differences between their cross-dressing balls that I hadn't been aware of:

Masquerade balls were in vogue throughout Europe, and it was not uncommon at these events for men to dress as women and vice versa. But for the monarch to decree that every participant crossdress was unprecedented. Moreover, according to Catherine, the Empress also ordered every guest to appear without a mask, a practice that was completely different from other masquerades, where aristocrats of both sexes wore masks until the end of the evening. By eliminating the masks, Elizabeth was significantly altering the meaning of the masquerade. Ordinarily, a person who came to such a party posed as someone (s) he was not. The implicit deceit made the evening fun and exciting, as guests played at guessing one another's true identities. By making men and women crossdress without masks, Elizabeth put everyone in a kind of ambivalent status. Noblemen would masquerade as a female version of themselves: they might crossdress, but their identity was never in question...

The extent to which gender lines were blurred here becomes especially clear when we look at the behavior of the Empress Elizabeth herself. Catherine recalled: "The only woman who looked really well and completely a man was the Empress herself. As she was tall and powerful, male attire suited her. She had the handsomest leg I have ever seen on any man and her feet were admirably proportioned. She dressed to perfection and everything she did had the same special grace whether she dressed as a man or a woman...

Catherine also recalled that many of the noblemen resented these balls, and even she grew tired of them. Nonetheless, Catherine did not do away with them completely after she became empress in 1762. She continued to hold many masquerade balls, but unlike those during Elizabeth's reign, Catherine's were conventional masked affairs where participants posed as other people. Catherine herself derived much pleasure from dressing as a man and keeping her true identity a secret.

BTW, the Chevalier d'Eon's bio is WILD, y'all. I am looking forward to giving you the next update(s) on the secret diplomacy!

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2023-08-12 01:21 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Then again, presumably Poniatowski got his male figure standards from Hanbury-Williams, the later being his mentor and all?

Yeah, what strikes me is that Poniatowski says "less hips, more beautifully shaped legs" and H-W says "hips too wide, leg not well turned." That could just be the same societal standard...but it does sound suspiciously like Poniatowski asked H-W for a "hot or not" on his own body. ;) OTOH, "the head is fine" vs. "pronounced beak of a nose", so maybe the similar parts are just from living in the same society.

From:

selenak

Are we talking about The Last King of Poland?

I was. And I thought I did mention it a bit back in the day, but if Mildred can't recall it, I probably misremember. It's a readable biography, though the Fritz stuff is, err, well, Adam Z. is under the impression his evil plan was to destroy Poland from practically the cradle onwards and this was his main obsession in life. While I was inwardly going, well, he did want that land corridor, but he had other things to obsess about as well, and also, I'm reading this with an eye to my Heinrich and Catherine story and you mention him only once as being sent by his brother to fulfill the evil plan. Credit him for his own scheming, why won't you?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Me not recalling it means nothing, but not being able to find it in searches is something else. That said, you could have mentioned it without the author's name, or with the author's name spelled wrongly, and then it wouldn't show up (and I likely wouldn't remember it).

Anyway, as you can see,

cahn, neither

selenak nor I are enthusiastic about the style or the scholarship and opinions. But if you want to know more about Poniatowski, then, sure, it's a decent bio.

It's better than his treatment of August II and III in The Polish Way and Poland, which you will hear about once I get my hands on that bio.

(I will not learn Polish, I will not learn Polish, I will not learn Polish. I don't have *time*, self. French and German, then enough Danish to read Holm and finish the Moltke bio, then Italian. (But it's so frustrating that I keep hitting citations that I cannot read.))

From:

selenak

Before you learn Polish: you've never given us Peter's autobiography! This should come first, no? Along with the two essays.:)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I agree! I have not forgotten, and Peter's autobiography is next on my list after the bit of Saxon-Polish history I'm doing (my brain is working its way up to something as complex as deciphering archive records).

ETA 1: I did French every day last week!

cahn, yell at me if I don't do it every day this week.

ETA 2: Thank you for the essay encouragement,

selenak, encouragement/signs of interest help!

Edited Date: 2023-08-07 07:29 pm (UTC)

From:

cahn

Heh. Okay, well, given that I'm having trouble with Massie (not Massie's fault! whenever I am actually able to settle down with it he's riveting! Also: poor Poniatowski :( ) it's not for now, anyway. Maybe later :P

From:

selenak

Repnin's dancing master quip is especially nasty because dancing masters are really the lowest on the scale of professional males in terms of other men's estimation. Remember FW ranting about dancing masters as well vis a vis Fritz.

Now, dancing masters may have been ridiculed and used as stock figures of fun etc., but knowing how to dance was regarded as quintessential for a gentleman, so they needed to exist. Remember that in Freylinghausen's diary, FW & pals have a discussion about whether or not it's necessary for men to know how to dance. Seckendorff is the only one not kowtowing to FW and saying that like it or not, it's quintessential knowledge for a young gentlemen. Now, FW and Grumbkow as children danced ballet because when they were children, Louis XIV - famously in love with ballet and dancing ballet himself until he was 35 - was still THE model for European royalty, and presumably they were daught in the social dances like menuet and contredance as well, and I note that FW, no matter how much he growled, evidently did let not just his oldest but also his younger sons learn how to dance, otherwise Heinrich wouldn't have been able to dance with Sophie so much at AW's wedding. And if even FW gives in to the necessity of male dancing, you know how much it was part of the social must. But dancing masters were still the least respected of men, the never show up in fiction of the time unless it's as figures of ridicule, so for Repnin to suggest this particular job for Poniatowski really was way nastier than Friedrich II Hohenstaufen making that quip about himself as a falconer for the Khan.

(If he had wanted to be just humourous, he could have pointed out Poniatowski's knowledge of literature and languages would qualify him as a librarian, university scholar or as what he had already been to H-W, a secretary. Dancing Master, though, is vicious.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Yes, indeed.

cahn, if you end up reading the book, you will see how Repnin treated Poniatowski. Actually, here you go, here's an excerpt:

The ambassador's role was a complex one. The depth of Russian involvement in Poland and the free hand he was given made his role akin to that of a colonial governor. His personality compounded this, and he was soon behaving like a satrap. It could not have been easy for anyone, let alone a fiery young man like Repnin, to know what limits to impose on his behaviour. Any society placed in a colonial form of subjection will react with the same baffling mixture of fear, defiance and irresponsibility, and Poland was no exception. The Russian ambassador found no lack of toadies to do his work for him, and since he promoted them and pushed them into the highest offices, he created an unwelcome social phenomenon. After four years of his activities, many of the highest posts in public life were occupied by people who in normal societies spend their lives in brothels and gaming-houses. While he promoted such venal elements, the ambassador despised them. But he reserved his hatred for those who showed moral backbone: their probity was the reef on which all his calculations were wrecked. Yet he could do little to hurt people like Michał Czartoryski, Zamoyski or Lubomirski. The one person he could hurt, very deeply, and through whom he could get his own back on the whole Polish nation, was Stanisław. The fact that he genuinely liked the king could not alter this.

In their private conferences, of which Stanisław kept meticulous records, Repnin often lapsed into the most uncouth behaviour. He could do this with impunity, since he represented a formidable military power, and because he also held Stanisław by the throat financially. The Russian troops in Poland provisioned themselves in the Crown estates, for which Repnin was supposed to pay the king. It requires little imagination to see what kind of a weapon this put in the ambassador's hand. While this could not have been pleasant for Stanisław, it was as nothing to the public humiliations, which were an affront to his majesty and therefore to the whole nation. Repnin flouted etiquette, talking out of turn, sitting in the king's presence, arriving or leaving at will, and generally treating the king as if he were a person of little consequence. The Poles grew so used to it that they hardly bothered to record such outrages. Visiting foreigners were scandalised.

When he went to the theatre in Warsaw, James Harris was astonished to find the actors waiting for Repnin to arrive before beginning the play, even though the king had been sitting in his box for almost an hour. At a masquerade given by Karol Radziwiłł during the 1768 Seym, Harris records that Stanisław wanted to wait until the ball room was ready before opening the dance, only to receive a message from Repnin, who was impatient to start the dance in another room, that 'If he does not come at once, we shall begin without him!'

From:

cahn

Oh nooooo. Thank you for this excerpt, but poor Poniatowski! That one about him sitting in the theatre for an hour while they wait for Repnin... ouch.

From:

selenak

It was awful. And indeed smacks of colonialism.

From:

cahn

Oh awwww. This simultaneously is the kind of great content I come to salon for (it would have never occurred to me that dancing master was a terrible insult... I guess in stuff like Marriage of Figaro we see a singing master, not a dancing master, who is comic but not (I thought?) ridiculous; presumably singing master is a more genteel profession? (Or have I been reading Basilio's character wrong all these years?) Of course in modern society dancing and singing as artistic professions are valued reasonably similarly, so I'd just extrapolated from that... Anyway, I certainly wouldn't have thought that it was worse than falconer!) and also kind of makes me sad, that it was such a nasty dig.

From:

selenak

presumably singing master is a more genteel profession?

Only a bit. I'm reminded of how Hester Thrale, a friend of Dr. Samuel Johnson's, went down in everyone's esteem for her second marriage to an Italian music teacher, causing all kinds of crude jokes. (And in her turn was very cruel and slighting to the white woman married to Johnson's black servant, calling the marriage every racist trope you can think of, and to the black servant himself.) Otoh, Hester Thrale's second husband was an Italian, and this for xenophobic Brits might have mattered as much as the music teacher part.

It also depends on your original rank. For middle class composers and musicians, being appointed as music teachers to royals isn't just a regular income but also a great honor, see also Quandt and Fritz, and hence Salieri in Amadeus ensuring Mozart doesn't get the job of teaching Joseph's niece (who was actually his niece-in-law, the first wife of Leopold's son Franz whom Joseph grew very fond of and who was pregnant when he was dying so for their last meeting he had himself be painted and the lights dimmed so she wouldn't be frightened - he was, correctly as it turned out, very afraid that the same thing that happened to his wife would happen to her). Being a singing teacher to a member of the nobility, like the fictional Almavivas, is respectable to good if you're a professional musician, especially if your noble actually pays you. But if you are nobility yourself, it's definitely a sign of having fallen in rank.

Going back to Poniatowski, while he owed his throne very much to Russia's influence, he wouldn't even have been considered as a candidate if his family hadn't been one of most important and oldest Polish noble families. Respectable jobs for offspring from such a family:

- being an officer in any army (doesn't have to be the Polish one) - THE job for young nobles, and while some of Poniatowski's brothers went that way, he himself did not

- working in the diplomatic service (that's what he did for a while)

- joining the clergy (especially in Poland)

- being a gentleman of leisure with scholarly interests; publication of scholarly works are cool as long as you don't give the impression of actually needing to earn your living this way

But certainly not being a dancing master or a music teacher.

From:

luzula

I guess this is a little late, given that I have already written and posted this story, but what about the status of fencing masters? I had an army officer (a gentleman's son with no means of independence) briefly consider this as a career when he left the army, but ultimately he trained as a surgeon instead. (Which I know is a lower status job than physician, but he was in exile in France at the time and could not really study at university due to being a Protestant.)

From:

selenak

Honestly, I don't know. My instinct is to say that fencing master is more repectable because it's a manly occupation directly connected to soldier-ness (even though no one fences in wars anymore the later the century gets), and presumably often is a job for former soldiers. But that's just me guessing. Mildred is the one reading a biography of the Chevalier d'Eon right now, she should know!

Re: The King's Secret: fighting Fritz

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2023-08-11 02:49 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

cahn

Being a singing teacher to a member of the nobility, like the fictional Almavivas, is respectable to good if you're a professional musician, especially if your noble actually pays you. But if you are nobility yourself, it's definitely a sign of having fallen in rank.

Ah, that makes sense. I was thinking about Mozart and Salieri, and not making the connection taht they weren't nobility.

he was, correctly as it turned out, very afraid that the same thing that happened to his wife would happen to her

Oh noooooo :((((

Respectable jobs for offspring from such a family:

Heh. This reminded me of what we used to say, if you go to an Ivy League university, it's only really acceptable for you to have a job in law, medicine, business, academia, management, technology, or consulting. Plumbing is right out!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I certainly wouldn't have thought that it was worse than falconer!

Stop me if I'm wrong,

selenak, but my impression is that falconer at a medieval royal court would have been a courtier's job, i.e. a nobleman's, whereas dancing master is middle class. If the conquering emperor is distributing jobs to formerly reigning monarchs who are now courtiers, falconer would have been one of them.

There's also the part where this is Friedrich making a quip about himself, and not being treated disrespectfully by an envoy.

(I have just gotten up to the part in the podcast where Dirk is talking about De arte venandi cum avibus, funnily enough. I need to finish the stupor mundi parts so I can go back to the Hanseatic League episodes! (There has been some skipping around, as is my wont.))

From:

selenak

I actually have a reprint of De arte venandi cum avibus somewhere, of Manfred's edition. It is a gorgeous book, even for us non-falconers.

Stop me if I'm wrong, [personal profile] selenak, but my impression is that falconer at a medieval royal court would have been a courtier's job, i.e. a nobleman's, whereas dancing master is middle class.

That's how I recall it, too. BTW, post Middle Ages and in the Renaissance, too. Shakespeare in Love doesn't make a claim to historicity and is an amusing fantasy, but one neat actual detail they included is that Ned Alleyn, the star actor cum leader of the Lord Admiral's Men, also teaches everyone how to dance for the dance scene in Romeo and Juliet.