Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 46

[cahn]

Background: The kids' school has a topic for "Unit" every trimester that a lot of their work (reading, writing, some math) revolves around. These topics range from time/geographic periods ('Colonial America') to geography ('Asia') to science ('Space') to social science ('Business and Economics'). (I have some issues with this way of doing things, but that's a whole separate post.) Anyway, for Reasons, they have had to come up with a new topic this year, and E's 7/8 class is doing "World Fairs" as their new topic.

Me: I know E's teacher is all about World Fairs and I know she is great and will do a good job. But I feel like if we had a different teacher who wasn't so into World Fairs, they wouldn't do such a good job and another topic would be better.
Me: Like... the Enlightenment!
D: Heh, you could teach that! But you'd have to restrain yourself from making everything about Frederick the Great.
Me: But that's the thing! Everyone does relate to each other in this time period! Voltaire -- and his partner Émilie du Châtelet, who was heavily involved in the discourse of conservation of energy and momentum -- well, I've told you Voltaire had a thing with Fritz -- and then there's Empress Maria Theresa, who went to war with him a few times -- and Catherine the Great --
D, meditatively: You know --
Me: *am innocently not warned even though this is the same tone of voice that is often followed by, say, a bad pun*
D: -- it's impressive how everyone from this 'the Great' family is so famous!
Me: *splutters*
D, thoughtfully: But of course there's probably selection bias, as the ones who aren't famous don't get mentioned. You never see 'Bob the Great' in the history books...
Me: *splutters more*

Comments

Re: Chevalier d'Eon II: England and the King's Secret

[selenak]

Everybody: *writes anonymous pamphlets trashing each other*

Why should Fritz and Voltaire have all the fun?

Great write-up. Does the biography mention the show duel D'Eon had with Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier St. George (= mixed race genius composer, violinist and master duelist, a generation younger) when the later was visiting England?

re: John Wilkes: Boswell, because he's Boswell, managed to befriend Wilkes, too, when making his European grand tour in the mid 1760s (aka the one where we have the German and Swiss part quotes from), which was especially dicey because Wilkes was anathema to beth Boswell's real Dad and to his chosen mentor Dr. Johnson.

Re: Chevalier d'Eon II: England and the King's Secret

[mildred_of_midgard]

Why should Fritz and Voltaire have all the fun?

Clearly they don't! Though I would need to double-check the anonymous part; I'm going from memory, but could be being influenced by all the other anonymous pamphlets out there (not just Fritz and Voltaire's).

Great write-up. Does the biography mention the show duel D'Eon had with Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier St. George (= mixed race genius composer, violinist and master duelist, a generation younger) when the later was visiting England?

Doesn't look like it, from searching through the book.

Re: Chevalier d'Eon II: England and the King's Secret

[selenak]

Pity, it's a highlight in the Boulogne biography I've read. (He won, unsurprisingly given their respective ages, but was very impressed with d'Eon.)

Re: Chevalier d'Eon II: England and the King's Secret

[cahn]

All of Alexander Hamilton's pamphlet-writing (I read the bio/listened to the musical before salon) definitely reads differently to me now that I know about all the other pamphlet-writing that was going on at around that time! (I can't remember how much of that, if any, was anonymous.)