The Life of Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams: Poet, Wit, and Diplomatist.

[selenak]

First of all, authorship to this book is credit to the Earl of Ilchester and Mrs. Langford-Brooke, which I took to meaning the Earl provided a great many of the papers and Mrs. L-B did the actual writing. The preface details the convoluted fate of H-W's papers, and how, among other events, earlier attempts to write is biography or publish a collection of his poetry failed, the later because Southey, the poet entrusted with the task, flat out refused because of changed morality. To which I say: Southey, you had it coming. Partly because of this, I presume, our author(s) are at pains to emphasize how Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams was a man of his time, alright, but not really a coarse Georgian, and would that he had lived in better times. Hence no syphilis, no non-straight verses (though his insinuating comments on Fritz and Hervey are kept intact), and of the het verses, nothing explicit.

This said, it's a biography that uses a lot of primary material - not just Hanbury's own papers but the national archives (which for example the mid 19th century Mitchell editor and publisher Andrew Bisset also used) for all the diplomatic dispatches, and in this regard, it's a treasure trove. Most of the footnotes go to primary sources. On the downside, it doesn't feel like the author(s) consulted many non-British sources - I mainly noticed Poniatowski's and Catherine's memoirs -, but not much else, and nothing German, despite H-W's work in Dresden, Berlin, Vienna, and of course all the Hannover stuff. And even of the British contemporaries, non-complimentary takes on H-W are dismissed in footnotes or in the final chapter with two sentences, like when we're told Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu didn't have a high opinion of him, but as she was friends with his wife, she wouldn't have. (Love the argument, as opposed to "she was on the other side of a feud you even quoted a poem of his from, wherein not only Hervey but she get direclty attacked, and oh, yes, she was friends with Hervey much more intensely - the Algarotti triangle not withstanding - than she was with his wife.) It very much feels like an authorized biography written centuries after the fact.



Charles the future envoy was born a younger son, like several folk we've encountered in salon before, only to have his older brothers die. (Though not all. One named Capel, who shows up in Mitchell's papers because Mitchell wonders whether to forward H-W's remaining luggage to him, survives.) The double name is the result of his father, John Hanbury, becoming bff with very rich and childless Charles Williams. (Hanbury then settled the majority of the Williams legacy on his fourth son Charles, hence Charles adopting the surname.) His mother also had a nice dowery, and all in all the Hanbury clan was well-off landed gentry, wihich is important because as we've seen, being an envoy is expensive. Young Charles has a typical childhood and youth, he goes to Eton, he makes the Grand Tour (nothing of his impressions survive), he gets into Whig circles, he makes a respectable match and marries, Lady Frances Coningsby, youngest daughter of Thomas C, Earl of Coningsy. (Her Dad was an admirer of Sarah "the Favourite" Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, and proposed to Sarah after Marlborough's death. While his proposal got rejected, the Marlborough connection was maintained and helpful to young Charles.) Charles runs for parliament and wins Stephen Fox as his sponsor. Now, the Fox brothers, as mentioned elsewhere, were incredibly important in Hervey's life - he first crushed on Henry, got gently rebuffed but maintained as a friend, and then fell big time for Stephen -, so I was somewhat amazed this is never mentioned because H-W also becomes friends with both brothers. (And shortly before and after Hervey's death exchanges non complimentary remarks about him with Henry F. (Granted, the Foxes and Hervey had a fallout in his last year of life, but that association was so firm and lengthy before that it doesn't make them look good, which is possibly the reason why it doesn't come up in the book - after all, Ilchester is probably a descendant - "Earl of Ilchester" was Stephen Fox' eventual title.)

Charles' early career is standard and nothing spectacular, his maiden speech in the House of C'ommons doesn'tmake much of an impression (and it's not left to us), and while he makes good connections - in addition to the Foxes, there's Horatio Walpole, brother of PM Sir Robert Walpole and uncle to Horace the writer - but really seems to have put most of his energy into literature, like writing a satire about Fritz of Wales on the occasion of the infamous birth of FoW's first child with Augusta being wisked away so that Caroline and G2 aren't present at the birth, and writing any number of verses. (Going by the ones quoted, they're mediocre, so he and Fritz are on the same level there.) One example, written when Stephen Fox, who married a thirteen years old child bride but thankfully didn't consumate the marriage or live with her for the next four years, after said four years did move in with her, may suffice - it was in celebration of the bride/wife: "Dear Betty, come, give me sweet kisses/ For sweeter no girl ever gave/ But why in the midst of our blisses/ Do you ask how many I have?/ I'm not to be stinted in pleasure/ Then prithee, dear Betty, be kind/ For as I love thee beyond measure,/ To numbers I'll not be confined."

He meets the guy who becomes his best friend, Thomas Wimmington, and with all the rethoric spend of how this was his friend of friends and soulmate and what note, I wonder whether Wimmington was a bit more if the authors didn't want to spare our feelings.

mildred_of_midgard: The author of the libertinism paper agrees! "However, it is unclear from the evidence whether or not Williams’s love for Winnington ever became physical." I was also pleased to see the Hephaestion and Alexander article we read was linked!

selenak: Well, here's a new bit that didn't make the hagiographic cut which I just found in this essay:

There is also some secondhand evidence about Hervey's homosexuality in a somewhat cryptic letter written by Charles Hanbury Williams to Henry Fox shortly after Hervey's death: "Upon my word Lord Hervey has left Winnington a very handsome legacy & I suppose he'll enter into possession immediately – I suppose Lord Lincoln won't push at him any more. If he does, Hervey will certainly appear backward to him. Poor Fitzwilliams!" Lord Lincoln was famed among his friends for possessing a large penis, and using it well. The Earl Fitzwilliam was so frightened at his marriage that it had to be postponed for a day. Thomas Winnington MP, great friend of the Fox brothers, inherited a legacy from Hervey. Williams' own underlinings provide the clue for the following interpretation: Winnington now has an inheritance of his own and need not submit to the large penis ("handsome legacy") of Lord Lincoln; but if Lincoln persists in trying to bugger ("push at") Winnington, Hervey (as symbol of the inheritance he left Winnington) will appear to bend over and present his arse ("backwards") for Lincoln's desires. Or something along those lines; there are too many clever nudges and winks here for us to quite make sense of it all, but we can see easily enough that Williams is suggesting, by means of italicized puns, that Hervey liked to be buggered.

The essay writer seems to have missed out on Winnington being H-W's friend of friends, so my own interpretation upon reading this was more along the lines of "okay, if Winnington had a fling with Hervey, that explains everything, H-W really was personally jealous. See later for his other comments on Hervey.


Back to the 1920s hagioraphy: At any event, Wimmington's death is what ultimately pushes H-W into his envoy career later. But first Charles is a young man about town, and our authors are at pains to emphasize he was NOT a member of the Hellfire Club and did not participate in its orgies, he was a member of the Society of Dilettanti, which was a slightly more respectable frat boy union and future office holder network. He falls in love with Peg Woffington, the great actress of the day, but while accepting his suit she's also lovers with David Garrick, most famous actor of the day, and this leads to the anecdote where a jealous H-W accuses her of having seen Garrick only this morning, when she told him she hadn't seen Garrick for eons. Replies Peg: "And is not that an age ago?"

We've now reached the early 1740s, and the contortion of "don't say syphilis!" re: H-W's impending marital breakup is so great that I must quote:


In June, 1742, Hanbury-Williams again retired to Bath. Up to that time he and Lady Frances had been together in Albermarle Street, but this proved to be their final separation; though they appear to have remained on good terms until the end of July. (...) In September Lady Frances left Albermalre Street for the house of her aunt, Lady Kildare; but, as far as can be ascertained, she then intended to return to her husband for the sake of the children. A few days later, however, Hanbury-Williams made a false step. In one of his letters he put forward, or was understood to put forward, an allegation which his wife pronounced unforgivable. Henry Fox and Dr. Oldfield, who was attending Lady Frances at the time, did their best to patch up matters, but in vain. Lady Frances went so far as to decline any interview whatsoever with her erring spouse.
On November 15, Horace Walpole wrote to Mann, 'Hanbury-Williams is very ill at Bath, and his wife in the same way in private lodgings in the City.' But by that time the terms of the final separation had been practically fixed by their lawyers. Lady Frances insisted on the custody of the girls, and threatened a 'public exposure' on a hint they might be taken from her. 'If you would prevent the utter ruin of our children,' she wrote, 'entrust me with the care of posession of them, in what manner you please. ' On these lines the final settlement was reached. Lady Frances, of course, retianiend her own money; and Hanbury-Williams made her an allowance for the maintenance of their daughters.

Reading between the lines: not only did he infect her with syphilis, he asked whether she couldn't have contracted it from someone else and infected him instead. Not that you'd know it based on this book, which emphasizes the marriage was doomed from the start since they were just too different, and that they're both at fault.

Re: the children - two daughters. H-W was actually a fond father, who tried to stay involved with his daughters' lives much as possible (and annoyed his wife by backing them every time, like when the younger, Charlotte, read the Fielding novel Tom Jones which her mother disapproved of). When the older got engaged to the Earl of Essex, a very good match in terms of social standing and money, H-W upon meeting the young man on the later's Grand Tour was criticial because the guy didn't mention his daughter enough to him, and said he'd rather marry his daughter to a parson than an Earl as long as the parson really loved her. In general, he's at his best with young people he can play a fun mentor role for (hello Poniatowski and Catherine).

Simultanously to having his marriage explode, H-W bitches with the Foxes about Hervey.



He writes to Henry: As for the poem you sent me, I will take my oath 'tis Lord Hervey's. 'Tis too plain, both from the unpoetick thoughts and bad versification and the quaint antitheses, but above all from the many quotations out of Appian and Dio Cassius, books that he is very fond of and that hardly anybody else ever looks into. And he sends Henry Fox a Hervey character portrait he's written:

I now come to the fifth character of the administration. He was second son of the Earl of Bristol, and while his oldest brother was yet alive married Mrs. Mary Lepell, Maid of Honour to the Princess of Wales.
The beginning of his life was spent in attending his father at Newmarket and his mother at the gaming-table. And very young in life, he was reputed a good jokey, and good gamester at all games of skill. He was excessively handsome, but so effeminately affected that it brought even his sex into question. He lived a great wihle among women, whose ill play at Quadrille made him ample amends for the badness of their conversation; for he every year cleared considerable sums at that game.
When he was first chose into Parliament he attended ill. When he did, it was always in favour of the court, but still with an absolute ignorance of business; and his health proving bad he left England for some time. Upon his return he resolved to apply himself to Parliamentary Affairs, and spoke often and with applause, in the House of Commons, mostly written speeches, laboured, full of terms and flowers. He now began to be taken notice of. Assiduity and parts he had, but no judgment. Having been in as many ridiculous scrapes, and attempted two as impossible things as ever man did, he longed to get into a court, for there his talents lay. The key of Vice-Chamberlain was given him, and as he thought to govern immediately, he began with attempting the management of the Queen and the P of W. at the same time, though they were at that time, to every person's eyes at court, ecept his, almost declared enemies. How that came out, the P of W' s inveterate personal enmity to him everr since very plainly evinces. Pherhaps that contributed to fix him better with the Queen. Perhaps he persuaded her to think it was in her cause he fell. HOwever, sometimes well, sometimes ill, he continued to have constant access to and conversation with her until her death. Tis certain the King never loved him or liked him. He about the time or a little before of having the Gold Key began to be an author.
To give you now his character, I must do it freely, and own, I think he ahas fewer mabilities and more disagreeable ein him than most people. And to begin, he never, I believe, opened his heart to any body on earht t horoughly; and in all the friendships he ver went into, seemed to me to design they should be subservient to his fiews, his interests, his pleasures. He inisted upon knowing your thoughts, and yet constantly showed, nay declared, you should not know his. He always knew, or pretended he knew, something mor ethan he would communicate; and you were to follow his dictates without being informed of his reason. (...) He affected to be learned, which he was not. What he knew he had got lately, and that was confined to a very few books. He was fond of writing verse, but wanted thought and even versification. His poems were ill imagined and worse turned. He succeeded better at prose. But in polticks, though thoroughly well informed and helped by facts, yet his style was so strained, so affected, so full of antithesis, that it tired. His thoughts were overdressed, and his want of argument ill supplied by an unmeaning tangle of words. HIs conversation was turned to ridicule, and it was his fort. He laughed well at his enemies, and as well at his friends. He would mimick well, and that helped out his descriptions very much.

As with his later Fritz rant, there are some good points buried here, like the fact it should have been clear to Hervey he could be Caroline's confidant or that of Fritz of Wales, but not of both at the same time, But by and large, I detect a lot of personal envy here. (Having read examples of Hervey's verses, like H-W's own, they're okay, not immortal. But the "he never tells his true thoughts to anyone" is bewildering if you'r read his love letters to Stephen Fox and Algarotti, which of course H-W had not, but his correspondant might have. And I note that as with his Wilhelmine description, H-W does the 18th century thing of gatekeeping out "fake geeks", who aren't really learned, they just pretend to be, he, of course, can detect the really learned. He's been in Eton!

H-W is a big, and life long Alexander Pope fan (I suspect he was the one responsible for Catherine having read Pope, which she did as she quotes him in her letter to her Hamburg pal about Heinrich - English poets aren't exactly on the teaching schedule for a Prussian princess), and so of course he sides with Pope against Lady Mary and Hervey in their bitter fallout:
At length Pope conquers: Hervey, Wortley yield,
And nameless numbers cover all the field:
Just so of old, or Roman story lies
Domitian triumph'd o'er a host of flies.



H-W despite sharing Hervey's and basically all of the Brits' opinion that Hannover is a drag, that G2 worrying about his Electorate and acting to Hannover's benefit is a curse on British politics, and ugh, Hannover, gets more and more interested in continental politics and in 1744 makes his very first anti Fritz mention in a letter:

The Lord confound the King of Prussia's armies and designs. As to his writings I could do that myself. (I don't doubt it, H-W. Except for the Voltaire correspondance.) What an impudent fellow tis, to say he does not directly make war upon the Queen of Bohemia, and yet at the same time sends his troops to attack and besiege Prague. Nobody under a King could have the face to say such things.

(Our author(s) share Macauly's stance, unsurprisingly, that whenever Fritz fights against someone allied to England, he's wrong, but when he's fighting in alliance with England, he's of course in the right.)

Of course, his opinion of his own royals isn't high, either:
Two hopeful sons are sprung from George's loins,
And one in folly, one in dullness shines;
From Freddy's lips the Royal nonsense flows,
And fools and ladies catch it as it goes
More solid Will, in beef and pudding deep,
Makes love and governs armies in his sleep.
But when, by our inexorable fate,
Our Mon- rots with C- the great,
Speak, Britons, speak, who then will be your head,
The prattling monkey or the lump of lead?



H-W is in the country when the 45 happens, and among those country gentlemen hastily forming their own militia in case BPC actually makes it further south. He's also present at the executions of two Jacobite lords about whom he writes with great sympathy, though he otherwise has no time for the Jacobite cause. Possibly foreshadowing how the English would go from reviling the Scottish uprising and hating on the Highlanders (see young Boswell witnessing a London theatre crowd shouting "no Scots! no Scots!" to some Highlander soldiers who had fought FOR England in the Americas) to finding it all frightfully romantic and noble fifty years down the line (see G4 dressing up in kilts), H-W was very touched and impressed by how two of these guys died, and wrote about it to Lord Ilchester, aka Stephen Fox, Hervey's ex boyfriend, and his hagiographic biography renders the letter nearly in full.

My dear Lord,

Yesterday I went to see the terriblest sight I ever saw. I saw the two Lords beheaded. Lord Kilmarnock, who was certainly the genteelest man I ever saw, came first, dresssed in black, in his own fair hair without powder, and walked (instead of going in the mourning coach which followed him, as did his horse) quite from the Tower across Tower Hill to the Transport Office, next door to which I was, so that they came within a yard of our door. The Sheriffs walked before him, and he came supported on one side by Foster, the dissenting teacher, and one Mr. Hume, a clergyman, on the other. He then walked into the Transport Office, where there were two rooms prepared for the two Lords; but Lord Balmerino desired to speak to Lord Kilmarnock, which was granted, and he came into his room, and asked whether ever he had heard that there were orders issued before the Battle of Culloden to put all the English prisoners to death; for that there was such a lie raised against Prince Charles. To which the Lord Kilmarnock replied, that he knew of no such orders at the time, for he was not in the secrets, but that since, he had heard so from such undoubted authority that he believed upon his honour it was very true. To which Balmerino answsered that he believed no such thing, and went out of the room.

After Lord Kilmarnock had stayed about an hour and an half in that place, he came forth supported in the same manner, and walked to the scaffold, which was erected about ten yards from the door. When he was upon it, he delivered his speech to the Sheriffs without saying a word; and then stood and payed with Foster, who was very devout and embraced him often, which comforted him much. After staying thus about 20 mnutes, he began to undress, and forgave Jack Ketch, who asked him forgiveness. He declared to the few people upon the scaffold that his repentance was very sincere, that with his last breath who would bless and pray for King George, and that he heartily wished that all the people that ever engaged in such wicked treasons as he might meet with the same ignominous fate. He then pulled off his coat, and tucked his hair under a night cap; then he knelt down before the block, which is a thing about 28 inches high, about a yard wide, and a foot and half thick, with two hollows, one for the breast to rest upon, and another to receive the chin, so the neck lies upon a rise. They kneel upon a cushion. And here I perceived first Lord Kilmarnock's great uneasiness. He rose from the block several times, pulled off his waistcoat, and showed much anxiety. At last he knelt down for good and all, and told Jack Ketch the sign should be dropping a hankerchief, which about 2 minutes prayer he did, and Jack Kech struck off his head at one blow, all but a bit of skin. The head was received into a piece of scarlet cloth, which 4 men held on the other side the block. And thus ended his life. Aged 42.

Very different was the behaviour of Lord Balmerinno, who died with greater indifference than I go to dinner. When he came out of the Tower, Lord Kilmarnock and he met upon the stairs. He embraced Lord Kilmarnock, and told (him) he wished he could die for them both. When the Lieut. of the Tower told him the Sheiffs were there to demand, he said he was ready: "But before I go, Mr. Lieutenant, here is K. James' helath in a bumper to you." When he appeared walking upon Tower Hill towards the Transport Office, I declare I could not imagine which was the hprisoner, for when I saw him at the Bar of the House of Lords he was a shabby-looking old fellow, in an old black suit of clothes and a bad bob wigg, but here he was dressed in the Pretender's regimentals, blue turned up with red, a good tied wigg, and a well cocked hat. He walked with great firmness, supported by nobody. Two clergymen walked behind him, and he looked much more like an officer upon guard than a prisoner. After Lord Kilmarnock was beheaded and the stage new covered with sawdust to hide the blood, and the block new covered with black cloth, Balmerino came forth looking round at the spectators, which at a moderate cumputation could not be less than a hundred thousand. He then mounted the scaffold, and seeing his coffin lie there, he said: "I must look at it, to see whether they have put my title right." When he had done reading, he throew his hat down upon it, pulled out his spectacles, and read his speech to the people upon the scaffold; for the soldiers, horse and foot, surrounded the scaffold, so that none of the mob were within 50 yards of it. The speech was very treasonable, and I believe he was seven minutes at reading it; after that he up to the block, and said: "If I had a thousand lives, I would lay them all down for the same glorious cause that I engaged in. How could I or any body refuse joining with such a sweet Prince as Prince Charles?"

The executioner then came and asked his pardon. He forgave him, and asked how many blows he gave Lord Kilmarnock, to which he answered one. "Oh!" said he, "that will do well for me," and then gave three guineas, and said he had no more. He then went to the other side of the stage to look at his horse, where seeing the warder that attended him in the Tower, he himself called him up and made him a present of his peruke which he pulled off, and put on a cap made of Scotch plaid, and then he pulled off his cloths and embraced two friends very cheerfully. I could hear the smack of his kisses up to where I was.

He then turned to the two clergymen that came with him, and to whom he had not yet spoke a word. He told them that he thanked them for attending him; that they had done all that could be done for him, but he hoped they found him well prepared. From thence he went to the block, and knelt on the wrong side of it, which being told of, he rose nimbly up nad went immediately on the other side, where he told Jack Ketch his sign should be when he lifted upo his right arm; and he then perceived Jack Katch went from him, which he did to fetch the ax, that was in a box at the other end of the stage (and which is exactly a carpenter's ax), he followed him wiht his eyes, and seeing him take up the ax, he called to him and took it from him and managed it in his own hands. He returned it then to Jack Ketch and, putting down his head upon the block, in a quarter of a minute he tossed his right arm up with the greatest (calmness), and his head was cut off at three blows, but the first did the business. I saw his face when he laid it down, and indeed he never changed colour, nor did I see in him all that dreadful time the least shadow of fear.


Then, in 1746, H-W's bff Thomas Wimmington dies which breaks his heart. Conversely, Henry Fox has been appointed Minister of War. As H-W also gets into trouble over satirzing one of the younger Marlboroughs, he basically pushes for an envoy job on the continent as a kind of escape, and gets it. It's off to Dresden with the guy who does not speak a word of German and still brushing up his French, but scoffs at other people's pretense at education. (He does get a series of Hannover born secretaries though to help with the languages.)

Dresden, as a city, finds his approval except for the "early" time of 11 pm when everyone retires. It's gorgeous - which it is - and there's much splendour. H-W also likes the King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, August III, son of August the Strong, for being nice and art loving, though he notes A3 is totally under Brühl's thumb. He's less impressed by the Queen (she who will remain in Dresden during the 7 Years War, Maria Josepha, daughter of HRE Joseph I. and thus first cousin to MT; August the Strong had married his son to her with probably an eye on Team Saxony claiming the Imperial throne):

Her Majesty is very devout, but not a bit better for her devotions. She does nothing but commit small sins, and begs forgiveness for them. She is ugly beyond painting, and malicious beyond expression. Her violent hatred to the Empress-Queen, and her great love to all her enemies, makes me rejoice that she has not the least influence at this court. She has much impotent aversion to Count Brühl; he hates Her Majesty in return, but then he makes her feel his power.

By "her enemies" he doesn't mean Fritz, he means France, which apparantly Maria Josepha is much in favour of.

This royal couple's son has just married Maria Antonia of Bavaria, or "Antoinette" as our author(s) call her, aka pen pal to MT and Fritz (on musical matters), also librettist of various operas and music lover in general.

Her person is extremely bad, but her manner is engaging. She does not want parts, but they are strangely turned. She has a desire to be admired beyond the rest of her sex. ...She has read a great deal, but her whole study has been love as it is described in French romances. She write s agreat deal, all upon the same subject, and I am sure all her poetical works would make a small folio. During the late Emperor's reign she meddled in politics, in which she varies as much as in her lovers; an t is its from them she chiefly takes her plie, for she is neither capable of forming a scheme herself, nor adhering to a plan that anybody else should prepare for her for four and twenty hours together.

(As we'll see, MT and Catherine are the only higher ranking women H-W doesn't ridicule.)

But of course the main person at court to pay attention to is Brühl.

He is the son of a gentleman of Thuringe. The family is good. Count Brühl's father was Marshall of the court of Saxe-Weissenfels. The present Count Brühl was page to the Duchess-Dowager of Weissenfels (mother of the present Duchess of Courland) who lived hte latter end of her life at Leipzig. The late King of Poland, who always came to the (Book) Fair, used constantly to visit her Highness of Weissenfels; and it was in those visits that he first saw Count Brühl, who, as page, used to light him upstairs. HIs Polish M. observed he was a very assidious boy, and took a fance to him, and upon the Duchess' recommendation made him his Page de la Chambre. For a great while his P M employed him as his secretary in his amours, but thinking that he saw great talents in him, he resolved to breed him pu to be a Minister, and began by making him spy upon all his other Ministers, which post he executed to the K's satisfaction, who in the last years of his life applied himself very much to business. And at his Polish Majesty's death his affairs whore wholly (having then no declared Minister) in Count Brühl's hands; who from being a page was in two years become Privy Councillor, Ministre de Conference and Gt Master of the Wardrobe. He was the only MInister that was with the King of Poland at Warsow when he died, and all the secret transactions of that critical time were in his hands. He, immediately upon the King of Poland's death, came back to Dresden, and found the present King of Poland entirely governed by his faovurite, Count Sulkokwski, who was the most ignorant and the most incapable of business of any man in Saxony. To this person Count Brühl united himself, and they together persuaded the King to go no more to council, nor to suffer his Privy Councillors to approach HIs Polish M's person; after which Count Brühl alone (for Count Sukowski was against it) persuaded his master to attempt the crown of Poland; and the success that attended that attempt was the first thing that gave the present K of Poland a good opinoin of Count Brühl. But he would never have arrived at the post of favourite, if Count Sulkowski had not destroyed himself by being the most absurd, the most insolulent, and the most brutal man upon earth, who took more pains to lsoe the King of Pland's favour than ever any Minister did to gain the confidence of any other prince.

(See also: Sachsens Glanz und Preußens Gloria.)

Count Brühl in his figure still has a a great deal of a page, which neither diomonds nore embroideries can efface. He is extremely polite and civil, but his civility is without distinction, which destroys the merit of it.

(I.e. he's nice to everyone, not just H-W.)

His vanity is beyond all bounds, and his expense has no l miits; neither does the King of Poland set any to it, for he permits him to take whatever he pleases out of the revenues of Saxony. His house is a palance, and his family a court. He has every vice and expense that would each of them singly undo any other person. Gambling, building, equipage, horses, books, pictures an a mistress, are extravagances that he has pushed to the highest degree.

And so forth, which, btw, is a contemporary testimony to Brühl's money wasting reputation that predates Fritz bashing him in his histories. Ironically, what frustrates H-W most about Brühl is that he seems to be afraid of pissing off Prussia. (Which, lest we forget, has invaded Saxony already once at this point, in Silesia 2.) At the same time, Brühl loathes Fritz right back, and relations to Vienna are cool because Maria Josepha thinks she should be Archduchess and Empress, whereas noble Britain wants to reconcile everyone (according this book), only to find out that the German princes want to be paid subsidies if they're to do as England wants. H-W is not happy. There's a lot of negotiating with the Poles, too, considering the question as to whether or not young future Elector also becomes the third Saxon King of Poland in a row (spoiler: he won't be), which brings H-W first into contact with Polish nobles. He keeps pondering Fritz from afar:

One must judge the King of Prussia's future by his past behaviour. (...) We have not only seen him twice abandon his allies, the French, the instant he perceived that his interest required such perfidy to support it. But also we saw him towards the end of the year 1743 promiting a peace with the greatest warmth, though at hte same time the advantages he daily gained over his enmeies gave him, to all appearance, the greatest encouragement to continue the war.

Dresden is very expensive, though, even for Sir Charles, and H-W is angling for another job, to wit, Turin, at the King of Sardinia's court. Alas, Cumberland "The Butcher" wants his friend Lord Rochefort there, so Henry Fox floates the idea of H-W going to Berlin instead. He's less than keen at first. He also is involved in the final negotiatons for the Peace of Aachen/Aix-la-Chapelle that concludes the Austrian War of Succession, and consequently is regarded as good at diplomacy by an admiring Walpole.



Horace Walpole, Lady Mary hater, notable Richard III defender and as "Courtiers" told me bff with Molly Lepell, Lady Hervey, in her later life, was a big fan of the guy, almost in Poniatowski proportions, and wrote:

Sir Charles Williams is the present ruling star of our negotions. His letters are as much admired as ever his verses were. He has met the Ministers of the two angry Empresses, and pacified Russian savageness and Austrian haughtiness. He is to teach the Monarch of Prussia to fetch and carry, unless they happen to treat in iamibcs, or begin to settle the lmits of Parnassus instead of those of Silesia.

....Yeah. No prizes for guessing this won't happen. Good lord, Brits.

It took eons before Fritz ever received hiim, but in the meantime, he met the rest of the envoys and the entire royal family. One big immediate problem was that there were a lot of Jacobites around, not just both brothers Keith but also the current French Ambassador, Lord Tyrconnel, who was an Irishman who due to siding with Team Stuart had gotten his father's estates forfeit.

A heavy man. Those that know him say he has sense, but he is very new in business and, I believe, ignorant of our trade. The false title he assumes, and which his wife is very fond of, makes it almost impossible for us to converse together.

(H-W at this point still did not speak any German - though he employed a secretary from Hannover who did -, and was still working on his French, so you'd think English speaking expatriates would be good know, but not if they're Jacobites.)

He meets both Queens, SD and EC, and thinks EC looks like her brother the Duke of Brunswick (Charlotte's husband) and still has a fine figure. SD, as G2's sister, welcomes him warmer than anyone else, but he's not much impressed by her and later will say so in greater detail. Otoh, he does take a shine to Amalie (still living with Mom): Handsome and more agreeable than anything I have seen in Berlin." (The biographer here adds a footnote saying this description of Amalie conflicts with the one given by Newcastle writing to Titley in Copenhagen of Amalie that: "I am informed this princess is disagreeable in her person, ill-natur'd, proud, and wiht all these qualities a coquette." (Lehndorff, of course, could tell you that both descriptions are true - see his own various takes on Amalie - , Williams, but as your later letter on EC will show, you don't notice Lehndorff exists.)

While visiting SD, H-W is also presented to AW and wife Luise.
AW: He speaks with great modesty and sweetness. But as on the one side he has not the parts or the quickness of the King, so on the other he has not that contempteous insolence with which H(is) P(russian) M(ajesty) speaks to everyone.

SD: The Queen-Mother talked a great deal to me about England, about hte late King, about religion and about everything in the world; and at last told me she was afraid I should think her a great talker, which I answered by telling her two great lies at once. The one was that I did not think so at all; the other was that I was charmed whenever I heard her open her mouth. H.M. repied that my conversation was so agreeable to her that she did not know how to rise from table. With these compliments we finished the supper.

Luise he likes. Surely two such amiable Princesses as she and the Queen deserve a better fate, for the P(rince) of P(russia) likes every woman better than his wife.

Can't argue with you there, Charles Hanbury-Williams.

Count Finckenstein, who during this time is appointed Deputy-Minister for Foreign Affairs and will be the one whom Fritz during his one week breakdown will together with Heinrich entrust the Kingdom to in the 7 Years War: He has very much the air of a French petit maitre manqué, and is extremely affected in everything he says and does. (...) Count Fink, as everybody called him, is very like the late Lord Hervey, and yet his face is the ugliest I ever saw.



The highlight and most consequential event for H-W is of course meeting young Poniatowski, but he doesn't know that yet. As many an envoy, he collects anecdotes, like when he meets a Madame Brandt, former mistress of the Elector of Cologne (cahn: the Elector of Cologne by necessity is always a Prince Bishop - MT's youngest son will get that title later this century). Her clerical boyfriend had given her quite a lot of jewelry:

When she came back to Berlin laden with these bijoux she was stopped at the gates; and the CustomHouse officers insisted she should pay duty for them, upon which she presented a ptetition to the late King, to beg H.M. to remit that duty. The King debated the matter at his Tabacgie, and after almost all the hard-hearted company had declared against the lady, the King said that they ought to consider that what was proposed to be taxed had been earned by the sweat of the lady's own body, and that what was gained in that manner ought to be exempt from all duty. He therefore ordered that the lady should have her good sdelivered back duty free.

ZOMG. What has gotten into you, FW? This sounds more like a Fritzian than like a FW act. FW avoidingn the chance to make cash and call someone a whore?

mildred_of_midgard: ?! The guy who made Ariane's mother pay for her illegitimate children?

Okay, I was looking her up to see if maybe this was actually Fritz and something got confused, and two things:

1. Remember when we had the great debate over who helped Fritz with the alleged STD treatment? At least one author (no source given, of course), claims it was Suhm!

[ETA: Found our debate! I thought we had discussed Suhm as a candidate, but couldn't remember. Looks like we left him as a possibility, but not the most likely one. Since I don't consider this book super accurate anyway, just based on skimming the Madame Brandt section, I'm not taking it as evidence that this either happened (Zimmermann as the source!) or that Suhm was involved...but I really really want to know what the source is for Suhm's involvement!]

2. Check it out, Selena: https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/ostwaldh/galante/chap011.html

According to that author, Luise von Brandt was at Rheinsberg and Fritz really liked her, although not as much as she liked him (she wanted to seduce him, his admiration was platonic). They had corresponded since 1736. She corresponded with Voltaire and Fritz wrote about her to Voltaire. In summer 1738, she had an affair with the Elector of Cologne, who was supposed to have given her a bunch of jewels upon her departure.

It was she who he chose to restore the good reputation of the fair sex frequenting Rheinsberg when a female member of the Prussian court society, perhaps Frau von Wrech, sent Voltaire an "incomprehensible epistle" in the spring of 1738 which, was, in the words of the Crown Prince, "a masterpiece of extravagance," and whose style showed only too clearly that the authoress, "a heroic Don Quixote in aesthetic terms," was on rather tight terms with common sense. "Please don't judge all our ladies by that rehearsal," Friedrich wrote to his poet friend at the time. 'On the contrary, be sure that there are some among them whose wit and face would not strike you as damnable. I must expressly say a few words in their favour, for they add an unspeakable charm to social intercourse; they are, completely disregarding gallantry, an indispensable necessity of social life, and without them all conversation comes to an end.”

Do you remember a Luise von Brandt from Fritz's correspondence with Voltaire? Or from anything else? Her name rings a bell, but not in a Rheinsberg context...

Huh, okay, looking in Trier, I do see Fritz saying that Madame de Brandt had written to Voltaire in June 1738 and Fritz was dying to know what Voltaire had written back.

My curiosity is very great to know what you will have replied to Madame de Brandt; all I know is that there are lines contained in your reply; please let me know.

And yeah, here's a September 1738 letter from Fritz to Camas, praising her:

I have just received your letter with the unintelligible epistle of our very obscure beautiful spirit. In truth, it is a masterpiece of extravagance, and I had difficulty in imagining that the lady whom you name me is the author of it. She goes to look for Voltaire two hundred leagues from her to spout paradoxes and a contradictory portrait of her person. Her comrade would certainly have acquitted herself better; she writes nicely, and without all that affectation and rigmarole of our new fine spirit. Madame de Brandt has a talent for expressing herself gracefully. You notice very well the conformity of the painted complexion of the Frenchwomen and the adulterated taste of our Germans. I wish we could barter happily one for the other; we would definitely win.

To Wilhelmine, about Madame de Brandt's husband, apparently, in February 1738:

M. de Brandt has just arrived; he is one of our gang, so that, with his help, we can begin new tragedies.

Oh, and Preuss says to see Other Seckendorff, so here goes. From 1736:

14th. The Devil tells me that yesterday the wife of Chamberlain Brand confided in him of her passion for the Prince Royal and of the two letters he had written to her by La Morian, to which they would kindly respond in a way that struck a chord with him. little more than gratitude. The Devil undertakes to correct the draft of her answer, she sends it to him, he turns it in his own way, with which she is charmed and sends it off. The aim of La Brand is to grant the last favor to the Prince Royal so that he may bring Prince Henry to marry his sister the Kamecke. The Devil tells him, that the last will never arrive &c.

Two pages later,

The Devil shows me the continuation of his correspondence with La Brand, who is at present at Cunnersdorf. She ingenuously confesses to him all her intrigue with Junior, which so far has come to nothing.

Huh!

So I'm supposed to believe that FW gave a notoriously sex-positive woman, whom Fritz liked, a pass on giving him money and on being called a whore? 

selenak: IKR? I was boggled. But otoh, the phrasing doesn't make it clear whether H-W heard this from Madame Brandt herself. He describes meeting her, that she's witty and hot, and then he says "there is this story...", but that could also mean he heard it from someone else.

Back to H-W's Prussian adventures.


As Newcastle has instructed H-W to avoid George Keith, Earl Marischal, HW when George Keith introduces himself while they're at the same social occasion is very cold and put on a sullen dignity and eat my pudding, and held my tongue.

Otoh, when he finds himself at a gathering with James Keith and James' Finnish mistress Eva, he ends up drinking with both of them until two in the morning. Another Scot called Hume "of very suspicious principles" shares gossip about the Brothers Keith with H-W:

Hume told Sir Charles that the Prince of Wales was an intmate correspondence with the King of Prussia, and that he had promised to assist the Earl Marischal, when he came to the throne. The two brothers, he hadded, had formerly lived together, but had quarrelled through the idiosyncrasies of their respective mistresses. Consequently, the Earl Mrischal, whose lady was 'a Turk unbaptised', had moved to another house.

(Sidenote: It's news to me Fritz and Fritz of Wales exchanged letters. Also, the only Turkish lady I'm aware of was the one whom James had rescued as a girl and whom George then took as his ward after James' death and whom Boswell met during his mid 1760s journey. Methinks Hume fleeced H-W for false gossip.)

When Fritz finally returns from Silesia, H-W meets him at a levée or rather intends to, because Fritz doesn't bother to come as far as the room where H-W stands. (The biographer is as indignant as H-W.) But Voltaire is here, and H-W decides that since he, too, is a poet, he might as well call upon V. Before meeting him, H-W had reported the following gossip about Voltaire to Newcastle:

About four days ago, Mr. Voltaire, the French poet, arrived at Potsdam from Paris. The King of Prussia had wrote to him about htree months ago to desire him to come to Berlin. Mr. Voltaire answered His Prussian Majesty, that he would always be glad of an oppportunity of throwing himself at His Majesty's feet, but at that time he was not in circumstances to take so long a journey; upon which the King of Prussia sent him back word he would bear his expenses. But Mr. Voltaire, not caring to trust the King of Prussia, would not leave Paris till His Prussian Majesty had sent him a bill of exchange upon a banker in that town for 4,000 Reichstaler, and he did not begin the journey till he had actually received the money. All that I now write your Grace was told me by the Princess Amalie.

So H-W invites himself over at Voltaire's

Found out by that vain, talkative Frenchman the reason why the King of Prussia had been so generous to him; for his has given hm the gold key of Chamberlain, the Order of Merit, and 5, 000 Taler per annum for life, two of which are to revert to a niece of his after he dies, for her life. This poet's chief business is to correct, and in some places totally alter, the King of Prussia's miscellaneous poems, which he has lately printed under the following title, Ouevres melées du Philosophe de Sans Souci, and his vanity could not help showing them to me. The works are printed with the largest margin I ever saw; and that margin in some polaces is filled up entirely with Voltaire's own handwriting. He gave me his new tragedy of Catiline to read.

H-W is also present at the performance where Voltaire plays Cicero, Heinrich plays Catiliine and Ferdinand and Amalie play minor roles, but says no one other than Voltaire could act. (Ouch.) When Henry Fox sends H-W a copy of "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" by Gray, H-W shows this work of English poetry to Voltaire, and gets a letter from Voltaire back written in English, which among other things shows Voltaire's still great fluency in English:

Sir, I return you with many thanks the gloomy but noble copy of verse you was pleased to lend me for some days. I think a Muse would be better inspired in your house than in a churchyard, and your conversation would be more useful to me than the prose and the poetry of all your priests. Pray, Sir, do not forget me, when you write to my Lord Chesterfield and to Mr. Forx; and tell my Lord Chesterfield that King Frederic writes in another way than King James. He is not so great a Divine, but, by God, he is every way a better scholar.

That's James VI and I. of Scotland and England Voltaire is referring to, and his book on hunting witches. 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".


About the rest of the Sanssouci Round Table, H-W writes to Lord Chesterfield (he of the famous Letters to his Son, ancestor of Zeithain's fictional narrator and married to Katte's supposed one time crush Petronella:

There are at present but two sorts of inhabitants in this town, soldiers and wits. The first of htese bodys, consisting of fourteen thousand, is too great to send you a list of their names. But the latter, which is made up of the choice and master spirits of the age, is as follows. The King, Rex idem et Vates, Voltaire, Maupertuis, Algarotti, D'Argens, D'Arget, D'Arnoud, La Mettrie and Pöllnitz. These are the nine he-Muses that adorn this German Parnassus, for no female is allowed to approach this court. Males wash the linen, nurse the children, make and unmake the beds. I may, more at my leisure, send you the historical anecdotes of all the above-mentioned geniuses, the various intrigues they form, the lies they tell, the villainies they commit, the verses they make and deny afterwards, and those they own though they did not make them. I hope it will prove amusing to you, becuase I can't imagine any more entertaining than a faithful narration of the civil wars of nine jealous wits.

Chesterfield replies: Of your nine male Muses, I know but two personally, Voltaire, who is undoubtedly a poet, though one would hardly think so by the bargain he has made for himself, than which Peter Walters or Lord Bath could not have made better. The other is my friend Algarotti, whom you and I both knew here many years ago as a led wit of the late Lord Hervey's, but whom I always considered as having but just parts and reading enough to make him a consummate coxcomb. What I have read of Marquis d'ARgens is below mediocrity, as what I have read of La Metrie is below either wit or philosophy. (...) Voltaire and Maupertuis, by what littlet I know of the latter, will, I think, be your chief companions. Voltaire has certainly parts and genius, Maupertuis has certainly knowledge.

Yeah, no. H-W meets all of the gang only rarely, though Voltaire when things with Fritz go south is just nice enough as to secure himself a possible British getaway, though H-W leaves first in the end. Writes the biographer:

Of Pöllnitz; "that worst of authors', Sir Charlers aid that he had written stupid Memoirs and had changes his relgion seven times. With Algarotti, however, he was soon on good terms. They had mutual friends to talk of, to wit, Fox and Chesterfield. 'My compliments to Voltaire,' wrote Fox on December 9. 'I knew Algarotti too when he was in England and liked him, though I never thought his parts comparable to the others. But indeed I can form no good judgment of him, for I never saw him but in Lord Hervey's company, which was as a false light to a picture, his Lordship's affection mix'd so with and gave such a clour to all conversation that he joined in.

Wilhelmine visits, and thus we get a H-W written portrait of her:



She is a lady above playing at cards, qu ne fait point de noeuds, detests all rural amusements, has got the better of all human fashions except that of doing mischief, loves metaphysics and hates ... - there is a Bitch Royal for you. Besides all this, she is an atheist, and talks about fate and destiny and makes jokes of a future state. She peaks of dying as of going to dinner, and says, if she was condemned to die the next day, she would not sleep a bit the worse for it. She wishes very much she could look into futurity and read the Book of Fate. She thinks all time lost that is not spent with books, or with such people as she has heard other people say are learned. She looks upon beauty as a thing which does not tend to make people agreeable; but says that wit and good sense are all we ought to admire in them; that they are never quite perfect unless they are learned; and that she may be in that number she passes her whole time between conversing with her brother's beaux esprits and writing volumes with her own hands, and being read to, for as she has weak eyes, she cannot read herself anymore. I am told that is very amusing to hear books of metaphysics read to her by her Maids of Honour, and French poetry by her German pages, so that those who read do not understand one word of what they are reading. But she that is read to pretends to be mightily edified by the lecture. She has a most sovereign contempt for her husband, who is a very good sort of Prince, but much addicted to those passions which brutes enjoy equally with man, but who knows nothing of Descartes or Sir Isaac Newton: and as she cannot bear such low company, she won't return to Bayreuth, but pretends to be sick, in order to stay at Berlin to converse with the master spirits of the age. At supper conversation never stood still for the 20th part of a second. H.R.H's conversation exceeded any comedy of Molière. I never met witha woman so learnedly ignorant or so seriously foolish in all my life. She went to bed at 11 o'clock; and I came home laughing all the way in the coach by myself.

(A footnote paraphrases another remark of H-W on Wilhelmine where he says she pretends to be able to write books, but of course someone like her never could, it's all pretense and wannabe intellectualism. One wonders what he'd think about the fact his poetry is forgotten while her trashy memoirs are still in print...)

First time I hear of "contempt for her husband", or Wilhelmine being unable to read anymore. The rest isn't that different from Lehndorff's description during the same visit, though with considerably more malice. No idea what ... - mean, whether this is biographer censorship or H-W himself. So instead of making firmer friends and gaining useful contacts, H-W finds himself ever more distanced from the people he did meet (I wonder why...) and his reports get accordingly more bitchy:

Nothing can make a worse figure than I do at this court. Shun'd and avoided by everybody; most people having orders not to visit me; the common civilities that are paid to other Ministers not paid to me. Hardly a house that dares to let me in, look'd upon as a dangerous spy and an enemy to HIs Prussian Majesty's views, and treated accordingly.

And now for the big letterly explosion. Our biographer tells us this rant on why Fritz sucks, sucks, sucks, is so "outspoken as to be partly unpublishable", because clearly he agrees with Georg Schnath on the tender sensibilities of 1920s readers. Still, what we get is:



Now for a little about the completest Tyrant that God ever sent for a scourge to an offending people. I had rather be a post horse, with Sir J. Hind-Cotton on my back, than his First Minister, or his brother, or his wife. He has abolished all distinctions. There is nothng here but an absolute Prince and a People, all equally miserable, all equally trembling before him, and all equally destesting his iron governoment. There is not so much dstance between your footman and you, or between an English soldier and his captian, or between a curate and a Bishop, as there is between the King of Prussia and his immediate successor, the Prince of Prussia, who dares not go out of Berlin one mile without his Tyrant's leave, nor miss supping every night wiht his Mamma upon any account. Another of his brothers is at this moment sent into banishment to a country town; and the third is in frequent danger of being put in irons, for daring in conversation sometimes to have an opinion of his own. It is knokwn that Princess Amalie has a mind to be married to the Duke of Deux Ponts. But he, Nero, told her the other day, that shemust never marry. And his reason is that she is to be the Abbess of Quedlinburg, which is worth about 5000 pounds per annum. He will have her spend that money in Berlin. Besides that, he does not care to pay her her fortune, which is not quite 20,000. He does not even allow her the interest of it, but gives her, to find herself in everything, 340 per annum, and not a shilling more. He serves his brothers in the same manner. The Prince has 20,000 per annum; but the King thinks that is too much, though he has a wife and two sons, and t herefore allows him but 10,00 per annum.

He makes a great rout with his Mother; but people that know him well, know he does not love her, and that the duty he has accustomed himself to pay her makes Berlin disagreeable to him; and therefore it is that he resides so much in Potsdam. All the outward show of respect to his Mother is a homage that he pays to himself through the belly that bore him. She is an old gossip, with all the tittle-tattle of that sort of people, and she is reckoned to have a large share of ill nature.

One would think that the wretched life that the King and Queen-Mother led under the late King of Prussia's reign (for he used one like a dserter in everything but shooting him, and the other like a kitchen wench), would have taught them humanity. Instead of which, they seem only to have learnt the art of making those under them as miserable now as they themselves were formerly.

The least that passes in a private family must undergo the royal inspection. And he keeps several persons at Berlin, who daily write him journals of all that passes there, and send them to Postdam. And at the head of this tribe of newswriters is Her Sacred Majesty, the Queen-Mother.

Children here are literally born to slavery; for they are marked at their birth, and the parents are obliged to produce certificates of their deaths or the children (I mean male ones, for he has nothing of any sort to do with female ones), at foruteen years of age, in order to be made soldiers.

No man can sell an estate, marry a child, go out of the country or go out of his town, without special leave; not even Count Podewils himself, who mast have special permission from the King every tme he goes to his own country house. (...)

The thing His Prussian Majesty has in the greatest abhorrence is matrimony. No man, however great a favourite, must think of it. If he does, he is certain never to be preferred.

There are many persons in this country in want, by being obliged to pay money that they raised for the King while Prince Royal, and which he hever has repayed them. The wretched Queen, his wife, is in the number. He allows her about six thousand pounds a year to keep her court, out of which she is obliged to pay her whole establishment, her table, her stables, and five hundred pounds a year interest for money that she borrowed for him while Prince, at the time when no one would lend him a halfpenny. It is amelancholy sight to see this Queen. She is a good woman, and must have been extremely handsome. It is impossible to hate her; and though his unnatural tastes won't let him live with her, common humanity ought to teach him to permit her to enjoy her esparate state in comfort. Instead of this, he never misses an ooportunity of mortifying this inoffensive, oppressed Queen. And the Queen-Mothe assists her dearly beloved son in this, to the utmost of her power, by never showing her common civility, or ever hardly speaking to her.

But it is not only matrimony that His Prussian Majesty has an eversion to. He hates in general to see people happy. For his sway is founded on vexation, and in oppression is his throne established. HIs inhmanity extends to the dsturbing happy lovers. The Empress' late Minister here had for some time been well with a most amiable lady of this place. Upon the Tyrant's hearing of this, he sent her am essage to forbid her seeing her lover any more. (...) (H-W complaints that Berlin has no social life since he never gets invited anywhere anymore.)

The one place that is open is the courts of the two Queens. If you go to the Queen-Mother, you are asked to supper and seated over against Her Inquisitive Majesty, who puts you to the question all supper-time. If you go to the Queen-Consort, there is nobody there but four stiff-rump ladies that are invited to play with the Queen, and half a dozen maids of honour. (Like I said, H-W evidently did not notice Lehndorff's existence.) Their two Majesties vye with one another who shall have the handsomest maids, in order to fill their court the better by it. There is a little decency kept up at the Queen--Consort's, but the Prussian Nero himself says that, 'La Cour de ma Mère est le Bordell de mes frères,' and the pretty Princess Amalie, being forbid to marry, begins to be of the maids of honour party...

This outburst comes shortly before H-W and Prussia are finally put out of each other's misery and he gets transferred. I find the whole rant fascinating in its mixture of good points and complete inaccuracies. Also, want to take any bets that he had a crush on Amalie and that she must have vented at him at least once about Fritz not paying her her dowry? ((Ulrike had the same problem, she is still trying to get AW to get Fritz to pay her remaining dowry in the mid 1750s) I guess the brother banished to a provincial town is Ferdinand getting Fritz' old post at Ruppin, and the brother daring to have his own opinion now and then is Heinrich. EC providing Fritz with money directly is news to me, though I think I recall she begged for him with FW more than once. And of course it's very much not true he didn't pay his (monetary) debts back, or that no one else would lend him money. (All those volumes of the Life of Prince Eugene...) But anyway, you can see why C-W was prized by those who liked him like Catherine and Poniatowski as raconteur full of humor whle those who couldn't stand him (tout Berlin, by the end) thought he was a self important self obsessed prick. Useful for "no one but Voltaire ever accused Fritz of being gay" people: H-W writing about Fritz' "unnatural tastes". Though I have to say, coming from a man who wrote the following lines, which you definitely won't find quoted in this biography, it's a case of pot and kettle:

Come to my Breast, my Lovely Boy!
Thou Source of Greek & Roman Joy!
And let my Arms entwine 'ye;
Behold my strong erected Tarse,
Display your plump, & milk-white Arse,
Young, blooming, Ligurine!

Otoh, his sympathy for EC and Luise is symphathetic, though again, given how he treated his own wife, pot, kettle.



Now, you may have wondered why I didn't include any Poniatowski relevant quote in the Prussian post. It's because all the quotes regarding the H-W/Williams relationship save for some very late letter near the end of H-W's time in Russia and one single comment by one of his daughters come from Poniatowiski's own memoirs, which frustrated me - I mean, not that the quotes aren't good, but I was hoping to find out how Williams saw the developing relationship without the virtue of hindsight. (The late quote where he does say how he feels for P is quite moving, though.) Also I have already done a write up of Poniatowski's memoirs.

After his less than glorious departure from Berlin, H-W has the additional trouble of his oldest daughter Fanny's marriage to be arranged to his satisfaction, and his younger daughter Charlotte scandalizing her mother by reading Tom Jones. As mentioned, upon meeting young Essex he's first a bit sceptical because the fellow doesn't mention his daughter a lot, and is Team Love Match. Otoh, once he realizes Fanny does want the Essex guy, he sets himself to mentoring him.

Our country is the country of Liberty. We have restraint of all sorts, an dpersons of the first rank will not permit those of inferior classes to enjoy ease beyond them in anything. And as persons of small fortunes that have no equipages, walk out in a morning wihtout any attendances, those of higer station have imagined that tis more easy and agreeable to walk out unattended than attended; and as people of fashion are generall known in London streets, they don't lose their dignity by such proceedings. But this is not to be done in foreign countries, where you are known and considered but by the exterir figure that you make. In those countries we are but birds of passage. Every Englishman of rank must keep up the outward show, or he will hardly meet with outward civility. And should a man of quality in Italy see you walking in the streets without a footman, it would not be an easy matter to persuade him afterwards that you was really the Earl of Essex.


After a brief second Saxon interlude, H-W gets posted to Vienna because London is under the impression the current envoy, Robert Keith, isn't tough enough on MT. As mentioned elsewhere, H-W was that rarity, an envoy who succeeded in making himself unpopular in Vienna and Berlin to the same degree. As with Fritz, he came with an already formed opinion, slightly revised it upon being received by FS & MT (as opposed to Fritz, they received him quickly), and then went back into critique.




Of course, he had the problem that just when he was in Vienna (after his time in Berlin), Kaunitz was coming back from Versailles with a great idea which no one told Sir Charles about for obvious reasons. Also, the Brits were absolutely convinced MT owed them her survival and her throne back in Silesia 1 and never ceased to be amazed that she wasn't properly grateful. The conflict du jour was about the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium), which the Maritime Powers (England and Holland) wanted to make sure Austria did not profit trade wise from, which was one reason why the Team Habsburg tried to get rid of them again for decades if they didn't try to find their way around the Brits. But while this, and H-W lecturing MT, was one reason for the way things went south, another was the undercurrent of Britain never stopping thinking MT owed them for being her ally in Silesia 1 & 2. (Which undoubtedly helped, but I think the Hungarians would like a word as to how crucial that support was.) One big difference to how things went in Berlin was that H-W was actually personally taken with MT and even wrote a romantic poem.

So, what he thought before being received, based on meeting other courtiers:

That Court is, as it has always been, intolerable. My suspicions of those that advise there go very far. They pay no court but to their enemies, and all their opposition is to their friends. They are too weak and too poor to do anything for themselves and too proud to let others do it for them. (...) The Emperor is the most covetous man upon earth. He is very rich, and lends his money out upon interest. But he will have good security, even of his wife, to whom he won't lend a thousand pounds wihtout a pawn, nor then thousand without a mortgage.

Another misunderstanding was that through all those years, Britain thought it had the solution for all Continental troubles: in exchange for voting for Joseph as King of the Romans and thus FS' designated succcessor as Emperor, MT should give the Electors what they want. MT, of course, had other ideas - Joseph getting elected wasn't worth most of this bunch wanted to have, and Britain kept overestimating how eager Team Austria was for that election. (In the end, Joseph wouldn't get elected until after the end of the 7 Years War.)

When H-W meets the Imperial couple, he modifies his opinion to:

Their Imperial Majesties were extremely gracious to me in the audiences which I had of them, and all their Ministers give me great dinners one after another, and show me numberless marks of distinction.

As opposed to Team Prussia, of course. Also, there are hot women, and H-W lists a couple (Princess Liechtenstein, Princess Kinsky and Countess Clary), and if those names sound vaguely familiar, they should - looks like H-W was either into the mothers-in-law or into Joseph's Circle of Five ladies themselves. However, as with Dresden, he's disappointed that partying beyond 10 pm is only done in private houses. And he writes on the MT: hot or not? question.

The manner of living here is agreeeable enough, and would be more so, if there was a supper to be had int he whole town. But all societies disperse at ten o'clock, and everybody retires to his own house at that time. I think there are as many handsome women here as ever I saw. There is a Countess Clary, that is as beautiful and amiable as Nature can form a woman. The Empress herself is what she represents, and has, as Milton says, "in every action, dignity and grace'. She speaks well, and has a peculiar sweetness in her voice; and I was enchanted in all she said to me in my first audience.
So far, so promising. H-W writes a poem of which only two verses survive as they are quoted in someone else's letter:

O Regina orbis prima et pulcherima! ridens
Es Venus, incedens Juno, Minerva loquens.

But alas, all that charm can't disguise she doesn't listen to him/King George. So now we get H-W's revised opinion on the Imperial Couple, which actually is a pretty good portrait for the most part. Scholarly footnote: "Etiquette of the House of Burgundy" - the famous Spanish Etiquette. Had its origin, as H-W correctly says, in Burgundy, and thus child! Charles V HRE was raised with it, and imported it to Spain, where it calcified, and where MT's Dad picked it up again in his unsuccessful attempt to become King of Spain centuries later.)

HIs Imperial Majesty seems to me more formed for what he was born to than for what Fortune has since thrown in his way. Nature designed him to be Duke of Lorraine, but never to be Emperor. His honours sit awkwardly upon hm, and he is visibly uneasy under his dignities. The Etiquet of the House of Burgundy is the thing in the world the most contrary to his dispositions. He suffers in all proceedings and ceremonials of which the court abounds, but he is happy when he gets privately out of the Palace, to walk on the ramparts with his sister or some of his companions without any attendance, and I think also his talents are more suited to a private life than to that high station in which he is placed.
From all the political discourse I have had with him, I am convinced that hemeans perfectly well. France is as odious to him as Prussia is to the Empress-Queen, and he seems to have just sentiments of the necessirty of preserving the strictest friendship with the King. (I.e. G2)
I endeavoured by every method I could think of to find what share the Emperor really had in the management of affairs, and though I discovered that every thing was communicated to him and nothng hid from him by the Empress' special command, and though I am persuaded that Her Imperial Majesty would take it extremely ill of any Minister who should attempt to keep a secret from the Emperor, yet I am equally convinced that the Emperor's opinion has not the greatest weight at the court in affairs of concern, but that the Empress does govern, and govern solely. (...) The Empress will be supreme in her vast territories. (...)
I now come to the Empress-Queen. Her person was made to wear a crown, and her mind to give lustre to it. Her countenance is filled with sense, spirit and sweetness, and all her motions accompany'd with grace and dignity. She is a peson of superior talents, great application to business, and strong passions, which she does not seem to wish to disguise, and which are very sibile in the frequent changes of her countenance. Had her education been suited to her situation and to the part that was designed for her to act upont he Theater of Europe, or had she at her Father's death fallen into the hands of able and honest Ministers, she would have made as great a figure as Elizabeth of England or Isabel of Castile. But during the life of Charles the Sixth she was carefully kept ignorant of all publick affairs. That Emperor took all hte paints imaginable to producre her the succession of great kingdoms and provinces, and at the same time did all that in him lay to render her incapable to govern them.

H-W goes on to blame Count Bartenstein as the worst of ministers who is leading poor, well intentioned MT astray from the path Britain wants her to tread. Bartenstein does this by the dastardly method of sending her all the papers and dispatches instead of letting someone write summaries for the poor, misguided woman.

No extracts, no abridgements were ever made, to save her eyes or her time. But as the Empress's application to business is very great, she read every paper that she received, which took up so much time that she had but very little left oconsider them; and so in the end was always governed by Bartenstein's advice, the effects of which your Grace has but too melancholy proofs of.

But wait! There's this new guy Kaunitz, back from France, looking to replace hateful Bartenstein! Surely this will make MT see the light of how to follow British policies...

It was not difficult to perceive in the conversations which I had the hnour of having with Her Imperial Majesty, that her intentions are to live in the strictest union with the King. But I had the misfortune often to differ with Her Imperial Majesty about the means of cementing that union. Her jealousy of being governed broke out very often, and particularly in the whole story of the Maritime Powers having signed the Preliminaries at Aix without her. Upon this I took the liberty to talk with great freedom to Her Iimperial MJajesty. I recapitulated int eh strongeest manner the many obligations she had to the King, and concluded what I had to say by tellling Her Imperial Majesty, that I believed she was the only person leftin Europe who was not of opinion that the signing those Preliminaries had been the salvation of the House of Austria. (...)
The Empress-Queen was warmed by what I had said, and seemed to take it very ill. But I could not depart from what I was convinced was true. Your grace had ordered me to talk with freedom; and I did so.
Our conversation was still more animated upon the aiffair of the Barrier. As I am convinced that till that point is settled the connection between the House of Austria and the Maritime Powers is but precarious, I was resolved to do my utmost to persuaide Her Imperial Majesty of the necessity of her giving the Maritime Powers satisfaction upo9n that head, and of the injustice with which they had been treated. This I did with a decent freedom. But I am sorry to say I found Her Imperial Majesty so prejudiced in this affair, that reason had very little share in all she said. The notion of being the independent sovereign of the Low Countries is so fixed in her, that it will be difficult to redadicate it. I took the liberty to tell Her Majesty in so many words, that she was far from being the independent sovereign of the Low Countries, that she was lmited by her treaties with the Martime Powers, which I hoped for the future would no more be violated. This Her Imperial Majesty seemed also to take very ill, and insisted loudly, so loudly that the people in the next room heard her, that she was the Sovereign of the Low Countries, and that it was her duty to project her subjects who had been too long oppressed by the Barrier Treaty and deprived of the natural priviileges which all other nations enjoy.

MT isn't done yet:

To England, by the alteration of the old tarriff, to which we have an undoubted right till a new Treaty of Commercie is made and a new tariff settled. To Holland, the non-payment of the subsidy, to which they are justly entitled, and without which they will not be able to maintain their 12, 000 men in the Low Countries.
To this Her Imperial Majesty said that we had not complied with the obligation of the Treaty ofBarrier, that a new treaty and tariff ought o have been made a great while ago, and that it was hig time for her to think of encouraging the trade and manufacturers of her subjects in the Netherlands. That the Barrier towns had been so ill defended in the late war and wer at present in so miseralbe a condition that it was very unsafe to trust the defence of the Netherlands to such precarious aid, and that therefore she was resolved to keep up so large a body of troops in Flanders as should prevent France from over-running that country at pleasure, and that, to enable her to keep up that great body of troops, she could not pretend to continue the full payment of the Dutch subsidy.(...)
I again repeat to your Grace that I think the Empress-Queen a person of superior parts and of strong passions, born to govern, but wishing to extend that government over her Allies as well as her own subjects.

So no, that diplomatic posting isn't a roaring success, either. Exit Charles Hanbury-Williams. Russia awaits!



While this is going on, our old friend Melchior Guy Dickens is English envoy in Russia, and in late 1752, he commits a diplomatic blunder by misinterpreting/misrepresenting one of the treaties H-W has negotiated.

He announced that England was willing to subscribe to a Declaration, which it was suggested should be made by the Czarina if Austria and England would join with her in it, promising to defend the King of Poland, in case he should be set on by Prussia. No such obligation in effect existed, as far as England was concerned, unless Augustus was directly attacked for making the treaty in question - almost an impossibility under the circumstances; and Dickesn was taken to task accordingly.

This meant Guy Dickens lost cred with Elizaveta, though, and was major reason why he had to be replaced as envoy. When H-W heads off to Russia, he thinks he will there accomplish his political masterpiece; a treaty between England and Russia to totally confine Prussia and tame Russa, and ensure the Austrians don't get too haughty. Speaking of haughty women, here's H-W offering advice to his daughter Fanny on how to be a proper wife:

Remenber a nother rule, an unerring one, which I have often in discourse given you, and hwich is, that no married woman ought to pretend to make a figure or shine but through her husband. His rising must drwa you up after him; your imagining to make a separate figure may hurt him, and will infallibly sink you. Tis from facts that I could mention that I learnt this rule, facts that I could tell you; and depend upon it the maxim is right. I have known wives who thought it clever to be able to set their husbands right when they thought them in the wrong, and this in a room full of company; and who, when they have got the better in an argument, imagined that they had gained a victory. But believe me, Fanny, such gains are losses. The really sensible woman will take the contrary part and assist her husband to her utmost, even when he has the worst of the argument; such a conduct gains confindence and affection. And that you may ever continue in Lord Essex' confidence as well as effection shall be my constant prayer, wish and endeavour.

By the rules of their society, he's not wrong, though I find it hilarious that the young woman whose Suhm he's going to become is just about the least person who can ever be described as shining through her husband.



Now, the Catherine/Charles Hanbury-Williams correspondence is preserved because while he returned every one of her letters to her after reading it with the reply mail so she could destroy it (if these letters had been intercepted, she'd been in so much trouble with Elizaveta and Peter!), he had it copied, as he did all his outgoing letters. (A sound believer in diplomatic immunity, Sir Charles.) When I say he becomes Catherine's Suhm, I speak advisedly. The affection in the letters, the "you're so great/You're so wonderful" is similar, he helps her out with money, and of course Catherine does need an older confidant. (She had a good relationship with her father as opposed to Fritz, but her father is dead, her relationship with her mother was terrible, and with the Czarina it's always a tightrope balance. And she's just delivered Paul, whom Elizaveta took immediately.) Now, given H-W's track record, the question has apparantly arisen as to why he doesn't go for an affair instead of the affectionate mentor relationship and instead introduces her to Poniatowski. Our author(s) defend him against the charge of having lobbied to have Poniatowski (a non-Brit, non-Hannoverian) appointed as his latest secretary and thus bringing him to Russia just when he realizes the relationship between Catherine and Saltykov (her first lover) is over for good, and say he'd never pimp, it was from the affection of his heart and also Poniatowski needed something to do. Now I don't doubt H-W cared for both Catherine and Poniatowski, but I also think since he was still compos mentis, he was very aware what it would do both to his personal relationship with Catherine and to his grand England/Russia treaty project if he infected her with syphilis as he'd done his wife.

so, here's H-W's reporting to Holdernesse on Catherine (and her husband): I often have conversation with the Grand-Duchess for two hours together, as my rank places me at supper always next to her Imperial HIghness, and almost from the beginning of my being here she has treated me with confidence, and sent me word by the Great Chancellor that he would do so. Since her coming into the country, she has by every method in her power endeavoured to gain the affection of the nation. She applied herself with diligence to learn the language, and speaks it at present (as the Russians tell me) in the greatest perfection. She has also succeeded in her other aims, for she is esteemed and beloved here to a high degree. Her person is very advantageous, and her manner very captivating. She has a great knowledge of this Empire and makes it her only study. She has parts and sense; and the Great Chancellor tells me nobody has more steadiness and resolution. (...)
AS to the Great-Duke, he is weak and violent; but his confidence in the Great-Duchess is so great, that sometimes he tells people that though he doesn ot understand things himself, yet his wife understands everything.

Catherine about meeting H-W in her memoirs: Our conversation was gay and agreeable. He had wit, was aquainted by many people, and knew Europe well, so to converse with him was no difficult matter. I learnt afterwards that he enjoyedh imself that evening as much as I did, and that he spoke of me with high praise.

Indeed he did. His bosses back in England want to know how the charming Grand Duchess talks of Fritz, since Fritz is partly responsible for her being future Czarina and her husband is such a fan. Will she, too, be a Prussian tool?

She has of late declared herself openly to me with respect to the King of Prussia. She is not only convinced that he is the formidable and natural enemy of Russia, but I find she hates him personally. She told me lately, in speaking of the Prince of Prussia, that he had not His Prussian Majesty's understanding, and, as to his head, it could not be so bad as his brother's, because the King of Prussia's was certainly the worst in the world. (Report from October 2, 1755)

Could it be Catherine tells H-W (still seething about Fritz himself) what he wants to hear? Perish the thought. (I mean, I totally believe she thought Prussia/Russia were competitors and to be wary of her husband's idol, and that AW would be a way easier monarch to deal with, but I doubt she had actual animosity towards the man she only met once and then it was a good meeting.)

H-W as you may have noticed doesn't think much of future Peter III, and our authors, with Catherine's and Poniatowski's memoirs as their sole foreign sources on H-W's time in Russia, don't, either. But even if he had a better opinion, I doubt this would have restrained him for helping out with the Catherine/Poniatowski affair which promptly unfolds. (Forwarding letters, arranging chances to meet, since Poniatowski lives with him.)



Of course, while H-W' negotiates away on the England/Russia treaty, London simultanously negotiates with Fritz for an England/Prussia treaty. Which H-W isn't told about for eons, though he perceives something might be in the air. Our authors think the treaty happened mainly because G2 was defensive of Hannover again (as Prussia promises to help if Hannover is attacked by French troops, which is ironic, as a big clause of the England/Russia treaty is the promise that Russia would help if Hannover is attacked by Prussian troops.) H-W even agrees that the Austrians as allies are more trouble than they're worth with all their haughtiness and lack of gratitude. But he knows that Elizaveta, who means this treaty to be ANTI Fritz, will not be happy to find herself indirectly in an alliance with him. No kidding. Basically, H-W's diplomatic masterpiece proves to be dead upon arrival, and it breaks his heart, and this, his biographers want you to know, is the main reason for his mental and physical decline which starts showing just about this time. That, and all the stress. Nothing else, you hear!! (They partly quote, partly paraphrase Poniatowski's description of H-W freaking out on him in a completely unprecedented way from the memoirs.) Poniatowski, btw, doesn't say "syphilis", either, he speaks of "infirmities", but he's writing about his adored mentor in his memoirs. Since Sir Charles takes to his bed more and more as the 7 Years War has started, this is when we get more and more letters and also an incident which I didn't mention in my Poniatowski write up, as H-W's young friends now are concerned for him:

The intimacy of the Grand-Duchess with Poniatowski assisted her to keep up frequent communications with Sir Charles, especially during his illness. Stanislas speaks of having begun to prove of real service to him, both in his work and in his leisure hours. He quotes an instance how one evening he was dining with the Ambassador, who was plunged into the depth of gloom at the news of the recent reverse of the British army in Minorca, the catastrophe for which Admiral Byng paid so dearly with his life. At the end of the meal, a packet was handed him from his father, enclosing Voltaire's La Pucelle, a work which the poet, for various reasons, had kept back from the world up to that time. Sir Charles's delight at this unexpected treat was intense. HIs troubles were forgotten: he became that evening the Sir Charles of by-gone days.

La Pucelle: Seriously, everyone BUT Fritz gets their hands on that work.

Poniatowski, alas, can't stay in Russia for much longer due (see P write up), and by the time he can come back, now as Envoy in his own right (for Saxony), H-W is in such a bad condition that he's about to be recalled for good. In the meantime, he has to put up with the political changed situation, and it's worth noting that all the suggestions as to whom to bribe at Elilzeveta's court so she will be pro Prussian which show up in Mitchell's reports and in Fritz' letters from 1756/1757 do come from him. But there is no portrait kissing mentioned. Definitely Not Having STD H-W consoles himself with writing to Catherine (whom he addresses in the male form for greater security, hence "Monsieur"):

What do you wish for, Monsieur, in answer to your letter? Do you wish for protestations, assurances, and even oaths, or do you prefer a frank, sincere, straightfoward answer, the advice of a humble, faithful and dsiinterested friend - in short, a continuation of my past conduct towards you?
My devotion to you, Monsieur, has no limits, save that of a higher duty. That is how the faithful Minister should speak. The private individual may speak differnetly; my services, my life, as a private individual are yours to command. These are preliminaries; an dI do not like such things.

From another letter:

One word form you is my most sacred law. When I think of you, my duty to my Master grows less. I am ready to carry out all the orders you can give me, provided they are not dangerous to you; for in that case I shall disobey with a firmness equal to the obdedience with which I would carry out all others.

And here's one which is both moving and intriguing, because it envisions a time when Catheirne is Czarina but does NOT mention Peter being Czar:

This is my castle in the air, which I built some time ago, and with which I very often amuse myself. When you are settled on the throne, if I am not there, I shall come at once. I hope that you will ask my Master for me as English Minister at your court. I should prefer to come with the rank of Ambassador in my pocket, but do not desire to produce it, because that would oblige me to keep u a station and ceremony which would weary me. I pride myself that I shall then live a great deal with you as a faihtful servant and a humble friend. I should like the right to come and go and to profit by your leisure hours: for I shall always love Catherine better than the Empress. I should ask you for the blue ribbon, in order to wear some portiojn of your livery and I should ask for your portrait, which I would carry all my life and would entail on my family, that so great an honour may continue to the last of my name. That is my ambition; do you condemn it?

It's not all emotional talk, though. In a letter trying to convince Catherine to use what influence she has to keep Elizaveta from joining MT irrevocably, he writes:

Let us examine for a moment the consequences of the war which you are about to cmmence, even if it should be successful. If the King of Prussia is conquered, and the iunion betwen France and Austria will become closer, and once the House of Brandenburg is beaten down, there will no longer by any power on the continent which will be capable of resisting that union, and which will not be forced to bow down to their will. Russia being no longer of any use to htem, will be set aside, and will have nothing forther to say in the affairs of Europe. I am afraid, too, of another result, the universal establishment of the Catholic religion, and am afraid of it with good reason. What I tell you is not a day-dream, it is a scheme, which is already prepared.

This is an impressive use of realpolitik and propaganda showing he still was able to use his faciliities (at least mostly) at this time. I mean, Austria and France going on re-Catholizing crusade together is utter nonsense, of course, but Fritz used that same claim very effectively at the same time to style himself as the Protestant hero, and both he and H-W neatly avoid mentioning very Prrostestant Sweden fighting at the side of Team Habsburg and Team Bourbon. But Catherine of course didn't have any influence (yet) on Russia's policies.



When Poniatowski comes back as Saxon envoy, he can't live with H-W anymore, and that throws a spanner into the works. Of course, he could visit when Catherine is visiting, but that would look very suspicious. Not to mention that Saxony and England are now at two different sides of the war.

Poniatowski to Catherine: I shall avoid any appearance of intercourse with La Sagesse, whom I implore you to convince of the absolute necessity of this for the good of all three of us, an din order to be able in time to become even more useful to him, a service hwich I certainly owe him from gratitude, and one which I wish from the bottom of my heart to perform. It is hard for me and very cruel to be forced to act like this, but I appeal to his honesty, and at the same time to his good sense. Both will speak for me.

Sir Charles understands, but it is hard for him. When he and P finally manage to meet, it's only after H-W's recall has been an established fact, and he needs to set up his replacement.

H-W to Catherine about P: I shall receive him as my son. I shall not speak one word to him of politics. OUr conversation will turn to you, on himself, on his family. I know beforehand that tears will come into my eyes when I embrace him. I am satisfied that he loves me, and that is enough.

H-W to P, after that last meeting: I love and adore you, as a child whom I have brought up: remember that.

Later meetings are attempted but have to be cancelled because the Russian Chancellor objects. And here's another very intriguing letter by H-W to Catherine about P:

We shall find means of communicating our thoughts to one another; and I am so certain of his devotion to me that I think only of means to help him. This is what I think about him. I flatter myself that, one day, you, Monsieur, and the King of Prussia as your lieutenant, will make him King of Poland.

The biographer(s) wonder whether H-W had the gift of prophecy or gave Catheirne this idea. I wonder whether that letter is authentic and not forged because it's so accurate. But it's farewell time now, and this is Catherine's letter to H-W, dated two days before Sir Charles leaves St. Petesburg:

Monsieur,
I am in despair at being deprived of the pleasure which I should have had in seeing and talking freely to you. Your generous friendship for me and for the Grand-Duke is unexampled. My heart is scarred by the hearsh treatment which you have received; but my deepest gratitude will be for ever yours. May happier times allow me to prove its full extent! It is equal (and that is all that can be said) to the debt which I owe you and the boundless esteem which is due to the nobility of your character. Farewell, my best, my dearest friend.

Our auithor(s) argue that while cynics may claim Catherine was just using H-W, she meant it, she would have called him back if he'd been still alive by the time she became Czarina, and that for him, in turn, she was the "purest" love of his life.

H-W's journey back is described including a mental breakdown in Hamburg. Again, no mention of syphilis. Instead, we leanr that vulnerable Sir Charles manages to attract an enterprising adventuress named Julie John or Johnes who manages, after three days of acquaintance, to extract a marriage pledge and a grant of 10,000 roobles. She will actually show up in England later waving the marriage pledge at his family and will have to be paid off. Says the book: Whether from noxious drugs or from more natural causes, Sir Charles became completely deranged during those days in Hamburg.

Aaand he's off, with another member of the Marwitz clan as escort. He's not locked up in the proverbial attic in England but cared for in a nice house, and his daughters visit, which he reports in a short letter showing he can pull himself together that much. But basically, it's the end for Charles Hanbury-Williams.



In addition to the "authorized biography", I also loaned a book Stabi algorithm recced, which comes pretty much to the opposite conclusions: "Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams and European Diplomacy" by D.B. Horn, 1930. It is pretty withering, and its final conclusion representative:

After a brilliant beginning his embassy to Petersburg had proved as futile and unsuccessful as his earlier missions ot Dresden and Berlin, Warsaw and Vienna. Few diplomatists have such a record of unmitagated failure. At every court to which he was sent Williams sooner or later rendered his recallimperative. He quarrelled with Frederick the Great; he wrangled with Maria Theresa and Kaunitz; after some years' residence at Dresden he broke violently with Brühl; at Petersburg, he offended the Empress, quarrelled with the Great Chancellor, and, but for the sound advice of the Grand Duchess, would probably have followed a line of conduct which would have led to his own expuslion from Russia and would have embroiled the relations of Britain and Russia. The mere enumeration of these facts proves that Wiliams was pre-eminently unsuited for the tiplomatic life. NOmatter how bad the relations of his Govenrment were with the courts at which he resided, it was surely unnecessary for the British minister, by quarelling personally with the sovererigns and ministers with whom he had to transact business, to make relations worse.
A distinction must, however, be drawn between his failure at Berlin and Dresden, which was due almost entirely to his own fault, and at Vienna and Petersburg, for which his Government was largely responsible. HIs mission ot Vienna was a fool's errand, and no good could have come of it no matter how skillful the envoy. At Petersburg, after success appepared to be within his grasp, the volte-face of his own Government deprived him of it, and the rashness and folly of the King of Prussia made failure irredimable. The growing coldness between Britain and Russia lay in thelogic of events after Frederick had invaded Saxony and Britain had definitely decided to support Prussia, which Russia, with the hlep of Austria and the connivance of France, was determined to crush. Williams' conduct intensified this coldness, but not not exercise a decisive influence on the relations of Britain and Russia, and the coldness increased rather than diminished after Williams had been succeeded by Robert Keith.

The author also uses the dispatches and a Berlin Journal which H-W (like Mitchell later) used as a big dispatch rather than a private diary, and some quotes underline the sexual censorship of the biography. For example, the quote about being cold to George Keith continues: "So I put on a sullen dignity, ate my pudding and held my tongue. I went away very soon after dinner to see Celia." (His mistress du jour.)

Something else that's clearer there is that London was deeply worried Fritz would support another Jacobite rising and that this is what him hosting all those Jacobite exiles was all about. Him sending George Keith as envoy to France put those fears in overdrive, because at this point the Prussia/France alliance was still a thing, and so basically Newcastle and Uncle G2 were wondering whether Fritz was about to stage a Franco-Prussian-Jacobite invasion of England. H-W sending dispatch after dispatch about how Fritz was the worst rather heightened that fear.

Something else I learned from this book and not from the other one is a new fact that finally enlightened me why SD, Mrs. I Want My Kids to Marry Their English Cousins, and G2 are at odds as they're reported to be both by a French envoy report in the 1750s and according to Hervey, who said G2 had hostility and contempt for his sister, with her deserving the later but not the former, something I never understood.

Well, remember that G2 surpressed G1's last will because of its clause concerning the idea that Britain and Hannover should be in the future split up if a reigning King has more than one son, with one getting England and one Hannover? G1 wrote this BEFORE G2 and Caroline produced future Cumberland, so he meant it to apply for Fritz of Wales as yet unborn kids. However, by the time G1 died, William "The Butcher" Cumberland existed, and so the will could have been used for him to get Hannover and FoW England, when G2 and Caroline wanted rather the reverse, if they couldn't get FoW out of the picture altogether? Okay, something I never considered but in retrospect is logical - that will contained other legacies, of course. And SD was absolutely convinced G2 was cheating her out of something their Dad wanted to leave her by surpressing the Will. The footnote in the book doesn't mention it, but I bet both FW and Fritz thought so, too.

More zingers: Instead of proceeding with caution and reserve, Williams showed a complete lack of self-control. He flung himself headlong into the arms of Frederick II's bete noire, Gross - the Russian envoy - and together they followed a policy of espionage and intrigue.Worse still, Williams could not conceal the hurt inflicted onhis vanity by the little notice which was taken of him at court. His picque led him to behave, according to his own confession, in a way entirely unsuited to his official position. To take one example, Williams mentions in his diary on 30 July that the Tartar envoy 'in his dirty boots' was placed at the upper end of the table. Williams promptly seated himself at the foot, explaining in al oud voice he did not wish to associate with canaille.
"The respect of the Prussian ministers to his Tartar Excellency," he continues, "put me in mind of the ceremony of making a Mamamouchi in Molière's Bourgois Gentilhomme. I immediately communicated my thoughts to Count Puebla - the Austrian envoy - who, in the company of his neighbours, immediately burst out into a fit of laughter, which laughter according to the best of my observation made Count Podewils - Prussian foreign minister - rather angry than merry to my no small satisfaction".

....How to win friends in high places, indeed.