1740 and All That

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 Hanbury-Williams: Youth and Soulmate )


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:

( The Illness that Dare Not Speak Its Name )

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

( We hates him, Precious! )

( Charles Hanbury Williams gets into politics )

( Execution of two Jacobite Lords )

( First Posting: Anglo Among Saxons )

( Second Posting: Meet the Hohenzollerns )

( Interlude: The Mystery of Madame Brandt )

Back to H-W's Prussian adventures.

( Avoiding Jacobite Exiles, Meeting Voltaire, Still Not Meeting Fritz )

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

( I never met with a woman so learnedly ignorant )

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:

( The completest Tyrant that God ever sent for a scourge )

( Fatherly Advice Interlude )


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.

( Charles Hanbury-Williams Tells It All: Habsburg Edition )

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

( Russian Prelude, more fatherly advice )

( Meeting Catherine The Not Yet Great: Diplomatic Success at Last! )

( Corresponding With Catherine )

( Saying goodbye to Poniatowski and Catherine )

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.

( Charles Hanbury-Williams: The Rebuttal )

Overall: very well written, very much biographie romancee in style - Stefan Zweig would have been delighted, and who knows, maybe was -, and also very opinionated. I looked up the author. He was Harold Acton, one of the Bright Young Things of the 1920s, best man to Evelyn Waugh during the later's first marriage, supposedly partly the model for Anthony Blanche in Brideshead Revisited. Scion of an Anglo-Italian family. Gay. Not a fan of Mussolini, thank God. Served in the RAF during WWII.

On to the narrative. Acton covers roughly a century, between the 1640s, when future Cosimo III. is born, to the death of Gian Gastone de' Medici, whereupon Franz Stephan gets the Duchy. He's focused on the family members and their wives - and btw, the end of the line came to be if this book is anything to go by because a couple of in varying degrees awful men married a couple of strong willed women, degree of awfulness debate worthy, several of whom did not behave as expected, and had catastrophic marriages with them - and blithely assumes you know at least a bit history if you've purchased this book and he doesn't have to explain everything from ground scratch.

( Harold Acton wants you to know why he picked THESE Medici and not the more famous ones )

( Ferdinando II: The Duke is not for Burning )

( Marguerite Louise d'Orleans: Vive la Resistance! )

( Cosimo III: How To Ruin Florence by Bigotry in 53 Years )

( Marguerite Louise: how to outrage your ex two countries away! )

( Gay Princes, Unwanted Wives: The Medici Variation )

( Cosimo tries to find alternate successors )

Cosimo dies. Gian Gastone ascends, the literal last of the Medici, save for his sister. He's so drunk all the time that he throws up out of his chaise when carried through Florence, so he rarely is. At meals he's not better - vomiting into his napkin, wiping his mouth with his periwig. Also: the Ruspanti. Who were they?

( The Ruspanti, or: are more than 300 male prostitutes in your bedroom enough, Sire? )

But: Gian Gastone's reign wasn't all sexual license and alcohol. After Cosimo's death, Gian Gastone immediately gets rid of the anti-Jewish and anti-Protestant laws his father had made, throws out corrupt churchmen from the government, and revoked the banishment of "new" (i.e. Galilean) ideas from the university of Pisa. He also separated Medici property from state property, being aware that despite his efforts, neither his sister nor Don Carlos would succeed him, and this way his sister could at least inherit the family possessions. Amazingly given thie condition he already was in by the time he took over, he managed a reign of 13 years before his alcoholism at last killed him. Because of his reforms, he was sincerely mourned. But the story of the Medici was over for good.

I.e. "Frederick the Great and Maria Theresia: in eye witness accounts." This actually was/is a series of books devoted to a particular era or historical figure(s); the first one of those I've read was "The French Revolution: In Eye Witness Accounts". The advantage is obvious: these are all either excerpts of primary sources, written at the time, or memoirs, written none too much later, arranged by subject, many of which might be difficult to track down individually. On the down side, you're also at the mercy of the editor, in terms of what he chooses to highlight or edit out.

( Short assessment of Jessen as an editor )

All these nitpicks aside, though, it's a great source book, and in addition to containing by now familiar documents it had a lot of documents from which I only knew individual phrases, but not the entire texts, which sometimes recontextualize previously known quotes quite differently. I've excerpted some especially intriguing gems.

( Hot or Not: Portraits of an Enigma )

Since the emphasis on this collection is on the Friedrich/Maria Theresia arch nemesis relationship, we get treated to several of the things they said and wrote about each other.

( He said, she said: through the decades )


Not that Joseph's kind of being a Fritz fan ever went the Peter III. way. He believed in imitation via competition, which turned out to be even more disturbing to his mother than mere admiration would have been, since it affected the peace of her realms. Fast forward to more than a decade later, and Joseph is like Fritz in the worst way, i.e. by invading Bavaria. Here's Mom trying to argue him out of it, on March 14th, 1778, very much belying son Leopold's claim that she was half senile near the end of her life, for that letter, written two years before her death, shows Maria Theresia the politician at the top of her game:

( Maria Theresia versus War: It's on! )

The last Fritz section goes on for a while longer. Jessen has the letter from Fritz - to D'Alembert, as it turns out, dated January 6th 1781 - which has the famously revisioninstic "I was never her enemy" quote in it; what I hadn't known before reading the complete letter was that he then, bereft of his best enemy, transitions right to his next target, German literature. Writes he:

( MT and me, by Fritz, followed by: Why Shakespeare is rubbish, and German literature does not exist )