1740 and All That

For cahn.

FW: I will put a bear in Gundling's room!

Roman Emperor Elagabalus, many centuries earlier: I will put bears in everyone's room!¹

Ivan the Terrible: I will set bears on people just to see what happens!²

Charles XII: I will get the bear so drunk it falls out the window to its death!

Gian Gastone: Ooh, you have bears? I want to see the bears! Bring me the bears.

*shortly thereafter*

GG: I'm so turned on rn. I want to have sex with--

Mildred: Please don't say the bear.

GG: The bear-handler. He's such a big brawny guy, yum.

Mildred: Oh, thank god.

GG: Also his two young assistants, also hot stuff.

Mildred: Still could be worse.

GG: The bear-handler and his boys³ will be added to my collection of male prostitutes.

Mildred: I already know about the collection of male prostitutes and so am not batting an eye!

GG: One night, the bear-handler will be drunk in his room when I get a hankering for him. I'm drunk also, it goes without saying. I will have him brought to me. But he's so drunk he doesn't want to get out of bed. But I'm the Grand Duke, and my pimp/boyfriend/life partner Giuliano will force him to come to my room. For more drinking, of course!

Mildred: Yep, sounds about right.

GG: We're having a great time, right up until I unleash a "prodigious vomit" all over his face and chest. I'm still having a great time, because I totally have a vomit fetish!

Mildred: ...Okay, you got me. I figured out you had an alcoholism fetish, but this one I didn't see coming.

GG: But he's furious and starts beating me black and blue to within an inch of my life. I bleat a little but am not really up for defending myself. Giuliano and other servants overhear the commotion and come running to save me from imminent death.

Mildred: Well, I don't blame him...

GG: Neither do I! In fact, he doesn't get punished at all and continues to draw his salary and live peaceably in Florence, probably because elsewhere in this narrative it's been recounted that I'm totally into getting beaten up, and I make the Ruspanti do it to me all the time!

Mildred: This narrative isn't very reliable, is it?

GG and Giuliano Dami, in unison: God no. Please treat this anonymous manuscript like the National Enquirer of the 18th century and don't believe anything you read about us in it. Unlike Harold Acton, who took it as gospel in his book.⁴

FW: My bears are the best attested!

Mildred and Gundling: ...That's not exactly a point in your favor.

Notes:

1. This is from a source that's so dubious that it's questionable how much it was even ever meant as history, so you shouldn't believe this happened so much as be aware that this is a story that was told and some people have believed it.

2. According to Massie in his Peter the Great bio. Not from any reliable source on Ivan the Terrible, which I have yet to read (but am starting to look into).

3. Called "boys", but the ages of the other "boys" that are given in the text as GG's prostitutes are around twenty, so not necessarily pedophilia here.

4. About which more when I've done some more research in the Italian books that draw on actual archival material that I recently bought and have started reading.

Later addendum:

If you give August III a bear, this happens:

"Numbers of wild beasts, taken in cages into the middle of the thickets in this charming spot, and forced to climb on little paths of planks between two walls, to the top of trees on the edge of the canal, were precipitated through a trapdoor into the water thirty feet below, and thus gave the King the chance, should he wish for it, of shooting wolves, boars and bears in the air. Hounds were waiting for them at the foot of the trees, to pursue them on land and water until the time came when the King thought fit to slay them. One of these bears, finding a boat, climbed on to the prow, in order to get away from the hounds. A young Rzewuski, brother of the Marshal, and Saul, chief clerk in the Saxon Foreign Office, in drawing back to the stern of the boat against the boatman who was steering, managed to make the craft heel over so far that she capsized. The bear for a second time described a circle in the air, and fell in the water close to these men, who got off with a fright, and gave the King much amusement by their adventure."

Courtesy of Poniatowski's memoirs, cited in the biography of Hanbury-Williams.

I *guess* it's better than locking Gundling up with bears and firecrackers, which the daily Frederician emails have just reminded us happened on October 10 (1716).

But from 2023, it's hilarious to read about! Flying bears catapulting through the air! What will 18th century monarchs with bears think of next?

Write-up by mildred_of_midgard for cahn, who was asking which Don Carlos was involved in marriage negotiations with MT in the 1720s.

( Don Carlos, no not that one )

( Salon discusses )