1740 and All That

mildred_of_midgard's random comments on Isabella of Parma's pre-marriage days from her biography by Ursula Tamussino. For a fuller story of Isabella's life, see the tag.

Isabella of Parma is named after her grandmother Isabella Farnese, strong-willed (second) wife of Philip V "the Frog" of Spain. Her father is Don Philipp, second son of Isabella and Philip. Their first son, Don Carlos, is the one who Isabella, among other things, unsuccessfully tried to get married to one of the Austrian Archduchesses, hoping for MT. More on him at Rheinsberg here.

( Mom )

Isabella, meanwhile, is about 7 years old, and a hyperactive kid.

One teacher, who wanted to intimidate her by making faces, she only imitated, and unsettled him with unpleasant truths, which she told him bluntly to his face. She couldn't see a pile of earth or coal without jumping over it, she chased butterflies, flooded her room, wanted to play war, write, sing, dance, construct a horse that could be set in motion by a string, nothing was too difficult for her, she would have loved to dance on the tightrope!

She writes later in life that this was received better at Versailles than at the hyper-etiquette-conscious world of the Spanish court. Considering how stifling Marie Antoinette found the etiquette of Versailles after Vienna, Spain was really something! (The daughter of Regent Philippe who was sent to Spain in the 1720s as part of the "exchange of princesses" also found Spanish etiquette stifling and was always getting in trouble.)

( Mom after leaving Spain )

Meanwhile, Isabella is growing up in Italy. She doesn't like it and writes about it in terms not unlike Algarotti's. The climate is terrible (alternating sweltering summers with frozen winters), the people are stupid, especially the "cicisbei", who are pretty but empty-headed, everyone is stupid and false, and only exist to cause her ten thousand irritations, and she always has the feeling she is surrounded by mortal enemies.

Not happy!

It's also not clear that she has any friends her own age, and as we've seen, her mother isn't around much even when she's around.

What she does have are a lot of hobbies. From Mom's agent in Paris, she orders:

four volumes of sonatas by Leclair, Vivaldi's "Four Seasons", the quartets by Telemann, the sonatas op. 6 by Locatelli, pieces for the harpsichord by Couperin, but also a wealth of operatic works, mainly by French composers.

She also went for dancing, archery, cooking, and gardening. She had a secret garden hidden away from prying eyes, and bred silkworms. She learned drawing, painting in pastels and copper engraving. We have one pastel painting by her ("Roman Charity", in which a young woman offers her breast to her dying father in a dark prison), and two landscape drawings.

And of course, she reads and writes a lot. Her library is again thanks to Mom's agent in Paris. Of course, this episode made me laugh.

She/her tutor wanted a bilingual "Telemachus" (remember, Fenelon's bestselling novel on how to be a good prince) from France, so Isabella could practice her German.

But no luck, there are no bilingual editions in Paris. A French copy and a German translation, then?

German translations in Paris? You must be kidding. :-P

( There are worse marriages than Joseph, it turns out )

Instead, she ends up with Joseph. What happened was that for the entirety of the 1750s, MT was trying to decide whether to marry Joseph off to someone from Parma (Don Philipp's kids) or Naples (Don Carlos's kids).

( Marriage preparations )

( Salon discusses )

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 )