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 )

While the estimable Dr. Schmidt(-Lötzen) only had the chance to publish four volumes of Lehndorff's diaries in book form, with volume IV covering the time until and including 1784, he did continue to publish his translations in the journal "Masovia" (where the first four volumes also made their debut in separate installments before being collected in book volumes), up to and including the year 1787.

( 1785: Twilight of the Fritz )


( 1785: Meeting Lafayette )

( 1786: Catherine the Great's true love rival revealed! )


( 1786: The Death of Kings )

( 1786-1787: New King, new job opportunities? )

( Kalckreuth: The return )

Soon, Lehndorff has other worries, though.

( On nearly losing your child (again) )


Karl makes it out of the sickness alive, though. Lehndorff's wife and his two other children get smallpox the same year, but survive as well, so there is more fretting and worrying, and then once he doesn't have worry about their lives anymore, Heinrich gives up and decides to go to Rheinsberg.

( 1787: Death of a Princess, Retirement for a Prince )

This would be a good place to end this write up, but unfortunately, there's still a decades-in-the-making rant to go through. It's one long outburst about how much life has screwed Lehndorff over, and thus he concludes 1787:

( Money can't buy you love, especially if you keep not getting it )

Gustav Volz' anthology "Gespräche" which is in our library contains Volz' combination of two French reports on Friedrich's' 1740 attempt at an incognito journey to France which ended prematurely in Straßburg/Strassbourg, that of the Marquis de Valfons, who was a captain in the local regiment, and that of the overall CEO Broglie's report as given on August 26th 1740, i.e. a day after it happened , for his superiors in Paris. A reminder on Broglie: not the one from the 7 Years War, but but this one, his father.

Volz is conscientious about his sources, so he tells us via footnote that the Marquis de Valfons' report is from "Souvenirs du marquis de Valfons", S. 50 ff, Paris 1860, while Boglie's report was printed in the "Archives de la Bastille, BD. XIII, S. 195 ff, Paris 1881.

Having read them now: worst incognito traveller ever! Also, no arrest, unless Broglie is being lying. The date: 23 - 25th August 1740.

( How to not travel under an alias if you don't want to be outed by the French )

felis then unearthed other reports on those Strassbourg/Straßburg days, including one from Manteuffel of all the people, which led to a lively salon debate, not least because we were curious who Le Diable's source among the travellers might have been.

( How fast can you send secret spy reports from Straßburg to Berlin anyway? )

Continuing on the note of "contemporary envoy reports are a gold mine", we give you the 1728 - 1733 reports of Wilhelm Stratemann, envoy of the Duchy Braunschweig/Brunswick, whose employers would end up marrying three of their offspring to three of FW's children (Fritz marries Elisabeth Christine, AW marries Louise, Charlotte marries the next Duke of Brunswick), on the fateful years when Hohenzollern family life went from dysfunctional to death sentences for boyfriends and intermittent imprisonment for the oldest son and daughter, respectively. The way Stratemann spins this saga into the most wholesome FW praising account any envoy (including FW's pal Seckendorff, the Imperial envoy at the time) has given yet is something to behold. Furtherly, bear mind this edition of the reports, edited by one Richard Wolff, was published before World War One, which meant that Hohenzollern censorship still applied. This said, Stratemann, with his detailed focus on royal family stories and lack of access to hardcore secret political negotiations, does provide a treasure trove of what would later be called "human interest" stories and useful details on anything from how FW and family celebrated Christmas to the seating chart of Wilhelmine's wedding banquet.

( So, who was Stratemann? )

But before getting to the Katte relevant reports, let's have some pre-escape attempt wholesome family life. As mentioned, Strateman got his political intel generally either via rumors or as crumbs from Seckendorff whom he tried to hang out with as often as he could, and thus it's frequently slightly or strongly off the mark. Otoh, he clearly did have a source among the staff in the royal household, whom I have identified based on several factors listed below as the governess of the Princess Sophie (and her two younger sisters, Ulrike and Amalie), and thus anything that happens with the kids is usually first hand. It is pronounced how he flings himself into these stories as opposed to reporting anything like that the other envoys (say, Suhm for Saxony or Dickens for Great Britain) report about the father/ oldest son or husband/wife clashes. So instead of stories about Fritz getting yelled at, you get stories about AW getting gifted with miniature canons and indulged in his love for fireworks. Until it really, really becomes unavoidable to report something else, what with a locked up Crown Prince.

( A happy royal family and their shenanigans: 1728 till the escape attempt )

With this background, and no word on FW humiliating Fritz in front of the army at Zeithain, the fateful summer trip by father and son being used as an escape attempt comes completely out of the blue. As I mentioned earlier, Stratemann hasn't heard about it (or at least doesn't mention it) as late as August 18th, at which point all the other envoys know, and when he does report Katte's arrest, he doesn't mention Fritz by name as the reason of it. He keeps reporting through September and October that the father/son reconciliation is imminent, that FW if anything will lessen Katte's sentence, that all will be well. Then comes November with its execution, of which Stratemann suddenly has far better intel than he used to in matters Crown Prince and Katte. And he has a fascinating follow-up on this in the middle of his wholesome family anecdotes, as none other than little August Wilhelm has heard about Katte's demise.

( Katte and the Consequences: The Disney Version )

So much fo Katte. Back to Hohenzollern family affairs.

( How to celebrate Christmas and break your oldest daughter to your will )

( On marrying your oldest daughter and son and the difficulties of replacing your court historian )

( Aftermath: Crown Prince not blissfully happy after all? )

The rest of the dispatches has the news that Wilhelmine has written she's really happy with her new husband in Bayreuth, the Protestant religious refugees from Salzburg arrive, and then there's the sudden time jump of a year to 1733 when Fritz gets married. No more interesting stuff. But no matter; Stratemann certainly delivered before that.

As Mildred has pointed out, today is the anniversary of our antihero's death. It's also the anniversary of the salon's spark of ignition, and in celebration of that, I present icons made from the photos taken during my recent expection to Brandenburg. You're welcome to take whichever strikes your fancy:

Sanssouci



Rheinsberg




People - Fredersdorf, Lehndorff and AW's bust at Rheinsberg

On to Part II. Frederick the Great said as early as the Seven Years War, and several times thereafter, that the only place where he'd been truly happy had been Rheinsberg, the namesake of our community. He was there for only four years (1736 to 1740). Later, he gave it to his brother Heinrich, who lived there for nearly half a century. When Fontane visited in the 1850s and 1860s, he was a bit frustrated that Heinrich by then was nearly forgotten, and the four years of Fritz were all anyone talked about, but I'm happy to report this is no longer the case. Lots of Heinrich stories provided by the audio guide and the inscriptions, though on the downside, the real life castellans are trying to convince you of Frederick's heterosexuality and swear he had a romance with a local Rheinsberg girl named Sabine. (In addition to being a married man, of course; this was the only time Frederick and his wife Elisabeth Christine truly lived together.) Never you mind, though: Rheinsberg!



( Palace of Dreams, Obelisk of Fraternal Revenge )


Now, not far away from Rheinsberg are the estates given to two boyfriends of Hohenzollern princes with very different fates. Say about Fritz what you want, but his taste in long term boyfriends was A plus, whereas Heinrich invariably, with only one or two exceptions, ended up with charismatic money spending jerks. None spent more money than Kaphengst, until at last according to legend Fritz told Heinrich in unprintable language to kick him out of Rheinsberg. Heinrich did this via setting him up with Meseberg, a beautiful palace in which today the Federal Republic of Germany puts its guests of state when they visit for more than a few hours. Meseberg is near enough so Heinrich could visit easily, but Kaphengst managed to run it down and get into debts again, at which point Heinrich had to sell his collection of paintings to Catherine the Great in order to bail him out, though he did call it quits then. Considering the currentn day use and the needs of top security, you can't visit Meseberg from the outside, but you can have a look (and conclude Kaphengst must have been spectacular in bed):

( Meseberg the Beautiful )

Meanwhile, the guy who has the claim of having been Frederick the Great's most long term partner, Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf, starting out as his valet, got the much more small scale estate of Zernikow as soon as Frederick ascended to the throne in 1740, but he made it florish, being the extremely competent organizer and business man he was.

( Competence is sexy, and thus so is Zernikow )


And thus it's time to head back from the province to the capital in this pic spam. On the Part III!

By now, enough intriguing contradictory sources have turned up on the matter of Christian Friedrich Glasow, hussar, valet and possible spy/wannabe assassin, that it's worth a separate post collecting them all.

( Lehndorff: This Glasow must die! )

Then there's Alexander von Münchow, who was of interest to us mainly due to his controversial testimony regarding Katte's execution which he may or may not have witnessed as a child when his father was a key player at Küstrin, and who served for a while as page to Fritz years later.

( Münchow: With a tea spoon of poison )

Now, neither Lehndorff nor Münchow doubt Glasow was, in fact, guilty of what he's been accused of. Imagine, therefore, my intrigued surprise when I read the memoirs of Friedrich Adolf von Kalckreuth, as dictated to his son, translated into German (Kalckreuth had dictated in French), and printed also in Minerva (clearly the magazine for 19th century history lovers), and they turned out to contain a passionate defense of Glasow.

Credibility of witness: Kalckreuth met Heinrich shortly before the war, became his AD and favourite from 1758 onwards, and remained his favourite until he was ousted by Kaphengst in the mid 1760s. His last attempt to hold to his position involved making a pass at Heinrich's unfortunate wife. He then ended up in a couple of deadbeat assignments in the provinces (where Lehndorff reencounters him in the 1770s and can't help indulging in some Schadenfreude, more here), until Fritz dies and nephew FW2 gets on the throne, which is when Kalckreuth resumes his career and makes it to Field Marshal in the Napoleonic wars. Being dumped by Heinrich in favour of Kaphengst left him with an ongoing grudge and the tendency to claim that all of Heinrich's military success during the Seven-Years-War was really due to him, which historians have taken less than seriously (especially given that Kalckreuth hadn't been with Heinrich in the early war years and was not always present during the later events). However: whether or not Glasow was guilty is absolutely immaterial to Kalckreuth's reputation, he has no horse riding on this, and he was, though not as Heinrich's AD, present in the Dresden winter quarters of 1756/1757, and so it's absolutely worth noting that he thinks Glasow was completely innocent. Here's what Kalckreuth, in old age - just like Münchow - dictated to his son:

( Kalckreuth: Glasow was framed! )

Now, this version by itself is actually quite plausible. Anyone rising quickly in royal favour, which Glasow undoubtedly did, is bound to evoke jealousy and resentment among the rest of the staff. And if favourite sister Wihelmine having lunch with Maria Theresia in the last phase of the previous war caused spectacular royal displeasure in her brother, then a mere valet hanging out with the wife of Saxony's PM (whom Fritz despised and presented in the blackest colours in his later history of the 7 Years War) was bound to suffer severe consequences.

However, as stated before: Kalckreuth writes this decades after the fact. Turns out there's yet another source noting down the Glasow scandal, this one, like Lehndorff, right when it happened, but, unlike Lehndorff, not from far away Berlin but during the events itself in Dresden. It's none other than Kalckreuth's predecessor as Heinrich's AD, Victor Amadeus Henckel Graf von Donnersmarck. (If anyone reading this is a fan of the Oscar winning movie The Lives of Others, directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, yes, same family.) Credibility of witness: Henckel von Donnersmarck's war time diary from 1756 - 1758 is regarded an an important source on the early part of the 7 Years War. He's relentlessly critical of Frederick the Great, which earlier historians - to whom any criticism of the great national hero was suspect - blamed on his connection to Heinrich, but I haven't seen anyone calling him a liar for it. (Just prejudiced.) Henckel von Donnersmarck resented Kalckreuth which is why he ended up asking for a transfer once Kalckreuth also became Heinrich's AD. However, Henckel's (friendly - no biographer has described them as romantic) relationship with Heinrich survived this, and the war. When he died, Heinrich assumed responsibility for his widow and son. His grandson's memoirs are responsible for a couple of anecdotes about Heinrich in his last years of life, and Henckel himself is one of the 29 men honored by Heinrich on the Rheinsberg Obelisk.)

This same Victor Amadeus Henckel von Donnersmarck believes Glasow to be guilty as sin when noting down the sensational news:

( Henckel: Glasow did it! He only had himself to blame! )


So: what do we believe?

( The Salon debates )

gambitten added another key bit of evidence, directly from the Secret Prussian State Archive, here:

( Glasow: A Most Wanted Man )

Yet another take on the Glasow affair is offered by Friedrich Nicolai in his six volume collection of Frederician anecdotes, "Anekdoten von König Friedrich II. von Preußen, und von einigen Personen, die um ihn waren", which got published between 1788 and 1792:

( Glasow: A seduced youth corrupted by a ruthless coffee maker )


This ends the Nicolai version of the tale of Glasow (and Völker). I'll do a separate post on Nicolai one of these days, but suffice to say for the purpose of this matter that he usually names his sources, though not in this particular case, which is interesting. He just says they are "trustworthy". The other pro-Glasow source we have is Kalckreuth, but Kalckreuth blames Glasow's dismissed servant for wrongly accusing him and doesn't say anything about Völker/Wöllner at all, so I don't think Kalkreuth is Nicolai's source. (My other reason for doubting it is that Heinrich doesn't get mentioned once in six volumes of anecdotes, and I think if Nicolai had an in with Heinrich's former boyfriend AD, there's be some stories at least co-starring him.)

A more likely source is former Chamber Hussar Schöning, about whom more here, who is the named source of a somewhat similar version of the story as given in the anecdote collection by Anton Friedrich Büsching, "Charakter Friedrichs des zweyten, Königs von Preussen", which was published in 1788, and somewhat elaborated upon in Büsching's later "Zuverlässige Beiträge", which was published in 1790.

The (much briefer) tale of Glasow shows up right after Büsching's account of the tale of suicidal (and kicked) Kammerhussar Deesen, aka the other handsome hussar who committed suicide over Fritz (and since Fredersdorf had been dead for decades, he really can't have been the cause); you'll find the story here. Which is why Büsching starts with "another" in this version of the Glasow tale:

( Glasow and Völker: both guilty )

And then we have Manger in his history of the builders and architects of Potsdam, talking about the various valets and chamber hussars through which Fritz often interacted with said building folk, usually when he was too angry to talk with them directly. Manger joined the Potsdam Baukontor in 1753 in a lowly position; after the 7 Years War, he made Bauinspektor in 1763. So he might actually have known Glasow, at least from afar. His take:

( Guilt proven! Though he looked dashing in red )

As of July 2022, yet another take has come to our attention, through Gustav Volz's essay on the correspondence between August Wilhelm and Lehndorff ("Aus dem Briefwechsel des Prinzen von Preußen August Wilhelm mit dem Kammerherrn Graf Ernst Ahasverus Lehndorf (sic)", published 1905 in the "Masovia" magazine).

( AW: Other than treason and theft, he didn't do anything )

Gentle readers, we leave it up to you to decide whether Glasow was guilty or framed. If you want to know what happened to him: his father petitioned Fritz for his life, with the the petition in question reading like an eerie deja vu if you're familiar with the petitions Katte's father and grandfather wrote to Friedrich Wilhelm. Unlike his father, Fritz noted on the petition that whille "his son's crime was great, I have mitigated somewhat", and did not go for a death sentence. Glasow regardless died in prison in Spandau within that same year.