January Meme: Historical Humor

[selenak]

avrelia asked whether there is any historical event/anecdote/fact I consider actually funny?

Oh, lots. Mind you, some of them depend on knowledge of context and background so much that by the time you've finished explaining, the funny part isn't there anymore. However, there are more than enough available for the telling which are for the most part self explanatory. (Often, but not always involving sex.) Like Charles II.'s reaction to finding young John Churchill, future Duke of Marlborough, future husband of Sarah "The Favourite" Churchill and ancestor of Winston, with his long term mistress Barbara Villiers. (Aka Lady Castlemaine.) Reportedly Charles said: "Young man, I forgive you, for I know you earn your bread this way."

(As Barbara provided young Churchill with 5000 pounds, you could say he did, indeed. It was the start of a grand career.)

Stilll talking of British royalty, we have the death of Caroline of Ansbach, wife of George II., which was a very tragic event by itself - google of what she died, it's gruesome - but did have a moment both funny and touching, which was when she told her husband he should remarry after her death, and George II indignantly replied: "Never! I shall have mistresses." To which Caroline commented: "Ah, mon Dieu, cela n'empêche pas" (translated by later biographers aternatingly with "that works, too" and "that's no impediment to marriage". (Being 18th century German nobles, of course Caroline and George talked French to each other.)

Actually, George was crazy about Caroline, despite having mistresses in her life time already. The first one mostly because it was expected of an 18th century prince, and also because he and Caroline, unlike his father, actually made some efforts to win over the Brits once the Act of Settlement indicated Dad (Georg Ludwig of Hannover, future George I) would inherit the crown. Among the Brits promptly showing up at Hannover to make nice with the future monarchs were the Howards. Charles Howard was a louse, and a physically abusive husband, and his wife, Henrietta, had come here with one aim in mind: get a job from the future British monarchs that would get her away from her husband. Her original idea had been becoming lady in waiting to Caroline, which she did, but she also ended up as future G2's first mistress.

Caroline: ?
Sophia (her grandmother-in-law and a notoriously snarky woman) (I'm not making this up, she really said this): Look at it this way: It will improve his English.

Caroline and Henrietta Howard (later Lady Suffolk) (& G2): the entire relationship is its own kind of odd. Like I said, Henrietta mainly wanted a job that would protect her against her husband. And to be fair, Caroline did that whenever Charles Howard tried to re-insert himself in his wife's life (with an eye to the money she now earned). And when George Augustus became Prince of Wales, some nobles thought cultivating his mistress was a good idea (which also was financially rewarding and got you lots of presents and invites), since usually the mistress has more influence than the wife - only not in this case. (Sir Robert Walpole, otoh, from the get go had the right instinct, cultivated Caroline instead and became PM.) On the downside, G2 had two main subjects, German genealogy and military tales, especially but not only his glorious six months as Young Hannover Brave serving with Marlborough (see above). And droned on about them since he couldn't think of anything else to talk about with his mistress, other than sex. And made no secret of prefering his wife. As soon as Charles Howard finally had died, Henrietta declared she had enough, retired as mistress and married a nice guy from the gentry. (She was over 40 at this point and half deaf, but still pretty and clever, and had accumulated a nice funding, so that worked out well.) Caroline, who had treasured the time G2 spent with his mistress as her preferred reading hours, was most put off and wrote a tart letter Lady Suffolk (as she was then) going on about how at their age, Henrietta should be past behaving like the heroine of a novel. But Lady Suffolk ignored this.

One more Caroline story: while of impeccable German (Protestant) nobility and connections, she'd actually been the poor relation of the Saxon and Prussian rulling houses as a girl, so it was a great surprise when her first proposal was from pretty much the highest ranking single male royal on the continent: a Habsburg only one life away from the Imperial throne. This was young Archduke Charles, brother of Emperor Joseph I., who would indeed later become Emperor, though at the time the expectation was still that Joseph I. would produce a son and Charles would more likely end up as King of Spain. En route to Spain, where he would eventually fail to win himself a kingdom (the French won instead, this was the War of the Spanish Succession), he met Caroline, talked to her for five hours, liked her a lot and signalled Team Vienna they could start with the negotiations. (He was 18, she was 20.) Things progress as far as a Jesuit being sent to Berlin (where Caroline hangs out with her Hohenzollern relations) in order to start conversion lessons, but thinking future life as a Catholic Habsburg over, Caroline decides she won't marry Charles after all. Being a smart woman, Caroline milked this rejected proposal for all the propaganda worth it had once she ended up married to future George II, because of course the single reason why the Hannovers were now claimants of the British throne and not the 50 plus people in the royal bloodline before them was that they were Protestants, and the others were Catholics. So she became the woman who rejected a Habsburg for the sake of Protestantiism. This argument came in really handy when the Archbishop of Canterbury wanted to explain Anglicanism to her apropos her coronation as Queen of England. Quoth Caroline: "Does he really believe I do not understand Protestantism, I, who rejected an Empire for it?" Exit the Archbishop.

Going from a Queen of England to a Queen of England Who Never Was (but almost, of Anne had only died a few months earlier): Caroline's grandmother-in-law, Sophia of Hannover, twelfth child of Elilzabeth Stuart (and thus granddaughter of James I. and VI) was, like I said, gloriously snarky, summing iup her early education thusly: I was taught the Heidelberg catechism, which was written in the German language. I knew it by heart without understanding a word of it. At seven in the morning I rose and had to present myself each day in a house dress to Mademoiselle von Quadt (...), who let me pray to God and read the bible. She taught me Pibrac's verses while rinsing her mouth and brushing her teeth which direly needed it. The grimaces she made while doing so I remember better than anything she wanted to teach me.

Wit was something she shared with her niece and favourite correspondent Liselotte (if anyone has watched Versailles or knows their French history, yes, that's the second wife of the very gay Philippe d'Orleans. Liselotte's letters to Sophia and her other relations from Versailles are a goldmine for historical hilarity (also for heartbreak, but this is not the post for it). It always depends on the situation. Arranged marriages between people of incompatible sexuality in principle? Tragic. Liselotte writing that Philippe placed lots of depictions of the Virgin Mary in their marriage bed in order to get it up for the consumation? Hilarious. (They were both relieved when after the birth of various children there was no more need for marital sex, btw.) Also Liselotte to her half sister, re: m/m sex in general, in her baroque German:

„Wo seydt Ihr und Louisse denn gestocken, daß ihr die weldt so wenig kendt? (…) wer alle die haßen woldt, so die junge kerls lieben, würde hier kein 6 menschen lieben können."

(What's gotten into you and Louise that you know the world so little? (...) if you hate everyone who loves young guys, you wouldn't be able to love 6 people here. )

(I have no idea whether Liselotte was correct in her estimation of how male many French nobles at the court of Louis XIV had sex with men, but hey, she was there and I was not.)

And lastly, I'll round of this tiny excerpt of a collection of amusing-to-me historical anecdotes with something else that's tragic in a larger context (Stanislas Poniatowski's relationship with Catherine the Great, because of Poland's fate), but still contains amusing details close up, and not just the time when Poniatowski climbed into the wrong window. No, there's also his way of proudly declaring in his memoirs that Catherine deflowered him (she wasn't Czarina yet, but Grand Duchess; she was twenty five, he was twenty two):

This was the woman who was to rule my destiny; my whole life was dedicated to her, far more literally than by what people usually mean when they make such claims in a similar position. And through an odd circumstance, I, despite being twenty two years of age, could give her something which no one had had before she did.

Firstly, a strict education had kept me from any debauched company; on my travels, my ambition to rise in so-called "good society" had protected me, and despite the many liasons I had started abroad, at home and even in Russia, several accidents of fate had made it possible that I had inadvertendly saved myself for the woman who was to govern my fortune later.

The other days

Comments

[viggorlijah]

Caroline annoyed that her reading hours have been cut! Those are all wonderful snippets, thank you for the translations

[selenak]

You're very welcome.

[avrelia]

thank you, I needed that! In my current state I notice all the doom, tragedy and easily avoidable mistakes in history. but the humans go on, and being silly and snarky helps along.

[selenak]

I'm glad it cheered you up a bit - tales of silliness and snark help me, too, in such times as these.

[kalypso]

The translation of Caroline's last words which reached me was "Goodness me, that won't stop you."

[cahn]

To which Caroline commented: "Ah, mon Dieu, cela n'empêche pas" (translated by later biographers aternatingly with "that works, too" and "that's no impediment to marriage".

Oh, ha, you'd told me about George II's response but I didn't know, or had forgotten, about Caroline's!

Aw, Caroline's reading hours. I'm glad it worked out for Henrietta :)

Quoth Caroline: "Does he really believe I do not understand Protestantism, I, who rejected an Empire for it?" Exit the Archbishop.

Hee!

(I have no idea whether Liselotte was correct in her estimation of how male many French nobles at the court of Louis XIV had sex with men, but hey, she was there and I was not.)

I totally laughed out loud at this!

And through an odd circumstance, I, despite being twenty two years of age, could give her something which no one had had before she did.

Oh, Poniatowski <3

[selenak]

According to Hervey, Caroline couldn't read when G2 was around, since she had to be focused on him then, so her reading hours were precious, she'll have you know. :)

[jesuswasbatman]

To be fair to the Archbishop, a German Lutheran might have genuinely needed some explanation of the nature of the Church of England, and the delicate balance between those in the Church who were enthusiastic Protestants, and those who would have been quite happy to have been Catholics if Henry VIII hadn't wanted a divorce.

[selenak]

True enough, but Caroline hadn‘t just arrived from Hannover when she got crowned. She‘d spent a decade as Princess of Wales in the country, had in fact officially converted to Anglicanism years earlier - as she was far clear than either her father-in-law or husband on the fact they needed the goodwill of the locals - and had an Anglican priest as part of her household. Which isn‘t to say that the fact she didn‘t use these sensible arguments instead of the popagandistic „I rejected an Empire for the sake of Protestantism!“ one doesn‘t make a point about Caroline, but the later catch phrase even made it into most of the eulogies about her. (I suppose no one was in a mood to point out she rejected the younger son of an Emperor who at that point had a shot at the Spanish throne at best.)