Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2013 May 16

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May 16

The name of Madame de Pompadours fortune teller

I know of the story, that Madame de Pompadour was taken by her mother to a fortune teller at the age of nine (1730), who told her that she would be the mistress of the king. This fortune teller was to have been the most popular of her profession at that time. My question is: who was the this fortune teller, what was her name? Who was the leading fortune teller of Paris in the 1730s? Thank you. --Aciram (talk) 01:00, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

This book, page 22, is the source for Wikipedia's statement. It also does not name the fortune teller, but states that "In her accounts twenty years later, there is an item of six hundred livres" paid to a specific woman. Presumably, if the writer of that source had access to those account books, then the woman must have been named somewhere, though that book doesn't name her. It's a start, tho. --Jayron32 01:06, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

This site names her "Madame le Bon". Neither English Wikipedia nor French Wikipedia has any article on a Madame le Bon. But it's another lead. --Jayron32 01:11, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

This site also names her as such. However, I think the best source, which would perhaps be a good one for a Wikipedia article source, would be this book from 1853. It's in French, and my French is a tad rusty, but on page 200 starts an article called "Livre de dépense de Madame de Pompadour" (basically "accounts of Madame de Pompadour") which describes the event, the payment of 600 livres and the name "Madame le Bon". The author of the article is the "Bibliothécaire de Versailles" or "Librarian of Versailles" which I would take to be a fairly unimpeachable source on the topic. --Jayron32 01:19, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

From there: "The first pension [money given for a purpose] on this list, and the most remarcable one, is that for Mme. Lebon, who predicted her, at age of 9, that one day she would be the maitresse of Louis XV (600 l.) This prediction, which the biographers do not mention, and which, as we see, Mme. de Pompadour always remembered, must have had an important influence on her destiny, and was probably one of the reasons that pushed her mother to go to all means to bring her in contact with Louis XV with the beautiful and young Madame d'Etoilles. The remembrance which Mme. de Pompadour kept for Mme. Lebon became without doubt the reason why she always had a weakness for witches and sorcerers. Mme. Duhausset tells in her Mémoires a story, which prouves this. [Le Rot]"

Service! (give and take). Anybody else hearing this eerie music ..? No - sorry - just tinnitus ... ;-) GEEZER^{nil nisi bene} 06:55, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

You too, eh. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 08:42, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

This story and the source should be added to the wikiarticle, at least in a footnote. Textorus (talk) 13:04, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

The cry of the Belfast Telegraph seller (extinct)

When I went to Nottingham to study at the beginning of the 1990s, I was quite startled to find that the guys selling newspapers on the street shouted out nothing more unusual than "papers!" Back home in Belfast, the street sellers of the Belfast Telegraph had an extraordinarily elaborate cry, which I'm given to understand may once have been "sixth - late - Tele", the sixth edition of the paper being the evening one once upon a time, but it had undergone much evolution and mutation as it was passed down over generations, so no two sellers had a cry that was quite the same, and none of them said anything intelligible.

I haven't heard one of these guys in years, and it seems the cry of the Belfast Telegraph seller is now extinct. Does anyone know if any of these cries are recorded and preserved anywhere on the internet? I've tried google and youtube but haven't turned up anything. It would be a shame if the memory of this peculiar phenomenon were consigned to oblivion when the last of those of us who remember it die. --Nicknack009 (talk) 15:37, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Not online, but one may be preserved in a 1972 BBC Northern Ireland TV documentary called In the Name of God. If you look at the synopsis here on the Northern Ireland digitalfilmarchive.net website, there's a 20-second shot of a Belfast Telegraph seller listed at 3.21 into the programme. I don't know if he's shouting, but with a whole 20 seconds of him in the film it's a possibility. The site expains on this page how to contact them,and the various locations you can visit to view material from the archive. - Karenjc 18:25, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Good one! Getting to Belfast Central Library will not be a problem for m--Nicknack009 (talk) 22:05, 16 May 2013 (UTC)e.

Somewhat off topic but in a similar vein, Morecambe and Wise did a sketch where the paper seller (Morecambe) was shouting "Morny Stannit". A posh businessman (Wise) has difficulty educating the paper seller to say "Morning Standard", but he eventually gets it. When the businessman is satisfied, he buys the newspaper only to find the name of the paper is "Morny Stannit". Astronaut (talk) 11:51, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Whenever I see the cyclist Ian Stannard's name I remember that sketch... --TammyMoet (talk) 12:27, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Dukes of Oldenburg

When did the two sons of Peter I, Grand Duke of Oldenburg ceased being Princes of Holstein-Gottorp and became Dukes of Oldenburg (not reigning dukes just a courtesy title)? Was it in 1785 when Peter (at the time Prince Peter of Holstein-Gottorp) became regent to Duke William or in 1823 when he succeeded William?--The Emperor's New Spy (talk) 18:55, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

There was never any official title of "Prince (Prinz) of Holstein-Gottorp": both the senior male by primogeniture, cadet males and all females of the patrilineal dynasty held and used the title "Duke/Duchess" not "Prince/Princess", according to L'Allemagne Dynastique's meticulously footnoted, 768 page Tome VII on the Oldenburgs. That source also notes discontinuation of use of the "Schleswig" prefix (as in "Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp") from the end of the Nordic War in 1721, when the Duke ceded to his senior kinsman, the King of Denmark, possession of the duchy of Schleswig and moved his capital from Gottorp to Kiel in Holstein. This branch did not formally renounce its claim to Schleswig until Catherine the Great did so on behalf of her son, Tsarevich Paul Petrovich Romanov in his capacity as Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, in 1769 (confirmed 1773). Catherine completed the exchange of what was left of Holstein-Gottorp for the new duchy of Oldenburg (which combined the counties of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst, inherited from an extinct branch of junior Oldenburgs) on 1 August 1773, effective as of 16 November 1773. She and Paul immediately (14 December 1773) donated Oldenburg to the so-called "episcopal branch" of the family, which was an agnatic cadet branch of the Holstein-Gottorps who held the Princely Bishopric of Lubeck. On 29 December 1774 Emperor Joseph II recognized the transfer and erected Oldenburg-Delmenhorst into the Duchy of Oldenburg, investing Duke Friedrich August, Prince Bishop of Lubeck with the title on 22 March 1777. From that date forward, members of that branch of the Holstein-Gottorps all became Dukes of Oldenburg, the head of the line becoming Grand Duke by grace of the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Henceforth the "Holstein-Gottorp" title was borne as a subsidiary title both by the Romanov Emperors of Russia and by the Grand Dukes of Oldenburg. In the obscure dispute over current use of "Duke of Holstein-Gottorp" as a title, remember two facts: 1. the title never descended according to primogeniture, but to all agnates, and 2. The original duchy was an altfürstliche state of the Holy Roman Empire, which means that it was a semi-sovereign state whose transmission had to abide by Imperial laws -- and all of the altfurstliche dynasties were required by German Princely Law (Privatfürstenrecht) to comply with Ebenburtigkeit marital standards, both in the Holy Roman Empire and the subsequent German Confederation, until abolished in 1918.FactStraight (talk) 20:52, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Wow. 109.99.71.97 (talk) 15:23, 18 May 2013 (UTC)