#likely

So, tumblr has decided to take the worst possible route and basically is jumping off a cliff instead of actually addressing its problems in a constrictive way that would make the site legitimately better. 

Apparently written works will be less policed - as a writer, apparently, I will be less affected - but I am not sure I can stick around here as my main platform while my visual artist peers are being purged left and right for things that are not at all bad.  Tumblr has basically taken the extreme position of ‘all sexuality is bad’ and I find that rhetoric incredibly dangerous, especially considering the strange surge of purity culture/radfem notions that has taken hold of a large chunk of people on here.  

It is a shame; you guys have been nothing but supportive of me while I deal with personal shit, and I hate to just up and leave - tumblr might be shooting itself in the foot (over and over to the point of crippling itself), but you guys have been excellent and are what keep me from just leaving entirely. 

I’m going to try and see if I can get a pillowfort account, which is where people seem to be migrating en masse (aside from twitter).  I’ll keep you all posted on that. 

I’ve created a twitter with the same handle aceprosecuties, but I have not had the chance to really do much with it at the moment.  My “main” twitter is heavily vld focused; dm me if you want to follow me there too (not that it would be hard to find me lol). 

I’ll post more things on my ao3 rather than restrict them to tumblr. 

I might make a curiouscat for requests - although I have not done them much lately, I do still like to try and do what I can for you guys!  Again, I’ll keep you guys posted. 

1774-1776

I’ve posted about these two quite a bit, but I have yet to compile a complete record of all the information we have on the relationship between Francis Kinloch and Johannes von Müller. Since I just found a book with lots of new information, now seems like a pretty good time to do this. @john-laurens first posted about Müller and Kinloch’s relationshiphereandhere, and gets 100% credit for first researching and posting about this relationship. 

I hope that this is helpful for anyone who is interested in Kinloch and/or his relationships outside of John Laurens. I’m going to split this up, a bit like my De Végobre essays, because there are two main time periods where Müller and Kinloch were physically in the same place, 1774-1776, when Kinloch was still in Geneva after John Laurens left, and the early 1800s, where Kinloch returned to Geneva with his family. I’ll also have a post about the period in-between these, where Kinloch and Müller were writing letters to each other. 

However, in this post I’ll be talking about the earliest of the above times, Kinloch and Müller’s relationship from 1774, when they first met, to late 1776, when Kinloch had to leave to go fight in America. Kinloch and Müller were living together for most of this time.

According to Johannes von Müller, 1752-1809: Bd. 1752-1780 by Karl Heinrich Henking, Müller and Kinloch first met at the house of a mutual friend, Charles Bonnet, in 1774. Madame Bonnet was apparently thrilled that Müller and Kinloch had become such fast friends, and “they were soon treated like sons of the house[.]” 

They began to study together, Kinloch assisting Müller in English.

Müller at this time was working as a tutor for the Tronchin family, but was unhappy. Kinloch, knowing this, devised a plan in which he and Müller would live together for the foreseeable future. Perhaps because Kinloch enjoyed studying together, but perhaps also for… other reasons.

Anyway, it was worked out, and so Kinloch “rented a small country house with six rooms in the village of Chambésy on the right bank of Lake Geneva, an easy hour from the city, halfway between Geneva and Versoix…” (Johannes von Müller, 1752-1809: Bd. 1752-1780 by Karl Heinrich Henking.) Müller was very happy there, and even more so when Charles Victor de Bonstetten came to join them.

And with the introduction of Bonstetten, now is probably a good time to examine Müller’s sexuality a bit. Johannes von Müller’s sexuality is not really a mystery. Pretty much everything I’ve found which talks about his sexuality states that he was homosexual, and very open about it for his time period. Later in life, sadly, this openness was exploited in a series of love letters and requests for money from a fabricated duke. (I post about thathere.)

In Outing Goethe and His Age, edited by Alice A. Kuzniar, it states that, “For present purposes, however, it is most important to know that Johannes von Müller was out as one inclined to Socratic or Greek love to an extent unparalleled in eighteenth-century Germany.” In other texts, Müller is more casually referred to as homosexual, and in older texts his sexuality is not really mentioned, but the consensus seems to be pretty clear.

When Müller’s actual relationships are discussed, the name that comes up is always Bonstetten. Müller and Bonstetten exchanged many letters, and were generally quite close. (a good summary of their relationship can be found here.) But as I hope you’ll find in these posts, it is possible that Kinloch’s name should be included as well.

So! Kinloch, Müller, Bonstetten, and a man named Alleyne Fitzherbert are living in this six-room house in the summer of 1775. But that August, Kinloch and Müller started traveling around Switzerland together. You know, like all friends do. Müller used the trip for a bit of research, seeing if the writings on differences between the parts of Switzerland were accurate.

After returning to Geneva, Kinloch and Müller lived with the Bonnet’s for a while, their old home having been moved into. In November of 1775, Müller and Kinloch “returned to their house in Chambésy, but then rented another apartment in May 1776 very close to Bonnet’s home in Genthod to be closer to their esteemed older friend.”

Side note to say how much Müller admired Charles Bonnet. He wrote to Bonstetten, “Herr Bonnet is truly a demigod; I do not know a more practical philosopher, a more noble-thinking and lovable man, neither in history nor in the world, and what is most beautiful is that all of this happens from the strength of his philosophy, not from mere impulses.”

It is during this time that, at least according to, Johannes von Müller, 1752-1809: Bd. 1752-1780, Müller was at his happiest. “…free of economic worries, he was able to live entirely in the sciences with which friends conduct an extremely extensive reading, which focused on the classical literature of antiquity and works of the English, French, Italians, and in some cases also the Germans in the fields of history, the Politics of constitutional law and economics related.”

Clearly, Müller and Kinloch’s relationship was far from purely emotional; they apparently also enjoyed studying and reading together. This parallels De Végobre and Kinloch– De Végobre mentions in a letter to John Laurens that, “…I read speclator, Clarissa, Milton and Shakespear, besides some philosophical books. Never, never in my life have I been so well entertained as when I read Milton; and why? First, for poet’s excellency and secondly and chiefly because I read it with Kinloch. My beloved, my dearest friend is Kinloch; how happy am I, when I teach him some part of natural philosophy, when I read with him both English and French poets, when I talk with him about various matters plainly and heartily as with a friend!”

But, alas for Müller, it could not last. Kinloch, though at first he was a loyalist, was preparing to leave Geneva to fight in the continental army. Though they had originally planned to tour Italy together, those plans were quickly deteriorating over Kinloch’s increased probability of returning to America.