Daughters of the Winter Queen

by Nancy Goldstone

  But although his university friends stood up for him, and the prince of Orange himself intervened in his favor, Descartes was sufficiently worried about being censored or even possibly condemned in the future to begin casting around for another, less threatening place to live. The obvious kingdom to turn to was his native France, and there his contacts and supporters tried to arrange a position for him at court. Unfortunately, this prospect failed to materialize. And then, just as he was getting over his disappointment at losing the opportunity in Paris, one of his closest friends and most ardent admirers, Pierre Chanut, was named ambassador to the court of Queen Christina of Sweden.

  CHRISTINA WAS ONLY TWENTY years old when Chanut first arrived in Stockholm in 1646, but she had already won international renown for her scholarship and political acumen. The only child of the great warrior Gustavus Adolphus, Christina had evidently felt the weight of expectations all through her childhood and adolescence and had responded by pushing herself to excel both physically and intellectually. She reportedly had learned eight languages and was a voracious reader and supporter of the arts. Even better, she was in the process of recruiting scholars to come to Sweden to further her education and that of her people, and she was embarking on an ambitious program to organize schools and universities. She was the perfect solution to Descartes’s problem, Chanut decided. There remained only the delicate task of bringing these two illustrious mortals together.

  A diplomat by training, Chanut handled the negotiations brilliantly. Christina, who was under pressure to marry, was at that time debating the philosophic question of which was worse, to love or hate unwisely, and Chanut offered to write to his good friend the eminent philosopher René Descartes for enlightenment. Descartes responded in February 1647 with a short essay entitled “The Nature of Love”—love being defined by the philosopher as “the property of allowing each of its thoughts to associate itself with certain movements or dispositions of the body in such a way that the repetition of certain dispositions of either, causes a corresponding action in the other”—which he happened to have handy, as he had already worked this out with Elizabeth in his Treatise on the Passions. Chanut (wisely) read little bits of this to Christina, who then asked to see more of Descartes’s work. Flattered, Descartes decided to crib from his earlier discussion of Seneca and send copies of the letters he wrote to Elizabeth for his Treatise on the Passions. But of course his correspondence represented only one side of the conversation; it would be so much better if he could include the princess’s responses as well. Accordingly, in the summer of 1647 he wrote to Elizabeth asking her permission to send copies of her letters to Christina along with his. He must have been aware that this idea might not be entirely welcomed by Elizabeth, because he couched the request as a way to perform her a service by encouraging a friendship between the two women. “The portrait which Chanut draws of the Queen and the discourse he reports have given me such a high esteem for her, that it seems to me you and she would be worthy of each other’s conversation,” he volunteered disingenuously. “And since there are so few of the rest of the world who are worthy of it, it would not be unpleasant to your Highness to enter on a close friendship with her, and that besides the contentment of spirit you would find in it, it might be desirable for many reasons.”

  This letter was the first inkling Elizabeth had that Descartes admired the queen of Sweden and was trying to impress her. It must have sent a chill through her heart. Christina was younger, of higher rank, more powerful, and by all reports just as accomplished intellectually. Nor did it help that the man to whom she had poured out her soul in letters now wanted to use those very letters to entice another woman. It was like overhearing your lover use exactly the same pickup line he had once used with you, and then having him turn to you to ask for help in convincing his new quarry of his sincerity.

  Elizabeth’s training as a princess—her rectitude, her careful preservation of her dignity in the face of numerous humiliations—served her well in this challenge to her most prized relationship. She was warm in her response to Descartes, reminding him how much she valued his friendship and emphasizing her efforts to introduce members of the Berlin aristocracy to his work. She ignored completely his request to show her letters to Christina and indeed refrained from any mention of the queen of Sweden.

  But of course this did not stop Descartes from sending his letters to Christina, who by this time had been primed by Chanut to receive them with great interest. “I had the honor two months ago to accompany the Queen on a journey to the silver and copper mines. In her leisure time in traveling she devoted herself entirely to her books. I carried with me your Principles of Philosophy. I read her the Preface. She opened the book at various parts, and remained very thoughtful for several days,” he wrote to Descartes in December 1648. (I’ll bet.) Soon after, Christina penned Descartes a short thank-you note for sending her his letters instructing her on the passions. Descartes, ever the courtier, was thrilled to receive a personal missive from a sitting monarch. “Had a letter come to me from heaven, and had I seen it descending from the clouds, I should not have been more surprised, and could not have received it with greater respect and veneration than that with which I received the letter it has pleased your Majesty to write,” he rhapsodized in his reply. “It seems to me that this Princess is created in the image of God in a greater degree than the rest of mankind,” he raved to Chanut in a subsequent note written in February 1649.

  And so it came about that in the spring of 1649, Queen Christina of Sweden, through the medium of the French ambassador Pierre Chanut, formally invited René Descartes to Stockholm to take up a position as philosopher-in-residence at her court for the purpose of instructing her personally in the Cartesian method.

  ALTHOUGH HE HAD CLEARLY been angling for just this invitation, once it actually arrived, Descartes hesitated. “I confess that a man born in the garden of Touraine [France], who is now in a country where, if there is not as much honey as God promised to the Israelites, there yet may credibly be discovered more milk [Holland], cannot so easily make up his mind to quit it for a land of bears between rocks and ice [Sweden],” he confided candidly in a letter to a friend in April 1649. But it was too tempting an offer to turn down, and he began making preparations for the journey, one of which was to break word of his new employment to Elizabeth.

  No husband who had cheated on his wife and was trying to get out of it by pretending to be concerned for her welfare ever penned a guiltier letter. “I have put off this journey for many reasons,” he finally wrote to Elizabeth, “but principally in order that I might have the honor of receiving your highness’s special commands before my departure. I have so publicly and constantly declared my devotion and zeal for your service that it would be more natural to think unfavorably of me if I manifested any indifference to what touches you… Therefore do I supplicate your Highness most humbly to favor me so far as to instruct me on every point where you think I can be of service either to you or yours, and to be assured that you possess the same power over me as if I had been all my life your slave.” This high-minded sentiment was rather spoiled, however, by his next line. “I entreat you also to let me know what you wish me to answer, if I should be put in mind of your Highness’s letters… which I had mentioned last year in my correspondence, and which there might be some curiosity to see.” Again, aware of how hurtful all this might appear, he could not resist throwing her a sop: “I intend to spend the winter in the country I am alluding to [Sweden]… if my desires are fulfilled I shall wend my homeward road through the spot where you may be in order to be able personally to reiterate to your Highness the expression of those sentiments I shall never cease to devote to you,” he concluded, although he had not bothered to visit her once during the three years she had been in Berlin.

  Poor Elizabeth! This letter hit her hard upon the heels of numerous ordeals. The previous year, she had just gotten over a bout with smallpox—“Though the fever has left me, and with it the peril of
my life, I am still quite covered with it and can use neither my hands nor my eyes. They feed me like a little child,” she had informed Karl Ludwig—when news came of Charles I’s execution, a trauma that affected her so profoundly that she had again taken to her bed.* She was also at this time in the midst of negotiations for Henrietta Maria’s unhappy Transylvanian wedding, the very mention of which caused her younger sister to burst into tears. And now the man she felt closest to in the world was leaving her for another woman. Although the letter she wrote him in answer has since been lost, she had sent an earlier one when he thought he might be taking a position in Paris, and it may be presumed that she reiterated the poignant sentiment expressed at that time: “Assuring myself that in changing your abode you will always keep the same charity for your very affectionate friend to serve you, Elizabeth.”*

  On September 1, 1649, Descartes embarked from Amsterdam to begin his journey to the Swedish queen’s side. A number of his friends were present to see him off. It was remarked that Descartes had had his hair curled and donned his best clothes for the occasion. “He reminds me of that Plato who was not so divine that he did not wish to know what humanity was,” reported one of the well-wishers with amusement, “[who was] going to Stockholm a courtier all shod and clad.”

  A month later Descartes arrived at Chanut’s house, where he was lodged and treated as an honored guest, and the next day appeared before the queen.

  HE MIGHT HAVE SAVED his fancy clothes. Sweden was no France, and Queen Christina was no fashionable lady. “As to the time she took to dress,” observed a contemporary report, “it needed in no way to be counted in the distribution of her day. In a quarter of an hour all was over, and, unless on most solemn occasions, a comb and a bit of ribbon were her sole head-dress. Her hair, thus neglected, was not unsuited to her face, of which she took so little care, that neither in town or country, neither for wind nor for rain, did she ever use mask or veil. She wore on horseback nothing but a hat with feathers, beneath which it was hard to discern her, when she added to it a mantle with a narrow collar like a man’s. This absence of all attention to her person was excessive, and would even have threatened her health had she been less vigorously constituted.”

  Descartes might have overlooked his new patron’s somewhat prosaic appearance if she had demonstrated a keen interest in his work, but this seems not to have been the case. Although their first interview began well, with Christina summoning the captain of the ship that had brought Descartes to Sweden to ask his opinion of the philosopher—“He taught me more in three weeks of the science of seamanship and of winds and navigation, than I had learned in the sixty years I have been at sea,” the sailor reportedly declared—the rest of the audience seems to have been disappointing. In fact, Descartes realized almost immediately that he had made a mistake, as can be ascertained by the rapidity with which he sought to reestablish contact with Elizabeth. “I have been in Stockholm but four or five days, and among the foremost things to which I am in duty bound, stands the obligation to write and offer my homage to your Highness, in order that you may know how powerless is all change of land or scene to alter or diminish in any way my zealous devotion to you,” he wrote humbly. Of Christina he reported, “She is extremely devoted to the study of literature, but since I do not know that she has done anything in Philosophy, I cannot judge of what her taste will be, nor if she will be able to take the necessary time to study it… Nevertheless,” he continued, “though I have so great a veneration for her Majesty, I do not think anything would avail to keep me longer in this country than till next summer… I can only assure you that I remain all my life yours,” he finished.

  The receipt of this letter must have acted like a balm on Elizabeth’s aching heart. She, who understood him so well, knew exactly what Descartes was saying to her. Christina, with her interest in literature, was no threat to Elizabeth. If he’d written that the queen of Sweden had a love of mathematics, well, that might have been a different story; but as it stood, the erring husband had discovered that he preferred his former soul mate after all. “I do not think anything would avail to keep me longer in this country than till next summer,” was a particularly telling phrase—he had been there less than a week and was already talking about leaving!

  Elated, she wrote back to him quickly to assure him that all was forgiven, and they could continue as before as though none of this had happened. Under the circumstances, she could afford to be generous. “It is proof of the continuance of your kindness to me, which assures me also of the happy success of your journey, since the object was worth the trouble, and you find still more marvels in the Queen of Sweden than her reputation had announced,” she answered virtuously. “I feel however capable of a crime against her service in rejoicing that your veneration for her will not detain you long in Sweden,” she continued merrily before offering to arrange a means by which to escape graciously, even naming a prospective guide to lead him to Berlin, as Descartes had earlier promised to visit her on his way back. “If you leave this winter I hope it may be in the company of M. Kleist, which will afford the opportunity of giving the happiness of seeing you again to your very affectionate friend to serve you, Elizabeth.”

  But of course he couldn’t leave right away; he had to at least make an effort to instruct his royal pupil. The problem was, Christina had many duties to perform, and needed a clear head to tackle a subject as challenging as philosophy. She found herself most able to concentrate first thing in the morning, when she had just arisen, before the inevitable duties associated with her position began to descend upon her. For an old soldier’s daughter like Christina, this meant five o’clock in the morning.

  If the devil himself had been asked to devise a revenge that would most punish a man like Descartes, he could not have come up with a more miserable torment. For Descartes, who was used to his ten uninterrupted hours of sleep followed by spending most of the day either in bed or wrapped up in blankets in a cozy room near a cheerful fire, to have to throw off the warm covers and rise in the blackness of a winter’s morning three times a week to ride in an open carriage through the howling winds and frigid temperatures of a Swedish winter to stand attendance in a drafty castle and try to instruct an unkempt twenty-three-year-old woman on the finer points of the Cartesian system taxed even the philosopher’s cherished beliefs about always looking on the bright side of a situation. “It seems to me that men’s thoughts freeze here during the winter, just as does the water,” he groused in a letter to another friend written on January 15, 1650. “I assure you that the desire which I have to return to my desert increases every day. It is not that I have not great zeal in the service of the Queen, nor that she does not show me as great kindness as I can reasonably expect. But I am not in my element here,” he concluded with uncharacteristic understatement.

  The winter he had chosen to visit was particularly cold and cruel, even by Swedish standards. His good friend Chanut, with whom he was still staying, also unused to the extreme cold, fell ill that January with a fever and an upper respiratory ailment; Descartes volunteered to help nurse him. And then, just as Chanut began to recover, Descartes sickened, infected with the same disease.

  All that January and February, Elizabeth waited impatiently for news from her friend, to hear how soon he might be leaving Sweden and coming to her; finally, it arrived. “Madame Elizabeth Palatine,” wrote Chanut in a letter dated February 19, 1650. “The duty which I herewith tender to your Royal Highness is the very last by which I should have desired to testify my humble respects; but I think myself obliged to give an account of a person whom you so greatly esteemed for his rarement, and to inform you, Madame, with incredible grief that we have lost M. Descartes. We were both he and I attacked almost at the same time by a similar malady, a continuous fever with inflammation of the lungs; but since his fever was in the beginning more internal, he did not believe it dangerous, and would not allow himself to be bled for several days, which rendered the illness so violent that all our
trouble and the continual care which the Queen of Sweden took in sending her own physicians could not hinder his decease… On the eighth day [he] told me that during the night he had made his account and was resolved to leave the world without grief and with confidence in the mercy of God… we were nevertheless deceived, both he and I, in the estimation of his strength, the end was nearer than we thought: the following night the oppression of his chest increased so as to hinder his breathing. He felt his end approaching without trouble and without fear; and not being able to speak, made signs many times repeated that he departed content with life and with men, and trusting in the goodness of God. I believe, Madame, that had he known the day before, while he could still speak, that his end was so near, he would have commended to me many of his last wishes, and would particularly have desired me to tell your Royal Highness that he died with the same respect he had always held for you during his life, which he had often testified to me in words full of reverence and admiration…”

  Soon after this, Elizabeth, in response to her sister Sophia’s urgent plea for help, left Berlin and traveled to Heidelberg to see if she could be of use in reconciling Karl Ludwig’s marital discords with his new young wife. Their brother Edward was also visiting at the time and he and Sophia remarked on Elizabeth’s surprisingly haggard appearance. “We thought her much changed, both in mind and person,” Sophia reported in her memoirs. “Looking at her, Prince Edward whispered to me: ‘Where has her liveliness gone? What has she done with her merry talk?’”