Elizabeth of Bohemia

by David Elias

  It was for this purpose that I managed to obtain the services of the renowned French scholar René Descartes, who had been making a name for himself in the field of philosophy. I myself had always considered the study of that discipline impractical and should have preferred Elisabeth to take up medicine, where I was sure she could make great strides, but such an endeavour would be considered beneath her station and so out of the question even for the child of a monarch in exile. As it turned out, the arrival of Monsieur Descartes would cause a rift between us greater than any that already existed.

  When he first arrived at The Hague two things were clear from the outset: that my daughter was at once romantically taken with him, and further that he was quite taken with me. For my part, as I have already told you, I had grown used to such attentions and passed it off as yet another in a long series of infatuations which were as like to burst into flame as to extinguish themselves. At any rate Elisabeth began her lessons and it was not long before Monsieur Descartes had become familiar to the court, though it was also plain he moved about in those circles with the same kind of reticence both I and my daughter were all too familiar with. Nevertheless decorum need be served and various protocols adhered to, so that court life took up more of our time than any of us cared to surrender.

  “What think you on this Monsieur Descartes?” Elisabeth asked me one evening.

  “He seems an able teacher.”

  “And what of the man?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I think you know.”

  I knew at once what was coming and prepared myself as best I could.

  “I have seen the way he looks at you,” Elisabeth went on.

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “You can hardly fail to do otherwise. Why, whenever the two of you are in the same room he will hardly deign to turn his gaze upon anyone else for casting it in your direction.”

  “You exaggerate. He merely looks to see that I approve of him as a suitable companion for your scholarship. After all, it is I who holds the purse that pays him.”

  “And what of his appearance?”

  “What of it?”

  “Tell me, do you find him handsome?”

  “It hardly matters that I do or no, but if you must know, I hadn’t really given it much thought.”

  “You have not answered.”

  “I find his features rather more clumsy than refined, and his visage to contain more of toil than romance.”

  “There’s little in it of elegance I grant, but I for one should not seek to find that quality in a man such as he.”

  “Perhaps we have different tastes.”

  “And yet I have seen him acquire very quickly a taste for your company.”

  “He seems equally fond of yours.”

  “He is my teacher. He has no choice.”

  “And you would like him to be something more.” As soon as I had let slip this last I regretted it. When Elisabeth didn’t answer I quickly added, “One thing is certain. It isn’t every woman who can conduct a conversation with him at the level you are able to sustain.”

  “I hardly know of another woman at court who cares to. Men are not attracted to such, and I suppose in this regard Monsieur Descartes is no different than any other. They go first to appearance, even when they are philosophers.”

  “You would think he knew better.”

  “I confess I have pondered to what extent you trigger these bouts of enchantment in him.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Why should it be that he is so sorely smitten with you?”

  “You know it is not my nature to strut and flutter. I have always disdained to do so.”

  “Perhaps by that very fact he takes notice of you. Perhaps you are unaware of your own schemings.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That you do it even as you deny it.”

  “Have I made suggestive remarks?” I felt the rush of blood in my chest. “Do I flirt? Why should I be derided for making conversation?”

  “Heaven forbid any man should find your utterances less than stellar.”

  “I have always been at my best in close conversation.” I forced myself to remain calm. “I am not much for idle chatter. Is there something wrong with that? Would you prefer I hobble myself for the sake of avoiding reproach from a jealous wife?”

  “Or daughter.”

  ***

  The exchange ended there, but the undercurrent of discomfort between us persisted. It had a way of cropping up even in the most unlikely of conversations, as happened one evening when I had allowed that Elisabeth might throw a small dinner party in honour of her brothers Maurice and Edward, as well as her sister Louise, all of whom were at present returned from various endeavours for a brief stay in The Hague. I was surprised to see Monsieur Descartes also in attendance and took Elisabeth aside to enquire about it.

  “I saw no reason not to invite him,” she said casually. “He wanted very much to come. I’m sure you don’t mind.”

  “I had hoped it would be just the family.”

  “That notion seems somewhat misplaced, don’t you think?” She looked at me coolly.

  Her veiled reproach left me somewhat unsteady, and though I allowed that Monsieur Descartes should join us, I took pains to spread my focus evenly around the table, making sundry enquiries after the pursuits of my children, and each time he turned his attentions to me, as he inevitably did, I made a point of directing the conversation elsewhere, most often to Elisabeth, but it seemed the harder I tried the more awkward the situation became.

  “Elisabeth, tell us about your studies with Monsieur Descartes,” said Louise at one point, which brought a sigh of relief from me, at first anyway, as I was glad to be left out of the conversation.

  “Monsieur Descartes and I have been discussing the relationship between the body and the soul,” she answered. “We are of two minds on the subject.”

  “They seem both of them self-evident to me,” said Louise. “Wherein lies the argument?”

  “I don’t see why we have to spoil a perfectly good dinner by discussing such a serious subject,” said Maurice.

  “My brother has no appetite for philosophy,” Edward said, thinking himself quite clever.

  “Monsieur Descartes would put forth they are two separate and distinct entities,” Elisabeth continued, “where I take the part that they are not so easily separated.”

  “I had always thought that one resides within the other,” said Edward.

  “Just so.” Maurice nodded in agreement. “Now can we talk about hunting? I understand the game is quite plentiful in these parts this year.”

  Elisabeth turned to me. “What think you on this, Madam?”

  “I say we have not yet heard from Monsieur Descartes himself. Sir, we would hear your interpretation of the matter.”

  “Your daughter has couched the dilemma quite accurately, Madam. Monsieur Descartes became intensely serious. We can all agree that we possess both of these, yet to say one can be found within the other leaves us open to a troubling challenge.”

  “How so?”

  “Where, dear Madam, within the body should we say the soul resides? Is there any place we can point to?”

  “Some will say the heart,” said Louise.

  “Ah, the heart.” Elisabeth looked at me. “Now we are on shaky ground, for who among us can account for that organ’s vagaries?”

  “And yet it can be torn from the body if need be,” declared Monsieur Descartes. “Not so the soul.”

  “How then when death arrives and it departs the body of its own free will?” asked Edward. “Do you mean to imply that the heart has no will of its own?”

  “Who can say what it wants or why? Only that it does.”

  “And how for yours, Monsieur Descartes?” Elisabeth enquir
ed.

  “Madam?”

  “Can you speak for it?”

  “To what end?”

  “What does your heart desire?” A slight awkwardness fell over the proceedings.

  “I’m afraid the question is hardly relevant to the topic we are discussing,” Monsieur Descartes replied stiffly.

  “And yet I think it is,” Elisabeth persisted.

  “You see,” said Maurice, “this is the problem with philosophy: that it seeks to ride above the waves which toss us daily into turmoil and disarray. I have no use for it.”

  “I think I can vouchsafe as much for myself,” I added.

  “Madam,” Monsieur Descartes looked at me pleadingly, “I hope you do not mean to tar the practitioner with the same brush as the practice. In that case I shall renounce all claim to philosophy and take up hunting.” He looked at Maurice. “I am an excellent shot.”

  “Or why not try mathematics. I for one can see how things are beginning to add up,” said Elisabeth.

  “And how is that?”

  “Two make a nice even number, but three is odd.”

  I was desperate to steer the conversation elsewhere. “I think it is very odd indeed that we have strayed so far from our original discourse.”

  “The discourse of the heart and soul and body: these are all one and the same to me,” said Maurice. “Their hunger is continual, so that none of them can ever be entirely satisfied. They all of them seek nourishment. The body for food and drink . . .”

  “And for embrace, I would add,” Monsieur Descartes looked in my direction.

  “The heart for love . . .” Maurice went on.

  “It also possesses a keen appetite for conquest.” My daughter fixed a cold stare at me.

  “And the soul,” Louise enquired after no one in particular, “what manner of sustenance does it crave?”

  “I venture more than anything it craves harmony,” I offered, “that the other two not be at odds with one another.”

  “And to that end,” offered Maurice, “I would see to it my body gets its proper rest, so if you will excuse me I have yet some study to pursue, and take myself to bed with a book.”

  “Whom do you read at present?” asked Louise.

  “Tonight it shall be Mr. Donne. And so I’ll say good night.”

  “How for yourself, Madam?” Elisabeth looked at me. “Whom would you take to your bed?”

  “There is bound to be a dog or two upon the sheets, if I know my mother,” said Edward.

  “I had thought to take a walk, perhaps,” I said.

  Monsieur Descartes leaned forward eagerly. “Would you care for some company?”

  “I’m afraid I prefer to take my evening sojourn in solitude, as has always been my habit.”

  “You could follow her, if you like.” Elisabeth made no attempt to hide her disdain. “Her dogs are like to do as much. You could fall in with them.”

  I had managed to alienate the affections of yet another of my children, just as I had already done with some of the others and would surely accomplish, sooner or later, with the rest. I should find myself again and again put on the defensive for no good reason I could think of. I couldn’t account for it. What was I missing again and again? Better not to know, perhaps. I wondered if the day should ever come when I might get up the nerve ask one of them, and whether they would be able to give me an answer.

  ***

  I thought it best to make myself as unavailable as possible to Monsieur Descartes even as Elisabeth’s lessons continued, but when the time came that his contract expired, no sooner had he departed from The Hague to take up residence elsewhere than my daughter chose to shamelessly follow him and take up her studies nearby, in hopes for a better outcome with her mother out of the picture. I could not help but think back to Sir Raleigh, in that he had been so much older than I, and here was my daughter, chasing after a man old enough to be her father. Then came word one day that Monsieur Descartes, as he was wont to from time to time, had abruptly forfeited all opportunity for social interaction and shut himself off from the world that he might better devote himself to the completion of a new philosophical treatise without distraction.

  He insisted that he and my daughter correspond forthwith only through letters, and this they did, though the contents were mostly of a dispassionate and academic nature, amounting to little more than philosophical discourse. I suppose in this way the two of them managed to attain a measure of spiritual companionship, which some say is the only kind that lasts. I have always felt that the deepest of bonds were cultivated by matters beyond the flesh. My daughter showed remarkable insight in the field of analytical philosophy, but I feared her contributions to Monsieur Descartes’s work should go unheeded unless the letters between them found their way into the hands of the right scholars. I intended to find some means to see that they did, but my task was made more difficult when I lost track of her thereafter and had to make do with various rumours that reached me of her whereabouts, including one that she had gone to Amsterdam to join a Mennonite sect for a time.

  For my part I harboured yet the rather naive notion that somebody would come along, someone different from the others, who would take an interest in me unlike any before, a person for whom I might feel something akin to that which my brother Henry claimed he felt for my husband, Frederick, upon their first encounter. I never forgot how he insisted that it seemed he had made the reacquaintance of a long-lost friend, or that he had found the best companion of his life. I have felt this way only fleetingly, in brief moments when I thought it might be so, but in a matter of days or weeks the realization always came that I had been misled yet again. And I confess I thought my daughter Elisabeth might have turned out to be that person.

  Through all of this Lord Craven remained true to his word and as good a benefactor as I might have hoped for under the circumstances. My children, hardly blind to the relationship we had, saw that he occupied a place of special privilege within the hierarchy of the court. They had not forgotten the devotion their father always showed to me, though some were quite young when he died, but I gave little thought to their sentiments. I had long ago decided there should be no more marriages in my future, save those vows I took to see myself wedded to the quest of freedom and independence. The talk at court was all about the fact that Lord Craven was not of equal station, notwithstanding that he was twelve years my junior, but I could not be bothered with any of it so long as it did not impede my means of obtaining supplementary income from those I needed to keep in my good graces. But by then I was a master of such techniques, and those lords and ladies of the court hardly knew how I spun them like so many whirling tops to do my business and see to my needs.

  I stayed the course even as rumours became increasingly difficult to ignore that Lord Craven had taken a lover. In spite of my better judgment, the thought crossed my mind that it might be one of my daughters, and even as I enjoyed a degree of relief when I learned that it was not, I found myself sabotaged by unquenchable bouts of jealousy. I hardly knew what to make of them, and approached Lord Craven one evening to confront him.

  “I suppose I can hardly blame you taking your affections elsewhere.”

  “You found out, then.” He sat down with his back to me and let his shoulders slump forward.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  “I suppose not.” He shook his head slowly.

  “Perhaps the opposite is true. That you wanted me to find out, the better to evoke some jealousy in me. Well, if that’s why you’re doing this, you’re wasting your time,” I lied.

  I came to stand next to him and he turned to look up at me. “I would never want to upset you.”

  “But surely you knew that it would.”

  “But why should it be so?” He grew a little bolder. “You have made it clear you are not in love with me and never can be.”

 
“I suppose next you will lecture me and say a man has his needs.”

  “And how be for a woman?” He looked up at me with a hint of accusation, rose from his chair, walked over to the window and leaned to look out of it.

  “You are free to do as you wish,” I said evenly.

  “Neither of us has ever been free to do exactly as he wished.”

  “Tell me, who is she?”

  “A lady of the court.” He turned to face me. “You can dismiss her if you wish.”

  “Better if I did, perhaps.”

  When he made no answer I added, “No doubt you will find another.”

  Still he spoke not a word.

  “Did you seek to make me jealous?” I said. “Or perhaps it was something else. You want to punish me.”

  “I have no defence but to plead that it was none of these.”

  “And yet I gave you leave to take some favour of me, and you would not.”

  “You gave me leave but little else. I could take what I desired, but by that very taking would my desire have been forfeit, for it should have been mine alone and none of yours.”

  “Many a man would have been eager to help himself nonetheless.”

  “I was never such a one of those. Surely you must know that by now.”

  “Where do you accomplish the deed? Was she eager?”

  “You can’t really seek to know these things.”

  “I would know what you’d have from me.”

  “Naught but what you cannot give, and so I am content.”

  “But where is your reward?”

  “I reap it even now.”

  “By wanting what you can’t have. In this, I suppose, we are the same. Fated to be together by some means neither of us understands or even wants, each evoking in the other that which we fail to arouse in ourselves.”