Through the Rhône valley, thick with vineyards, they made they way to the thriving town of Lyon, where they arrived just as night was falling. Here, a century before, Italian architects had built an enchanting Renaissance city of red stone towers and winding staircases, and here, in a thousand silk manufactories, artisans wove their beautiful fabric day after day. Christina’s behaviour on arrival did not match the nobility of her surroundings: at the approach of an earnest local dignitary, she was enjoined to step down from her coach to hear his lengthy speech of welcome, but the man was curtly dismissed. ‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘Let’s leave the speeches till tomorrow.’ And she waved her coachman onward.
She was ready to extend more civility the following day, when she received a gentleman of honour sent from the King – or more properly, from Cardinal Mazarin. He was none other than the Duc de Guise, former captor and King of Naples, and he was to accompany the Queen on her journey to the French court. It was a tactical choice, and a happy one for Christina; she took to the Duc at once, and there was nothing she wanted to talk of more than Naples and its crown. The Duc himself, a handsome man of 42, appears to have viewed his new charge with amusement and irony, and a courtly touch of languid condescension, too. Renowned for his attentions to the fair sex, he paid careful attention to Christina, and after a few days sent a description of her to a friend at Louis’ court. In due course it was read aloud to the young King and his mother:
I’m dreadfully bored at the moment, but I would at least like to amuse you by sending you a portrait of the Queen I am accompanying. She is not tall, but she is shapely, with a large rump, fine arms, and pretty white hands, but more of a man than a woman, and with one shoulder higher than the other, though she hides this so well with her bizarre clothes and her way of walking that one really could lay odds on whether the defect is there at all. Her face is long but not to a fault, and all her features are long, too, and quite pronounced, her nose aquiline, her mouth rather large but not disagreeably so, her teeth passable, her eyes really beautiful and full of fire, her complexion, despite a few pock marks, quite clear and pretty. Her face is nicely shaped but framed by the most extraordinary coiffure. She wears a man’s wig, very heavy and piled high in front, hanging thickly at the sides and fair at the ends. The top of her head is a mass of hair; at the back it looks vaguely like a woman’s coiffure. Sometimes she wears a hat. Her bodice is laced crosswise at the back. It is made almost like a man’s vest, with her shirt showing all the way round between it and her skirt. The skirt is very badly fastened and not very straight. She always wears a lot of powder and lots of face cream, and she hardly ever wears gloves. She wears men’s shoes, and she sounds and moves like a man as well. She loves to show what a fine horsewoman she is; she really glories in it, and she is at least as proud of it as the great Gustav her father could have been. She is very civil and a great flatterer; she speaks eight languages, and above all French as if she had been born in Paris. She knows more than the whole of our Académie at the Sorbonne combined, is admirably well informed about painting as about everything else, and knows more about our court intrigues than I do. In short, she is quite extraordinary. I shall accompany her to court by way of Paris, so you will be able to judge for yourself. I do not think I have forgotten anything, except that sometimes she wears a sword, and a buffalo hide collar, and her wig is black.5
The Duc’s duties towards Christina required him to spend many hours in her company, and the two were frequently seen engrossed in lively conversation. Rumours of a passionate love affair inevitably followed, but, despite her shapely figure, the Duc seems to have remained safely indifferent to the overpowdered little woman with the passable teeth. He himself, on the other hand, was precisely the kind of man whom Christina did admire: tall, handsome, very masculine, a soldier and adventurer, and a clever and cultured man to boot. She enjoyed his attentions to her, and now and then may have allowed herself to misunderstand them.
Juicier rumours soon overtook them, in any case. At a banquet in Lyon, Christina was introduced to the Marquise Elisabeth de Castellane, ‘la Belle Provençale’, and within a day the Queen’s desperate love for her was established fact. The Marquise was said to be one of the most beautiful women in the kingdom. She had married at the age of only thirteen years, but her mariner husband had been lost in a shipwreck, and now, at twenty, she was already a widow. Christina found her ravishing; on her account, it is said, she delayed her onward journey. How frequently they met, or what they spoke of, or what the Marquise thought, is not recorded, but Christina’s captivation at least is revealed in a gallant little billet-doux:
Ah! if I were a man, I would fall at your feet, submissive and languishing with love; I would spend days, I would spend nights in contemplation of your divine attractions. Your beautiful eyes are the innocent authors of all my woes. I will spend the rest of my life in a state of bittersweet enchantment, while I await some happy reversal that will change my sex. In this sweet hope, I count the days of my life.6
Though it goes on to speak of ‘unsatisfied burning desires’ and ‘never fading voluptuousness’, it is not really a love letter. Christina did not know the Marquise long enough even to be infatuated with her. A flirtatious note, couched in the passionate language of the précieuses, was a pleasant game to play; had the Marquise responded in earnest, Christina’s fun might have been rather lessened. She was not a man, after all, nor was she a lover of women in the fullest sense, and in the end she resigned herself to a ‘most pure, most firm, most confiding friendship’. Even this does not seem to have outlasted her visit. And if the Marquise ever thought of her, she did not have long to do so. Within two years she had married again, and one day, in her husband’s absence, her two brothers-in-law tried to rape her; she defended herself, but they forced her to take poison, then finished her young life with pistol and dagger.
Not all Christina’s encounters in Lyon were grist to the gossipmongers’ mill. Some at least were innocent and accepted as such, among them her meeting with Claude-François Menestrier, a learned young Jesuit famous for his prodigious memory. Christina, always proud of her own excellent memory, decided to test his powers for herself. A meeting was arranged, but Menestrier did not arrive; undaunted, Christina set off to see him at his own house. Without warning or ceremony, she knocked at his door, announced who she was, and sat down. She had prepared for the encounter by making a list of 300 words, taken at random, and this she began to read. Menestrier duly repeated the list without hesitation, repetition, or deviation. Christina was enraptured, but Menestrier had not finished yet – without waiting for an invitation, he then intoned the list backwards, faultlessly.7
From Lyon, Christina took the road north towards Paris, and at the beginning of September she arrived at the magnificent château of Fontainebleau, some 25 miles from the city. The château had been built, more than a hundred years before, in the middle of a large forest, ‘a withdrawn and solitary place’. Italian architects, invited by François I, Renaissance prince par excellence, had established it as one of the finest palaces in Europe. Later monarchs had added to its splendour; elegant gardens, complete with paths and streams and ‘a marvellous fountain, with four hundred pipes’, had been laid out by Louis’ grandfather, and when Christina arrived, the beautiful horsehoe staircase was still being admired as a recent embellishment.8
It was probably too early in the season for her to have seen the forest at its most enchanting. Only in the fullness of the autumn would the trees produce their finest aspect in marvellous red and gold. Then, the King would arrive to indulge his passion for hunting, for the richness of game in the forest was legendary. Christina loved hunting, too, but for now she was not tempted. She was tired from her latest journey, and showing signs of a deeper weariness. It had been six weeks since her departure from Rome, and the endless hours of jolting carriages and tiresome formalities of welcome had begun to take their toll. She was irritable and unwell, and relieved to come at last within sight of th
e beautiful château, rising out of the dense and quiet forest, ‘like an oasis in the desert’.9
In the King’s absence, the Duc de Guise took charge, and for once Christina had only brief formalities to endure. There was just one address of welcome, made, in fact, by the Comte de Comminges, though he had been travelling with her all the way from Lyon as the Queen Mother’s representative. Christina was then introduced to some of the ladies of the court, each of whom greeted her with a kiss, after the French fashion. Whether amused or annoyed, she could not resist an undiplomatic comment, perhaps with a touch of defensiveness as well. ‘Why are these ladies all so eager to kiss me?’ she exclaimed. ‘Is it because I look like a man?’
Christina, whether Queen or King, was royally installed. One evening’s rest was enough to restore her, and so began a lively week of music and dancing and ballets and plays, all to her delight. It was vastly increased by a meeting she had long wished for, with Anne-Marie-Louise-Henriette d’Orléans, la Duchesse de Montpensier, known since her civil war exploits as ‘la Grande Mademoiselle’. The two had already exchanged a number of enthusiastic and mutually admiring letters. Like Christina, the Duchesse was an admirer of the Prince de Condé, though unlike Christina, she was keen to marry him – once his sickly existing wife, ‘poor Claire-Clémence’, had departed the world.
During the second Fronde rebellion in the early 1650s, the Duchesse had distinguished herself in the lists against her cousin, the King, and she was now officially in exile at her vast, turreted castle of Saint-Fargeau in Burgundy. For the moment, however, she had lodged herself nearer the court, the better to pursue the possibility of rehabilitation. Hearing that Christina was staying nearby, she had determined to meet her, but first she had sent a strategic message to the King, to solicit his permission for her visit to ‘a foreign princess’. It had duly arrived, and Mademoiselle now sent to establish what kind of reception she might expect from Christina herself. Though currently in disgrace, she was, after all, a princess of the blood. Would she be permitted to sit in the Queen’s presence, not just on a bench, but in an armchair, with a proper back? Her courtly companion thought not, and scoffed at Mademoiselle’s effrontery, but Christina was happy to oblige her. Her response arrived at seven in the evening, and Mademoiselle, in public though not private mourning for a sister whom she had never known, changed hastily into a sober gown, and set off with a retinue of curious ladies.
She had much in common with Christina. In age, the two were just six months apart. Both loved strenuous physical activity, especially riding and hunting – Mademoiselle had had horses sent to her from Germany and even a pack of hounds from England. She was a keen billiards player as well, and a veritable fanatic for shuttlecock, at which she spent two hours every morning and two hours every afternoon. Like Christina, too, Mademoiselle was a woman of cultivated tastes, although here Christina had the advantage, for Mademoiselle’s formal education had been spasmodic and mediocre, and it was only in exile, at the age of 25, that she had begun to read seriously, and also to write. But in her earliest adulthood she had frequented an important Paris literary salon, a fact of some envy to Christina, who had spent the same years languishing, as she saw it, in intellectual isolation in the frozen north. And, through the years of her exile, Mademoiselle had developed her cultural interests, and at Saint-Fargeau had installed a theatre and even her own printing press. From this emerged portraits and verses, at times pastoral or satirical, but mostly in the style of the précieuses, extolling the virtues of celibacy and the life of the mind to which all noble-souled young ladies aspired. They were ideas to which Christina herself responded eagerly and instinctively. They accorded perfectly with her intense admiration for great men and great ideals, and with her personal antipathy to marriage. They answered, and in a way legitimized, her own aspirations and her own unusual nature, and la Grande Mademoiselle seemed, to her, a living embodiment of them. Above all, Christina envied the Duchesse’s amazonian reputation, gained when she had fired a cannon at the King’s troops from the top of the Bastille. The act had drawn a ferocious curse from Cardinal Mazarin. ‘She has killed her husband!’ he had declared, and had thenceforth vengefully blocked any plan for her to marry.
For the moment, the suitors’ loss was Christina’s gain. She was passing the evening at a ballet performed within the sumptuous home of a wealthy magistrate who lived near Fontainebleau. In a beautiful room decorated à l’italienne, she sat surrounded by a crowd of the admiring and the curious, most of them perched ignobly on low, backless benches. Mademoiselle’s first impression was one of relief, for, as she later wrote, ‘I had heard so much about her bizarre clothes that I was frightened to death I would burst out laughing when I saw her’.10 On this occasion, at least, Christina was acceptably dressed in a skirt of grey silk and a flame-coloured bodice of fine wool, both finished with gold and silver lace. Attached to her skirt was an embroidered kerchief with a flame-coloured ribbon, and a little braid of gold, silver, and black. Her wig this time was blonde, with a womanly bun at the back, and in her hand she carried a black-feathered hat.
The Duc de Guise had remarked that Christina wore ‘a lot of powder and lots of face cream’, and it seems that she may have done so on this evening as well, for Mademoiselle records that her skin was white – days later it would be notably brown. ‘Her eyes are blue,’ Mademoiselle continues, ‘sometimes soft, and sometimes very bold. Her mouth is quite pretty though large, her teeth are good, and her nose is large and aquiline. She is very short. Her bodice conceals her poor figure. All in all, she reminded me of a pretty little boy.’
As for the Duchesse herself, Christina was ‘overjoyed’ to see her. She threw her arms around her, saying that she had wanted to meet her ‘passionately’. She had delayed the start of the ballet expressly so that the Duchesse could see it as well. Mademoiselle demurred; she could not stay; she was still in mourning for her sister, who had been a mere fortnight in her grave. Christina insisted; Mademoiselle gave in; the ballet, she records, was ‘very pretty’.
Christina observed nonetheless that she had not given the performance her complete attention, and remarked as well that the Duchesse’s father was ‘the only person in France’ who had not paid her the honour of a visit. Where was he, she wanted to know, and how many sisters did the Duchesse have, and who were her stepmother’s family? Yes, she had read the Comte de Béthune’s work, and yes, she knew all about the Duchesse’s ladies; the Comtesse de Fiesque didn’t deserve her reputation as a beauty – was the Chevalier de Gramont still in love with her? As the Duc de Guise had noticed, Christina was abreast of all the latest gossip, and ‘very eager to let us know it’, as Mademoiselle recorded.
The ballet was followed by a play, and now there was general astonishment, not on account of the play itself, but at Christina’s behaviour. In contrast to the other ladies, and indeed the gentlemen, who, in the manner of the day, sat bolt upright throughout, she lounged in her chair, swinging her legs over the arms of it, now to right, now to left. When a scene took her fancy she praised it aloud, swearing by God, repeating her favourite lines, and when the action wore thin she fell into reveries, emitting deep sighs, before springing to attention suddenly to adopt a posture more suitable, as Mademoiselle remarked, to one of the clowns at the commedia dell’arte.
After light refreshments of fruits and preserves, there were fireworks over the lake. The two stood together, and when Mademoiselle started at an explosion too near to them, Christina took her hand and began to tease her. Surely she could not be afraid? Had not the Duchesse herself taken part in the battle at Orléans? Had she not mounted guard atop the Bastille and herself ordered the cannon to be fired at the King’s troops? Mademoiselle replied that her bravery could be summoned only when occasion demanded it, and that on the whole that was ‘quite enough for me’. She had at least had her chance, however, and in a whispered aside to the Duc de Guise, standing nearby, Christina indicated that she awaited her own with impatience. The Duc encouraged
her to relay this to the Duchesse, and Christina admitted aloud that, more than anything in the world, she wanted to be present at a battle, and that she would never be happy until she had done so, and that she was ‘wildly jealous’ of the Prince de Condé and all that he had done. Was he not a good friend of the Duchesse? Indeed he was, and a very close relative. Christina declared that he was the greatest man in all the world! The Duchesse replied that he would be happy to know that he held such a place in the Queen’s esteem.
The fireworks over, Christina invited Mademoiselle to speak with her en tête-à-tête. She led her into a little private gallery, and shut the door behind them, asking the Duchesse to explain all the difficulties which lay between herself and the King. Mademoiselle did so, presumably glossing over her own treasonable activities, and Christina took her part, declaring at once that she was ‘absolutely right’, and the King ‘absolutely wrong’, and insisting that she would tell him as much, and would take it upon herself to bring about a reconciliation between them. Christina would not be deterred; the Duchesse was not going to spend her days languishing in the countryside; she was the most beautiful princess in Europe, and the nicest, and the richest, and the grandest; she was born to be a queen and Christina would have it so; she must marry Louis, she must be Queen of France; it was a necessary political step, for the good of the whole nation – Christina herself would arrange it with Cardinal Mazarin.
Christina Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric Page 29