The young queen was completely taken with his answer—and with Descartes himself. After reading his response to one of her questions, she said to Chanut: “Monsieur Descartes, as much as I can see from his writing and the picture you have drawn for me, is the most fortunate of all men, and his condition is worthy of envy. You would bring me pleasure by assuring him of the great esteem I have for him.”
The queen now decided that the letters were not enough. She wanted Descartes to become her private philosophy teacher. For that, he would have to leave Holland and come to her court. Chanut was elated that his plan was finally beginning to succeed. But he would have one more hurdle to pass in order to see his mission accomplished: he now needed to make Descartes want to come to Sweden.
When the queen wrote him back, Descartes was flattered. On February 26, 1649, he answered her in a letter from Egmont, Holland: “Madame, if it should have happened that a letter was sent to me from heaven, and that I saw it descend upon me from the clouds, I would not have been more surprised, and would not have received it with more respect and veneration than I did the letter Your Majesty has written me.”
Descartes was still unhappy about his fights with Dutch theologians and philosophers, and in his heart still felt the hostility directed at him in his adopted country. As he wrote to Princess Elizabeth about that time, he was often going back to France and felt he was living with “one foot in each country.” But he still enjoyed tranquillity in Holland, despite his troubles, and would be reluctant to leave. However, Sweden would offer him a new opportunity to start afresh, and he would enjoy being close to the seat of power there. And perhaps every philosopher wants to be able to connect his or her philosophy with worldly power: the example of Aristotle as tutor to the young Alexander the Great comes to mind. But then again, in Holland Descartes was free. He could wake up late in the morning—after sleeping his usual ten hours a night—and lazily read in bed for as long as he wanted. He lived in comfortable surroundings, usually in a small town in the countryside offering walks in nature and fresh farm food, which he valued very much, and yet never too far from a major city such as Leyden or Utrecht or Amsterdam, in which good libraries could be visited whenever he wanted, and in which intellectuals—including his many friends—could be met for discussions. This was not a life he would easily give up.
But Chanut persisted. He wrote letters to Descartes describing the queen's great intelligence, thirst for knowledge, and charm. His strongest card, however, was the queen's admiration for Descartes. Chanut wrote him: “The queen is very much concerned with your fortunes.” And then, “I don't know if, once the queen tasted your philosophy, she would not try to bring you to Sweden.”
Descartes responded that he was very taken with the queen's interest in him. Still, he did not want to leave Holland for what he thought was “the land of the bears, between rocks and ice,” as compared with his natal “gardens of Touraine.” The troubles in Holland would not be the deciding factor, since he felt he could always return to France. He was always welcome in France, and had become quite famous there—but he did not see the possibility of a major position. He described his disappointment to Elizabeth: “I believe that they want me in France as an elephant or a panther, for being a rare creature, and not at all for being useful in any way.”
On February 26,1649, Descartes responded from Holland to Chanut's letter that hinted at an upcoming formal invitation from Christina of Sweden: “Nothing ties me down to this place, other than the fact that I know nothing about another place where I might do better.” Chanut continued his gentle persuasion. Finally, he wrote him most directly: “The queen of Sweden desires to see you in Stockholm and to learn philosophy from your mouth.”
Reluctantly, Descartes accepted Queen Christina's invitation to come to Sweden to serve as her philosophy teacher. The queen showed great generosity and suggested, through Chanut, that Descartes take several months off before making the voyage to his new country, as well as giving him a few more months' time to get acclimated in Sweden before he would have to do anything in his new position. And with a final grand gesture, the queen ordered one of the admirals of her fleet, a man named Flemming, to sail to Holland and pick up her royal guest and bring him to Stockholm.
When Admiral Flemming of the Royal Swedish Fleet landed in Holland in August 1649 and made the trip to Descartes' home in Egmont, the philosopher refused to follow him to his ship. Descartes claimed that he did not know who the man was and therefore would not go with him. Letters he wrote to his friends at that time provide evidence that he was still reluctant to leave Holland, and that perhaps he used this excuse in order to buy himself more time. Eventually, once letters reached him telling him that Flemming was indeed an admiral and that he had indeed been sent by the queen to pick him up, Descartes packed up his bags. He took care of his financial concerns, moving money from one bank to another, paying off debts, and revising his will. He bade farewell to his friends and was ready to leave. Some who saw him off remarked some months later that he had a premonition of his death and was ill at the thought of leaving for Sweden and an uncertain future.
On September 1, 1649, Descartes left Egmont to board his ship in Amsterdam headed for Stockholm “coiffed in curls, wearing crescent-pointed shoes, his hands covered with well-lined snow-white gloves,” according to a witness. He was accompanied by his new German valet, Henry Schluter, who was fluent in French and Latin in addition to his native tongue. Before leaving, Descartes wrote to his friend Clerselier, Chanut's brother-in-law, that he was going to Sweden because of his trust in Chanut, rather than because he wanted to. And prophetically, he added: “I would be extremely upset if my presence in Stockholm should serve as the subject of malicious gossip by those who would like to say that the queen is too assiduous in her study, and that she receives her instruction from a person of another religion.”
Descartes could not have been more correct in this concern. The intellectual court of Queen Christina had been dominated by “grammarians.” These were librarians, philologists, and other scholars, all of them Calvinist and fiercely opposed to Catholicism. They would all learn to distrust and hate Descartes, especially once he became the queen's favorite adviser.
The voyage by sea from Holland to Sweden took over a month—an unusual length of time. This was due to inclement weather accentuated by headwinds that impeded the ship's progress. According to the captain, Descartes used his science to help him navigate in difficult seas, and he said that he learned more from Descartes during the month he spent with him at sea than he had learned in decades of sailing the oceans.
Descartes arrived in Stockholm on October 4, 1649, and was received by the queen's representative. The crates containing his manuscripts and other possessions were unloaded from the ship, and he was taken to his lodgings for the night. The next day, Descartes was received by Queen Christina in a ceremony in which she lavished so much honor upon him that it incited a general jealousy of the new arrival at her court. And no one was more jealous of and hostile to the philosopher than the man named Freinsheimius, who was the queen's chief librarian.
Christina went further in honoring Descartes. She offered to grant him Swedish citizenship, and said she wanted to confer upon him noble rank. In addition, she wanted to give him lands in Germany that the Peace of Westphalia made hers. But the philosopher modestly declined these generous offers.
The queen was eager to establish the work plan for her new tutor. She wanted to meet him in the first hour after waking up in the morning—that is, at 5:00 A.M. Again, modest and polite, Descartes never told her that this was completely contrary to the lifestyle he had led all his life, staying up late at night, going to bed whenever he wanted to, never waking up before ten in the morning, and then staying in bed to read and think. So at age fifty-three, Descartes would begin a new lifestyle: one that would require him to wake up very early in the morning and leave his warm bed in the French embassy, and—in the frigid Swedish winter—go to the queen's u
nheated library, arriving there at 5:00 A.M. to deliver an hour-long lesson in philosophy. But Descartes had six weeks to get used to the idea, and to get used to living in his new country.
Queen Christina of Sweden with Descartes
Descartes lived with the Chanuts, at the lodgings of the resident of France, in the embassy building. Pierre Chanut was not in Stockholm when Descartes arrived—he was in Paris for consultations with the government and also for the ceremony promoting him from resident to ambassador. Mme. Chanut, the sister of Descartes' friend Clerselier, took good care of her guest, putting him up at the upper floor of the house, located three hundred yards from the royal palace. When Pierre Chanut arrived, Descartes witnessed the ceremony in which Chanut presented his credentials as ambassador to Queen Christina. This promotion was remarkable since Chanut was a member of the middle class, and ambassadors at that time were usually members of the nobility. His promotion had much to do with merit—his success in advancing the relationship between the two nations, including the fact that he had been able to turn France's great philosopher into an adviser to the queen of Sweden.
After meeting Christina only a few times, Descartes realized that there was a strong bond between them. It was the beginning of another troubling thought for him: the possibility of a platonic, if not physical, love triangle between himself, Christina, and Elizabeth. Shortly after his arrival in Sweden, Descartes wrote the following letter to his devoted Princess Elizabeth. It was the last letter Descartes would write to her.
Stockholm, 9 October 1649
Madame,
Having arrived in Stockholm four or five days ago, one of the first things I consider among my duties is to renew the offers of my very humble service to Your Highness….
One of the first things that [Queen Christina] asked me was whether I have had any news from you, and I did not fail to tell her right away that which I think about Your Highness; since, noting the strength of her spirit, I had no fear that this would give her any feelings of jealousy, as I assure myself as well that Your Highness would also not have when I openly tell you about my sentiments for this queen.
Descartes started teaching the queen, and she proved to be the perfect student. She had endless stamina and desire to learn. While the 5:00 A.M. sessions were difficult for the philosopher, Christina could go on and on. She would spend many hours each day studying beyond her morning sessions with Descartes. While on horseback during hunts, she would carry books and read them on breaks from the chase, as well as between official duties. Christina asked Descartes about issues other than philosophy as well: literature, religion, and politics. He was becoming her chief and most favored adviser. The queen was slowly falling under the spell of Descartes, or at least that was how everyone in her court viewed the situation.
The grammarians conspired against Descartes, furious about the French and Catholic influences they saw him as exerting on their queen. Descartes felt the hostility, and it made him regret his move more than all other factors combined. On January 15, 1650, he wrote in a letter to a friend named Bregy: “The thoughts of the people here freeze during the winter as do the waters…. My desire to return to my desert grows every day more and more.”
To another friend, he wrote that the courtiers “regard all strangers among them with much jealousy.” Unfortunately, Descartes would not escape this jealousy to return to his “desert” or the gardens of Touraine.
Chapter 19
The Mysterious Death of Descartes
ON FEBRUARY 3, 1650, FIVE MONTHS after he arrived in Stockholm, Descartes fell ill. Most of his biographers have concluded that his illness resulted from having to rise early—something he was not at all used to—and from the bitter Swedish cold. In fact, that particular winter was the harshest in sixty years. Indeed, the doctor who looked after Descartes in Stockholm diagnosed his symptoms as those of pneumonia.
Queen Christina's best doctor, her “first doctor,” was a Frenchman by nationality. His name was du Ryer, and he was a friend of Descartes and an admirer of his work. Du Ryer was born in Spain but had moved to France as a young man and received his medical degree from the University of Montpellier. He had been introduced to Descartes' philosophy and enthusiastically called himself a Cartesian even before he met the famous philosopher at the court of Queen Christina. Descartes trusted Dr. du Ryer, and might have been inclined to follow his orders; he certainly would have been happy to have du Ryer as his physician. But the day Descartes fell ill, Dr. du Ryer was far away from Stockholm on a mission on behalf of the queen, and not expected back soon.
The queen therefore sent Descartes her “second doctor,” a Dutch physician by the name of Weulles. According to Baillet, Weulles was “a sworn enemy of Descartes since the time of the war that the ministers and theologians of Utrecht and Leyden had declared upon him.” Weulles had been allied with anti-Cartesian elements in Dutch acade-mia, and was further described by Baillet as wanting to “see Descartes dead.” This man “had put into use all he had judged as capable of harming” Descartes. Just why such a doctor was assigned to treat the ailing French philosopher remains a disturbing mystery.
Medical knowledge in the seventeenth century was poor, and practitioners may not have known the difference between a cold, influenza, pneumonia, or something else. To treat an illness effectively, one would need to diagnose it correctly. But whatever the illness—be it pneumonia or stomach pains or the plague—the treatment prescribed by these doctors was always the same: bleeding.
Descartes' illness started on the fifteenth day of the illness of Pierre Chanut, whom Descartes had visited every day while the ambassador was bedridden. When he left his bedside on the fifteenth day, Descartes felt a chill. That same day, Chanut had started to feel much better and was on the mend. The second day of Descartes' illness was the day of the feast of the Purification of the Virgin. Descartes was present at the ceremonies, but felt so bad that he had to leave early and get into bed.
That night, Ambassador Chanut, feeling much better himself, asked the queen to send Descartes a doctor. And according to Baillet, Weulles, “knowing the debt he had to the queen, as well as to the integrity of his profession,” came to the French embassy and presented himself to Chanut to offer his services to the ailing philosopher. Descartes had avoided seeing a physician for the first two days of his illness because he was wary of charlatans and ignorant doctors. Now there was no choice—the queen had sent him Dr. Weulles, and he was too sick to refuse him.
As soon as he arrived at Descartes' bedside, Weulles decided to bleed his patient. The philosopher, who had spent time over the preceding decades studying anatomy, knew one thing that most of his contemporaries didn't: that bleeding doesn't help with anything. It can only cause infection. In fact, two years earlier, Descartes' good friend Marin Mersenne had died from an infection in his arm, which resulted from being bled as a remedy for some minor ailment.
Weulles approached Descartes, ready to cut. Descartes was surrounded by his trusted valet, Henry Schluter, as well as his friend the ambassador and the ambassador's wife. All of them urged him to allow the doctor to bleed him.
“Gentlemen,” said Descartes, “spare the French blood!”
Weulles did not insist, and left the patient to his own medicine: bland food—mostly broth; water; and rest.
Descartes may well have contracted the illness from Chanut. Both men had high fever and what the doctors diagnosed as pulmonary inflammation. Chanut had been bled and was convinced that the bleeding had cured him. So after the doctor left Descartes' room, he kept pleading with him to allow Weulles to bleed him. But Descartes remained resolute against what he knew was a primitive and dangerous practice.
“Bleeding shortens our days,” he said quietly, closing his eyes. Then he opened them again, and added: “I've lived forty years as an adult in good health without bleeding.”
By the next day, Descartes' health had deteriorated badly. His temperature was high, and he had the worst headache he had ever expe
rienced. His early biographers described him as feeling as though his head was about to burst. As soon as the ambassador and Mme. Chanut arrived at his bedside, they again urged the philosopher to allow the Dutch doctor to bleed him. Descartes would not hear of it. Then he said, referring to Weulles: “If I must die, I will die with more contentment if I do not see him.”
Then he asked the people gathered around his bed to leave him to rest. The Chanuts and the servants all departed, leaving Descartes with only his trusted valet by his bedside.
But someone, apparently, told the Dutch doctor what Descartes had said about him, and he took it badly. It made him hate Descartes even more than he had until then. He would not cure this patient against his own will, Weulles said.
Another day passed, and the patient was still with fever and in great pain. That evening Weulles made his prognosis: the patient will die. According to Baillet, the doctor was determined to see his prediction come true.
But in the morning, Descartes felt surprisingly well. His fever had gone down and had “left his head, so his reason could return.” He sat up in bed and read. He ate some bread, and he drank water. He told everyone gathered around him that he was feeling well and that the illness, apparently, had by now taken its full course. He asked to drink alcohol, requesting that it be flavored with tobacco. (Baillet surmises that this may have been Descartes' attempt to induce vomiting.)
Dr. Weulles's judgment was that this concoction would be fatal to anyone in Descartes' condition. But he said that at this stage, anything would be permitted to Descartes. So he left the room and returned with a glass filled with a dark liquid that smelled of alcohol and tobacco. He gave it to Descartes.
By the next morning, Descartes' health had taken a sharp turn for the worse. He was now throwing up blood and a blackish fluid. Phlegm came out of his mouth. He was in agony. At 8:00 A.M., Descartes, weak and about to abandon hope, finally gave up his resistance and allowed the doctor to bleed him. Very little blood came out, so an hour later, the doctor bled him again. This made the Chanuts hopeful, and they were grateful that their friend had finally agreed to the cure. But it made Descartes' condition worse. And as the day progressed, his condition deteriorated.
Descartes's Secret Notebook Page 17