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Bridging Two Cultures
The Story of the Huygens Family
The Dutch Golden Age in the seventeenth century was a period which saw a quite extraordinary convergence of talent, not just in society as a whole, but also within the confines of a single family. There is no doubt that on the international stage Christian Huygens (1629-1695) has become the best known member of this family. The language of mathematics and physics is international by nature and knowledge of Christians's observations on light (Traité de la lumière, 1690) and his invention of the pendulum clock spread all over the world. But within the Netherlands it could well be that Christian's father Constantine (1596-1687) is better known than his son. Constantine used his mother tongue rather than the international language of Latin for his poetry, and as a result sacrificed fame throughout Europe to his love of his own country. He did this quite deliberately, judging that his own mission and that of his generation was to raise the quality of Dutch literature to match European standards. He became an important Dutch poet - but this only made him a big fish in a small pond.
So father and son united science and literature in one family. But there was much more to come. Constantine was a keen musician, playing a number of instruments. He was also a composer. His Pathodia sacra et profana (1647), moving settings of psalms and love songs, have been rediscovered in our own time and have been recorded on discs and cds by well-known artists. The collection of scores in this book is, however, only a small fraction of what Huygens actually wrote. When he died he left more than 800 compositions to his son Christian. These, however, have disappeared without trace.
The Huygens family were also interested in the plastic arts. Constantine liked to sketch and was a connoisseur of painting. He commissioned a number of artists to paint portraits of himself and his family. In the autobiography in Latin about his early years, dating from 1629-1631, he wrote an interesting essay comparing the respective talents of Jan Lievens and Rembrandt, at that stage both still young men. He singled out for praise the precise and vivid way in which Rembrandt portrayed emotion. At the same time he criticised both painters for their conceit; why wouldn't they go to Italy to polish their genius? One of Rembrandt's rare remaining letters was
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Adriaan Hanneman, Portrait of Constantine Huygens and his Children. 1640. Mauritshuis, The Hague. Christian is in the upper left corner, Constantine Jr. in the upper right corner.
written to Constantine Huygens. Rembrandt informed him in this letter (of 12 January 1639) that he had just finished two paintings - of the Entombment and of the Resurrection of Christ - and commends them for the way in which they express ‘ the greatest and most natural emotion’.
Constantine Huygens, the uomo universale, was also interested in architecture. He designed his own house on the Plein in The Hague, next door to the present day Mauritshuis (see The Low Countries (1993-94: 153-157) - albeit with the help of the famous architects Jacob van Campen and Peter Post. Unfortunately his palazzo was demolished in 1876 and there is now only a photograph to remind us of what it was like.
Constantine's sons inherited his talent for drawing. Christian, the scientist, was a creditable draughtsman. An engraving of a portrait of his father was used in 1658 to illustrate the first edition of Cornflowers (Korenbloemen), a collection of poems. We also have a copy he made of a head of an old man - by Rembrandt again. But Christian's eldest brother, called Constantine after his father, and who I will call Constantine junior, was an even better artist. During his travels at home and abroad he recorded his surroundings in hundreds of sketches and drawings, some of them very detailed.
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The plan of Constantine Huygens' country seat Hofwijck, drawn by himself and included in the first publication of Hofwijck (The Hague, 1653).
Then after the generation of Constantine junior and Christian the link with art and science was abruptly broken. The rise, high tide and ebb, so often found in three generations of a family, applied just as much to the Huygens.
It all began in the Northern Netherlands with Christian Huygens senior (1551-1624), the grandfather of the physicist. He came from the Southern Netherlands, but had decided to become a Calvinist and was appointed Secretary to Prince William of Orange, the leader of the revolt against Spain - an event which ushered in the Eighty Years' War (1568-1648). It was his appointment to this post which brought Christian to Holland. After Prince William's death in 1584 he obtained another influential post as Secretary to the Council of State and then later Secretary to Maurice and Frederick Henry. In 1592 he married Susanna Hoefnagel, who came from Antwerp. She had a brother called Joris, who in exile made a living as a painter of miniatures and became quite well-known as an artist. So it was through the female line that the talent for the plastic arts came into the family.
The first Christian was always something of an outsider in The Hague, and for this reason he tried all the harder to pave the way for his sons.
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Maurice, who was born in 1595, and his brother Constantine, born the following year, were given a first-class education which was clearly intended to prepare them for careers at court or as diplomats. The proud father wrote a short account of his sons' education. In it he wrote this about ‘little Constantine’, who was clearly destined for great things...: ‘From the very first you could detect in him an outstanding genius and a devout disposition. He could walk without help before he was even 10 months old... While he was still very young he learned to recite his alphabet and to read and then to speak French and all with the same ease as his brother had done before him. I taught him music in the space of six weeks so that he could sing in perfect harmony with us before he was six years old.’
And the delighted father went further still. Even before his seventh birthday, Constantine could play the violin ‘with quite exceptional grace and perfection’ and a few months later he began lessons on the lute. He started Latin on his eighth birthday and by the time he was eleven or twelve he could even write poems in Latin. But he could also ride a horse well, to say nothing of his painting and modelling.
In his autobiography, mentioned above, Constantine gives an account of the education he received from the perspective of the grateful recipient, with some striking details and additional information. From these it seems that his father Christian used some original methods: ‘It was winter and as is the custom we wore coats whose sleeves were adorned from the wrist to the shoulder with a single row of gold velvet buttons. Our father cleverly gave each of these buttons the name of a note of music. In this way we learned without any effort the correct sequence of notes, from top to bottom and back again.’
We also learn from Constantine something about the dancing lessons which his father had given them despite advice to the contrary from a Calvinist clergyman. And he continued: ‘Then we went on to learn how to put on and to doff your hat, how to offer your hand, how to embrace the knee of someone, how to bow your head and then raise it to look the recipient in the eye and how to genuflect.’ Like his proficiency in French, English, Latin and Italian, these were all indispensable skills for a courtier.
This kind of education worked just fine for Constantine, even though it was some time before his career took off. He tried the law first. Then he went as an attaché on a number of diplomatic missions: one in 1618 was to England. There he enjoyed some minor triumphs at the court of King James. Amongst other things he organised a lute concert for the King, who was gracious enough to break off his game of cards to listen to the young Dutchman. In 1622, on one of his later diplomatic missions, the King made him a knight and from then on he could call himself ‘Sir Constantine’. But it was time for him to pursue a proper career. His time came in 1625, the year in which Prince Maurice died. He was succeeded by his brother Frederick Henry and this was Huygens' chance. He was appointed Secretary to the new Prince and went on to fill this function not just for Frederick Henry but later for William ii and then for William iii.
Meanwhile he had also made a name for himself as a poet. His first extensive collection of poems appeared in 1625. It was entitled Otia, ‘Leisure Hours’, something to do in one's spare time. In a curious way this collection of poems was a kind of letter of application. In the introduction
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Thomas de Keyser, Portrait of Constantine Huygens and his Assistant. 1627. Canvas, 92.4 × 69.3 cm. National Gallery, London.
Huygens explained in detail that he considered his poems an act of service to his country, but that even so they were something which he had written in his spare time. He had never neglected his primary duties as a budding diplomat for them. But now that his youth was passing he hoped that he would soon be able to show fully what he could do for his native country. Just as these days one attaches a photograph and letters of recommendation to an application, so the young Huygens ensured that his book was embellished with a flattering engraving of himself and favourable quotations from prominent Dutchmen such as Daniel Heinsius, the internationally renowned professor of Greek and writer of neo-Latin and Dutch poetry.
Whether it was the result of this splendid book, or whether it was the forceful recommendations which had come from his father's contacts (his father had in fact died in the meantime), this time things worked out. As we have already noted, Constantine obtained a job for life. He wrote to his friends that his book was the last product of his free time. From then on he would no longer be able to ‘otiari’. As it happens this was by no means the whole truth. Like a true workaholic Huygens went on writing poetry whenever he had a minute or two to spare. He wrote when he lay sick, when he was travelling on horseback, when he was with the Prince in the field or in attendance at court. But the titles of his works made it clear that writing poetry could only be a secondary activity for him. His second major book
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was called Cornflowers, - beautiful, yes, but only weeds among the ears of corn. This was published in 1658 with a second impression in 1672. In his volume of compositions he added to the title Pathodia the word ‘occupati’ - they were by a man who was very busy.
As well as his own original work he also did translations. It was Huygens who was responsible for introducing John Donne's poetry to the continent. There is some debate about the quality of the translations he did in the years 1630-1633. Huygens himself was modest about them: ‘The translation of a poem is as different from the original as substance is from shadows.’
In 1627 Huygens married Susanna van Baerle, a girl of musical and literary talents. They had sons and daughters and, as had happened to himself, Constantine in his turn set out in writing the way they were to be
A pendulum clock and its mechanism, drawn by Christian Huygens in his Horologium Oscillatorium (1673).
brought up. We learn from these details that Susanna had had a very anxious time when she was pregnant with Christian. She had been terribly shocked by an encounter in the street with a child with a horribly disfigured face. It was thought at that time that this could mean her own child would be similarly affected. But Christian was a fine child and although there were a few problems he developed quickly. He seems to have been a child who had a good memory and he was even heard to recite the Lord's Prayer in his sleep! His real forte, however, was arithmetic; in their lessons together he soon overtook his older brother. He was also good at music. But although Christian naturally received good tuition in French - and of course also in Latin - his father never succeeded in getting him to write poems or compositions in Latin; ‘ but on the other hand he quickly grasped anything to do with mechanics or other aspects of mathematics. He also knew immediately how to produce a model of something just as soon as he had read about it or heard me talk about it’.
When there was nothing more the children could learn at home they went to the University of Leiden where Christian soon got the reputation of being
Christian Huygens (1629-1695).
‘the most learned mathematician of all the students at Leiden’. But he did not neglect the fine arts. The brothers were interested in music and they took drawing lessons at Leiden. Their father spoke of his pride in the drawings his sons had done - and the particularly praised the quality of Christian's work.
Constantine senior may have viewed Christian's outstanding scientific ability with some astonishment, but never with antipathy. On the contrary; he was proud of his ‘Archimedes’, as he called him. He was in fact interested in science himself and corresponded with such European scholars as Marin Mersenne and Descartes. His poetry may not suggest any specific expertise in the field of science, but still he likes to display some scientific interest. He writes more as a researcher than as a mystic of what he reads in Nature, ‘God's second book’. In the poem on his weekend home Hof-wyck he writes of nature: ‘The clockwork's known to us, with every cog and spring.’
The image actually comes from Kepler, but its use by the father of the inventor of the pendulum clock gives it a special effect. When Constantine senior used this particular quotation, Christian had in fact not yet invented his clock. But once he had done so, the poet wrote about it more than once - for example in a poem written for Christian:
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Son, who hast by God's guidance gloriously
Found out the unmoving motion of these movements,
Whatever the world's swings may bring you, good or ill,
Keep ever in your mind their constancy.
Just as Christian's invention made it possible to use an accurate chronometer at sea, so he himself, the master responsible for that work, should remain constant under all conditions.
These were lessons which Christian could well use in his own life, for he encountered both peaks and troughs. For quite a long time he was without a proper job and lived with his father. During this period he worked on problems in physics and mathematics. For example, using a telescope he had made himself, he discovered Saturn's moon Titan in March 1655. His brother, Constantine junior, helped him enthusiastically in building the telescope and in other similar activities. A visit to France resulted in him getting an honorary degree at Angers and, what was more important, a chance to make the acquaintance of fellow scientists in Paris. Back in The Hague again he began to publish his discoveries. One example was Horologium (1658), his dissertation on the pendulum clock. He sent copies of this to a number of French scholars, including Pascal. In 1660 he again travelled to Paris to extend his scientific contacts there. He was presented to Louis xiv and was given an honorarium for his work on the clock. Somewhat later he also visited London where he had discussions with Robert Boyle among others and in 1663 was elected to the Royal Society. But his future lay in Paris and in 1666 he achieved a leading position at the Académie Royale des Sciences.
Thus far he had prospered. But an unhappy love affair meant that his private life was less satisfactory. And life in Paris with all its intrigues and academic disputes brought on a deep depression which lasted for several months in 1670. Further problems followed in 1672 as Louis xiv invaded the Netherlands and Christian had to decide where his personal loyalty lay. The years in Paris passed, therefore, with a mixture of success, strife and sickness. In 1681 he was for a time at the family house in The Hague, but by then the beginning of the end was in sight. His return to Paris was no longer so eagerly sought-after, though he still remained in touch with all the great scholars of his age, like Leibniz and Isaac Newton. In fact Newton sent him a copy of his Principia mathematica. Huygens studied this with great attention and admiration and he met Newton in London when he was staying there in 1689 (see The Low Countries 1993-94: 186-192).
His last work, published posthumously in 1695, was Kosmotheoros, a thoughtful book in which among other things he answered - in the affirmative - the question as to whether the planets were inhabited by rational beings and discussed how their social organisation might look. On 8 July 1695 he died after a painful illness, unmarried and without children. His father Constantine had predeceased him in 1687.
Christian's older brother Constantine (1628-1697) had a much less eventful life. He had to wait even longer than his father for a suitable position. It was not until 1672, when he was already 45 years old, that he was finally appointed Secretary to Prince William iii - the very post for which his father had been preparing him. He kept a diary of his travels with the Prince - with some risqué entries in it - and he illustrated this with sketches of what he
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Constantine Huygens Jr., View of Maastricht. Drawing, 1676. Teylers Museum, Haarlem.
had seen on the way. These sketches have now been dispersed, alas, although in 1982-1983 a splendid exhibition was devoted to them entitled With Huygens on his Travels (Met Huygens op reis). Constantine junior died in The Hague in 1697, two years after his more famous brother, and his only son died in the same year. That brought an end to the halcyon days of the Huygens family. As writers, composers, artists and designers they had made the arts blossom, while Christian as the mathematician, physicist and inventor was responsible for the advancement of science. So that one house on the Plein in The Hague where Constantine and his two sons Christian and Constantine junior lived and worked was truly a ‘bridge between two cultures’.
m.a. schenkeveld-van der dussen
Translated by Michael Shaw.
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Further reading
| andriesse, c.d., Titan kan niet slapen. Een biografie van Christiaan Huygens. Amsterdam / Antwerp, 1993 (an English translation of this biography of Christian Huygens is in preparation). |
| bachrach, a.g.h., Sir Constantine Huygens and Britain (Vol. 1, 1596-1619). Leiden / Londen, 1962. |
| bos, h.j.m. et al. (ed.), Studies on Christian Huygens. Lisse, 1980. |
davidson, peter and adriaan van der weel (ed.), A Selection of the Poems of Sir Constantijn Huygens. Amsterdam, 1996.
Met Huygens op reis. Tekeningen en dagboeknotities van Constantijn Huygens Jr. (1628-1697), secretaris van stadhouder-koning Willem III. Zutphen, 1982. |
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Selective discography
| elly ameling / max van egmond, Constantijn Huygens: Pathodia sacra et profana, emi, 165-25 634/35. |
| camerata trajectina, Muziek uit de Gouden Eeuw: Constantijn Huygens en Gerbrand Adriaensz. Bredero, Globe, 6013. |
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