Source:
Christina of Sweden, pages 20 to 23, by Ada Harrison, 1929
The biography:
Christina's story thus falls naturally into two parts, her life in Sweden and her life outside it; the first stage when, being a queen in fact she was by her very queenliness enslaved; the second stage when, being a queen in nothing but name, she was free to take all Europe for her province. The first half of the narrative, though Christina did her best with it, is naturally the less varied; the second half is changeable, fantastic, more than a little sordid. The whole is the picture of a nature powerfully following its own bent neither to salvation nor damnation, but to some intermediate destination which its own invincible self-confidence has pronounced the one true goal.
Although as long as she was in Sweden she was obliged in a measure to conform to convention, Christina was never cut to pattern. Her behaviour was never stereotyped, and although her personal appearance was not astonishing, certain eccentricities of dress and bearing made her easily distinguishable. In feature she was a typical Vasa, with high forehead and Roman nose. She had a small mouth and abundant hair. Her biographers say, in duty bound, that her eyes were lustrous, her lips red, her neck and hands white. Not even adulation ever described her as a beauty, but once we hear of her looking ravishing — one night in Rome, when she wore a blue ribbon, and set two candles for herself, and read aloud a French comedy by their light. She admits that one shoulder was higher than the other, the result of her being dropped in infancy, and adds characteristically that she could have remedied this fault if she had taken the trouble. She was a little below middle height, which defect, Chanut remarked, might have been corrected with fashionable shoes. But Christina, like the true feminist she was, wore low heels. She was, inevitably, careless of her personal appearance; the queen lingering at her toilet was never part of the picture. 'There is no doubt', even the flattering Chanut admits, 'that her neglect of herself was excessive.' A quarter of an hour was the most she allowed herself for dressing except on occasions of State. Her hair was caught carelessly with a ribbon; various items of her attire were always faintly masculine. She behaved, in fact, like the modern woman, and as a certain number of women have always behaved throughout the ages.
Her habits, like her dress, had to interfere as little as possible with the pressing business of her life. She ate simply and little, and rose so early that she was obliged to sleep for an hour after dinner to get a minimum of rest. For the remainder of her day she employed herself with that strenuousness which is now called a nervous disease, but which, corrupt as it may have been, certainly accomplished something. She rose at five, despatched a quantity of business, gave audiences of every description, took the air in her sled, hunted, footed it at a ball. 'She is unwearied in outdoor exercise', says her French biographer, 'to the point of being able to remain ten hours on horseback at the hunt. Neither heat nor cold disturbs her. No one in Sweden is better able than she to bring the hunted hare low with a single shot. She can put a horse through every kind of trick.' When she stood up to dance, she was the last in the room to tire. At everything she outdistanced her suite.
And always from her throne in the north, she was keeping up with the art, the literature, and the great personalities of Europe, writing letters indefatigably to an immense circle, begging her representatives in every quarter of the globe to send her manuscripts, pictures or medals. The collector's passion was so strong with her that at times it rose superior even to her pride. On an occasion when she had bought the contents of two famous French libraries and had paid the money but had not received the books, she wrote, 'I have so great a passion for the rarities and beauties of your country that I will never regret acquiring them, at whatever the the [sic] price. ... To pacify the wretches who have sold you the pictures and books, you must give them what they ask, rather than get involved in any litigation.' On the one hand she was the inheritor of the Lion of the North, with her love for the chase, for war and glory, with her passionate hero-worship of her contemporary Condé, and her conventional but sincere raptures over Pompey and Alexander the Great. On the other hand she was herself the Pallas of the North, congratulating Mademoiselle de Scudéry, befriending Grotius, almost forcing Descartes to leave his comfortable home in Holland to come and be her tutor. In her pursuit of art and culture, as in everything else, she was absolutely honest. She was never the dilettante extolled by courtiers into a royal Maecenas.
In gratifying the pleasures of culture, that is, in giving learned persons presents and pensions, in entertainments, in acquiring whatever works of art were to be bought, she was so extravagant as to cause the Parliament to murmur. She was equally reckless in her bestowal of titles. She ennobled where she listed, where, she protested, merit was, and rudely jostled the ancient nobility with her lords of a day. She insisted that Salvius, who was of humble birth, should be made a senator, and declared reasonably to the protesting Senate: 'When the point in debate is concerning good advice and wise counsel, no one enquires whether the adviser has sixteen quarters in his coat of arms, but whether he has laboured for the benefit of the State.' But reason did not always rule her in this respect. She felt so keenly that to be condescending and to be generous was to be truly royal, that she bestowed rewards out of all proportion with sense. In ten years she created 17 counts, 46 barons, and 428 lesser nobles, and sold or mortgaged a vast quantity of crown property to support them. She was so fantastically lavish to her favourites that in 1650 the Estates presented a 'protestation for the restitution of crown property.'
Above: Kristina.
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