Source:
Extraordinary Women: Their Girlhood and Early Life, pages 54 to 61, by William Russell, 1857; original at the New York Public Library
Russell wrote a further biography of Kristina in 1864 (please excuse the month in the permalinks, I have been posting for previous dates to catch up on everything and didn't yet think to set the intended date before posting!):
The biography:
CHRISTINA, QUEEN OF SWEDEN.
IT was this Queen's Chancellor, Axel Oxensteirn [sic], who bade his son observe how slight an amount of wisdom was required for the governance of nations, — a reflection possibly suggested by the Chancellor's estimate of Christina's capacity, and her fame as a sovereign: and quite as surprising and providential as the fact enunciated by Oxensteirn, is that of how slight a remedial agency suffices to save the foundering vessel of the State when most hopelessly emperilled, and restore realms, apparently undone, to pristine prosperity and power. The sun of England, as everybody knows, has been time out of mind on the very point of setting; but ever some fortunate chance — a brilliant speech, or triumphant division in either House, — nay, the final state of the poll at a city or county election — has saved us, at the last moment, from being plunged in outer darkness. It may be doubted, however, judging from contemporary chronicles, that the great interests of humanity were at any time in such imminent and mortal peril as in the year 1632, or saved from ruin by such seemingly inadequate means. Gustavus-Adolphus, King of Sweden, Lion of the North, and Bulwark of the Protestant Faith, had fallen at the victory of Lutzen, in Upper Saxony; and not only was Sweden thought to have been thereby hurled from her place of pride and power, but the cause of Scriptural truth itself struck down in the person of its valiant champion, when, amidst the general consternation, Chancellor Oxensteirn reminded the assembled States that the slain hero had left a daughter, and only child, then about six years of age, and that there might be still hope for the country in her immediate recognition as Queen of Sweden; which sentiment or prophecy was applauded to the echo, the instant Christina was introduced and seen to be the very image in miniature of her great father. "Behold", exclaimed one Larson, a peasant-deputy, giving voice to the general feeling, — "Behold the very features of Gustavus-Adolphus! We will have her for our sovereign. Let her be seated on the throne and proclaimed king!" This was done, and the salvation of Sweden was an accomplished fact.
The child herself was only less delighted than the rescued nation. "I was so young", she wrote many years afterwards, "that I know not either my own worth, or my great fortune; but I remember how delighted I was to see all those men kneeling at my feet and kissing my hand;" adding, with as much piety as modesty, in the fragment of autobiography entitled, 'The Life of the Queen Christina, written by herself and dedicated to God', 'It was Thou, O Lord, that didst render the child admirable to her people, who were amazed at the grand manner in which I enacted the part of Queen upon that first occasion. I was little, but upon the throne I displayed an air and countenance that inspired the beholders with respect and fear. It was Thou, O Lord, that caused a girl to appear thus who had not yet arrived at the full use of her reason. Thou hadst impressed upon my brow a mark of grandeur not always bestowed by Thee upon those Thou hadst destined, like me, to glory and to be Thy lieutenant over men."
Christina, drawn by other though flattering hands, does not quite accord with this splendid self-portraiture, except in its aspect of masculine imperiousness, which was very early developed, and seemed natural to a child born, as she herself exultingly boasted, amidst shouts of triumph, and cradled amidst palms and laurels, in the arms of her playmates, Victory and Fortune. In truth, the attendants at her birth, misled by the hair-helmet, so to speak, which encased her head, the thick down upon her face, and the rough, harsh cry with which she greeted the world, exclaimed that a man-child was born, in fulfilment of the unanimous predictions of the astrologers consulted by Gustavus-Adolphus and his Queen, the beauteous Maria-Eleonora, daughter of John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburgh; which star-interpreters, moreover, not only so prophesied, but explained the dreams disclosed to them by the royal parents, to predict, as read by the light of the signs in the heavens — the Sun, Mars, Mercury, and Venus, in conjunction, as at the birth of Gustavus-Adolphus himself — that the boy, supposing him to outlive the first twenty-four hours, which Mercury made doubtful, would attain to as great celebrity as his father; a perplexing blunder on the part of the soothsayers, but subsequently shown to be merely a verbal one, Christina having been, it was soon discovered, "born with the head of a Machiavel, the heart of a Titus, the courage of an Alexander, and the eloquence of a Tully!"
Gustavus-Adolphus bore the disappointment better than the, for a time, discomfited astrologers. "Sister", said the King, addressing the Princess Catherine, who with some trepidation informed him that the supposed boy was in sad verity a girl, — "Sister, let us return thanks to God. I trust this daughter will prove as valuable to us as a son; and may the Almighty, who has vouchsafed her to us, graciously preserve her! She will be an arch girl", added Gustavus, "who begins to play tricks upon us so soon." And he forthwith ordered a Te Deum to be sung.
Gustavus was not the less determined that his successor on the throne of Sweden, though a queen by sex, should be a king, as he comprehended kingship, by education, tastes, and habit; a resolution to which, it will be seen, his daughter was chiefly indebted for her meteoric celebrity, and its premature disastrous eclipse. Very early was his child inoculated with a taste for the pomp and circumstance of war; "and, as a soldier's daughter should", remarked the delighted father, "crowed and clapped her tiny hands at the blare of trumpets and roar of cannon;" and was yet teething, when promised by the Lion of the North that she should thereafter accompany him to a field where she should behold much finer sights — meaning by finer sights, the scientific carnage of impious wretches who declined accepting, or were coerced into withstanding the propagation of the gospel of peace as interpreted by the great Gustavus. "But, to my misfortune", laments speedily-unwomanised Christina, "death prevented him from keeping his word, and me from serving an apprenticeship under so complete a master." Concurrently with a liking and aptitude for war, and all masculine accomplishments and sports, Gustavus was anxious that Christina should be well and early grounded in the Lutheran faith and Holy Scripture, the basis of all knowledge. The tares germinated far more vigorously than the wheat upon the virgin volcanic soil where they were both indiscriminately sown; and a vivid commentary upon the wisdom of the great King of Sweden's educational precepts is presented by the fact, that whilst his daughter's predilection for violence and contemptuous disregard of the sanctity of human life became — as witness the deliberate assassination, late in her career, of the Chamberlain Monaldeschi — an arbitrary principle of her moral creed, an indefensible right to slay being hers, she maintained, by divine inheritance, about all of divinity she ultimately believed in, Christina at an early age exchanged Lutheranism for Philosophism; and when Philosophism had lost its hold upon her mind, she finally, and whilst still under thirty, formally professed herself a Roman Catholic! — "The greatest scandal she could afflict us with", remarked the most sagacious of the Popes, with whom she was perpetually quarrelling, "unless the idea of writing a book in defence of the Faith should unhappily seize her."
In minor points, the masculine and military propensities of Christina were assiduously cultivated — grew with and much faster than her growth; so that long before she attained the maturity of her teens, she felt and avowed illimitable contempt for women, their duties, accomplishments — save dancing — tastes, conversation, manners, dress, — vehemently regretting she was not a man — not because she liked men overmuch, but that they were not women. Her own appearance has been thus rhymingly depicted: —
"By her petticoat so slight,
And her legs too much in sight;
By her doublet, cap, and dress,
To a masculine excess, —
Hat and plume, and ribands tied
Fore and aft in careless pride;
By her gallant, martial mien,
Like an Amazonian queen, —
Nose from Roman consul sprung,
And a fierce virago's tongue —
Large eyes, now sweet and now severe, —
Tell us 'tis Christina clear."
Personally, Christina was by no means unattractive. She was short, but well formed[,] with the exception of a slight deformity of one shoulder, caused by the falling of a beam of wood thereon when she was a child [sic]. She had large, bright-hazel [sic], expressive eyes; a profusion of light-brown hair, which would have been more ornamental had she permitted her attendants to comb and dress it oftener than about once a month; and had fine, regular teeth, that might easily have been white. But her mouth was large, and not, it was thought, agreeable "in repose"; neither, one would imagine, could it have been so in activity of boisterous, immoderate laughter, or of swearing, to which masculine habit the young and royal lady appears to have been incurably addicted. She was distinguished for remorseless industry withal; — so much so, "that the men and women that waited upon me were quite in despair, for I gave them no rest night or day." This incessant mental activity acquired for her the reality or reputation of immense learning; and she is said to have rapidly and thoroughly mastered Greek, Latin, most of the modern languages, history, philosophy, mathematics, geography, astronomy, and divinity and moral duties as interpreted by John Mathias, a pious, earnest man, from Luther's Catechism, and the best authors; the duty of reverencing her mother, the tender, loving wife and faithful widow of the great Gustavus, not, it would seem, included, — for so pained, offended at last, became the disconsolate lady with Christina's conduct [sic], that she fled secretly to Denmark, declaring she preferred begging her bread elsewhere, to the state of Queen-Mother at her daughter's Court [sic]! Maria-Eleonora's indignation did not, however, endure, and after the lapse of a few years she and Christina were outwardly reconciled.
Combined with the pernicious effect of the education prescribed by Gustavus-Adolphus, in pursuance of his resolution to be even in the grave the governor of his child and moulder of her character, was the hardening, debasing influence which must ever surround the heir to an absolute crown, and this upon the unimpeachable testimony of Christina herself — a firm believer in the divinity of despotism. "Those", she writes, "who believe that childhood is the season when princes hear truth are mistaken, for even in the cradle they are feared and flattered. Men fear the memories of princes as much as their power, and handle them gently as they do young lions, who can only draw blood now, but hereafter will have strength to tear and devour." Unquestionably true; and a curious commentary upon another dictum of hers, that an heir-apparent to a (despotic) throne is a universal blessing, — the glory of the State, and the happiness of individuals depending upon it!
Christina, as queen, especially when arrayed and prepared for the public representation of the part, shows to much greater advantage than as girl or woman. When scarcely seven years old, she received the Muscovite ambassadors, serenely sated upon her lofty silver throne, and was not, her historiographers admiringly relate, in the least frightened by their long beards. "Why should I be afraid of their beards?" she asked her apprehensive councillors: "have you not also long beards? and yet I am not afraid of you!" At sixteen she openly presided in the Senate, and became at once, says the courtly French ambassador, "incredibly powerful therein.[" "]She adds", he goes on to say, "to her quality of sovereign those of grace, honour, courtesy, and the art of persuasion; so that the senators, when they assemble, are astonished at the influence she gains over their sentiments." ...
Note: ribands = ribbons (archaic form of the word).
No comments:
Post a Comment