Christiaan Huygens – A family affair - Proeven van Vroeger

I will contend the way in which Constantijn Sr. used his different talents to establish
social connections and tried to use them to fashion his position either socially or professionally,
or often both (section i). 15 Furthermore, I will show that these virtues of courtly eruditeness
and disinterestedness have resulted in a brand of biographical history that obscures these
social processes when read straightforwardly (section ii). I argue that Constantijn Sr. should
not just be seen as just a courtier: someone moving around at a court (perhaps successfully)
while in his “normal life” staying at a safe distance from the values and etiquettes from the
court. 16 Rather, he should be seen as a courtier: someone who modeled his life, work (including
his writings), and demeanor after the standards of his professional surrounding: the court
(section iii). Constantijn Sr.’s writings thus unavoidably are “member-accounts,” 17 leading to
(extra) interpretative difficulties for the modern reader. I argue that new hermeneutical
approaches are needed to assess Huygens’s many writings, taking as an example the road to
Constantijn Sr.’s knighthood at the Court of James I (section i and iv).
i. From The Hague to Oxford – the usefulness of music and poetry
During his three visits to England in the years 1621-24, the young Constantijn
Huygens Sr. accompanied the Dutch ambassador François van Aerssen (1572 – 1641) on
three consecutive diplomatic missions to the court of King James I. They formed the final
embodiment of his “Grand Tour” through Europe. 18 Van Aerssen, Christiaan Huygens Sr.’s
neighbor, had offered the latter to take his son on an unpaid apprenticeship, offering him a fine
15 With “self-fashioning” I mean to refer to the notion in Stephen Greenblatt’s “Renaissance selffashioning”:
“a way of designating the forming of a self” which gained much ground in the sixteenth
century when it became more and more a common ground that human-beings could form themselves
and others instead of the previously religious conception of Man as “the imitation of Christ”. “[I]t
describes the practice of parents and teachers; it is linked to manners or demeanor, particularly that of
the elite; it may suggest hypocrisy or deception, an adherence to mere outward ceremony; it suggests
representation of one's nature or intention in speech or actions.” GREENBLATT, S. (2005) Renaissance
self-fashioning : from More to Shakespeare, Chicago, University of Chicago Press., p2-3
16 STRENGHOLT, L., HUYGENS, C. & HEER, A. R. E. D. (1987) Constanter: het leven van Constantijn
Huygens, Amsterdam, Querido., p64-5 calls Huygens a courtier (“hoveling”). This seems to express more
of a “socio-geographical” identity (the physical act of residing at a court) than a meaningful
categorization in terms of an early-modern socio-professional identity.
17 SHAPIN, S. & SCHAFFER, S. (1985) Leviathan and the air-pump : Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life
: including a translation of Thomas Hobbes, Dialogus physicus de natura aeris by Simon Schaffer, Princeton, N.J.,
Princeton University Press., p2, 4-7
18 According to Bachrach Constantijn Sr.’s Grand Tour was the “coronation” of an upbringing that was
primarily aiming at England BACHRACH, A. G. H. (1980) The role of the Huygens family in
seventeenth-century Dutch culture. IN BOS, H. J. M., RUDWICK, M. J. S., SNELDERS, H. A. M.
& VISSER, R. P. W. (Eds.) Studies on Christiaan Huygens : invited papers from the Symposium on the Life and
Work of Christiaan Huygens, Amsterdam, 22-25 August 1979. Lisse, Swets & Zeitlinger., p32
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