Christiaan Huygens – A family affair - Proeven van Vroeger

Huygens was invited to perform for the King. He could see the full potential of being a
courtier here, of fashioning a social position through music, words and culture with perhaps
a copy of “Il Cortegiano” from the Killigrew’s bookcase in his hand.
Huygens took great care in being seen and judged as a noble courtier, a honnête homme
of ‘Constant’ dedication and impeccable honor. He insisted on being recognized as a “man of
the good” (“un homme de bien”) or a “honnête homme.” 68 It comes as no surprise that during his life
Huygens filled his bookcase with the courtier’s appropriate literary armor and ammunition:
tracts on social standing, guidebooks on social demeanor and pleasant conversation,
handbooks on “the perfect secretary,” volumes on emblemata and impresa, embassy- & travel-
logs and “updates” on the wishes of princes (see Appendix A for a selection of court-related
titles on Constantijn Sr.’s book catalogue). They seem to fit the picture of Constantijn
Huygens Sr. – a courtier in ambition and practice – very well.
iv. A “qualité extérieure” – Patronage and the making of an English Knight
“And while he [King James I of England] spoke thus, he raised the sword that the
noble Earl of Holland had handed to him on his sign, and completely unexpected he knighted
me” (see the quotation at the outset of this chapter). 69 With sprezzatura Constantijn Sr. artfully
concealed the efforts that had been taken in order for this special event to happen. Constantijn
Sr. was not made a knight overnight, but through the lobbying and recommendation of several
people, notably his patron, François van Aerssen.
In early modern societies ruled by aristocracy, “[c]onnection and patronage were
crucial (...) [-] perhaps the means – of matching candidates and vacancies.” 70 In diplomacy, and
the preparatory Grand Tour, it was indispensable to gain the patronage of a high diplomat.
Christiaan Sr., as we have seen, arranged Van Aerssen’s high patronage for his son
Constantijn Sr., and Constantijn, on his turn, made sure that his own sons gained high
married into the Cooke family of learned ladies, and like him, served as a diplomat, which gave him
occasion to present a copy of the Courtier, in Hoby’s translation, to Mary Queen of Scots. Killigrew was
remembered in the seventeenth century as an example of the ‘complete gentleman’, a student of history,
geography, fortification, and a man skilled in riding, shooting, music and painting. In the case of
painting, he was ‘a Dürer for proportion, a Goltzius for a bold touch, an angelo for his happy fancy, and
an Holbein for oil works’. If contemporaries did not compare him to Castiglione’s ideal courtier, they
surely should have done so.”
68 HUYGENS, C. (1911) BW., Vol. IV, Lett. 4538 – Constantijn Sr. to Princess Amalia (1647), p386.
69 HUYGENS, C. & BLOM, F. R. E. (2003) Mijn leven verteld aan mijn kinderen in twee boeken (De vita
propria sermonum inter liberos), Amsterdam, Prometheus., p120-1
70 POWIS, J. (1984) Aristocracy, Oxford, UK ; New York, NY, USA, B. Blackwell., p58
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