Going Dutch_ How England Plundered Holland's Glory - Lisa Jardine [138]
In spite of his forebodings, after his breakdown of 1676 Christiaan Huygens did return to the Académie des sciences in Paris for a brief period in late 1678. In spring 1681, however, he collapsed again. This time it was his sister Susanna, accompanied by her husband and their three children, who was sent to rescue him. She stayed three weeks – finally realising her dream of visiting the French capital – then brought Christiaan home for the last time. In 1684 the Académie, tired of his absence, dismissed him. He joined his father in the big family house in The Hague, keeping the aged Sir Constantijn company until his death in 1687.
Thereafter, Christiaan retired to his father’s estate, with its wonderfully serene and restorative garden, at Hofwijk. But with the Dutch invasion of England, his reputation as a brilliant scientific innovator enjoyed one final flowering abroad. For while Hooke was an old-style divine-right-of-kings man (like his close friend Sir Christopher Wren), and had, right up to William of Orange’s arrival, steadfastly backed James II as England’s legitimate monarch, Christiaan Huygens, his scientific adversary, was the clever younger brother of William’s private secretary, Constantijn Huygens junior, who had played a prominent role in the successful invasion.
In London, Constantijn junior was now a senior figure in the new administration, with real political power. The fact that all Sir Constantijn Huygens’s children spoke excellent English was now a further distinct asset. The young English scholar Thomas Molyneux, visiting Christiaan during his final period in Paris, reported that he had received a warm welcome: ‘When he understood after a few words that I was English, he spoke to me in my own language, beyond all expectation, and moreover, extremely well.’55
Constantijn’s new position in England tempted his brother Christiaan out of retirement, with the prospect that he could now be assured of real respect from the English virtuosi, and could finally take his place among the Fellows of the Royal Society (he had been elected an overseas member in 1663 – the first foreigner to receive that honour).
Christiaan had a further reason for allowing himself to be tempted away from the seclusion of Hofwijk. For two years he had been poring over Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, or the Principia, of which the author had sent him a presentation copy, working painstakingly through its mathematical calculations. Shortly after he read it, Huygens told Constantijn that he had enormous admiration for ‘the beautiful discoveries that I find in the work he sent me’.56 When John Locke came to visit him, and asked him if he thought Newton’s mathematics, which he admitted he could not himself follow, were sound, Christiaan told him emphatically that they were certainly to be trusted. Newton, to whom Locke recounted this, proudly repeated the Dutch mathematician’s endorsement in London. A visit to London would enable Huygens to meet Newton face to face.
In preparation for his trip, Christiaan resuscitated and rewrote his ten- year-old treatise Traité de la lumière (Treatise on Light), to provide him with his credentials for re-entering English intellectual life. He wrote to Constantijn:
I had intended to stay here at Hofwijk for the whole winter … However, you might have an opportunity to see Mr. Boyle. I would like to visit Oxford, if only to make the acquaintance of Mr. Newton [in fact, of course, Newton was at Cambridge] for whose excellent discoveries I have the greatest admiration, having read of them in the work [Principia] which he sent me.57
Christiaan arrived in London on 6 June 1689. He joined Constantijn junior and Constantijn junior’s son in lodgings close to Whitehall. A week later the three of them went together to stay at Hampton Court Palace, where the new King and Queen were in residence. On 12 June Christiaan travelled