The Gardens of Touraine : Part 2

Descartes's Secret Notebook: A True Tale of Mathematics, Mysticism, and the Quest to Understand the Universe
by Amir D. Aczel

(Page 2 of 2)

In early times, the hedges denoted by the French name Haia (or Haya or Haie) stood for thorny hedges that were planted by the townspeople in an effort to defend themselves and their property from marauding bands of brigands and highwaymen that pillaged and looted the countryside. But as times improved after the duke of Anjou took control of the area in September 1596 - six months after the birth of Rene Descartes - the hedges implied by the name of the town came to mean hedges of beautiful gardens. To this day, this part of France is known for its exquisite gardens and areas of great natural beauty.

Late in life, just before he left on his final journey to Stockholm, Descartes wrote to his dearest friend, Princess Elizabeth: "A man who was born in the gardens of Touraine, shouldn't he avoid going to live in the land of the bears, between rocks and ice?" Descartes may well have been thinking of the garden of his own childhood home, his grandmother's house in La Haye, when he wrote these words to Elizabeth. Descartes' childhood home is an attractive two-story country house with four large rooms, although it is not nearly as impressive as the family mansion in Chatellerault. But it is surrounded by an exuberant garden, now restored to its original state, with flowers under the generous canopy of graceful trees. One can imagine the young boy enjoying many hours of undisturbed thinking and playing in this tranquil garden.

A year after René was born, shortly after giving birth to her fourth child, Jeanne Brochard died. The newborn survived for three more days, and then died too. Some of Descartes' biographers have written that Rene's personality was deeply affected by the loss of his mother, and have even speculated that the young boy blamed himself for her death because he did not quite understand - the event having taken place so close to his own birth - that she died sometime after giving birth to her next child.

After the death of his wife, Joachim remarried. He took a Breton woman named Anne Morin as his wife, and with her had another son and another daughter (and two other babies who died in infancy). They bought a house in Rennes, where René's older sister joined them in 1610, and where she got married in 1613 to a local man. Until then, Rene and his older brother and sister were raised by a governess. Rene Descartes was extremely attached to his governess, who was a devout Catholic. She lived to old age, and Descartes specified in his will that she was to receive a significant amount of money annually for her support.

As a child, René became known as the young philosopher of the family because he had a great curiosity about the world, always wanting to know why things were the way they were. The child grew up in the natural environment of farming and hunting and strolling in the woods. Throughout his life he would make references to the bucolic land of his birth and its natural rhythms. In letters to friends, and in published works, he would describe his childhood memories: the smell of the earth after a rainstorm; the trees at different seasons of the year; the process of fermentation of hay, and the making of new wine; the churning of butter from fresh milk; and the feel of the dust rising up from the earth as it was being plowed. Perhaps it was this early closeness to nature that kindled his interest in physics and mathematics as means for understanding nature and unraveling her secrets.

The Descartes family was wealthy, and René would inherit even more assets directly from his grandfathers on both sides, both of whom had been successful medical doctors. His great-grandfather Jean Ferrand had been the personal physician of Queen Eleanor of Austria, the wife of Francis I of France, in the middle of the sixteenth century. He attained great wealth, which was eventually passed on to his daughter Claude, who married Pierre Descartes. Their son was Joachim Descartes, René's father. In 1566, when Joachim was only three years old, his father, Pierre, died of kidney stones. Pierre's father-in-law, Jean Ferrand, Queen Eleanor's personal physician, performed the autopsy on his son-in-law. In 1570 he wrote up the results of the operation and published them in a scientific paper, in Latin, about lithiasis - the formation of stony concretions in the body. His deep curiosity about nature - even to the point of dissecting the body of his own son-in-law - was passed on to his descendants. While, unlike his grandparents, René Descartes would not pursue medicine as a profession, late in life he would dissect many animals in search of the secret to eternal life.

René Descartes would spend much time during his adult life managing his inheritance. This wealth, including significant land holdings in Poitou, would enable him to pursue his interests without concern about a livelihood. It would afford him to indulge his whim of volunteering for military campaigns as a gentleman soldier without compensation - simply for the thrill of adventure. He would be able to afford luxurious accommodations wherever he traveled, and to employ servants and a valet. His money would even allow him to look after the education of his staff, thus sharing with them some of the privilege of his family's wealth. Descartes would grow up to be a very generous employer and friend.

Despite Adrien Baillet's statement in his very comprehensive 1691 biography of Descartes that the family belonged to the nobility, recent research indicates that, as far as Rene's life is concerned, this was not true. The renowned French historian Genevieve Rodis-Lewis explains in her 1995 biography, Descartes, that the Descartes family gained the rank of knighthood, the lowest status of nobility in France, only in 1668 - eighteen years after René's death. According to French law, nobility was conferred on families after three successive generations had served the king in high office. Joachim Descartes certainly held such a position, and some have argued that he had originally sought to become councillor to the Parliament of Brittany in hopes of obtaining nobility status for his descendents. But Rene Descartes would choose a different direction in life, and so nobility would be conferred on the family only after another member had satisfied the three-generations requirement, years after René's death.

After he remarried, Joachim Descartes spent most of his time in Rennes with his new wife and the children she bore him. He also had interests and family business farther south and west in Nantes, also in Brittany. As they grew older, Rene and his brother and sister traveled frequently to visit their father. Eventually, Rene Descartes would see all of western France as his home territory, since time in his later childhood was spent throughout the regions of Poitou, Touraine, and Brittany.

But the frequent travel throughout the region was hard on the boy. In adulthood, Descartes described his health as a child as poor, and recounted in letters to friends that every doctor who had ever seen him as a child had said that he was in such poor health that he would most likely die at a young age. His devoted governess took such good care of him, however, that when he was eleven years old he was healthy enough to be sent away to study at the prestigious Jesuit College of La Flèche.

Copyright © 2005 by Amir D. Aczel.

About the Author

Amir D. Aczel is the author of many research articles on mathematics, two textbooks, and nine nonfiction books, including the international bestseller Fermat's Last Theorem, which was nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Award. Aczel has appeared on over thirty television programs, including nationwide appearances on CNN, CNBC, and Nightline, and on over a hundred radio programs, including NPR's Weekend Edition and Morning Edition. Aczel is a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.