by A. N. Wilson
Reinhold, fondling George’s six-year-old head with one hand and mopping his brow with the other, which clutched a handkerchief, had replied,
—Herr Rosenthau, I have not come to town to ask you for more money, merely to ask for an extension of the loan. I do not know how I can have spent so much.
It was a sentence he heard so often on his father’s lips and which he would often himself repeat!
—Herr Pastor – there was genuine kindness in the prophet. He was a man of business but not a shark and he had been inspired by many of the pastor’s interests, above all, his knowledge of Egypt – Herr Pastor, I want you to have this book, as a gift from us for you have been one of our best customers.
The prophet had not actually placed coins into Reinhold’s hands. He knew that to give money, as such, to the pastor was like pouring water through his fingers. He had written a guarantee on a piece of paper and Reinhold, as fast as George’s six-year-old legs could run – had hurried to Eyck’s shop in Johann Nepomukgasse agog to see what the prophet had bought them – for Nahum had playfully withheld the title of the volume prized above rubies. And there it was! A magnificent quarto of Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae (1735), the first great work of taxonomy. For the first time since Aristotle – but with so much more scientific accuracy and discipline – the attempt had been begun to categorize each genre of fish, bird and beast, each family of plant and tree, to classify and to define each species. It was a gift of stupendous generosity from the old prophet. For Reinhold and George Forster it became an invaluable tool, almost, for father and son, their raison d’être: for, from now onwards, they would scarcely walk outside the parsonage-house without the specific aim, not only of identifying every bird, fish, leaf and petal itemized in Herr Linné, in so far as such flora and fauna were to be found in East Prussia, but also – this was the challenge – they would set out to find species which had escaped the notice of the great Swedish botanist. In Reinhold, the lust for knowledge was a twofold thing, everlastingly co-existent with the pleasure of putting another in the wrong.
With what joy, if George’s beady little eyes found a finch or a reed or a wild blossom un-noted in Linnaeus, would the pastor dispatch a letter to Sweden informing the great man of yet another lacuna in his survey. They always had a reply, even if Linné sometimes needed convincing that, for example, Baltic bog moss (Sphagnum balticum) really was slightly different from the commoner moss, Sphagnum recurrum. Most of the species George saw had already been noted in Linné’s book – but it was by reading it that he learnt to be what we call a scientist, but what the eighteenth century called a natural philosopher. (‘The tactless philosopher’ was one of Reinhold’s nicknames when they were living in London, on their return from voyaging with the Captain.) With his father George also helped the botanist Gottfried Reyger prepare his work on the flora of Danzig – Tentamen Florae Gedanensis (1764).
George was ten years old when escape from the parish of Hochzeit-Nassenhuben became a possibility. The Russian Empress Catherine the Great, herself a German, had determined upon a programme of colonization by German settlers along the Volga. (In the event twenty-seven thousand Germans, exhausted or displaced by the war, made the journey.) They were slow in coming, partly because rumour travels more readily than bedraggled refugee families, and the word was that the bare steppes were bleak and inhospitable, the local Russian commissioners harsh and despotic, the local criminals violent and efficient. What was needed was a German speaker who could survey the Volga region and counter-blast the ‘mischievous, injurious rumours’ spread abroad concerning the plight of the colonies. The Russian resident in Danzig, Hans Wilhelm von Rehbinder, offered this delicate diplomatic role to ‘the tactless philosopher’. Reinhold was so desperate to get out of Nassenhuben that he took his boy to St Petersburg almost at once – in the spring of ’65. It was strange, looking back from an adult memory, George had no recollection that he had wept, on leaving his childhood village, the scene of all his life-experiences for a decade. He had felt no grief at parting from his mother and siblings. All he could recollect, of the setting forth with Reinhold, was that they were leaving behind, less a collection of souls, than an atmosphere, an atmosphere which emanated, like the smell from one simmering stockpot in the kitchen filling the whole parsonage with a stench of cabbage and chicken bones, from his mother’s capacity for discontent. Her little headaches, necessitating tiptoes from her children, her ‘blinding’ headaches, which required an already shadowy house to be shuttered in darkness, her ‘bilious’ attacks, her rheumatick pains, and above all her simmering ill nature had poisoned all his early childhood, spoiling those innocent early times, when he still loved Reinhold without reserve, because he knew no other, no other object of love and saw no reason for his father not to be as he was. So it was that they set off for Russia as on a great jaunt, with joy and lightness in their hearts – Heiterkeit.
‘The tactless philosopher’ would have got nowhere in life had he only been tactless. He had genuine accomplishments. He knew seventeen languages, and was a considerable scholar. He was also a networker of the greatest skill. Those whom he would later offend by his clumsiness he had won by assiduous social talent. He made a great success with Grigorii Orlov, Catherine’s favourite, whom she had put in charge of her colonization programme. With the sizeable Lutheran population of the capital he made friends – as with the Russian scientific academy. George for the first time in his life went to school – Pastor Büsching’s school – where most of the lessons were conducted in German, some in Russian. By the time Reinhold had got his appointment – Imperial Commissioner to the Volga – George had learnt Russian. They toiled through the dark Petersburg winter – Reinhold persuading Orlov to buy him meteorological instruments and reference books, while networking in the international academic and diplomatic circles of the capital – especially among the English – until George had mastered the language. When the ice on the Volga had broken and the sudden spring returned to Russia, they were ready to set off on their journey – along the Volga’s west bank to Dmitrevsk (Kamystuk), then across the great river to the Kalmuck Steppe, where the Forsters inspected the salt mines, north to the river Yeruslan and back to Saratov. As winter began again, in late autumn, the Forsters were prepared to return to Petersburg.
George remembered the hot summer as one of seemingly interminable journeys by straw-laden carts on sun-baked barges: of filthy inns, of relentless, scorching skies, of smelly ‘popes’, bearded priests in brimless hats and greasy cassocks, so dirty that you did not suppose they had ever washed in their lives, of foul-mouthed toothless women in scatterings of hovels which passed for villages, of the moonlit weirdness of the salt mines and their hard-faced German managers – so unlike the high cheek-boned mysterious Slavs of the villages – of the colonies, where they saw so much hardship and poverty, but where they refreshed themselves, almost wallowed, in hearing their own language spoken, of the gut-pains caused by brackish water, of the delicious refreshing kvass sold by old ladies carrying barrels on their backs down the main streets of dusty provincial towns, of bells clattering from gilded onion domes. And he remembered, too, the joy of improving, with every passing day, his skills as a draughtsman – chiefly drawing plants, but also birds and beasts, and as if to plumb the puzzle of Reinhold’s strange character, the endless portraits of his father: the long face, which in some lights seemed sharp and clever, and in others, gormless; the moist lips which were sensual, the hooded eyes which were spiritual; the slightly crooked, long nose. At court, or when he wanted to impress, Reinhold wore a stiff Dutch wig, but often, on the road, he wore his long, wispy hair uncovered save by the large round-brimmed hats which had been his preferred head-covering since University days.
Throughout the Volga journey, and throughout the subsequent marks of the Petersburg autumn, both Forsters worked diligently. Reinhold had done extensive cartographical work – his map of the Volga region, much the most detailed to date, would be published in England in �
��68. Father and son between them had identified two hundred and seven plants, twenty-three mammals, sixty-four birds, fourteen reptiles and sixteen fish, many of them not in Linnaeus – all of which were chronicled in a learned paper, ‘Specimen Historiae Naturalis Volgensis’.
All these were enough to establish the academic qualifications of the father-and-son pair. As a ‘natural philosopher’ Reinhold was triumphant, as an aspirant favourite of Catherine the Great, he did less well.
Orlov had sincerely wanted a report on the Volga colonies – the Russians needed to import more Germans to the sites to boost the economy of the region, especially in the mines. Some helpful criticism – relative to property law, inheritance law, and the settlers’ need to feel politically represented – would have been in order. Reinhold, however, delivered a full-frontal attack on the Russian administration. He represented the German colonists as being in a condition similar to the colonists of America vis-à-vis the Government in London – unrepresented and economically exploited. The brutality of the Russian bureaucracy made life hard, sometimes intolerable, for the settlers. Having submitted his report to Orlov Reinhold found himself dismissed. There then followed a pattern which would repeat itself wherever he went – a wrangle about money. Reinhold claimed he had been promised the position of Councillor of State with a salary of two thousand roubles. The Government offered him a thousand roubles to shut him up. (In fact, Catherine, a wise though ruthless ruler, acted on many of Reinhold’s suggestions to improve the Volga colonies, but by then he had cut his losses – or rather the losses of his creditors in Petersburg – and sailed for England.)
It was a stormy crossing. Twice they had to put in at Norwegian harbours and wait for the tempests to subside. The journey, which could have been accomplished in a few days, took the best part of a month. In the intervals of heaving, agonizing seasickness, George talked to those on board. He talked Russian to some of the passengers. From the sailors his sharp ears picked up a variety of English which, in the learned societies his father wished to penetrate in London, had to be tempered by a more measured version of the tongue. Reinhold’s spoken English, after a lifetime of reading the language, was always accented, and his written mastery of grammar was never perfect. George spoke his several Englishes like a native. He would say – before they’d even docked at Harwich – ‘If tweren’t for this thur fuckin’ storm we’d’ve been home two fuckin’ week ago’, or, ‘T’First Lieutenant’s a bugger and oi mean bugger.’ (George was at that date unaware of the meaning of the term in any language.) He could also – the same First Lieutenant having taken a friendly interest in the lad – speak the officer’s English and say that he thanked Lady—, or Sir Somebody—, for their condescension and had the greatest happiness in accepting their kind invitation. He had also, in the intervals of being sick, read a history of Russia and decided to write a translation of it into English.
His initial impressions never left him. Though he later believed Berlin to be the finest city in Europe, architecturally, and though Destiny would allow him to die in Paris – after a solitary year, separated from his wife and children – it was London which was most spectacularly teeming with intellectual and social interest. They had just about enough money to pay one month’s rent for a small room in Denmark Street. Smoke from a neighbour’s chimney flitted past the window in puffs. From the street below came the clatter of carriage wheels on cobblestone, the shout of traders, the seemingly unstoppable conversation of the inhabitants. In German, Vati had said —You see it is only a matter of time before Woide finds us something! Woide is our man!
A thin man, Reinhold’s age, a friend of student days in Berlin, Woide seemed a frail figure on whom to hang high hopes. It was to Woide’s house in Denmark Street they had repaired on landing – Woide occupied two rooms on the first floor.
—Woide understands more Coptic than anyone else in Europe, Reinhold excitedly told his son, and George, at twelve, did not question that this augured well for the future, though quite how Woide, with his unstoppable excitement at finding someone with whom he could discuss Coptic scripts and paintings, might improve the Forster family fortunes, George did not ask.
When the first month ran out, they sold souvenirs from their Russian journey to buy themselves a second month – Tartarian coins, miniature icon-paintings, fossils. Woide, little by little, worked his magic, introduced them to the Swedish naturalist Daniel Carl Solander, and to Andreas Planta, one of the keepers at the British Museum, who was cataloguing the Natural History collection. Surely if Planta, a German-speaking Swiss pastor, could do such work, they could find paid employment for Reinhold Forster? Woide took the Forsters to scientific meetings at the Royal Society. He persuaded George to abridge Lomonossof’s Russian history, translate it into English and sell it to a bookseller – which he did – to Mr Snelling, No. 163 next to the Horn Tavern in Fleet Street. Within no time they felt themselves part of a ‘circle’. Solander, Linnaeus’s representative on English soil, introduced them to Joseph Banks – then twenty-four years old – who had sailed with Captain Cook in the Endeavour to Tahiti, witnessed the passage of Venus over that island, and sailed on with the Captain to New Zealand. Plans were afoot to sail again – and if Banks required assistant naturalists in his entourage? Well, certainly, my dear fellow.
—Cook is . . . how shall I put this to you? Banks had guffawed – it was a noise which Englishmen of a certain class made, and it already slightly scared George. Ever met him?
—Kapitän Cook?
—Well, he calls himself Captain but he’s not yet been gazetted beyond the rank of – simple soul – you get me?
Reinhold did not.
—Is he not one of the finest navigators in the history of mankind – did not his skills as a cartographer show themselves when he mapped the coastline of North America? Is he not an astronomer as well as a sailor of valour?
—Yes, yes, no doubt – but – at heart a peasant. Father was a farm labourer in Yorkshire – did ye know?
Banks, it would appear, had been the real genius behind Cook’s momentous voyage – they should not pay too much attention to Cook.
—But I say, sir! Your boy, what is this I heard? – Banks bowed obligingly to George – written a book? You must bring it to the next meeting of the Antiquaries, present ’em with a copy for the library.
And this was done.
The son of Mr Forster, honorary Fellow of this Society, a young Gentleman of not 13 Years of Age, but conversant in several Languages, presented a Copy of a Work, translated by him into English, entitled A Chronological Abridgement of the Russian History, translated from the original Russian, of Michael Lomonossof, Counsellor of State and Professor of Chymistry at the Academy of Sciences at Petersburg; & continued to the present Time by the Translator.
Thanks were returned to this young Gentleman for his kind Present.
Invitations followed – My Lord Lansdowne, Secretary of State for the Colonies, asked Reinhold to his table – offered him a post as pastor at Pensacola, West Florida. It was turned down. Solander introduced him to Joseph Priestley – of all the Englishmen he’d met to date, one of the most fascinating.
Priestley wore no wig. He was in his mid-thirties – four years younger than Reinhold – sharp blue eyes, a clear skin, a strong-boned jaw and a straight nose. He spoke of his passion for education.
—In England, a young gentleman can attend one of the older schools and learn nothing – nothing except Latin and rudimentary mathematics. He will go on to Oxford, if his path is to lead him to the Church or the Law, and just study more of the same. Of the modern tongues he will learn nothing – of Natural Philosophy, nothing . . .
He told Reinhold of his explorations into electricity and of his correspondence on the subject with Mr Franklin in America. He talked of his chemical researches. He was on his way to discovering what we call oxygen and he called, at this date, dephlogisticated air. He spoke of wanting to live in a world where boys and girls, equally, could pursue
knowledge, discover the nature of Nature – of matter, of stuff, of what there is. He also spoke of religion, but in a manner which Reinhold did not wish to follow: indeed, Mr Priestley said,
—Do not most men and women if they are honest revere the teachings of Christ without any understanding that he was divine, or their Saviour, or the sacrificial Lamb of Passover? Do not most men and women who are called Christians merely want to live justly, to love mercy, to worship the Creator by the exercise of goodness?
Priestley told Reinhold that, partly with money from a like-thinking young businessman, the red-faced Mr Wedgwood, who was also at the table, he had helped to establish the Warrington Nonconformist Academy which had enjoyed a partial success.
—Ay, partial! laughed Wedgwood. We employ scholars to lecture our young scholars – men of science to breed up men of science. You canna expect men like that to be ushers, thrashing little brats into shape and mekkin ’em learn the tables . . .
—Ooshes? The word puzzled Reinhold.
—Ay, so we decided – did we not, Mr Priestley ’n’ I – ter dispense wi’ little ’uns – ter tell the truth they were so badly disciplined, so out of control they learnt nothing – yet they were being taught by some o’t’ foremost natural philosophers in t’world!
—But I have decided, for the time being, said Mr Priestley, to give up my teaching work. I supervise three of our meeting houses, and preach in all of them regularly. And my chemical research takes up more and more of my time.
—Which is why, said Mr Wedgwood, drawing his chest close and putting his face near to Reinhold’s, we are looking for a new teacher at the Academy – one who can instruct the scholars in modern languages, and one who can gi’e lectures in Natural Philosophy as well.
—A man of science, fluent in the European tongues! said Mr Priestley.
It became a matter of some merriment, on Mr Wedgwood’s part at least, that Reinhold’s next question had been