by A. N. Wilson
Alexander von Humboldt, possibly the cleverest human being who has ever lived on this planet, stared at Therese with complete incomprehension.
—He hasn’t noticed, darling, said Caroline.
—I know. And I can’t tell whether that is very VERY flattering or very VERY insulting.
In a low voice which Alexander could not catch, Caroline cooed in Therese’s red little ear,
—Women only half exist, darling, for such as he.
—But Wilhelm isn’t like that . . . ?
—Very much not.
And with a moist index finger Caroline stopped Therese’s lips.
The Humboldt brothers were not the Forsters’ discovery, far from it, but they had burst upon them from the moment of their arrival in Mainz, and immediately, Wilhelm, at twenty-two, Alexander at twenty, had been clear annunciations of a new dawn.
When their father died, the mother had asked Goethe how she should educate the two boys. The monster-ego poet of Weimar, perhaps already dreaming of the demonic intellectual journeys of Faust, proposed an experiment – that the brothers should be crammed with knowledge, told all there was to know, allowing them the chance to explore every possibility of action and aesthetic appreciation. Even old Professor Heyne, Therese’s father, was persuaded to Berlin to teach the brothers Greek. Wilhelm learnt languages and literature from University professors. Alexander was taught all that was then known of chemistry, physics and mathematics. Both studied Philosophy with Kant. Later, the mother would force Wilhelm into the diplomatic service (his last posting, after the Napoleonic wars, was as Prussian Ambassador in London). Alexander became, like Novalis, an inspector of mines, but from his first readings of George Forster’s Voyage, he had pined to become a traveller, and, long after this story is done, he would travel through Central and South America, and publish, in the French language, a thirty-five-volume account of the geography and Natural History of those lands. He became what Goethe had wanted him to become, a universal genius, living deep into the nineteenth century, and dying in 1859.
1790
THE RHINE WAS IN LOW WATER. IT HAD BEEN A DRY SPRING. The skiff made slow progress. The hills, dotted with vineyards and medieval castles, swooped and soared. The thought came to George that, had Mr Hodges depicted the scene, it would have been all hills, trees, vines and ruins, their little skiff two brown triangles against flat water, and the three men who sailed it – Humboldt, himself, and a playwright called Iffland who had come for the journey as far as Koblenz – would have been no more than the pin-sized savages who adorn that painter’s romanticized depictions of the South Seas. This was the journey which transformed George into a Romantic, and, when they read his accounts of the Rhine, its walled towns, its colossal rock formations, its mirror-water-surface, the journey made the sensible Germans sensitive – the cloth traders and clockmakers, the wine merchants and salt miners – became Nature mystics. Though it delighted the fancy to think, as the waters flowed past St Goarshausen, that the Rhine maidens would lure river passengers to their deaths on the rocks which jut out of the waters, George saw the waters themselves, and the great sky, and the rocks, as the truly ‘romantic’ discovery. Nature not legend lifted the soul into its mysterious silences.
Resuming a journey by sail inevitably prompted memory, memory which young Humboldt and Iffland implored him to open and to share, of the blue seas and sun-gilt islands. So, as their little boat glided almost noiselessly downstream, the silences were dotted with discourse of King Potatow, of canoes filled with smiling men and women offering plantain and coconuts, of exotic flora, of feathered cloaks and ceremonial meals at which no one present entirely understood what the other was saying. Of Rai and the gap in her white teeth and her long curtains of black hair cloaking her chubby shoulders, he said nothing; nor of Reinhold, his energetic capacity to collect botanical specimens only rivalled by his ability to rub up shipmates the wrong way. These memories were not for sharing, for they were, as he now saw more clearly than ever before, memories of love.
Perhaps it was the passage of time, perhaps it was the curiosity of his listeners, perhaps it was the unlocking of love in his heart by little Rosechen from whom he’d parted in Mainz with such tears – but, whatever the reasons, he knew that this journey of his and Humboldts, was going to be transformative. Already he saw the world with new eyes. Whereas, ten years before when he had first travelled alone, and passed through Paris on his way to Germany, and looked upon the Gothic intricacies of La Sainte Chapelle with blank indifference, now, in the cathedral at Cologne, which he had seen many times, he was transfigured by the Gothic. The swooping, fluted columns of the nave and their capitals of leaf-fringed stone were revelations. On the cathedral’s shadowy paving, he stood looking up, up, upwards, transfigured into the architects’ purposes. Hitherto, taught by classical severities, George had supposed the arrangement of stone upon stone, the creation of arches, doors, columns, windows, roofs, was a classical, ordered thing, an imposition of mathematics. These architects, however, having learnt a mathematics superior to the Roman – from the medieval Arabs, which enabled them to construct pointed arches, had soared into a different aesthetic, in which stone could become spreading branches, in which a building, rather than defying the organic green, the crushed leaf, could enter the natural sphere, rather as, in Ovidian myth, an escaping damsel could be transformed into a laurel bush. Nor were these experiences of aesthetic ecstasy, in the presence of Nature – the Rhine and its waters – and of the Art–Nature marriage achieved by Gothic, even for a moment at variance with the ardour for scientific knowledge evinced by his young companion.
For several months before the voyage, Humboldt had been at work on his first major scientific work, on the basalt to be found in the Lower Rhine regions, so that while they exclaimed at the beauties of the Rhine, they were also analysing its very constitution. Humboldt was beginning to realize that basalt was volcanic, formed underground through an uprush of molten material, and hardening instantly as it burst from the surface of the earth and met the cold air. The pillars of basalt thrown up by Nature posed deep thoughts – when had the volcanic eruptions occurred? Surely far longer ago than Science, let alone Theology, had for centuries supposed? So, Geology and Poetry both had their pillars. From Cologne they journey to Düsseldorf, from Düsseldorf to Aachen, where the tomb of Charlemagne, father of modern Europe, prompted thoughts about the condition of contemporary Europe, since the French convulsions of the pervious summers, the white marble throne on which, since Charles the Great, so many German emperors had been crowned seemed so plain, so unostentatious that, George felt, it could be taken as a satire on all the thrones of the world. To journey on, through Brabant and to see those parts of Flanders still under the rule of the Austrian Empire was to feel the obsolescence of modern political institutions.
From the Low Countries, they took a packet boat to Dover. To be at sea once more, to hear the huge sails flapping their dragon wings above their heads, to feel the heave and bobbing of the vessel and to hear waves slapping the wooden sides was to re-enter, however briefly, the Resolution.
Whenever the sloop put in at a new haven, there had always coexisted, beside the tedium of finding suitable harbourage, the technical challenges of casting an anchor, the fear of the human. When the shoals and shallows of the treacherous reef had been successfully evaded, and the first human face, peering from behind a rock or a banana-bunch, had been spotted, would the inhabitants recognize the Captain’s peaceful intentions? One of Cook’s greatest gifts, beside his courage and his uncanny genius as a navigator and cartographer, was his ability to move with friendly confidence among the natives, to demonstrate his essential friendliness, to enfold their hands in his hands, to rub noses. Perhaps any traveller’s success in his journeys depends upon the measure to which he has cultivated these gifts. As the cross-Channel ferry approached England, that summer of ’90, George remembered the first time he and his father had arrived there in ’66, and thought: Reinhold could
not rub noses. When he and George had come ashore, had they presented enough old nails, beads or rusty medals? Had they entered with sufficient show of deference into the hierarchic ceremonies? Had they displayed enough gratitude as the Royal Society or the University of Oxford had wrapped them in the English equivalent of a feathered cloak? Though learned and noble Englishmen might have offered them the learned or noble version of a fruit drink served in a coconut shell, Reinhold had never quite known how to respond with the required combination of sycophancy and swagger. Though he had outwardly learnt the syntax and vocabulary of the English language, he had not really understood its organic grammar. He had not realized that when a favour was offered, there was not necessarily any truth in the offer. When favour was indeed given with diffidence, as if the gift were of no account, Reinhold had not seen that this diffidence was not to be taken at face value, nor that when an Englishman shrugs modestly and asks you not to mention it, he actually wants you not merely to mention it, but to gush, to set it to music. The Admiralty, and Parliament, had conveyed great honours on the Forsters by making them the official naturalists on the Resolution. The £4,000 given, if spent more judiciously, might have defrayed Reinhold’s costs, and if the airy mention of future appointments or emoluments, the Directorship of the British Museum, for example, might not have been exactly meant, there probably would have been rewards, honours, positions for the asking had he asked with due deference, had he known when to ascend the dais in his grass skirt, when to place the feathered headdress on a grateful head, when to swallow, however unappetizing, the proffered putrid delicacy.
The Captain was dead, there was no chance of introducing Alexander to him, but George had it in mind to visit the Widow Cook in the famed farm at Mile End. Here, for all too short a time, had lived the goat which had accompanied Cook on the first voyage, to Tahiti, upon whose collar were inscribed words composed specially by Dr Johnson:
Perpetui, ambita bis terra, praemia lactis
Haec habet altrici Capra secunda Iovis
(‘After a double circumnavigation of the globe, the goat, second (only) to the goat that nursed Jove, has this reward of her milk that never failed.’)
The goat, alas, who had survived the journey to the South Seas and back, had expired in ’72 not long after being installed in Mile End.
The Captain had not often alluded to his home life, but when he had done so, it had been with warmth. Once, finding Reinhold and George together on the deck, discussing Latin literature or plants, or swapping quotations, the Captain had remarked,
—You’re a lucky man – you’re both lucky – to have each other.
—You have sons to be proud of, sir.
There was that slight pause, often noticeable in Cook’s discourse with Reinhold as if the naturalist had stepped a little too far, as if perhaps the father, and not another, might decide the suitable emotion when his own sons were in question. After the pause, though, a smile.
—Ay, I have ’n’ all, whether they follow me into the Service, we’ll have to see. James and Nathaniel have it in mind – we’re hoping to send ’em to the Naval Academy at Portsmouth.
—Start them young!
—James isn’t ten yet, Nathaniel seven – Hugh’s the babby.
—Happy the man who has his quiverful.
—Ay – we’re lucky to have them. We thank God, sir, though we’ve lost three, Mrs Cook and I.
It crossed George’s mind, during this conversation, on a gently breezy blue day sailing from Tonga to New Zealand, that when the Captain was staring silently at the ocean, as he so often did, his mind was very likely with his lost children, or with his wife on the farm at Mile End; whereas he suspected that when Reinhold’s family were out of sight, they were out of mind.
Mile End was a pleasant bosky village a little way east of the City, being gradually built up with handsome terraced houses. The two-wheeled barouche which took them there had no difficulty in finding the farm, more a smallholding, in which fowl – geese and chicken – paced splay-footedly in the mud and where, at the back, half a dozen pigs could be seen enjoying the morning air.
—She ain’t ’ere, said a labouring man leaning on a fork.
The arrival of strangers was enough to attract a gaggle of the curious. There was a group of what at first seemed to be three children. Then they realized that it was two children, of about eight and ten, and a dwarfish woman – perhaps an aunt or grandmother – no taller than four feet.
—Perhaps if we wait, proffered George.
—If she is to return.
—Is he Russian? asked one of the children, pointing at Humboldt.
—We are happy to wait until she returns.
—Only, said the labourer, it’s the Orkses now.
—Orkses?
—Mr and Mrs Hawks, said the dwarf. They’re the proprietors of Mile End Farm now. I say, are you lawyers?
—One of ’em’s Russian.
—’E didn’t say so.
—No but ’e wouldn’t would ’e, fat-ed.
Four more women had approached, excited by the knowledge that lawyers had been sent all the way from Russia to see the Widow Cook.
—Got ideas, she did, said the bonneted dwarf.
So, Mrs Cook had moved, and after inquiries, they found her new address, in Surrey. Their driver believed he could effect the journey to Clapham in half an hour. In the fly, Alexander asked,
—What is hoity toity?
—Snobbish.
—And these ideas Mrs Cook has. They are scientific ideas? Philosophical ideas?
—It’s possible. I think they meant that, since her husband’s fame, she considers herself a little grand.
Their driver was a helpful young man. When they reached Clapham, a well-built village with a new church on a piece of common land just south of the River Thames, inquiries were made at the inn, and they were soon pulling the bell-rope outside a handsome double-fronted house, some ten years old, with a trellis of roses – still in bud – framing a garden gate, and a neat path edged with box. The shiny new door was opened by a shiny new footman, and when they had left cards, and a note, on his salver, and waited in the hall, attending the reaction of their hostess, they were eventually ushered into her pretty drawing room, to find Mrs Cook, wearing a crimped bonnet of creamy lace and with a waisted black dress. When George had explained his identity, and that of his companion, Mrs Cook said,
—You’d be the younger of the German gentlemen.
—No, no. I am considerably older than Mr Humboldt.
—But the younger of the German gentlemen who sailed with Captain Cook.
—Oh, yes indeed, ma’am.
—And your father, he yet lives?
—Yes, ma’am. He is a Professor in Halle.
Mrs Cook had a small straight mouth like a rat-trap, which now closed, indicating that further mention of Reinhold would not be desirable.
—And your sons, ma’am. You have three sons, I believe? They are all at sea?
The silence which followed reminded George of the Captain’s silences.
—Nathaniel, my second boy, was serving on the Thunderer in Jamaica – ten year ago now – ’80. The whole ship went down in a hurricane. At least his father did not have to know of it.
The frosty silence almost forbade inquiring about the other boys, but she eventually conceded that James, the eldest, was a Lieutenant, and Hugh, still a schoolboy, hoping for Cambridge.
(What, asked Humboldt in the fly as they came away, was he hoping for Cambridge?)
—I almost wondered, when I gave her Cook the Discoverer, whether she would have preferred not to see the book.
—How could she not be pleased with it?
—Alexander. Memory is a strange thing. It is more than ten years since I was in England. Before, I saw it with young eyes, but also with my father’s eyes. Only when I was with Mrs Cook did I remember how angry it made everyone, my writing A Voyage. I had blotted all this from my mind. I remembered only the v
oyage itself – and then arriving – and the book – and how popular it was. But the other things I had either forgotten or put from my mind – that I had only written the book because the Admiralty forbade Vati from writing it. They said Captain Cook should be the first to go into print over the matter. That it was owing to him – the kudos, the money. It now amazes me that we had the gall, the sheer cheek, Vati and I, to write my Voyage book. I wrote it fast. We finished it before Cook. It sold well – only now do I quite see how angry, how justifiably angry, the Captain must have been! I’d done more than jump the gun. I’d violated him – the man I most admired in the world. In spite of the row caused by my book, the Admiralty allowed me and Vati to publish another, a botanical book about the voyage. It was an expensive book to produce. I had to do the drawings, and copper-plate engravings had to be made, and although they reimbursed us, it was not enough. Vati got into terrible debt in London . . . they were frightening times . . . Vati was threatened with the Debtor’s Prison, the Marshalsea. Where was the money to come from? He found a job as a humble secretary to the Prussian Ambassador. Without diplomatic immunity he would have gone to prison. That was when he wrote the Letter . . .
—What Letter?
—It seems so utterly crazy to me now. His written English was good, but not good enough, so I had had to write it for him. We borrowed money and had it printed and bound . . . a letter to Lord Sandwich at the Admiralty, at the way we had been treated.
—But you had been wrongly treated?
—Yes, but to go into print, Alexander, with petty complaints about how much money we had spent on sketch-books and scientific instruments . . . and to end by saying we detested England.
—You wrote this?
—I wrote this paragraph in which I described the Forsters running away from Oliver Cromwell because of their loyalty to the King . . . And then I said, Vati ‘returned to England, from a natural predilection to it, as a mother country. If he is not yet entirely weaned of this prejudice, it is not your lordship’s fault; you have done your endeavours to make him detest this country’ . . .