The Invention of Nature (18 page)

Humboldt was not thinking of just one book. He envisaged a series of large and beautifully illustrated volumes that would, for example, depict the great peaks of the Andes, exotic blooms, ancient manuscripts and Inca ruins. He also intended to write some more specialized books: botanical and zoological publications that described the plants and animals of Latin America precisely and scientifically, as well as some on astronomy and geography. He planned an atlas that would include his new maps showing plant distribution across the globe, the locations of volcanoes and mountain ranges, rivers and so on. But Humboldt also wanted to write more general and cheaper books that would explain his new vision of nature to a broader audience. He put Bonpland in charge of the botanical books, but all the others he would have to write himself.

With a mind that worked in all directions, Humboldt could often hardly keep up with his own thoughts. As he wrote, new ideas would pop up which were squeezed on to the page – here was a little sketch or some calculations jotted into the margins. When he ran out of space, Humboldt used his large desk on which he carved and scribbled ideas. Soon the entire table top was completely covered with numbers, lines and words, so much so that a carpenter had to be called to plane it clean again.

Writing didn’t stop him from travelling, as long as it was in Europe and near the centres of scientific learning. If he had to, Humboldt could work anywhere – even in the back of a coach, balancing his notebooks on his knees and filling the pages with his almost indecipherable handwriting. He wanted to visit Wilhelm in Rome, and see the Alps and Vesuvius. In March 1805, seven months after his arrival in France and only a few weeks after Caroline had finally left Paris for Rome, Humboldt and his new friend, the chemist Gay-Lussac, also set out for Italy. Humboldt now spent much of his time with the twenty-six-year-old unmarried Gay-Lussac, who seemed to have replaced Carlos Montúfar as Humboldt’s closest friend when Montúfar had moved on to Madrid earlier that year.3

Humboldt and Gay-Lussac travelled first to Lyon and from there to Chambéry, a small town in south-eastern France from where they could see the Alps rising on the horizon. As the warm air breathed life over the French countryside, leaves unfurled and clothed the trees in the fresh green of a new season. Birds were building their nests and the roads were lined with the bright blossoms of spring flowers. The travellers were equipped with the best instruments and regularly stopped to take meteorological measurements which Humboldt wanted to compare with those from Latin America. From Chambéry they continued south-east and crossed the Alps into Italy. Humboldt adored being back in the mountains.

On the last day of April they arrived in Rome and stayed with Wilhelm and Caroline. Since the couple had moved to Rome two and a half years previously, their house had become a meeting place for artists and thinkers. Every Wednesday and Sunday Caroline and William hosted a lunch, as well as welcoming a large number of guests in the evenings. Sculptors, archaeologists and scientists from all over Europe arrived – no matter whether they were famous thinkers, aristocratic travellers or struggling artists. Here Humboldt found an eager audience for his tales from the rainforest and the Andes, but also artists who turned even his roughest sketches into glorious paintings for his publications. Humboldt had arranged to meet Leopold von Buch, an old friend from his time at the mining academy in Freiberg, who was now one of the most respected geologists in Europe. They had plans to investigate Vesuvius and the Alps together.

Humboldt found more acquaintances in Rome. In July Simón Bolívar arrived from France. During the previous winter, as the cold days had enveloped Paris in a grey blanket, Bolívar had sunk into a dark mood. Simón Rodríguez, his old teacher from Caracas who was in Paris too, had suggested an excursion. In April they had driven by stagecoach to Lyon and then had begun to walk. They marched along fields and through forests, enjoying the rural surroundings. They talked, sang and read. Slowly Bolívar cleansed his body and mind of the dissipations of the previous months. All his life Bolívar had adored being outside, and now once again felt invigorated by the fresh air, exercise and nature. When he saw the Alps rising against the horizon, Bolívar had been reminded of the wild landscapes of his youth, the mountains against which Caracas nestled. His thoughts were now deeply engaged with his country. In May he crossed the Savoy Alps and walked all the way to Rome.

In Rome Bolívar and Humboldt talked again about South America and revolutions. Though Humboldt hoped that the Spanish colonies would free themselves, at no moment during their time together in Paris and then in Rome did he see Bolívar as their potential leader. When Bolívar argued rapturously about the liberation of his people, Humboldt saw only a young man with a brilliant imagination – ‘a dreamer’, as he said, and a man who was still too immature. Humboldt was not convinced, but as a mutual friend later recounted, it was Humboldt’s ‘great wisdom and accomplished prudence’ that helped Bolívar at a time when he was still young and wild. Humboldt’s friend, Leopold von Buch – a man famed for his geological knowledge, but also for his unsocial and brusque behaviour – was irritated by the political hijacking of what he had believed would be a gathering of scientific minds. Buch swiftly dismissed Bolívar as a ‘fabulist’ full of incendiary ideas. And so Buch was relieved to leave Rome for Naples and Vesuvius on 16 July – together with Humboldt and Gay-Lussac but without Bolívar.

The timing could not have been better. A month later, on the evening of 12 August, as Humboldt regaled a group of Germans who were visiting Naples with stories from the Orinoco and the Andes, Vesuvius erupted in front of their eyes. Humboldt couldn’t believe his luck. As one scientist commented, it was a ‘compliment that Vesuvius chose to give Humboldt’. From the balcony of his host’s house, Humboldt saw the glowing lava snaking down the mountain destroying vineyards, villages and forests. Naples was thrown into an eerie light. Within minutes Humboldt was ready to ride towards the spewing volcano to observe the eruption as closely as possible. During the next few days he climbed Vesuvius six times. It was all very impressive, Humboldt wrote to Bonpland, but nothing compared to South America. Vesuvius was like an ‘asteroid next to Saturn’ in comparison to Cotopaxi.

An eruption of Mount Vesuvius (Illustration Credit 9.4)

Meanwhile in Rome, on a particularly hot day in mid-August, Bolívar, Rodríguez and another South American friend walked to the top of the hill Monte Sacro. There, with the city at their feet, Rodríguez recounted the story of the plebeians in ancient Rome who – on that very hill – had threatened to secede from the republic in protest against the rule of the patricians. Hearing this story, Bolívar fell to his knees, grabbed Rodríguez’s hand and vowed that he would liberate Venezuela. He would not stop, Bolívar declared, until ‘I have broken the shackles’. This was a turning point for Bolívar and from now on his country’s freedom was the guiding torch of his life. Two years later, when he arrived in Caracas, he was no longer the party-loving dandy but a man driven by ideas of revolution and liberty. The seeds of South America’s liberation were germinating.

By the time Humboldt returned to Rome at the end of August, Bolívar had already left. Feeling restless, Humboldt also wanted to move on and decided to travel through Europe to Berlin. He rushed north, stopping briefly in Florence, Bologna and Milan. He couldn’t go to Vienna as planned because Gay-Lussac still travelled with him, and, with Austria and France at war, it would have been too dangerous for the Frenchman. The sciences, Humboldt complained, no longer provided a safeguard in this volatile climate.

As it turned out Humboldt’s decision to skip Vienna was a wise one because the French army had crossed the Rhine and marched through Swabia to take Vienna in mid-November. Three weeks later Napoleon defeated the Austrians and Russians at the Battle of Austerlitz (today’s Slavkov u Brna in the Czech Republic). Napoleon’s decisive victory at Austerlitz marked the end of the Holy Roman Empire and of Europe as it had hitherto existed.

1 After the revolution, the Académie des Sciences was incorporated into the National Institute of Sciences and Arts (Institut National des Sciences et des Arts). A few years later, in 1816, it once again became the Académie des Sciences – and part of the Institut de France. For the sake of consistency, it will be the Académie des Sciences throughout the book.

2 It was probably Carlos Montúfar who introduced Humboldt to the South Americans in Paris – but Humboldt and Bolívar also had several mutual acquaintances. There was Bolívar’s childhood friend Fernando del Toro – the son of the Marquis del Toro with whom Humboldt had spent time in Venezuela. In Caracas Humboldt had also met Bolívar’s sisters and his former tutor, the poet Andrés Bello.

3 Montúfar returned to South America in 1810 where he joined the revolutionaries. He was imprisoned and executed in 1816.

10

Berlin

IN A DESPERATE attempt to avoid the battlefields, Humboldt altered his route to Berlin. He went via Lake Como in northern Italy where he met Alessandro Volta, an Italian scientist who had just invented the electric battery. Humboldt then crossed the Alps as fierce winter storms were raging. Rain, hail and snow pounded down – Humboldt was in his element. As he journeyed north and across the German states, he visited old friends along the way as well as his former professor, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, in Göttingen. On 16 November 1805, more than a year after his return to Europe, Alexander von Humboldt arrived in Berlin with Gay-Lussac.

After Paris and Rome, Berlin felt provincial, and the flat countryside around the city seemed plain and dull. For a man who loved the heat and humidity of the rainforest, Humboldt had chosen the worst time of the year to arrive. Berlin was freezing cold during those first harsh winter months. Within weeks Humboldt was ill, covered in a measles-like rash, and weakened by a high fever. The weather, he wrote to Goethe in early February 1806, was unbearable. He was of a more ‘tropical nature’, Humboldt said, and no longer suited for the cold and damp north German climate.

As soon as he came, he was ready to leave. How was he to work here and find enough like-minded scientists? There wasn’t even a university in the city, and the ground, he said, was ‘burning under my feet’. By contrast, King Friedrich Wilhelm III was delighted to have the most famous Prussian back. Celebrated across Europe for his daring explorations, Humboldt would be a great ornament at court, and the king granted him a generous yearly pension of 2,500 thalers with absolutely no obligations attached. This was a large sum at a time when skilled craftsmen such as carpenters and joiners earned less than 200 thalers annually, but perhaps not when compared to the 13,400 thalers that his brother Wilhelm earned as a Prussian ambassador. The king also made Humboldt his chamberlain, again with no apparent conditions. Having spent much of his inheritance, Humboldt needed the money but at the same time found the king’s attentions ‘almost oppressive’.

A dour and frugal man, Friedrich Wilhelm III was no inspiring ruler. He was neither a pleasure-seeker nor an art lover like his father, Friedrich Wilhelm II, and lacked any of the military and scientific brilliance of his great-uncle, Frederick the Great. Instead he was fascinated by clocks and uniforms – so much so that Napoleon reputedly once said that Friedrich Wilhelm III should have been a tailor because ‘he always knows how many yards of cloth are needed for a soldier’s uniform’.

Embarrassed by the ties that would now bind him to the court, Humboldt asked his friends to keep the royal appointment quiet. And perhaps with good reason, because some were shocked to see the apparently fiercely independent and pro-revolutionary Humboldt making himself subservient to the king. His friend Leopold von Buch complained that Humboldt now spent more time at the king’s palaces than the courtiers themselves. Instead of concentrating on his scientific studies, Buch said, Humboldt was immersed in court gossip. The accusation was slightly unfair because Humboldt was far more absorbed in scientific matters than in royal affairs. Though he had to be at court regularly, he also found time to lecture at the Berlin Academy of Sciences, to write and to continue the comparative magnetic observations that he had begun in South America.

An old family acquaintance and wealthy distillery owner offered Humboldt his garden house to live in. His estate bordered the River Spree and was just a few hundred yards north of the famous boulevard Unter den Linden. The little garden house was simple but perfect – it saved Humboldt money and allowed him to concentrate on his magnetic observations. He built a small hut in the garden for that purpose, and in order not to influence the measurements had it constructed without a single piece or nail made of iron. At one stage he and a colleague spent several days taking data from the instruments every half-hour – day and night – getting only snatches of sleep in between. The experiment resulted in 6,000 measurements but also left them somewhat exhausted.

Then, in early April 1806, after a full year in Humboldt’s company, Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac returned to Paris. Humboldt was unhappy and lonely in Berlin and wrote to a friend a few days later that he was living ‘isolated and as a stranger’. Prussia felt like a foreign country. Humboldt was also worried about his botanical publications for which Bonpland had taken responsibility. These were specialized books for scientists and based on the plant collections they had acquired in Latin America. As a trained botanist, Bonpland was more suited for the task than Humboldt. Bonpland, however, did his best to ignore the work. He had never enjoyed the laborious chore of describing plant specimens and writing, infinitely preferring the richness of the rainforest to the tedium of his desk. Frustrated with the slow progress, Humboldt repeatedly urged Bonpland to work faster. When Bonpland finally sent some proof pages to Berlin, the meticulous Humboldt was irritated by the many mistakes. Bonpland was a little too relaxed about accuracy, Humboldt thought, ‘in particular concerning the Latin descriptions and numbers’.