“Humboldt, Prometheus of our time!”
What Humboldt wanted was to discuss his observations on the magnetic pole, and to compare the meteorological records he had taken in the Ural Mountains with those at Moscow; but the Rector preferred to show him some relic plaited out of the hair of Peter the Great. It was with difficulty that Ehrenberg and Rose found an opportunity to tell him something of their discoveries.[[50]]
[50]. Odd views were taken in Russia of Humboldt’s travels. There was a Cossack at Perm who liked describing how he escorted “a mad Prussian prince called Gumplot.” When asked what Gumplot did, he said: “He was quite childish, picking grasses and gazing at sand. At one place he told me through the interpreter to wade into a pool and fish out what was at the bottom—there was nothing but what there is at the bottom of every pool. Then he asked if the water at the bottom was very cold. You won’t catch me that way, thought I; so I saluted and said, ‘The rules of the service require it, Your Excellency.’” [Author’s Note.]
Even in unofficial circles, we don’t do things much better in Russia. Liszt was received in just the same way by Moscow society ten years ago. There was folly enough over him in Germany; but that was quite a different thing—old-maidish gush and sentimentality and strewing of roses, whereas in Russia there was servile acknowledgement of power and prim formality of a strictly official type. And Liszt’s reputation as a Don Juan was mixed up in an unpleasant way with it all: the ladies swarmed around him, just as boys in out-of-the-way places swarm round a traveller when he is changing horses and stare at him or his carriage or his hat. Every ear was turned to Liszt, every word and every reply was addressed to him alone. I remember one evening when Homyakóv, in his disgust with the company, appealed to me to start a dispute with him on any subject, that Liszt might discover there were some people in the room who were not exclusively taken up with him. I can only say one thing to console our ladies—that Englishwomen treated other celebrities, Kossuth, Garibaldi, and others, in just the same way, crowding and jostling round the object of worship; but woe to him who seeks to learn good manners from Englishwomen, or their husbands!
§16
Our other distinguished visitor was also “a Prometheus of our time” in a certain sense; only, instead of stealing fire from Zeus, he stole it from mankind. This Prometheus, whose fame was sung, not by Glinka but by Púshkin himself in his Epistle to Lucullus, was Uvárov, the Minister of Education.[[51]] He astonished us by the number of languages he spoke and by the amount of his miscellaneous knowledge; he was a real shopman behind the counter of learning and kept samples of all the sciences, the elements chiefly, in his head. In Alexander’s reign, he wrote reform pamphlets in French; then he had a German correspondence with Goethe on Greek matters. After becoming minister, he discoursed on Slavonic poetry of the fourth century, which made Kachenovsky remark to him that our ancestors were much busier in fighting bears than in hymning their gods and kings. As a kind of patent of nobility, he carried about in his pocket a letter from Goethe, in which Goethe paid him a very odd compliment: “You have no reason to apologise for your style: you have succeeded in doing what I could never do—forgetting German grammar.”
[51]. Serghéi Uvárov (1786-1855) was both Minister of Education and President of the Academy of Sciences. He used his power to tighten the censorship and suppressed The Moscow Telegraph, edited by Polevoi, which was the most independent of Russian journals; in this way he “stole fire from mankind.” The reference to Púshkin is malicious: what Púshkin wrote about Uvárov in that poem was the reverse of complimentary. “Lucullus” was Count Sheremétyev and Uvárov was his heir.
This highly placed Admirable Crichton invented a new kind of torture for our benefit. He gave directions that the best students should be selected, and that each of them should deliver a lecture in his own department of study, in place of the professor. The Deans of course chose the readiest of the students to perform.
These lectures went on for a whole week. The students had to get up all the branches of their subject, and the Dean drew a lot to determine the theme and the speaker. Uvárov invited all the rank and fashion of Moscow. Ecclesiastics and judges, the Governor of the city, and the old poet, Dmítriev—everyone was there.