With old attachment, yours,
A. v. Humboldt.
Thursday.
You will explain to me orally the mythological name of Sorocaba.[[76]]
Varnhagen narrates in his diary, under date of August 11th, 1855:—“About 1 o’clock Humboldt came, looking well, quite vigorous, in fresh and lively spirits; when he made a worse impression a short time ago, as Dirichlet thought, it was the effect of sickness, and is passed now. First, he spoke of the book of my cousin, which he praised, for which he thanks him (in a letter). The expression Sorocaba I cannot explain to him. Humboldt was but recently made a knight of the great Brazilian order, on account of an arbitration between Brazil and Venezuela, respecting a large tract of land. ‘Formerly they intended, in Rio de Janeiro, to arrest me as a dangerous spy, and to send me back to Europe, the order drawn up for the purpose is still shown there as a curiosity; now they make me an arbitrator! I, of course, decided for Brazil, because I wanted the large order; the Republic of Venezuela has none to confer!’ These words, spoken in the gayest irony, I interrupted with the exclamation, ‘How times change!’ ‘Yes; the order of arrest, and then the insignia of the great order!’ ‘Oh, no,’ I replied, ‘I did not think of this personal affair, but of the historical; formerly the pope was the general arbitrator!’ Humboldt saw the last volumes of the life of Stein on my table, and expressed his displeasure on the external arrangement, the meagreness of the text, and the unsifted character of this book; he thought that the gold snuff-box, with brilliants, which the King had already sent to Pertz for these volumes, was entirely too much. Injustice, crying and mean, perpetrated by Stein against old Prince Wittgenstein. Pertz, too, he said, was unjust to Wittgenstein. Stein had not at all been a firm character, no one had changed views and judgments more easily. (Beyme said the same thing, and adduced instances of it.) His early liberal ideas on national economy, civil institutions, commerce, and trades, were a product of the times, which he afterwards entirely renounced and disputed when the current of opinion set in that direction. He surrendered his former sentiments so shamefully that his former friend, Kunth, who remained faithful to them, but also wished to avoid committing Stein, burned more than three hundred of Stein’s letters, because, as he thought, they would bring nothing but disgrace on the revered man, and would show him in the greatest contradiction with himself. Of the Prince of Prussia, Humboldt said that he had told every one in St. Petersburg, as well as here, that the war would have been avoided if Prussia had from the first acted resolutely. The Emperor Nicholas would have yielded. The imperial family he represented as harmonious, including the Grand Duke Constantine, who did not seem so dangerous to him as usually described. The Emperor’s mother used to say they were all mere children, and that she must remain with them in order to keep them together. The war was severely felt, business at a standstill, the country drained of men, the armies not very numerous; Poland, the Baltic countries, and Finland but weakly garrisoned; the greater part of their forces was in the Crimea; the losses immense and irreparable. Gortschakoff reports that the daily combats cost him 180–200 men—a frightful number for a month; that Nesselrode contemplates a renewal of negotiations, but before that heavy blows would first be dealt on one side or on the other. Sebastopol itself was by no means considered out of danger. The Prince has gone from here to Erdmannsdorf to the King; thence he hastens on to Baden. The King has Lieutenant-General von Gerlach, with him in Erdmannsdorf, among others, also Radowitz, in case he is not ‘already tired of him, as happens so easily.’ Humboldt talks of Radowitz decidedly as of a Jesuit, calls him Ignatius, mocks him, and jests on him a long time. ‘The great destinies of Italy’ leave the King very indifferent; but a colored pane of glass, a quaint device on an old monument, a family name, enlist his greatest interest, occupy, and amuse him; and for such trifles Radowitz was the right man! The same is the case with Bunsen, with whom the King corresponds on theological and patristic curiosities. He has asked him to write articles in the papers against the Bishop of Mainz; but Bunsen makes the condition to be allowed to refer in his articles to the command of the King, since otherwise they would possess neither influence nor effect. Humboldt thinks Bunsen would not resist a call hither, even if it was not official, but only a personal one by the King. The Duke of Coburg-Gotha desires an enlargement of his territory and a higher title—that of a ‘King of Ostphalia’ is already proposed. The King jestingly calls him by that title already. He counts upon England and France, and willingly flatters and accommodates Bonaparte, who would meet with little difficulty in being the recognised Protector of a new Rhenish Confederation. So much for Germany and Teutonism. It is betrayed most assiduously by its sworn defenders. Finally, Humboldt added: ‘When a man has the misfortune to be compelled to live among such wretches as this Gerlach, Raumer, and the rest who have crept into this Court.’... He went from me to the Koethener Strasse to look at a picture, and left me much excited. I could not keep in mind and write down one-tenth of all he said.”
Varnhagen adds, on the 12th of August, Humboldt said of the situation of Prussia, it reminded him of a trial he once heard in Paris; the lawyer had to ask damages for a box on the ear, and had exclaimed triumphantly at the close: “Au fond nous n’avons pas reçu le soufflet, nous n’avons eu que le geste!”
169.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.
Berlin, January 13th, 1856.
Smile, dear friend (you are fully justified!) at the strange lines of Princess Lieven, and at my troublesome inquiry. Madame de Quitzow, who has not written to me for twenty-five years, wants to know, whether the Emperor Paul, in the epoch of his political insanity, had made the proposition through Kotzebue, that the ministers for foreign affairs should measure swords personally instead of the armies. I was at that time (1799 and 1800) in the deltas of South America, and was entirely ignorant of the anecdote which the Russian Princess now, as it appears to me, so occidental in her predilections, desires to corroborate. The obscure researches I have made would seem to lead to the result that the duel was to be waged not by the ministers but by the monarchs themselves. I pray you, noble friend, to write me a few lines on what your excellent memory supplies, and still more I pray you to tell me consoling words about your health at the return of the injurious cold weather. Bunsen writes me that he expects a fourth edition of his letters. Does the great reading demand for this excellent or rather useful book indicate that the German public is less chloroformed against action than we had supposed? Dubito. The German landlord of a (dicunt) very dirty hotel, which glories in my name in California for many years—beside a more cleanly one of “Jenny Lind,”—sends me German California papers from time to time. In a discourse on the moral and intellectual state of the English, the French, and the Germans, the editor recently said: “We Germans are a nation of thinkers, deeply occupied with the world of ideas, we also have the great advantage before the members of other nations who live here, that we care little or not at all about civil or political affairs.” Thus we boast on the shores of the Pacific, buy the “Zeichen der Zeit,” but hardly 5 per cent of us go to the primary elections. It is inconvenient, we think. With old love and reverence,
Yours,