224.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.
Berlin, September 9th, at night, 1858.
Hearty thanks, my dear friend, for your affectionate missive. The thanks of the excellent ... is far from indifferent to me. No one here has had the politeness to inform me that my proposal has been accepted. As you and your accomplished niece, Miss Ludmilla, are fond of curiosities, and as my extreme old age has deadened all compunction at the exhibition of my own praises, I send you a letter from Queen Victoria, delivered by the Princess of Prussia, and requesting an autograph of some passages from the Views of Nature and Kosmos (poetical descriptions of nature), as well as a letter from the American Secretary of War, who has been accommodating to me for the traveller Moellhausen, the son-in-law of Seiffert, draughtsman of the two expeditions to the South Sea, and who, mirabile dictu, has dismissed all political animosity on account of my friendship for Fremont. The latter of the communications gives me the greater pleasure of the two, though it is unpardonably extravagant in the use of great names.
The regency, indispensable as it is to restore the wasted power of the country, is still, alas! in the clouds. I hope the Prince of Prussia will abide by his present promise, not to act further without being expressly invested with the title of Regent. But who is to make the first move, when the King is kept in such seclusion, that even I have not seen him since the return? If the Chambers initiate the matter, the Government stands convicted of pusillanimity. Alea jacta, and the sum of intelligence at stake seems to have been doled out by nature with laudable economy.
What knowledge have you, dear friend, of M. Iwan Golowin, whose impudence is so unprecedented as to admit of his photographing me before the public in the most dreadful négligé de costume, même, as I wrote him in great indignation, en me dotant de deux fautes de français, venaient instead of viennent, pourrait instead of pouvait. What will men not do to make tools of their neighbors?
I beg you to return me the three curiosities consisting of the copy of Victoria, the letter of the Secretary of War, and Rovira by Golowin, by Sunday morning, when I must go to Tegel with Baron Stockmar, the father.
My walk (ma démarche) increases lamentably in senile want of direction. Beware of my patience with life. Reputation keeps pace with imbecility, and the part of the “dear youth in age,” of the “worthy Nestor of all living men of Science,” Vecchio della montagna, becomes extremely irksome, though there be in the neighborhood of the Netze, a maiden whom the Nestor is to establish for life at Tegel, because the place is so near to Berlin, that on the slightest hint she can hasten to the city to close my eyes.
With the most faithful friendly esteem,
Yours,
A. v. Humboldt.