Read Online The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf - Free Book Online
Authors: Andrea Wulf
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was so excited that he couldn’t decide where to go and mentioned so many possible destinations that no one knew what his plans were: he spoke of Lapland and Greece, then Hungary or Siberia, and maybe the West Indies or the Philippines.
The precise destination didn’t yet matter because first he wanted to prepare, and now did so with pedantic drive. He had to test (and buy) all the instruments he needed, as well as travel through Europe to learn everything he could about geology, botany, zoology and astronomy. His early publications and growing network of contacts opened the doors – and he had even had a new plant species named after him: Humboldtia laurifolia, a ‘splendid’ tree from India, he wrote to a friend, ‘isn’t that fabulous!!’
Over the next months he interviewed geologists in Freiberg and learned how to use his sextant in Dresden. He climbed the Alps to investigate mountains – so that he might later compare them, as he told Goethe – and, in Jena, he conducted more electrical experiments. In Vienna he examined tropical plants in the hothouses of the imperial garden, where he also tried to convince the young director, Joseph van der Schot, to accompany him on his expedition, declaring that their future together would be ‘sweet’. He spent a cold winter in Salzburg, Mozart’s birthplace, where he measured the height of the nearby Austrian Alps and tested his meteorological instruments, braving icy rains as he held his instruments in the air during storms to detect the electricity of the atmosphere. He read and reread all the travellers’ accounts he could get hold of, and pored over botanical books.
As he rushed from one learned centre in Europe to another, Humboldt’s letters exuded a breathless energy. ‘This is just the way I am, I do what I do, impetuously and briskly,’ he said. There was no one place where he could learn everything, and no one person could teach him everything.
Humboldtia laurifolia (Illustration Credit 3.1)
After about a year of frantic preparations, it dawned upon Humboldt that although his trunks were stuffed with equipment and his head was filled with the latest scientific knowledge, the political situation in Europe was making his dreams impossible. Much of Europe was embroiled in the French Revolutionary Wars. The execution of the French king, Louis XVI, in January 1793, had united the European nations against the French revolutionaries. In the years following the revolution, France had declared war on one country after another, in a roll-call that included among others Austria, Prussia, Spain, Portugal and Britain. Gains and losses were made on both sides, treaties signed and then overthrown, but by 1798 Napoleon had gained Belgium, the Rhineland from Prussia, the Austrian Netherlands and large parts of Italy for France. Wherever Humboldt turned, his movements were hampered by war and armies. Even Italy – with the tantalizing geological prospects of the volcanoes Mount Etna and Vesuvius – had, thanks to Napoleon, been closed off.
Humboldt needed to find a nation that would let him join a voyage, or which would at least grant him passage to their colonial possessions. He begged the British and the French for help, and then the Danes. He considered a voyage to the West Indies, but found his hopes dashed by the ongoing sea battles. Then he accepted an invitation to accompany the British Earl of Bristol to Egypt, even though the old aristocrat was known as being rather eccentric. But again these plans came to nothing when Bristol was arrested by the French, suspected of espionage.
At the end of April 1798, one and a half years after his mother’s death, Humboldt decided to visit Paris where Wilhelm and Caroline now lived. He hadn’t seen his brother for more than a year and turning his attention to the victorious French also seemed the most practical solution to his travel dilemma. In Paris he spent time with his brother and sister-in-law, but also wrote
The precise destination didn’t yet matter because first he wanted to prepare, and now did so with pedantic drive. He had to test (and buy) all the instruments he needed, as well as travel through Europe to learn everything he could about geology, botany, zoology and astronomy. His early publications and growing network of contacts opened the doors – and he had even had a new plant species named after him: Humboldtia laurifolia, a ‘splendid’ tree from India, he wrote to a friend, ‘isn’t that fabulous!!’
Over the next months he interviewed geologists in Freiberg and learned how to use his sextant in Dresden. He climbed the Alps to investigate mountains – so that he might later compare them, as he told Goethe – and, in Jena, he conducted more electrical experiments. In Vienna he examined tropical plants in the hothouses of the imperial garden, where he also tried to convince the young director, Joseph van der Schot, to accompany him on his expedition, declaring that their future together would be ‘sweet’. He spent a cold winter in Salzburg, Mozart’s birthplace, where he measured the height of the nearby Austrian Alps and tested his meteorological instruments, braving icy rains as he held his instruments in the air during storms to detect the electricity of the atmosphere. He read and reread all the travellers’ accounts he could get hold of, and pored over botanical books.
As he rushed from one learned centre in Europe to another, Humboldt’s letters exuded a breathless energy. ‘This is just the way I am, I do what I do, impetuously and briskly,’ he said. There was no one place where he could learn everything, and no one person could teach him everything.
Humboldtia laurifolia (Illustration Credit 3.1)
After about a year of frantic preparations, it dawned upon Humboldt that although his trunks were stuffed with equipment and his head was filled with the latest scientific knowledge, the political situation in Europe was making his dreams impossible. Much of Europe was embroiled in the French Revolutionary Wars. The execution of the French king, Louis XVI, in January 1793, had united the European nations against the French revolutionaries. In the years following the revolution, France had declared war on one country after another, in a roll-call that included among others Austria, Prussia, Spain, Portugal and Britain. Gains and losses were made on both sides, treaties signed and then overthrown, but by 1798 Napoleon had gained Belgium, the Rhineland from Prussia, the Austrian Netherlands and large parts of Italy for France. Wherever Humboldt turned, his movements were hampered by war and armies. Even Italy – with the tantalizing geological prospects of the volcanoes Mount Etna and Vesuvius – had, thanks to Napoleon, been closed off.
Humboldt needed to find a nation that would let him join a voyage, or which would at least grant him passage to their colonial possessions. He begged the British and the French for help, and then the Danes. He considered a voyage to the West Indies, but found his hopes dashed by the ongoing sea battles. Then he accepted an invitation to accompany the British Earl of Bristol to Egypt, even though the old aristocrat was known as being rather eccentric. But again these plans came to nothing when Bristol was arrested by the French, suspected of espionage.
At the end of April 1798, one and a half years after his mother’s death, Humboldt decided to visit Paris where Wilhelm and Caroline now lived. He hadn’t seen his brother for more than a year and turning his attention to the victorious French also seemed the most practical solution to his travel dilemma. In Paris he spent time with his brother and sister-in-law, but also wrote
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