There gloomy Potsdam has kept me too long from your side.
NOTE BY VARNHAGEN.—This letter accompanied “The German Emigration, and
its Importance in the History of Civilization. By Julius Froebel.
Leipsic: 1858.” A copy sent by Froebel to Humboldt.
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.
My wicked friend Lasalle—Heraclitus the Obscure—has been expelled by the
Prince of Prussia and Illaire,[104] in spite of all my intercession, and
in spite of the promises made to me. They led me to hope that after a
few weeks (the election being over) the Obscure would return to
Pythagoras, the more obscure. What a dispensation of justice!
NOTE BY VARNHAGEN.—Iwan Golowin had asked Humboldt’s permission to
dedicate to him a Russian drama entitled Rovira, and when Humboldt
assented in a hasty French note, he inserted a facsimile of the note
into the book.
225.
HUMBOLDT TO LUDMILLA ASSING.
BERLIN, _Oct. 12th, 1858_.
What a day of agitation, of grief, of misfortune was yesterday. I was
summoned by the Queen to Potsdam, to take leave of the King. He wept
with deep emotion. Returning home at six in the evening, I opened your
letter, my friend! He has departed from the earth before me, the man of
ninety years, the old man of the hills! It is not enough to say that
Germany has lost a great author, him who could most nobly mould our
tongue to the expression of the finest sentiments—for what is the value
of form in the presence of such acuteness, such pregnant force of mind,
such elevation of thought, such knowledge of the world. What he was to
me, to me who am now entirely isolated, is incomprehensible to any mind
less refined, less beautiful than yours; I shall soon come to tell you,
Bowed with grief, yours,
A. V. HUMBOLDT.
ALPHABETICAL INDEX
OF PERSONS ALLUDED TO.
_The figures opposite the names refer to the numbers of the letters in
which they are mentioned._