Among the exceptional incidents of my course, which lasted four years (for the university was closed for a whole academic -year during the cholera ) , were the cholera itself, the arrival of Humboldt and the visit of Uvarov.
Humboldt, on his return from the Urals, was greeted in Moscow at a solemn session of the Society of Natural Scientists at the university, the members of which were various senators and governors-people, on the whole, who took no interest in the sciences, natural or unnatural. The fame of Humboldt, a privy councillor of His Prussian Majesty, on whom the Tsar had graciously bestowed the Anna, and to whom he had also commanded that the insignia and diploma should be presented free of charge, had reached even them. They were determined to keep up their dignity before a man who had been on Chimborazo and had lived at Sans-Souci .
To this day ·we look upon Europeans and upon Europe in the same way as provincials look upon those who live in the capital, with deference and a feeling of our own inferiority, knuckling under and imitating them, taking everything in which we are different for a defect, blushing for our peculiarities and concealing them. The fact is that we \'\"ere intimidated, and had not recovered from the jeers of Peter I, from Biron's insults, from the arrogance of Germans in the services and of French instructors.
They tal k in Western Europe of our duplicity and vvily cunning; they mistake the desire to show off and swagger a bit for the desire to deceive. Among us the same man is ready to be naively liberal \vith a Liberal or to pretend to agrPe with a Legitimist, and this with no ulterior motive, simply from politeness and a desire to please; the bump de l' approbativite is strongly developed on our skulls.
'Prince Dmitry Golitsyn,' observed Lord Durham, 'is a true Whig, a Whig in soul ! '
Prince D . V . Golitsyn was a respectable Russian gentleman, but why he was a Whig and in what way he was a Whig I do not understand. You may be certain that in his old age the prince wanted to please Durham ar:d so played the Whig.
The reception of Humboldt in Moscow and in the university
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was no jesting matter. The Governor-General, various military and civic chiefs, and the members of the Senate, all turned up with ribbons across their shoulders, in full uniform, and the professors wore swords like warriors and carried three-cornered hats under their arms. Humboldt, suspecting nothing, came in a dark-blue dress-coat with gold buttons, and, of course, was overwhelmed with confusion. From the vestibule to the great hall of the Society of Natural Scientists ambushes were prepared for him m � all sides: here stood the rector, there a dean, here a budding professor, there a veteran whose career was over and who for that reason spoke very slowly; everyone welcomed him in Latin, in German, in French, and all this took place in those awful stone tubes, called corridors, in which one cannot stop for a minute without being laid up with a cold for a month. Humboldt, hat in hand, listened to everything and replied to everything-! feel certain that all the savages among ,.,.hom he had been. r!'d-skinm•d and copper-coloured, caused him less trouble than his Moscow reception.
As soon as he reached the hall and sat down, he had to get up again. The Director, Pisarev, thought it necessary, in brief but vigorous language, to issue an order of the day in Russian concerning the services of his Excellency, the celebrated traveller; after which Sergey Glinka,20 'the officer,' with an 1812 voice, deep and hoarse, recited his poem which began:
Humboldt-Promethce de nos jours!
While Humboldt wanted to talk about his observation on the magnetic needle and to compare his meteorological records on the Urals with those of Moscow, the rector came up to show him instead something plaited of the imperial hair of Peter I . . .
and Ehrenberg and Rose had difficulty in finding a chance to tell him something about their discoveries.21
20 S. N. Glinka, author of patriotic Yerses of no merit. Referred to as
'the officer' by Pushkin in a poem. ( Tr.)
21 How diversely Humboldt's travels were understood in Russia may be gathered from the account of a Ural Cossack who sen·ed in the office of the Governor of Perm; he likPd to describe how he had escorted the mad Prussian prince, Gumplot. \Yhat did he do? '\Veil, the silliest things, collecting grasses, looking at the sand; in the saltings he says to me, through the interpreter, "Get into the water and fptch what's at the bottom ;" well, I got just what is usually at the hottom, and he asks, "Is the water very cold at the hottom?" No, my lad, I thought, you won't catch me. So I d rew myself up at attention, and answered, "\Vhen it's our duty, your Highness, it's of no consequence: we are glad to do our
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Things are not much better among us in the non-official world: ten years later Liszt was received in Moscow society in much the same way. Enough silly things were done in his honour in Germany, but here his reception was of quite a different quality. In Germany it was all old-maidish exaltation, sentimentality, all Blumcnstreuen, while with us it was all servility, homage paid to power, rigid standing at attention; with us it was all 'I have the honour to present myself to your Excellency.'
And here, unfortunately, there was also Liszt's fame as a celebrated Lovelace to add to it all. The ladies flocked round him, as peasant-boys on country roads flock round a traveller while his horses are being harnessed, inquisitively examining himself, his carriage, his cap . . . . No one listened to anybody but Liszt, no one spoke to anybody else, nor ans"vered anybody else. I remember that at one evening party Khomyakov, blushing for the honourable company, said to me,
'Please let us argue about something, that Liszt may see that there are people in the room not exclusively occupied with him.'
For the consolation of our ladies I can only say one thing, that in just the same wa::' Englishwomen dashed about, crowded round, pestered and obstructed other celebrities such as Kossuth and afterwards Garibaldi and others. But alas for those who want to learn good manners from Englishwomen and their husbands!
Our second 'famous' traveller was also in a certain sense 'the Prometheus of our day,' only he stole the light not from Jupiter but from men. This Prometheus, sung not by Glinka but by Pushkin himself in his 'Epistle to Lucullus,' was the Assistant Minister of Public Instruction, S. S. (not yet Count) Uvarov. He amazed us by the multitude of language5 and the heterogeneous hotch-potch which he knew; a veritable shopman behind the counter of enlightenment, he preserved in his memory samples of all the sciences, the concluding summaries, or, better, the rudiments. In the reign of Alexander, he wrote Liberal brochures in French; later on he corresponded on Greek subjects with Goethe in German. When he became Minister he discoursed on Slavonic poetry of the fourth century, upon which Kachenovsky observed to him that in those days our forefathers had enough to do to fight the bears, let alone singing ballads about the gods of Samothrace and the mercy of tyrants. He used to carry in his pocket, by way of a testimonial, a letter from best." ' ('\Ve are glad, etc.,' was the formula which soldiers were expected to shout when addressed on parade by a senior officer.) (R.)