The Invention of Nature

As his contacts responded, waves of knowledge and data rolled towards Berlin. Each month new material arrived that had to be read, understood, sorted and integrated. The work expanded as Humboldt went along. With the ever increasing flood of knowledge, he explained to his publisher, ‘the material grows under my hands’. Cosmos was ‘a kind of impossible enterprise’, Humboldt admitted.

The only way to handle all this data was to be perfectly organized about the research. Humboldt collected his material in boxes which were divided by envelopes into different subjects. Whenever he received a letter, he cut out the important information and placed it in the relevant envelope together with any other scraps of material that might be useful – newspaper cuttings, pages from books, pieces of paper on which he scribbled a few numbers, a quotation or a little drawing. In one such box, for example, which was filled with material related to geology, Humboldt kept tables of mountain heights, maps, lecture notes, remarks from his old acquaintance Charles Lyell, a map of Russia by another British geologist, as well as engravings of fossils and information from classicists on geology from ancient Greece. The advantage of this system was that he could collect materials for years, and when it came to writing, all he needed was to grab the relevant box or the envelope. As untidy as he was in his study or chaotic about his finances, when it came to his research Humboldt was unremittingly exact.

Sometimes he scribbled ‘very important’ on a particular note or ‘important, to follow up in Cosmos’. At other times he glued pieces of paper with his own thoughts on to a letter, or tore out a page from a relevant book. One box might contain newspaper articles, a dried piece of moss and a list of plants from the Himalaya. Other boxes included an envelope evocatively entitled ‘Luftmeer’ – air ocean, which was Humboldt’s beautiful term for the atmosphere – as well as materials on antiquity, long tables of temperatures, and a page with citations about crocodiles and elephants found in Hebrew poetry. There were boxes on slavery, meteorology, astronomy and botany among many others. No one but Humboldt, a fellow scientist claimed, could so dexterously tie together so many ‘loose ends’ of scientific research into one great knot.

Usually Humboldt was gracious about the assistance he received, but once in a while he let his famously malicious tongue rule. Johann Franz Encke, the director of the observatory in Berlin, for example, was treated rather unfairly. Encke worked particularly hard, spending many weeks collecting astronomical data for Cosmos. In return, though, Humboldt told a colleague that Encke ‘had become frozen like a glacier in his mother’s womb’. Nor did Humboldt spare his brother the occasional barb. When Wilhelm tried to help his brother’s precarious financial situation by suggesting him as the director of a new museum in Berlin, Alexander was outraged. The position was below his standing and reputation, Alexander told his brother, and he had certainly not left Paris to become the director of a mere ‘picture gallery’.

Humboldt had become used to admiration and flattery. The many young men who gathered around him formed something like his own ‘royal court’, one of the Berlin University professors noted. When Humboldt entered a room it was as if everything was recalibrated and the centre changed – ‘all turned to him’. In silent reverence, these young men listened to Humboldt’s every syllable. He was the greatest attraction Berlin had to offer and he took it for granted that he was the focus of attention. No one was ever able to interject a single word when Humboldt spoke, one German writer complained. His penchant for talking incessantly had become so legendary that the French writer Honoré de Balzac immortalized Humboldt in a comical sketch that featured a brain stored in a jar from which people extracted ideas, and a ‘certain Prussian savant known for the unfailing fluidity of his speech’.

One young pianist who had considered an invitation to play for Humboldt a great honour quickly discovered that the old man could be very rude (and that he had no interest in music whatsoever). As the pianist began to play, there was a moment of silence but then Humboldt continued to talk so loudly that no one could listen to the music. He was lecturing the audience as he always did and as the pianist played his crescendos

and fortes, Humboldt raised his voice in tandem, always outdoing the music. ‘It was a duet,’ the pianist said, ‘which I did not sustain long.’