The Invention of Nature

AH refused stick: Eduard Buschmann to Johann Georg von Cotta, 29 December 1857, AH Cotta Letters 2009, p.601.

99

‘Special Results of Observation’: AH Kosmos 1858, vol.4; AH wrote the fourth volume in two parts – the first 244 pages had been printed in 1854 but the official publication of the complete volume was only in 1857, Fiedler and Leitner 2000, p.391.

100 readership Cosmos: By 1850 the authorized translation of the first and second volumes of Cosmos were in the seventh and eighth editions, while the subsequent volumes never went beyond the first edition, Fiedler and Leitner 2000, pp.409–10.

101 AH and volume 5: AH Kosmos 1862, vol.5; Werner 2004, p.182ff.

102 Schlagintweit brothers to AH: Hermann and Robert Schlagintweit, Berlin, June 1857, Beck 1959, pp.267–8.

103 AH’s essay on Himalaya: This was his 1820 essay ‘Sur la inférieure des neiges perpétuelles dans les montagnes de l’Himalaya et les regions équatoriales’.

104 ‘unmercifully tormented’: AH to Julius Fröbel, 11 January 1858, AH Letters USA 2004, p.435.

105 almost 5,000 letters: Varnhagen, 18 February 1858, AH Varnhagen Letters 1860, p.307.

106 ‘formal and business-like’: AH to Friedrich Althaus, 30 July 1856, AH Althaus Memoirs 1861, p.137; AH to Edward Young, 3 June 1855, AH Letters USA 2004, p.347.

107 Washington’s birthday: Joseph Albert Wright to State Department, 7 May 1859, Hamel et al. 2003, p.249; Bayard Taylor, 1859, Taylor 1860, p.473.

108 ‘Labouring under extreme’: Humboldt’s announcement, 15 March 1859, Irving 1864, vol.4, p.256.

109 AH dispatched Cosmos: AH to Johann Georg von Cotta, 19 April 1859, AH Cotta Letters 2009, p.41; Fiedler and Leitner 2000, p.391.

110 AH health bulletin: Bayard Taylor, May 1859, Taylor 1860, pp.477–8.

111 ‘How glorious these’: AH to Hedemann and Gabriele von Bülow, 6 May 1859; Anna von Sydow, May 1859, Beck 1959, pp.424, 426; Bayard Taylor, May 1859, Taylor 1860, p.479.

112 news of AH’s death: For Europe and US see later endnotes; for the rest of the world, for example: Estrella de Panama, 15 June 1859; El Comercio, Lima, 28 June 1859; Graham Town Journal, South Africa, 23 July 1859.

113 ‘The great, good and’: Joseph Albert Wright to US State Department, 7 May 1859, Hamel et al. 2003, p.248.

114 ‘Berlin is plunged’: Morning Post, 9 May 1859.

115 Darwin manuscript Origin

: Darwin to John Murray, 6 May 1859, Darwin Correspondence, vol.7, p.295.

116 ‘Alexander von Humboldt is dead’: The Times, 9 May 1859; see also Morning Post, 9 May 1859; Daily News, 9 May 1859; Standard, 9 May 1859.

117 Church, AH and Heart of Andes: Kelly 1989, p.48ff.; Avery 1993, pp.12ff., 17, 26, 33–6; Sachs 2006, p.99ff.; Baron 2005, p.11ff.

118 Church following AH: Baron 2005, p.11ff.; Avery 1993, pp.17, 26.

119 ‘artistic Humboldt of’: New York Times, 17 March 1863; this related to Church’s painting Cotopaxi.

120 ‘scenery which delighted’: Frederic Edwin Church to Bayard Taylor, 9 May 1859, Gould 1989, p.95.

121 AH funeral: Bierman and Schwarz 1999a, p.196; Bierman and Schwarz 1999b, p.471; Bayard Taylor, May 1859, Taylor 1860, p.479.

122 news reached US: North American and United States Gazette

, Daily Cleveland Herald, Boston Daily Advertiser, Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, New York Times, all on 19 May 1859.

123 ‘lost a friend’: Church to Bayard Taylor, 13 June 1859, in Avery 1993, p.39.

124 ‘from the labors’: Louis Agassiz, Boston Daily Advertiser, 26 May 1859.

125 ‘most remarkable’: Daily Cleveland Herald, 19 May 1859; see also Boston Daily Advertiser, 19 May 1859; Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, 19 May 1859; North American and United States Gazette, 19 May 1859.

126 ‘age of Humboldt’: Boston Daily Advertiser

, 19 May 1859.

127 ‘greatest scientific traveller’: Darwin to Joseph Hooker, 6 August 1881, Darwin 1911, vol.2, p.403.

128 ‘April 3rd 1882 finished’: Darwin’s copy of AH Personal Narrative 1814–29, vol.3, endpapers, CUL.

129 scattered the ‘seeds’: Du Bois, 3 August 1883, AH du Bois-Reymond Letters 1997, p.201.

130 AH’s ideas in art and literature: For Walt Whitman and AH, see Walls 2009, pp.279–83 and Clark and Lubrich 2012, p.20; for Verne and AH, see Schifko 2010; for others see Clark and Lubrich 2012, pp.4–5, 246, 264–5, 282–3.

131 ‘the greatest man since’: Friedrich Wilhelm IV quoted in Bayard Taylor 1860, p.xi.

Chapter 21: Man and Nature

1

Marsh arrived in Vermont: Marsh to Caroline Estcourt, 3 June 1859, Marsh 1888, vol.1, p.410.

2

Humboldt Commemorations, 2 June 1859:

Journal of the American Geographical and Statistical Society