The Invention of Nature

Just as the shops proclaimed Britain’s commercial might, so too did the magnificent headquarters of the East India Company in Leadenhall Street in the City. At the entrance six enormous fluted columns held an imposing portico that depicted Britannia holding out her hand to a kneeling India who offered her treasures. Inside, the opulent rooms exuded both wealth and power. The marble relief above the mantelpiece in the Directors’ Court Room could not have been clearer – it was called ‘Britannia receiving the Riches of the East’. It portrayed the offerings of the East – pearls, tea, porcelain and cotton – as well as the female figure of Britannia and, as a symbol for London, Father Thames. There were also large canvases of the company’s settlements in India such as Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. It was here, in East India House, that the directors discussed military action, ships, cargo, employees, revenues and, of course, travel permits to their territory.

Besides seeking permission to explore India, Alexander had a packed schedule in London. He went with Arago to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, he stopped at Joseph Banks’s house in Soho Square, and assisted the famous German-born astronomer William Herschel for two days at his house in Slough, just outside London. By now eighty years old, Herschel was a legend – he had discovered Uranus in 1781 and had brought the universe to the earth with his huge telescopes. Like everybody else, Humboldt wanted to see the giant forty-foot telescope that Herschel had constructed, one of the ‘Wonders of the World’, as it had been described.

What interested Humboldt most was Herschel’s idea of an evolving universe – one that was not solely based on mathematics but a living thing that changed, grew and fluctuated. Herschel had used an analogy of a garden when he wrote of ‘the germination, blooming, foliage, fecundity, fading, withering and corruption’ of stars and planets to explain their formation. Humboldt would use exactly the same image years later when he wrote of the ‘great garden of the universe’ in which stars appeared in various stages, just like ‘a tree in all stages of growth’.

Arago and Humboldt also attended meetings at the Royal Society. Since its foundation in the 1660s ‘for the improvement of naturall knowledge by Experiment’, the Royal Society had become the centre of scientific enquiry in Britain. Every Thursday the fellows met to discuss the latest developments in the sciences. They conducted experiments, ‘electrified’ people, learned about new telescopes, comets, botany and fossils. They debated, exchanged results and read letters that had been received from scientifically minded friends and foreigners alike.

There was no better place for scientific networking. ‘All scholars are brothers,’ Humboldt said after one meeting. The fellows had honoured Humboldt by electing him as a foreign member two years previously, and he was unable to disguise his pride when his old friend and the president of the Royal Society, Joseph Banks, praised his latest botanical publication in front of the illustrious assembly as ‘one of the most beautiful and magnificent’ ever produced. Banks also invited Humboldt to the even more exclusive Royal Society Dining Club where he reconnected with the chemist Humphry Davy, among others. Used as he was to Parisian cuisine, Humboldt was not so enthusiastic about the food and complained that ‘I have dined at the Royal Society where one gets poisoned.’ No matter how unpalatable the food was, the number of scientists joining the dinners rose significantly when Humboldt was in town.

The meeting room at the Royal Society (Illustration Credit 13.2)

As Humboldt went from one meeting to another, Arago tagged along but he gave up on the late evening events. At night, when Arago slept, the indefatigable Humboldt embarked on another round of visits. At forty-eight, he had not lost any of his youthful enthusiasm. The only thing he disliked about London was the rigid formality of fashion. It was ‘detestable’, he grumbled to a friend, that ‘at nine o’clock you must wear your necktie this style, at ten o’clock in that, and at eleven o’clock in another fashion.’ But despite the rigours of fashion, it all seemed worth it because everybody wanted to meet him. Wherever Humboldt went, he was welcomed with the greatest respect. All ‘powerful men’, he said, thought favourably about his projects and his India plans. But all this success did not have the desired effect on the directors of the East India Company.