Arabia Felix

by Thorkild Hansen

  The bill for medicines bought by von Haven from the chemist Florent. In the last paragraph of the bill are the two items “arsenic jaune” and “arsenic blanc”

  This was the amount that von Gähler, who must have been a robust specimen, found insufficient. By trying to play the matter down like this, he made it impossible for Bernstorff to estimate the real gravity of the next point in his report—something which greatly influenced the Danish Minister’s decision, and thus had the most far-reaching consequences for the remainder of the expedition. The ambassador goes on to say that it is absolutely necessary that the two parties to the conflict be separated. Thus von Gähler disputes the accuracy of Forsskål’s information, yet simultaneously supports him in his demands—presumably an example of the somewhat special form of logic peculiar to higher diplomacy. From von Gähler’s further treatment of Forsskål we shall soon see how he had even lost his ability to speak straight.

  In order to bolster his suggestion that the expedition should be split—thereby avoiding what for anybody in authority is always the worst of evils, namely a scandal—von Gähler then gave character sketches of the various members of the expedition, which it is interesting to compare with what we already know about the men in question. He wrote:

  “Regarding the personal qualities possessed by the individual members of this party, there is no one who is not without his own special merits. Herr von Haven clearly has many. In regard to the literary aspects of scholarship, which are his special concern, I acknowledge that one could not have made a better choice; I only wish I could say the same of his character and disposition. The attached letter describes him in these respects only too clearly. Yet I have not had occasion myself to note the irascible and violent sides of his nature; during his stay here he has at least succeeded in dissembling to that extent. Herr Forsskål is no less intelligent, capable or learned. In him the spark of imagination is united with unique powers of observation; but as he has been feigning just as much as the other man, I am inclined to believe that he has still retained a good deal of the vulgar character of his home country. Both of these men find it difficult to free themselves from the ancient prejudices prevailing among the two nations in that part of Scandinavia, and it is apparent that they will never reach agreement to the degree their common task entails.”

  By reducing von Haven’s wounded vanity to a little anti-Swedish feeling, von Gähler achieved the same result as when he played down the importance of the purchase of arsenic: namely, to minimise in Bernstorff’s eyes the conflict between the two men, a conflict which had already in one desperate moment been fierce enough to bring thoughts of murder to the mind of one of them. The other members of the party also had their characters reported on by von Gähler. He continues:

  “Herr Niebuhr is deficient neither in efficiency nor in industry. As far as his character is concerned, he is clearly a man of honour, and the finances could not have been entrusted to better hands than his. I venture to say that it would have been a mistake to have given them to von Haven, who is as spendthrift as the other is economical. I judge here in the light of my own experience. Niebuhr might ideally have been possessed of a little more determination and firmness than he has when it comes to the point. The artist is one of the nicest people you could imagine, made for living in harmony with any nationality, and a man whom nobody would have any reason to complain of. I think he has already made himself sufficiently well known by his works. As for the doctor, he is also a nice fellow and a man much more accomplished in his profession than the Egyptians and the Arabs will suppose when they see how young he is. Even though he is completely dependent on Herr von Haven, the others treat him fairly and correctly. Perhaps it was not his conscience alone that caused him to confide to the others the matter which has alarmed the whole party; he may well have had other reasons for being dissatisfied with the Professor, who may conceivably have treated him with rather too much arrogance.”

  Finally von Gähler returned to his suggestion for separating von Haven from the rest, and remarked that the Dane might perhaps pursue his researches partly in Cairo and partly in Damascus, while the others could continue the expedition as planned to Arabia Felix. In this way, he said, it might be possible to hide the scandal from the public and prevent people in the academic world from beginning to talk. He therefore suggested that Bernstorff should pretend nothing had happened, both to the world at large and to the Danish expedition itself, and simply ascribe his orders for separation to a decision taken in Copenhagen as a result of mature consideration of quite different circumstances.

  With this von Gähler ended his report. He had skilfully succeeded in informing His Excellency the Minister of something disagreeable in a fashion which produced hardly any disagreeable effect. On the one hand he minimised the conflict between the two men, partly by passing rapidly over the matter of the arsenic, partly by ascribing the whole thing to unimportant national prejudices. On the other hand he argued strongly for separating the same two men immediately if the expedition was to be able to continue. In other words, regardless of what Bernstorff now decided, von Gähler could humbly declare himself in agreement with His Excellency.

  This was precisely what happened. Bernstorff sadly discussed the affair with Moltke in Copenhagen, and on 9th February, 1762, he sent a reply to von Gähler in which he expressed his distress at seeing an undertaking beginning to fail after costing so much trouble and money. For the rest, Bernstorff was inclined to think von Gähler was right: if there was no other possible way of calming such passionate natures, one must settle for a separation. The Marshal thought the same. And Bernstorff enclosed in a sealed envelope the royal command which von Gähler could forward if he thought it necessary.

  If he thought it necessary. This last addition was important. Bernstorff, too, was not without talent in the art of meaning two things simultaneously; and after leaving von Gähler free to separate von Haven from the rest, he made the remainder of his letter a catalogue of all the disadvantages that would ensue from such a separation.

  The first, said Bernstorff, was the fact that von Haven had specially prepared himself both for Mount Sinai and for the remainder of the expedition. If he were now to be allowed to remain in Cairo to study historical monuments which many another had investigated before him, it would be tantamount to removing him from the task for which he had specially qualified himself and giving him a commission a good deal more banal and uninteresting. It was indeed quite possible that the journey to Mount Sinai would only result in the discovery of a number of worthless inscriptions, but this was not to be known in advance; and it was precisely this uncertainty that had persuaded His Majesty to send a man there who was in a position to judge the importance of this widely-known find. Von Haven was the only one on the expedition to fulfil these requirements. The same applied also to the remainder of the expedition to Arabia, which was meant above all to throw new light on the Holy Scriptures. Once again, von Haven was the one best able to carry out this very important research; and it was in order to help him in this that the king assigned to him an artist, a doctor, a botanist and an astronomer.

  To these observations, which reveal the degree to which Bernstorff was still ignorant of von Haven’s academic and human shortcomings, the Danish Minister now added a number of remarks of a more delicate nature. He continued:

  “Nor is this all. If we exclude Herr von Haven from the expedition, Herr Forsskål will take his place and thereby become the head of the party. Will he, a Swede, get along any better with the others than their own countryman? I know very well that they are ranked equal; but one of them will always have to be first, and he will constantly regard himself as being something more than the others. Let us now assume that Herr Forsskål, along with the other members of the expedition, succeeds brilliantly; then the entire academic world will recognise him alone, and speak only of him. It will be as though he had achieved the whole thing; and nothing will be more disagreeable for our nation than to see this foreign
er deprive us of all the honour of the exploit which was originally conceived in our own breasts, and carried out thanks to the generosity of our own king.”

  Bernstorff concluded by repeating that von Gähler was free to avail himself of the secret order to von Haven if he believed this to be the only way of avoiding the collapse of the expedition; but immediately afterwards, in a postscript, he expresses his own sincere hope that von Gähler could manage these problems without making use of it.

  The form of argument in Bernstorff’s letter clearly follows the pattern hinted at in von Gähler’s report, with its ornamental and thus distorted account of the real facts of the situation. Like the ambassador, the Danish Minister passed quickly over the real reasons behind the letter of complaint sent from Rhodes by Forsskål, Niebuhr and Baurenfeind. To explain the dramatic antagonism between the two professors—an antagonism which had its real source in the tension between the energetic Forsskål’s ability and the weak von Haven’s conceit—Bernstorff accepted the ambassador’s suggestion of national differences, which, from what we know, seem to have played only an insignificant part. Finally, Bernstorff, like von Gähler, was himself guilty of basing his ideas precisely on the kind of national prejudice ascribed to the members of the expedition.

  One excuse for Bernstorff, quite apart from the distortions of the report he received from von Gähler, can be traced back to that fateful clash in Copenhagen between Forsskål and Kratzenstein, which still remained fresh in his memory. His attempt to bring Linnaeus into the Danish expedition’s work, and to replace the unsatisfactory Kramer by the Swede called Falck, had been meant by Forsskål as a service to scholarship—a view which is by no means invalidated by the later course of events. But because of the arrogant and tactless fashion in which he tried to accomplish these things, the Government in Copenhagen could not but see in his motives a manifestation of Swedish nationalism. This claim to an exclusive concern with the rights of scholarship was what Forsskål was now having to pay for dearly. The unhappy conflict between Dane and Swede, which hitherto had been only a subordinate factor in the expedition’s internal drama, now became in Bernstorff’s letter the declared motive for not wanting to remove von Haven; the dangerous and tense situation was thus preserved, along with all the other consequences it held for the expedition’s subsequent course.

  Von Gähler in any case was in no doubt. When one is a diplomat, one must be able to read between the lines; von Gähler was, as we have seen, a very successful diplomat, and Bernstorff’s letter to him was full of hidden meaning. The sealed envelope accompanying it might just as well have been empty. It was simply a symbol. After the way Bernstorff had expressed his own misgivings, it never occurred to von Gähler for a moment to make use of it. Since he had already taken care in advance to be in agreement with the Minister regardless of what the latter might decide, it was an easy matter for him to report to Bernstorff on 17th April, 1762, that “His Excellency’s wisdom and percipience removes all doubt which the unhappy report from Rhodes might give rise to.” Von Gähler promised that he would at once set about counselling reason to these angry men, and try to smooth over the conflict between them so that they were at least able to tolerate each other’s presence and help each other in the task they were engaged on.

  The ambassador’s work consisted of writing the three letters mentioned as having reached the expedition in Cairo in June, 1762. That it really was a hard job is borne out by two of the letters in particular. Whereas the first letter, addressed to the entire expedition via Forsskål, merely contained the official information that the request contained in the document from Rhodes had been rejected, von Gähler composed the two others, to von Haven and Niebuhr respectively, in a superb diplomatic style.

  The letter to von Haven especially is an impressive piece of tight-rope walking. After a long introduction calculated to flatter the conceit of the Danish professor, von Gähler sidles up to the point:

  “My dear friend, speaking now with all the respect I bear for you and for your very excellent merits and intelligence, may I say there is merely one thing that in a certain respect somewhat disquiets me. It concerns the real unity, the harmony of character, the concord of heart, the bond of common interest which quite naturally ought to exist amongst the members of your expedition; for only such bonds as these are able to sustain it, preserve it, and lead it on to that honour and those achievements which not only His Majesty in his generosity and patriotism and love of learning but also the entire academic world so ardently hope and desire. I am not speaking now of the trifling disagreements which occurred en route from Marseille to Constantinople, and which of course simply derived from certain misunderstandings. I am confident that the reconciliation I endeavoured to effect has been for both parties as wholly genuine as I myself desired. Meanwhile, however, I have received a letter from the other side in Cairo which does not in the least seem to confirm the stability of that reconciliation. None of these gentlemen makes any particular complaint; they merely arouse certain misgivings by a few chance remarks. But do I need to tell you, my dear von Haven, that they have given me some grounds for concern in case there still exists a germ of incompatibility in mind and heart? The entire learned world has its eyes firmly fixed upon you, regarding you if not as the leader of the expedition then at least as its most distinguished member. Herr von Haven, it is known that you are a Dane. Is not this for you a most fortunate, a most honourable task: to be able to work for the glory of your king and his Government, to participate in an undertaking which has been planned by your own country, which is under the protection of its throne, and which has been mounted for the undying honour of your countrymen ? In God’s name, regard this mission as the most precious thing in your life; think of the honour and acclaim that will await you; and think on the other hand of the consequences of any misadventure which might destroy the whole aim of the expedition. I fear that in that case any criticism would be directed straight at you, and His Majesty would himself be compelled to take into account the verdict of the public.

  “I will not conceal from you that, in a certain sense, I am saying the same to Herr Forsskål; and I am putting it to him, as I am to you, that nothing seems to me so easy as to live in understanding, peace and harmony with all men. All it demands is that one should cast off all such prejudices as prevent this, and pay heed to the call of reason, to one’s duties towards one’s fellows, and above all towards our Lord God. You are too intelligent a man for me to need to say more. All that remains is for me to implore you to regard what I have said as the sincere advice of a friend, to keep it confidential from the others, and to believe that I have only your own well-being at heart.”

  The adroit von Gähler had succeeded better than ever before in conveying two things at once. He had flattered von Haven’s conceit and at the same time given him a warning. He had let his suspicions of the Professor be known, but put them in a way that suggested the Dane was in reality quite innocent. If von Haven had really wanted to kill the others with the arsenic he got in Constantinople, he could not but read this letter as an ominous reprimand; if he had had no such thoughts the threat was so efficiently camouflaged that he could not take any offence.

  Naturally, the ambassador in his letter to Carsten Niebuhr followed a very different form. Practically no flattery, practically no ambiguity, simply as straight speaking as is ever found in an embassy. On the other hand von Gähler had to ask Niebuhr to keep the letter a secret; right across the letter he wrote and underlined: “Lesen und behalten Sie diesen Brief für Sich allein.” “Read and keep this letter strictly in confidence.”

  First, Niebuhr was told that von Gähler, in addition to the letter he had written to the remainder of the expedition, felt especially impelled to approach him personally: “You will note that the proposed separation is not to the taste of our superiors; instead, the entire party is to continue the expedition together as a group without further delay. It is therefore up to you to obey these instructions as quickly as p
ossible.”

  At the same time von Gähler wanted to assure Niebuhr that his threat to shoot von Haven had not been interpreted in as bad a light as he might suppose. “On the contrary; from what I have reported of your character, such favourable opinions have been formed about your honour that it is felt that you are perhaps the one best able, if not exactly to reconcile the others by persuasion and exhortation, then at least to induce them to live in civilised and friendly intercourse with each other. With this object in mind, you must pay appropriate regard on the one hand to Herr von Haven’s excitability and on the other to Herr Forsskål’s not wholly natural, and I may even say somewhat assumed, calm; similarly, you must particularly beware of assuming always that he is in the right. Without losing the latter’s confidence, you must strive also to win the other’s trust; or, to put it bluntly, to wear the cape on both shoulders.”