Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence Part 1

Louis Aga.s.siz: His Life and Correspondence.

by Louis Aga.s.siz.

PREFACE.

I am aware that this book has neither the fullness of personal narrative, nor the closeness of scientific a.n.a.lysis, which its too comprehensive t.i.tle might lead the reader to expect. A word of explanation is therefore needed. I thought little at first of the general public, when I began to weave together in narrative form the facts, letters, and journals contained in this volume. My chief object was to prevent the dispersion and final loss of scattered papers which had an unquestionable family value. But, as my work grew upon my hands, I began to feel that the story of an intellectual life, which was marked by such rare coherence and unity of aim, might have a wider interest and usefulness; might, perhaps, serve as a stimulus and an encouragement to others. For this reason, and also because I am inclined to believe that the European portion of the life of Louis Aga.s.siz is little known in his adopted country, while its American period must be unfamiliar to many in his native land, I have determined to publish the material here collected.

The book labors under the disadvantage of being in great part a translation. The correspondence for the first part was almost wholly in French and German, so that the choice lay between a patch-work of several languages or the unity of one, burdened as it must be with the change of version. I have accepted what seemed to me the least of these difficulties.

Besides the a.s.sistance of my immediate family, including the revision of the text by my son Alexander Aga.s.siz, I have been indebted to my friends Dr. and Mrs. Hagen and to the late Professor Guyot for advice on special points. As will be seen from the list of ill.u.s.trations, I have also to thank Mrs. John W. Elliot for her valuable aid in that part of the work.

On the other side of the water I have had most faithful and efficient collaborators. Mr. Auguste Aga.s.siz, who survived his brother Louis several years, and took the greatest interest in preserving whatever concerned his scientific career, confided to my hands many papers and doc.u.ments belonging to his brother's earlier life. After his death, his cousin and brother-in-law, Mr. Auguste Mayor, of Neuchatel, continued the same affectionate service.

Without their aid I could not have completed the narrative as it now stands.

The friend last named also selected from the glacier of the Aar, at the request of Alexander Aga.s.siz, the boulder which now marks his father's grave. With unwearied patience Mr. Mayor pa.s.sed hours of toilsome search among the blocks of the moraine near the site of the old "Hotel des Neuchatelois," and chose at last a stone so monumental in form that not a touch of the hammer was needed to fit it for its purpose. In conclusion I allow myself the pleasure of recording here my grat.i.tude to him and to all who have aided me in my work.

ELIZABETH C. AGa.s.sIZ.

CAMBRIDGE, Ma.s.sachusetts, June 11, 1885.

LOUIS AGa.s.sIZ.

PART 1. IN EUROPE.

CHAPTER 1.

1807-1827: TO AGE 20.

Birthplace.

Influence of his Mother.

Early Love of Natural History.

Boyish Occupations.

Domestic Education.

First School.

Vacations.

Commercial Life renounced.

College of Lausanne.

Choice of Profession.

Medical School of Zurich.

Life and Studies there.

University of Heidelberg.

Studies interrupted by Illness.

Return to Switzerland.

Occupations during Convalescence.

JEAN LOUIS RODOLPHE AGa.s.sIZ was born May 28, 1807, at the village of Motier, on the Lake of Morat. His father, Louis Rodolphe Aga.s.siz, was a clergyman; his mother, Rose Mayor, was the daughter of a physician whose home was at Cudrefin, on the sh.o.r.e of the Lake of Neuchatel.

The parsonages in Switzerland are frequently pretty and picturesque. That of Motier, looking upon the lake and sheltered by a hill which commands a view over the whole chain of the Bernese Alps, was especially so. It possessed a vineyard large enough to add something in good years to the small salary of the pastor; an orchard containing, among other trees, an apricot famed the country around for the unblemished beauty of its abundant fruit; a good vegetable garden, and a delicious spring of water flowing always fresh and pure into a great stone basin behind the house. That stone basin was Aga.s.siz's first aquarium; there he had his first collection of fishes.* (* After his death a touching tribute was paid to his memory by the inhabitants of his birthplace. With appropriate ceremonies, a marble slab was placed above the door of the parsonage of Motier, with this inscription, "J. Louis Aga.s.siz, celebre naturaliste, est ne dans cette maison, le 28 Mai, 1807.")

It does not appear that he had any precocious predilection for study, and his parents, who for the first ten years of his life were his only teachers, were too wise to stimulate his mind beyond the ordinary attainments of his age. having lost her first four children in infancy, his mother watched with trembling solicitude over his early years. It was perhaps for this reason that she was drawn so closely to her boy, and understood that his love of nature, and especially of all living things, was an intellectual tendency, and not simply a child's disposition to find friends and playmates in the animals about him. In later years her sympathy gave her the key to the work of his manhood, as it had done to the sports of his childhood. She remained his most intimate friend to the last hour of her life, and he survived her but six years.

Louis's love of natural history showed itself almost from infancy.

When a very little fellow he had, beside his collection of fishes, all sorts of pets: birds, field-mice, hares, rabbits, guinea-pigs, etc., whose families he reared with the greatest care. Guided by his knowledge of the haunts and habits of fishes, he and his brother Auguste became the most adroit of young fishermen,--using processes all their own and quite independent of hook, line, or net. Their hunting grounds were the holes and crevices beneath the stones or in the water-washed walls of the lake sh.o.r.e. No such shelter was safe from their curious fingers, and they acquired such dexterity that when bathing they could seize the fish even in the open water, attracting them by little arts to which the fish submitted as to a kind of fascination. Such amus.e.m.e.nts are no doubt the delight of many a lad living in the country, nor would they be worth recording except as ill.u.s.trating the unity of Aga.s.siz's intellectual development from beginning to end. His pet animals suggested questions, to answer which was the task of his life; and his intimate study of the fresh-water fishes of Europe, later the subject of one of his important works, began with his first collection from the Lake of Morat.

As a boy he amused himself also with all kinds of handicrafts on a small scale. The carpenter, the cobbler, the tailor, were then as much developed in him as the naturalist. In Swiss villages it was the habit in those days for the trades-people to go from house to house in their different vocations. The shoemaker came two or three times a year with all his materials, and made shoes for the whole family by the day; the tailor came to fit them for garments which he made in the house; the cooper arrived before the vintage, to repair old barrels and hogsheads or to make new ones, and to replace their worn-out hoops; in short, to fit up the cellar for the coming season. Aga.s.siz seems to have profited by these lessons as much as by those he learned from his father; and when a very little fellow, he could cut and put together a well-fitting pair of shoes for his sisters' dolls, was no bad tailor, and could make a miniature barrel that was perfectly water-tight. He remembered these trivial facts as a valuable part of his incidental education.

He said he owed much of his dexterity in manipulation, to the training of eye and hand gained in these childish plays.

Though fond of quiet, in-door occupation, he was an active, daring boy. One winter day when about seven years of age, he was skating with his little brother Auguste, two years younger than himself, and a number of other boys, near the sh.o.r.e of the lake. They were talking of a great fair held that day at the town of Morat, on the opposite side of the lake, to which M. Aga.s.siz had gone in the morning, not crossing upon the ice, however, but driving around the sh.o.r.e. The temptation was too strong for Louis, and he proposed to Auguste that they should skate across, join their father at the fair, and come home with him in the afternoon. They started accordingly. The other boys remained on their skating ground till twelve o'clock, the usual dinner hour, when they returned to the village. Mme. Aga.s.siz was watching for her boys, thinking them rather late, and on inquiring for them among the troop of urchins coming down the village street she learned on what errand they had gone. Her anxiety may be imagined. The lake was not less than two miles across, and she was by no means sure that the ice was safe.

She hurried to an upper window with a spy-gla.s.s to see if she could descry them anywhere. At the moment she caught sight of them, already far on their journey, Louis had laid himself down across a fissure in the ice, thus making a bridge for his little brother, who was creeping over his back. Their mother directed a workman, an excellent skater, to follow them as swiftly as possible. He overtook them just as they had gained the sh.o.r.e, but it did not occur to him that they could return otherwise than they had come, and he skated back with them across the lake. Weary, hungry, and disappointed, the boys reached the house without having seen the fair or enjoyed the drive home with their father in the afternoon.

When he was ten years old, Aga.s.siz was sent to the college for boys at Bienne, thus exchanging the easy rule of domestic instruction for the more serious studies of a public school. He found himself on a level with his cla.s.s, however, for his father was an admirable teacher. Indeed it would seem that Aga.s.siz's own pa.s.sion for teaching, as well as his love of young people and his sympathy with intellectual aspiration everywhere, was an inheritance. Wherever his father was settled as pastor, at Motier, at Orbe, and later at Concise, his influence was felt in the schools as much as in the pulpit. A piece of silver remains, a much prized heir-loom in the family, given to him by the munic.i.p.ality of Orbe in acknowledgment of his services in the schools.

The rules of the school at Bienne were rather strict, but the life led by the boys was hardy and invigorating, and they played as heartily as they worked. Remembering his own school-life, Aga.s.siz often asked himself whether it was difference of climate or of method, which makes the public school life in the United States so much more trying to the health of children than the one under which he was brought up. The boys and girls in our public schools are said to be overworked with a session of five hours, and an additional hour or two of study at home. At the College of Bienne there were nine hours of study, and the boys were healthy and happy. Perhaps the secret might be found in the frequent interruption, two or three hours of study alternating with an interval for play or rest. Aga.s.siz always retained a pleasant impression of the school and its teachers. Mr. Rickly, the director, he regarded with an affectionate respect, which ripened into friendship in maturer years.

The vacations were, of course, hailed with delight, and as Motier was but twenty miles distant from Bienne, Aga.s.siz and his younger brother Auguste, who joined him at school a year later, were in the habit of making the journey on foot. The lives of these brothers were so closely interwoven in their youth that for many years the story of one includes the story of the other. They had everything in common, and with their little savings they used to buy books, chosen by Louis, the foundation, as it proved, of his future library.

Long before dawn on the first day of vacation the two bright, active boys would be on their homeward way, as happy as holiday could make them, especially if they were returning for the summer harvest or the autumn vintage. The latter was then, as now, a season of festivity. In these more modern days something of its primitive picturesqueness may have been lost; but when Aga.s.siz was a boy, all the ordinary occupations were given up for this important annual business, in which work and play were so happily combined. On the appointed day the working people might be seen trooping in from neighboring cantons, where there were no vineyards, to offer themselves for the vintage. They either camped out at night, sleeping in the open air, or found shelter in the stables and outhouses. During the grape gathering the floor of the barn and shed at the parsonage of Motier was often covered in the evening with tired laborers, both men and women. Of course, when the weather was fine, these were festival days for the children. A bushel basket, heaped high with white and amber bunches, stood in the hall, or in the living room of the family, and young and old were free to help themselves as they came and went. Then there were the frolics in the vineyard, the sweet cup of must (unfermented juice of the grape), and, the ball on the last evening at the close of the merry-making.

Sometimes the boys pa.s.sed their vacations at Cudrefin, with their grandfather Mayor. He was a kind old man, much respected in his profession, and greatly beloved for his benevolence. His little white horse was well known in all the paths and by-roads of the country around, as he went from village to village among the sick.

The grandmother was frail in health, but a great favorite among the children, for whom she had an endless fund of stories, songs, and hymns. Aunt Lisette, an unmarried daughter, who long lived to maintain the hospitality of the old Cudrefin house and to be beloved as the kindest of maiden aunts by two or three generations of nephews and nieces, was the domestic providence of these family gatherings, where the praises of her excellent dishes were annually sung. The roof was elastic; there was no question about numbers, for all came who could; the more, the merrier, with no diminution of good cheer.

The Sunday after Easter was the great popular fete. Then every house was busy coloring Easter eggs and making fritters. The young girls and the lads of the village, the former in their prettiest dresses and the latter with enormous bouquets of artificial flowers in their hats, went together to church in the morning. In the afternoon the traditional match between two runners, chosen from the village youths, took place. They were dressed in white, and adorned with bright ribbons. With music before them, and followed by all the young people, they went in procession to the place where a quant.i.ty of Easter eggs had been distributed upon the ground. At a signal the runners separated, the one to pick up the eggs according to a prescribed course, the other to run to the next village and back again. The victory was to the one who accomplished his task first, and he was proclaimed king of the feast. Hand in hand the runners, followed as before by all their companions, returned to join in the dance now to take place before the house of Dr. Mayor. After a time the festivities were interrupted by a little address in patois from the first musician, who concluded by announcing from his platform a special dance in honor of the family of Dr. Mayor. In this dance the family with some of their friends and neighbors took part,--the young ladies dancing with the peasant lads and the young gentlemen with the girls of the village,--while the rest formed a circle to look on.

Thus, between study and recreation, the four years which Aga.s.siz's father and mother intended he should pa.s.s at Bienne drew to a close. A yellow, time-worn sheet of foolscap, on which during the last year of his school-life he wrote his desiderata in the way of books, tells something of his progress and his aspirations at fourteen years of age. "I wish," so it runs, "to advance in the sciences, and for that I need d'Anville, Ritter, an Italian dictionary, a Strabo in Greek, Mannert and Thiersch; and also the works of Malte-Brun and Seyfert. I have resolved, as far as I am allowed to do so, to become a man of letters, and at present I can go no further: 1st, in ancient geography, for I already know all my notebooks, and I have only such books as Mr. Rickly can lend me; I must have d'Anville or Mannert; 2nd, in modern geography, also, I have only such books as Mr. Rickly can lend me, and the Osterwald geography, which does not accord with the new divisions; I must have Ritter or Malte-Brun; 3rd, for Greek I need a new grammar, and I shall choose Thiersch; 4th, I have no Italian dictionary, except one lent me by Mr. Moltz; I must have one; 5th, for Latin I need a larger grammar than the one I have, and I should like Seyfert; 6th, Mr. Rickly tells me that as I have a taste for geography he will give me a lesson in Greek (gratis), in which we would translate Strabo, provided I can find one. For all this I ought to have about twelve louis. I should like to stay at Bienne till the month of July, and afterward serve my apprenticeship in commerce at Neuchatel for a year and a half. Then I should like to pa.s.s four years at a university in Germany, and finally finish my studies at Paris, where I would stay about five years. Then, at the age of twenty-five, I could begin to write."

Aga.s.siz's note-books, preserved by his parents, who followed the education of their children with the deepest interest, give evidence of his faithful work both at school and college. They form a great pile of ma.n.u.script, from the paper copy-books of the school-boy to the carefully collated reports of the college student, begun when the writer was ten or eleven years of age and continued with little interruption till he was eighteen or nineteen. The later volumes are of nearly quarto size and very thick, some of them containing from four to six hundred closely covered pages; the handwriting is small, no doubt for economy of s.p.a.ce, but very clear. The subjects are physiological, pathological, and anatomical, with more or less of general natural history. This series of books is kept with remarkable neatness.

Even in the boy's copy-books, containing exercises in Greek, Latin, French and German, with compositions on a variety of topics, the writing is even and distinct, with scarcely a blot or an erasure.

From the very beginning there is a careful division of subjects under clearly marked headings, showing even then a tendency toward an orderly cla.s.sification of facts and thoughts.

It is evident from the boyish sketch which he drew of his future plans that the hope of escaping the commercial life projected for him, and of dedicating himself to letters and learning, was already dawning. He had begun to feel the charm of study, and his scientific tastes, though still pursued rather as the pastimes of a boy than as the investigations of a student, were nevertheless becoming more and more absorbing. He was fifteen years old and the time had come when, according to a purpose long decided upon, he was to leave school and enter the business house of his uncle, Francois Mayor, at Neuchatel. He begged for a farther delay, to be spent in two additional years of study at the College of Lausanne.

He was supported in his request by several of his teachers, and especially by Mr. Rickly, who urged his parents to encourage the remarkable intelligence and zeal already shown by their son in his studies. They were not difficult to persuade; indeed, only want of means, never want of will, limited the educational advantages they gave to their children.

It was decided, therefore, that he should go to Lausanne. Here his love for everything bearing on the study of nature was confirmed.

Professor Chavannes, Director of the Cantonal Museum, in whom he found not only an interesting teacher, but a friend who sympathized with his favorite tastes, possessed the only collection of Natural History in the Canton de Vaud. To this Aga.s.siz now had access. His uncle, Dr. Mathias Mayor, his mother's brother and a physician of note in Lausanne, whose opinion had great weight with M. and Mme.

Aga.s.siz, was also attracted by the boy's intelligent interest in anatomy and kindred subjects. He advised that his nephew should be allowed to study medicine, and at the close of Aga.s.siz's college course at Lausanne the commercial plan was finally abandoned, and he was permitted to choose the medical profession as the one most akin to his inclination.

Being now seventeen years of age, he went to the medical school of Zurich. Here, for the first time, he came into contact with men whose instruction derived freshness and vigor from their original researches. He was especially indebted to Professor Schinz, a man of learning and ability, who held the chair of Natural History and Physiology, and who showed the warmest interest in his pupil's progress. He gave Aga.s.siz a key to his private library, as well as to his collection of birds. This liberality was invaluable to one whose poverty made books an unattainable luxury. Many an hour did the young student pa.s.s at that time in copying books which were beyond his means, though some of them did not cost more than a dollar a volume. His brother Auguste, still his constant companion, shared this task, a pure labor of love with him, for the books were more necessary to Louis's studies than to his own.

During the two years pa.s.sed by Aga.s.siz in Zurich he saw little of society beyond the walls of the university. His brother and he had a pleasant home in a private house, where they shared the family life of their host and hostess. In company with them, Aga.s.siz made his first excursion of any importance into the Alps. They ascended the Righi and pa.s.sed the night there. At about sunset a fearful thunder-storm gathered below them, while on the summit of the mountain the weather remained perfectly clear and calm. Under a blue sky they watched the lightning, and listened to the thunder in the dark clouds, which were pouring torrents of rain upon the plain and the Lake of Lucerne. The storm lasted long after night had closed in, and Aga.s.siz lingered when all his companions had retired to rest, till at last the clouds drifted softly away, letting down the light of moon and stars on the lake and landscape. He used to say that in his subsequent Alpine excursions he had rarely witnessed a scene of greater beauty.

Such of his letters from Zurich as have been preserved have only a home interest. In one of them, however, he alludes to a curious circ.u.mstance, which might have changed the tenor of his life. He and his brother were returning on foot, for the vacation, from Zurich to their home which was now in Orbe, where their father and mother had been settled since 1821. Between Neuchatel and Orbe they were overtaken by a traveling carriage. A gentleman who was its sole occupant invited them to get in, made them welcome to his lunch, talked to them of their student life, and their future plans, and drove them to the parsonage, where he introduced himself to their parents. Some days afterward M. Aga.s.siz received a letter from this chance acquaintance, who proved to be a man in affluent circ.u.mstances, of good social position, living at the time in Geneva. He wrote to M. Aga.s.siz that he had been singularly attracted by his elder son, Louis, and that he wished to adopt him, a.s.suming henceforth all the responsibility of his education and his establishment in life. This proposition fell like a bomb-sh.e.l.l into the quiet parsonage. M. Aga.s.siz was poor, and every advantage for his children was gained with painful self-sacrifice on the part of both parents. How then refuse such an opportunity for one among them, and that one so gifted? After anxious reflection, however, the father, with the full concurrence of his son, decided to decline an offer which, brilliant as it seemed, involved a separation and might lead to a false position. A correspondence was kept up for years between Louis and the friend he had so suddenly won, and who continued to interest himself in his career. Although it had no sequel, this incident is mentioned as showing a kind of personal magnetism which, even as child and boy, Aga.s.siz unconsciously exercised over others.

From Zurich, Aga.s.siz went to the University of Heidelberg, where we find him in the spring of 1826.

TO HIS FATHER.