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Iosif Khristianovich Hamel' (1788-1861)Author(s): Dorothy GaltonSource: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 44, No. 103 (Jul., 1966), pp. 473-474Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4205788 .

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Marginalia

Iosif Khristianovich Hamer (1788?1861)

Dorothy Galton

A regent book on the Tradescants,1 father and son, both named

John (1570-1638 and 1608-1662), makes passing reference (pp. 67-9 and

85-7) to Iosif Khristianovich Hamel', who is worthy of a place in the

record of Anglo-Russian relations because of his researches on the same

subject more than a century ago.2 The elder Tradescant was the first

great gardener in England and laid out the gardens of Hatfield House

among other places. He travelled on the continent in search of plants which he introduced into England; in 1618 he went to Archangel in the retinue of Sir Dudley Digges3 and visited the islands in the Dvina in a boat provided by the tsar. Of this journey Tradescant kept a diary, dis? covered by Hamel' as a manuscript by an 'unknown author' in the Ashmolean Museum, which he attributed to Tradescant; the attribution was confirmed by later researchers.4 Hamel' transcribed a large part of the

manuscript in his book, but the full text, now in the Bodleian Library, was not published until 1951 by S. Konovalov in Oxford Slavonic Papers, II, pp. 130-141, which Miss Allan reproduces in her book.5 Hamel' also disclosed the story of how the Tradescants' museum of unusual objects, mostly collected abroad, which they kept open to the public at their home in south Lambeth, came to be taken over by Elias Ashmole to form the basis of what became the Ashmolean Museum; he listed some of the plants introduced from Russia by Tradescant, as well as giving facts about the lives of both father and son. His book is not included in Miss Allan's

bibliography.

1 Mea Allan, The Tradescants: Their Plants, Gardens and Museum, 1570-1662, London, 1964. 2 Tradescant der Aeltere 1618 in Russland. Der Handelsverkehr zwischen England und Russland in seiner Entstehung. Ruckblick auf einige der alteren Reisen im Norden, St Petersburg/Leipzig, 1847; trans. John Studdy Leigh as England and Russia: Comprising the Voyages of John Tradescant the Elder, Sir Hugh Willoughby, Richard Chancellor, Nelson and Others, London, 1854; Russian edition Anglichane v Rossii v XVI i XVII stoletiyakh {Prilozheniye k VIII tomu i XV tomu Zapisok Imperatorskoy Akademii Nauk), 2 vols, St Petersburg, 1865 and 1869. The material first appeared in Recueil des Actes de VAcadtmie des Sciences de St Pitersbourg, December 1845. There is an introduction by the translator to the English edition, but no introduction to the other editions and no indication that the Russian edition was translated from German.

3 For an account of this mission, see S. Konovalov, Anglo-Russian Relations 1617? 1618' {Oxford Slavonic Papers, I, 1950, pp. 64-103). 4 See note Ee, p. 88 of Konovalov's article. The manuscript consisted of a day-to-day diary of the voyage and a part entitled 'Things by me observed', dealing with contem? porary life in the Archangel region (June to September 1618). 5 There are great variations in spelling in the transcriptions as published in the three editions of Hamer's work, and also between them and Konovalov's transcription in OSP. Tradescant was not very literate and his handwriting presents difficulties. J. S. Leigh seems to have modernised some of the spelling according to ideas of his own; he did not know Russian and, in taking over some of the proper names from the German, arrived at some strange results: e.g. 'Woliinsky mayor of Rashsk' = Volynsky mayor of Ryazhsk;

* Posdegeff' = Pozdeyev.

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474 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

Iosif Khristianovich Hamel'6 was the son of the chief of police of Sarept on the Volga. He studied at the St Petersburg Medico-Chirurgical Academy, where he obtained a doctorate of medicine in 1813, in which

year he was elected Corresponding Member of that Academy and also of the Academy of Sciences. He wrote technical articles for various Russian

journals including Severnaya pochta. In 1813 he was sent by the Minister of the Interior, Kozodavlev, to England, where he came to know Sir

Humphry Davy and tried out his miner's lamp. Hamel' also became interested in the ideas of the Quaker philanthropist William Allen, about which he wrote under the title Der gegenseitige Unterricht. Geschichte seiner

Einfuhrung und Ausbreitung dur ch Dr A. Bell, J. Lancaster und andere (Paris, 1818; translated into Russian, 1820). In 1816 Hamel' was with the Grand Duke Nikolay Pavlovich, and in 1818 with the Grand Duke Mikhail

Pavlovich, on their visits to England.7 He was interested in contem?

porary industrial developments in England and in the course of his visits sent to Russia 35,000 pamphlets relating to patents in England since 1617. In Russia he turned his attention to industry there, describing the Tula armaments factory in an article in 1826. In 1829 he became an Academi? cian (Technical section), and in 1834 had a hand in getting the first rail?

way built in Russia (from St Petersburg to Tsarskoye Selo and Pavlovsk). In 1839, 1840 and 1841 he was again in England and Scotland, and sent home a report on a large magneto-electric machine built by Elkington and Mason in Birmingham for gold- and silver-plating. He had helped to organise industrial exhibitions in Russia, so it was not surprising that he represented the Academy of Sciences at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851; he was also present when the first under-water cable was laid between England and France in that year. In 1852 he was in England, Scotland and Ireland, and in 1853 in Ireland again and in New York, whence he sent home descriptions of Ericsson's inventions and of a

printing machine of the brothers Hoe. A book by him on Sebastian Cabot

appeared in 1856. In his last years he became increasingly interested in

telegraph systems.8

6 See gapiski Imperatorskoy Akademii Nauk, 1863, III, pp. 189-98 (with a portrait); a list of his works (pp. 197-8) shows the breadth of his interests from shell-fish and birds to cochineal on Mt Ararat.

7 In the introduction to his translation J. S. Leigh says that Hamel' was in England with Alexander I in 1814, but he is probably mistaken. Alexander I was in England in 1814 (N. K. Shilder, Imperator Aleksandr I: yego zhizn' i tsarstvovaniye, St Petersburg, 1897-8, III, p. 269) and Grand Duke Nicholas in 1816 (Baron G. F. Stockmar, Memoirs, 1872, I, p. 55; N. K. Shilder, Imperator Nikolay I: yego zhizn' i tsarstvovaniye, St Petersburg, 1903, I, p. 72). 8 Hamel7's researches on Tradescant were no doubt carried out at various times on his visits to England, but internal evidence would suggest that the material was written up after 1839. The Prilozheniye in part II of Anglichane (pp. 251-3) was added after Hamel"s visit to England in 1851 and does not appear in the German and English edi? tions of 1847 and 1854; it first appeared in Bulletin Phys.-mathim. de VAcadimie des Sciences de St Pitersbourg, X, No. 11.

I have to acknowledge encouragement in the preparation of these notes from the for? mer Librarian of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, L. Loewenson, and I am particularly indebted to him for drawing my attention to the following reference. In Dela i Dni, St Petersburg, 1920,1, pp. 406-8 there is a contribution by A. S. Nikolayev referring to Hamel"s visit to Ireland and the United States in 1853. Nikolayev found in

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