Queer Places:
Yale University (Ivy League), 38 Hillhouse Ave, New Haven, CT 06520
Columbia University (Ivy League), 116th St and Broadway, New York, NY 10027
Cimitero di San Michele
Venice, Città Metropolitana di Venezia, Veneto, Italy
Ithaca City Cemetery
Ithaca, Tompkins County, New York, USA
Eugene
Schuyler (February 26, 1840 – July 16, 1890)[1] was
a nineteenth-century American scholar, writer, explorer and diplomat. Schuyler
was one of the first three Americans to earn a Ph.D. from an American
university;[2] and
the first American translator of Ivan Turgenev and Lev Tolstoi. He was the
first American diplomat to visit Russian Central
Asia, and as American Consul
General in Istanbul he
played a key role in publicizing Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria in 1876 during
the April Uprising.[3] He
was the first American Minister to Romania and Serbia,
and U.S. Minister to Greece.[4][5]
A memorial to John Safford
Fiske, by his friend
Joseph Hetherington McDaniels,
a Hobart professor of Greek language and literature, reveals that Fiske had
guided historian Edward
Augustus Freeman in his travels and research for a book on Sicily, and
"had been the intimate companion of the scholar and diplomatist,
Eugene Schuyler, in voyages
through the Levant and the Aegean sea." Fiske, Freeman, and Schuyler had
constituted a "brace of comrades." McDaniels had visited Fiske's villa in
Alassio, and recalled his "bewitching garden which he opened hospitably and
freely to his friends" and the many "pictures which were mostly mementos of
beloved artist friends." McDaniels called Fiske "a sweet soul that gave much
and asked no praise, but affection. And that affection he certainly had."
Schuyler was born in Ithaca, New
York on February 26, 1840. He was the son of Matilda Scribner and George
W. Schuyler, a drugstore owner in Ithaca,
New York who later was elected New
York State Treasurer and served as a member of the New
York State Assembly. His father's ancestors, of Dutch descent, included Philip
Schuyler, a general in George
Washington's army and a U.S.
Senator.[6] His
mother was the half-sister of Charles
Scribner, the founder of the famous American publishing house.[7]
At the age of fifteen, Schuyler entered Yale
College, where he studied languages, literature and philosophy.[8] He
graduated with honors in 1859 and was a member of Skull
and Bones.[9]:91 He
became one of the first graduate students at Yale, and in 1861, he and two
other students were the first Americans to receive Ph.D.s from
an American university.[8]
In 1860, Schuyler became an assistant to Noah
Porter, a prominent linguistician and literary figure, in the revision
of Webster's Dictionary, the first dictionary of American English.[10] In
1862, Schuyler began to study law at Yale
Law School, and received his law degree, in 1863, from Columbia
Law School. He began practicing law in New York, but did not find it very
interesting. Instead he began to write, becoming a contributor to The
Nation magazine. He continued to write for The Nation until the end of his
life.[11]
On July 12, 1877,[38] Schuyler
was married to Gertrude Wallace "Gert" King (b. 1836) in Paris.[39] She
was the daughter of the late President
of Columbia University Charles
King,[40] niece
of former U.S.
Representative and New
York Governor John
Alsop King,[1] and
granddaughter of both Rufus
King and Nicholas Low.[41] Her
sister, Mary
Alsop King Waddington, was a writer who was married to the Prime
Minister of France William
Henry Waddington.[39]
In September 1863 a Russian naval squadron made a long stay in New York
harbor, hoping to escape capture by the British
Navy in the event of a war between Britain and Russia over the Polish
Uprising of 1863. Schuyler met some of the officers of the Russian
flagship, the Alexander Nevsky, which inspired him to study Russian. He
learned Russian well enough to translate the novel of Ivan
Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, which was published in 1867, the first
translation of Turgenev to appear in the United States.[12] The
same year Schuyler studied Finnish,
and edited the first American translation of the Finnish national epic, Kalevala.
In 1864, Schuyler applied for a diplomatic post in the State Department.
The State Department took three years to consider his application, and then
offered him the position of consul in Moscow, then the second city of Russia.
En route to his post, Schuyler stopped in Baden-Baden to
meet Turgenev, who gave him a letter of introduction to Lev
Tolstoi. Schuyler began his diplomatic tour in Moscow in August 1867.[1]
In the spring of 1868 he made his first trip to the edge of Central Asia,
traveling with a Russian merchant, Vasilii
Alekseich, by steamboat down the Volga to Samara,
then by carriage to Orenburg,
which at the time was the base for Russian military operations The Russians
had occupied the Khanate of Bukhara in
1866 and were advancing toward Samarkand.
In 1868, Schuyler was a guest of Tolstoi for a week at his estate at Yasnaya
Polyana, at the time when Tolstoi was finishing War
and Peace. He helped Tolstoi rearrange his library, and went hunting with
him. Tolstoi, who was interested in public education in the United States,
asked Schuyler for copies of American primers and school textbooks. Schuyler
received Tolstoi's permission to translate his novel The
Cossacks into English. In 1869, the new Administration of President Ulysses
Grant removed Schuyler from his post in Moscow and replaced him with a
political appointee. Schuyler was able to obtain a post as consul to the
Russian port of Reval (now Tallinn).
In November, 1869, President Grant appointed a new Minister to Russia, Andrew
Curtin, a former Governor of Pennsylvania who knew nothing of Russia.
Curtin was impressed by Schuyler and appointed him as the secretary of the
American legation in St.
Petersburg, a post which Schuyler held until 1876.
Schuyler was able to combine his diplomatic duties with scholarship and
travel. He began writing a major biography of Peter
the Great, and frequented the meetings of the Russian Geographic Society
in St. Petersburg. In 1873, he was one of the first foreigners invited to
visit Russia's new conquests in Central Asia.[13]
Schuyler left St. Petersburg by train on March 23, 1873 and traveled first to
Saratov. He was accompanied by an American journalist, Januarius
MacGahan, who was working for the New
York Herald. Schuyler and MacGahan traveled from Saratov by
sledge to Orenburg, then
to Kazala (now Kazalinsk),
then to Fort Perovskii (now Kzyl-Orda).
MacGahan went from there to find the Russian Army at Khiva,
while Schuyler travelled on to Tashkent,
in present-day Uzbekistan, Samarkand, Bukhara and Kokand.
He returned to St. Petersburg via Siberia and the Urals. His trip had taken
eight months[13]
(he had told the State Department he would be gone only three months), but he
brought back a wealth of geographical information. Schuyler wrote extensively about his trip for the National
Geographic Society in the United States, and he also wrote a long report
for the State Department.[13][14] He
was embarrassed when his confidential report was published in December 1876
in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States - 1874, and
translated into Russian by the St. Petersburg press. His report had been
critical of the treatment of the Tatars by the Russian General Konstantin
Petrovich Von Kaufman. A Russian journalist responded, "it did not lie in the
mouth of an American statesman to say evil things of the Russian treatment of
Tatars - he ought to look at home, and criticize the policy of his own
countrymen toward the North American Indians." With the exception of the
treatment of the Tatars, Schuyler was favorable toward the Russian presence in
Central Asia. "On the whole, the Russian influence is beneficial in Central
Asia," he wrote, "not only for the inhabitants, but to the world, and it
certainly is greatly to our interest that a counterpoise should exist there
against the extension of English domination in Asia. Having once taken
possession of the country, it will be almost impossible for the Russians, with
any fairness to the natives, to withdraw from it.." Schuyler wrote a two-volume book about his travels in Central
Asia. The book, Turkestan, was published in October 1876, in both the United
States and England.[15]
Like his report to the State Department, it was favorable to Russia's role in
Central Asia: "Notwithstanding the many faults which may be found in the
administration of the country, the Russian rule is on the whole beneficial to
the natives, and it would be manifestly injust to them to withdraw her
protection and leave them to anarchy and to the unbridled rule of fanatical
despots."
Schuyler left Russia in 1876. He tried unsuccessfully to be named Minister
to Turkey, but that position went to a political appointee of the Grant
administration and he was given the position once more of the secretary of the
legation, and also of consul general. He arrived in Istanbul on July 6, 1876. Two months after earlier
an uprising against
Turkish rule had taken place in Bulgaria.
The uprising had been repressed by force by the Ottoman Army, with the massacre of
civilians. Schuyler learned of these massacres from the Bulgarian students
and faculty of Robert
College in Constantinople.[16]
Vague reports of the massacres had first been printed in the British press on
May 6. American Faculty members from Robert College collected more information
and sent them to the British Minister to Turkey, with no result. They then
sent the reports to the correspondents of The
Times and the London
Daily News. The London Daily News published its account on June 23, 1876.[17][18] It
caused an immediate sensation in London. The Bulgarian atrocities were
discussed in Parliament on June 26, and the opposition Liberal Party demanded
a full investigation. The Conservative government of Prime Minister
Benjamin Disraeli agreed to investigate the reports. The British Government
appointed a second secretary at their embassy in Istanbul, Walter Baring, to
conduct the investigation. Fearing a cover-up, the faculty members of Robert
College asked the American Minister to Turkey, Horace
Maynard, to conduct his own investigation. Maynard gave the task to Schuyler. Schuyler prepared to travel to Bulgaria to investigate the
reports. By chance, Schuyler's friend from Russia, Januarius
MacGahan, arrived in Constantinople to cover the Serbia-Turkish
War. Schuyler invited MacGahan to accompany him on his journey to
Bulgaria. Schuyler and MacGahan left for Bulgaria on July 23.[19] They
were joined by a correspondent of Kölnische Zeitung German journalist
Karl Schneider (1854–1945) and by a second secretary of the Russian Embassy in
Constantinople Georgian prince
Aleksi Tsereteli (Aleksei Tseretelev) and Turkish and Bulgarian translator
Petar Dimitrov, instructor at the American Robert College in Constantinople.[20] They
spent three weeks documenting the atrocities which had taken place at villages
in southern Bulgaria three months earlier. After visiting a number of towns
and villages, Schuyler stated in his report to the U.S. Minister to Turkey,
Horace Maynard: " It is very difficult to estimate the number of Bulgarians
who were killed during the few days that the disturbances lasted, but I am
inclined to put 15,000 for the districts that I have named." [21][22]
Schuyler's official report, and MacGahan's newspaper reporting, combined to
cause a sensation in the British press.[25] The
Government of Benjamin
Disraeli tried to minimize the massacres, saying that the Bulgarians were
equally responsible, but these claims were refuted by Schuyler and MacGahan's
eyewitness reports.[26][27] When
Russia threatened war against Turkey, Britain told the Turkish government
that, because of the state of public opinion, it could not take the side of
Turkey.[28][29]
The Russian Government, moved by Pan-Slavic sentiment and a desire to help the
Orthodox Christian Bulgarians, declared war on the Ottoman Empire and invaded
Bulgaria in 1877. The Turkish Army was defeated and Bulgaria
was liberated from Ottoman rule in 1878.[30]
Schuyler's role in the liberation of Bulgaria greatly displeased the Ottoman
Government, which protested to the U.S. Government. Secretary of State Hamilton
Fish was also displeased with Schuyler, since Schuyler had acted without
his knowledge or consent. He discussed withdrawing Schuyler from Turkey, but
decided against it, since he did not want to appear to be unsympathetic to the
Bulgarians. When a new President, Rutherford
Hayes, took office, Schuyler was subjected to more attacks in the press,
accused of bias toward the Bulgarians. On January 3, 1878, the Turkish
Government demanded his recall: "The Porte regarded a continuance of Mr.
Schuyler as consul-general at Constantinople as a serious injury to Turkey in
its diplomatic relations and in the administration of its affairs in the
provinces." On May 29, 1878, a State Department investigation of Schuyler
found that "His sentiments and sympathies are strongly anti-Turkish" and that
he "aided greatly to alienate British sympathy from Turkey in her struggle
with Russia," and reprimanded him for his "unauthorized and self-imposed
mission to Bulgaria." Schuyler was removed from Turkey and given the post of consul in Birmingham,
England.[1] While
there he finished his translation of Tolstoi's The Cossacks, which was
published in 1878.[31]
In August 1879, Schuyler became consul general in Rome,
where he completed writing his book on Peter the Great,[32] and
began a new book on Catherine
the Great.[33]
A year later, he became Chargé
d'affaires in Bucharest,
as the United States prepared to recognize the independence of Romania and Serbia.
In Romania, he studied Romanian and became a corresponding member of the
Romanian Academy of Sciences. On July 7, 1882, he was concurrently appointed
the Minister Resident/Counsul General to Romania, Serbia, and Greece, while
becoming a resident in Athens. He presented his credentials to Romania on
September 8, 1882, to Serbia on November 10, 1882, and to Greece on January 9,
1883.[4]
In July 1884, he was out of a job again when the U.S. Congress, as an economy
measure, abolished the post of minister to Greece, Romania and Serbia. He presented his recall on September 7, 1884 for Romania, his
recall was transmitted by note by the Vice Consul General at Belgrade on
September 19, 1884 for Serbia, and he presented his recall on October 13, 1884
for Greece.[4]
In 1884, Schuyler left the diplomatic service to lecture at Johns
Hopkins and Cornell
University on diplomatic practice and the conduct of American diplomacy.[1] His
book American Diplomacy and the Furtherance of Commerce was published by
Scribner's in 1886,[34] and
according to his death notice in The
New York Times, the publication of the book "prevented him from becoming a
member of the permanent staff of the State Department, where his experience
would have made him especially useful."[35] In
1889, the Administration of President Benjamin
Harrison nominated him as First Assistant
Secretary of State. The nomination was withdrawn, however, after
opposition within the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee,[1] and William
F. Wharton was eventually appointed and confirmed.[4]
Instead, Schuyler took the post of diplomatic agent and consul general in Cairo,
Egypt. While in Egypt, he contracted malaria, and died in Venice on July 16,
1890, at the age of fifty.[1][36] He
was buried in Cimitero
di San Michele in Venice.[37]
Mount Schuyler on Graham
Land in Antarctica is
named after Eugene Schuyler "who investigated the crushing of the Bulgarian April
Uprising of 1876 and co-authored the draft decisions of the subsequent
1876 Constantinople
Conference."[42] Streets
in the Bulgarian cities of Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna and Panagyurishte are
named after him. Between the many curious things Schuyler found in Russian
Turkestan is worth mentioning the figure of the iskatchi as it is/was frequent
in Wales, (Great Britain), the person sprinkling salt and bread over a corpse
at a funeral and eating later such bread to clean the deceased man of his
sins, sometimes for a fee.
My published books:
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