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Samuel Bentham in Russia, 1779-1791
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2019
Extract
To many Englishmen, and to still more young Scots, Russia in the later eighteenth century seemed a land of opportunity, comparable to America in the scope it offered for the acquisition of wealth and the free exercise of talents. Samuel Greig, a shipowner's son of Inverkeithing in Fife, became the creator (after Peter I) of the Russian Navy. John Rogerson, an Edinburgh doctor, for four decades acted as personal physician to successive rulers of Russia. Careers such as these seemed to show what could be achieved in this great partly-known country by a young man of enterprise and ability. Of the considerable number of Englishmen who sought their fortunes in Russia during this period, Samuel Bentham was in many ways not typical. There is none, however, whose movements and impressions are easier to follow, since the British Museum possesses an extensive collection of his correspondence written during the years he spent there, and addressed mainly to his father, Jeremiah Bentham, and his famous brother, the political philosopher Jeremy.
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References
1 “Some account of his activities in Russia can be found in the Life of Brigadier-General Sir Samuel Bentham (London, 1862) by his widow, Lady Maria Sophia Bentham. It makes use of the manuscripts now in the British Museum, but is concerned with Bentham's personal life in Russia rather than with the general significance of his career there. The D.N.B. biography by J. K. Laughton relies heavily on this book and adds nothing to it.
2 Lortholary, A., Le Mirage russe en France au dix-huitiètne siècle (Paris, n.d.)Google Scholar, Part II, passim..
3 To Jeremy Bentham, May 5, 1779, Britism Museum, Additional Manuscripts (henceforth referred to as Add. MSS.) 33538, fol. 279. (All dates are given in the New Style..
4 He also thought of making a career in India, an idea which his brother disliked. Ibid., fol. 285.
5 The brothers corresponded about this project for several years. The language in which the code was to be drawn up, how soon it could be finished, how it should be brought to Catherine's notice, even how it should be bound, were all discussed in detail. Jeremy, however, was never a systematic worker. As late as August, 1780, the introduction was still unfinished (Jeremy to Samuel Bentham, August 6, 1780, Add. MSS. 33539, fol. 71), and after this the subject was gradually dropped by both of them, particularly as Samuel had now realized how little chance there was of such a proposal receiving serious attention from the Tsaritsa and her ministers (to Jeremy Bentham, October 12, 1780, ibid., fol. 113).
6 Jeremiah to Samuel Bentham, May 17, and July 7, 1779, Add. MSS. 33538, fols. 327. 335.
7 He carried no less than 81 letters of introduction, addressed to people in Holland, Germany and Sweden as well as in Russia itself. A list of them can be found in Add. MSS. 33555, fols. 1-4.
8 Jeremy to Jeremiah Bentham, September 2, 1779, Add. MSS. 33538, fols. 367-70.
9 The reigning Duke, Peter, was the son of the notorious Biren, whom he had succeeded in 1769.
10 To Jeremy Bentham, February 8, 1780, Add. MSS. 33539, fol. g.
11 To Jeremy Bentham, February 1, 1780, ibid., fol. 8.
12 His unpublished “Noctes Rossicae, or Russian Evening Recreations,” which can be found in Add. MSS. 14390, shows remarkable knowledge of Russian music, folk songs, dances, etc. He edited A Tour Performed in the Years ijay6, through the Taurida or Crimea, by his wife, Maria Guthrie (London, 1802) and wrote “A Supplementary Tour through the Countries on the Black Sea,” which is in Add. MSS. 14388-9. He also published a number of papers on medical subjects, some of which have reference to Russia.
13 Pleshcheev's, Survey of the Russian Empire According to its Newly-Regulated State (London, 179a)Google Scholar, was perhaps the first work of general importance on Russia written by a Russian to be published in an English translation. He at one time hoped that Samuel Bentham would marry his sister (Pleshcheev to Jeremy Bentham, July 2, 1780, Add. MSS. 33539, fol. 6a). a Russian to be published in an English translation. He at one time hoped that Samuel Bentham would marry his sister (Pleshcheev to Jeremy Bentham, July 2, 1780, Add. MSS. 33539, fol. 6a).
14 To Jeremy Bentham, April 22, 1780, ibid., fols. 31, 34. Twenty years later the Swiss Dumont, who played a great part in organizing and publishing Jeremy's writings, noted tfiat in Russia there was “nothing easier than to obtain 18% on land” (Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. Sir J. Bowring [Edinburgh, 1838-43] hereafter quoted as Bowring, X, 406).
15 He first met “Mr. Eaton the great traveller” at the house of the British ambassador, Sir James Harris (to Jeremy Bentham, April 19, 1780, Add. MSS. 33539, fol. 39). Eton, who had already been Dutch consul at Basra, established in 1776, together with a Russian merchant, a trading concern in Constantinople. He later published, among other works, a well-known Survey of the Turkish Empire (London, 1798), and in the early nineteenth century he was one of the pioneers of British trade with the Black Sea.
16 Jeremy to Samuel Bentham, May 15, 1780, ibid., fol. 45.
17 To Jeremy Bentham, August 3, 1780, ibid., fol. 64.
18 About 55 miles NNW. of Kiev.
19 To Jeremy Bentham, September 15, 1780, Add. MSS. 33539, fol. 81.
20 To Jeremy Bentham, October 14, 1780, ibid., fol. 86.
21 To Jeremy Bentham, October 25, 1780, ibid., fol. 98.
22 Jeremy to Samuel Bentham, August 6, 1780, ibid., fols. 69-70.
23 Pleshcheev to Jeremy Bentham, February 25, 1781, ibid., fol. 148.
24 Pallas to Samuel Bentham, April 3, 1781, ibid., fols. 162-67.
25 About 75 miles NNE of Sverdlovsk. Established in 1725, this was one o£ the older iron-producing centers of the Ural. ( Portal, R., L'Oural au dix-huitième sièle [Paris, 1950], p. 157 Google Scholar).
26 These included the invention of an “amphibious carriage” which could be used for crossing streams met en route. In 1792 Jeremy suggested its use as a military baggage wagon (letter to George III, May II , 1792, Bowring, op. cit., X, 260) and some experiments were made with it.
27 To Jeremy Bentham, May 23, 1781, Add. MSS. 33539, fol. 186.
28 The present-day Solikamsk on the left bank of the Kama, about 15 miles N. of Berezniki. A flourishing city in the seventeenth century, its importance was now declining.
29 To Jeremy Bentham, June 27, 1782, Add. MSS. 33539, fols. 289-90.
30 To Jeremy Bentham, February 27, 1782, ibid., fol. 285.
31 To Jeremy Bentham, July 27, 1782, ibid., fols. 292-93.
31 Cf. Anthoine, M., Essai historique sur le commerce et la navigation de la Mer Noire (Paris, 1805)Google Scholar, passim..
33 Gerhard, D., England und der Aufstieg Russlands (Munich-Berlin, 1933), chapter vi, especially pp. 292–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 A good deal of material relating to his travels in Russia in 1781-82, including extensive but sometimes rather illegible diaries, will be found in Add. MSS. 33532, fols. 115 ff. His itinerary for the period February, 1781, to October, 1782, i.e. from his departure from St. Petersburg to his return there, is in Add. MSS. 33556, fols. 1-2. From November, 1781, if not earlier, he was equipped with an official guide and interpreter, ostensibly at least because of his ignorance of Russian and of the geography of Siberia (order of November 24, 1781 in Add. Mss. 33554, fols. 57-58). He had in fact begun to take lessons in Russian over a year before (To Jeremy Bentham, October 14, 1780, Add. MSS. 33539, fol. 88).
35 He told his father late in 1780 that when he did not eat at friends’ houses, apples and bread were all he could afford at home (To Jeremiah Bentham, undated. Add. MSS. 33539, fol. 100).
36 To Jeremy Bentham, December 13, 1780, ibid., fol. 113.
37 To Shelburne, undated, ibid., fol. 275.
38 To Jeremy Bentham, June 27, September 8, 1782, ibid., fols. 292, 299-300.
39 To Jeremy Bentham, October 22, 1782, ibid., fols. 305-6.
40 These papers, in a French copy, are in Add. MSS. 33555, fols. 1-3, 65-70. English translations are in Add. MSS. 33554, fols. 37-56. They advocate the use of more and better machinery in mines, and suggest improvements in pumps, furnaces, fuel economy, the treatment of ores, etc.
41 Her son, Paul, who had been educated at Edinburgh University, was a close friend of Bentham. See his letter of April 18, 1783, in Add. MSS. 33539, fol. 332.
42 To Jeremy Bentham, February 11, 1783, ibid., fol. 326.
43 To Jeremy Bentham, March 18, 1783, ibid., fols. 330-31.
44 To Jeremy Bentham, July 26, 1783, ibid., fol. 379. He believed Catherine had offered him an appointment near St. Petersburg to help a rather inconclusive love affair he was having with the Countess Sofia Golicyn, niece and ward of Field Marshal Prince A. M. Golicyn. He seriously contemplated marriage with her, but this was violently opposed by her mother and above all by her aunt (To Jeremy Bentham, July 7, 1783, ibid., fols. 353-56). His diary for the last months of 1783 (Add. MSS. 33564, fols. 1-31) shows the sincerity of his feelings for her.
45 To Jeremy Bentham, September 24, 1783, Add. MSS. 33539, fol. 414.
46 To Jeremy Bentham, October 7, 1783, ibid., fols. 418-19. Jeremiah Bentham at first refused to discharge the debt, but eventually did so (To Jeremiah Bentham, April 16, 1784, Add. MSS. 33540, fol. 33).
47 To Jeremy Bentham, January 31, 1784, ibid., fol. 9.
48 It is interesting to note that he was able to find at St. Petersburg an English cabinet maker to construct a model of the latter (Add. MSS. 33564, fol. 7).
49 To Jeremy Bentham, undated, Add. MSS. 33539, fol. 466.
50 Potëmkin had already questioned him about the possibility of building at Kherson large frigates of fifty guns, capable of facing the Turkish fleet (Add. MSS. 33564, fol. 25).
51 To Jeremy Bentham, February 2, 1784, Add. MSS. 33540, fol. 21.
52 The town of Krichev is about 55 miles east of Mogilev.
53 He had already prepared tentative plans for the development of the Ukrainian estate of Colonel Ribeaupierre, one of Potëmkin's aides-de-camp (To Jeremy Bentham, April 18,1784, Add. MSS. 33540, fols. 35-36).
54 To ? Burkitt, March 20, 1784, ibid., fol. 29. Burkitt, apparently a watchmaker, was to have a salary of 600 rubles, and 600 more for traveling expenses.
55 Potemkin to Samuel Bentham, August 28, 1784, ibid., fol. 108; Samuel to Jeremy Bentham, July 29, 1784, ibid., fol. 91.
56 To Jeremy Bentham, July 29, 1784; Jeremiah Bentham to Sir James Harris, October 26, 1784; Dr. C. Brown to ? Benson, April 22, 1785, ibid., fols. 91, 114-15, 153.
57 To Jeremy Bentham, November 9, 1784, January 25, and March 29, 1785, ibid., fols. 131, 136, 143.
58 Dr. Brown to Benson, April 22,1785, ibid., fol. 153.
59 Brown to Jeremiah Bentham, September 7, 1785, ibid., fol. 186.
60 Samuel to Jeremiah Bentham, January 17, 1786, ibid., fol. 237.
61 His journey to Krichev via Dieppe, Paris, Genoa, Leghorn, Constantinople, and thence overland through the Balkans (a remarkable exploit for a man normally so physically unadventurous) can be followed in Add. MSS. 33540, fols. 174-250. His return journey from Krichev to Warsaw in December, 1787, is described in a very interesting diary, which has never been published, in Add. MSS. 33552, fols. 75-97. On his visit in general see Everett, C. W., The Education of Jeremy Bentham (New York, 1931)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chapter viii, passim..
62 Bowring, op. cit., X, 250.
63 “Upon the whole,” wrote one, “I seriously believe that none of the English will ever learn it perfectly.” (A. Beaty to Thomas Walton, February 29, 1786, Add. MSS. 33552, fol. 384).
64 See the complaints of Dr. Debraw, who for some time, till he quarreled with Bentham, supervised the business side of the enterprise, in a paper endorsed “1786 Sept. Dubraw's Statement of the Men's Salaries,” in Add. MSS. 33534, fols. 172-73; cf. Bowring, op. cit., X, 162.
65 For example Francisco de Miranda, the future liberator of Venezuela, records meeting him at Bakhchiserai in the Crimea in January, 1787 (Archivo del General Miranda [Caracas, 1929], II, 233).
66 To Jeremy Bentham, May 27, 1787, Add. MSS. 33540, fols. 365-66; Jeremy to Jeremiah Bentham, June 5 and 25, 1787, ibid., fols. 372, 382.
67 Lansdowne to Jeremiah Bentham, September 1, 1786, ibid., fol. 306.
68 Mordvinov to Samuel Bentham, November 26, 1786, ibid., fol. 310.
69 By the end of 1787 4,000 rubles (tour years’ salary) were owed him. (To Jeremy Bentham, November 26, 1787, ibid., fol. 427).
70 He seriously considered returning to England if he could obtain government backing in building a prison on the Panopticon principle, thus exchanging “the command of an independent Battalion of 900 honest Russian soldiers … for that of even a smaller number of British malefactors.” (To William Pitt, 1787 [draft of a letter which was not sent] ibid., fol. 442).
71 To Samuel Bentham, October 28, 1786, ibid., fol. 310.
72 A. V. Suvorov to Samuel Bentham, September 7, 1787; Mordvinov to Samuel Bentham, October 2, 1787, ibid., fols. 401, 408.
73 On the weakness of the Russian Black Sea fleet see his “List of the Russian Nava! Force in the Black Sea as it stood in Janry- last 1787,” ibid., fol. 470.
74 To Jeremy Bentham (?), October 23, 1788, Add. MSS. 33540, fol. 487.
75 Add. MSS. 33554, fols. 168, 223.
76 Potemkin to Samuel Bentham, October 30, 1788, ibid., fol. 490. Potëmkin had ordered Mordvinov on March 11, 1788 to allow Bentham, though an army officer, to serve on board the Russian ships (Arkhiv Grafov Mordvinovykh, ed. V. A. Bilbasov [St. Petersburg, 1901], I, 425).
77 To Jeremy Bentham, October 23, 1788, Add. MSS. 33540, fols. 488, 489.
78 He retained, however, a financial interest in it. With Mordvinov and two other Russians, he helped to fit out in the Mediterranean a privateer commanded by a Greek, Lambros Katzones. (Mordvinov was in any case anxious to develop Russian privateering in the Mediterranean as the only effective means of diverting Turkish naval strength from the Black Sea [Arkhiv Grafov Mordvinovykh, I, 462-67, 512-13, 528-31, 576-78].) The enterprise was very successful, but for many years afterwards Katzones succeeded in retaining most of the profits (Mordvinov's petition to Paul I of March, 1799, ibid., II, 460-63; General Markov to Mordvinov, April, 1799, ibid., II, 463-64). Probably Bentham never recovered his share of the profits.
79 To Jeremy Bentham, February 7, 1789, Add. MSS. 33541, fol. 12.
80 William Newton to his father, September 21, 1789, ibid., fol. 74.
81 To Jeremy Bentham, December 14, 1789, ibid., fols. 91-92 (printed in Bowring, op. tit., X, 221-23). After his return to England he sent his father an account of the Kirghiz based on his travels amongst them. It seems not to have survived.
82 They did not reach him till February, 1790, at Jassy. When they did, he was too taken up with other business, and with his own amusements, to pay much attention to them (Newton to Samuel Bentham, February 14, 1790, ibid., fol. 113).
83 Shields thought the Okhotsk area “the last place God made,” but believed a profitable trade might be opened to Batavia and the French settlements in India (to Samuel Bentham, September 20, 1790, ibid., fols. 166-67). Interesting details of his difficulties can be found in his letters to Dr. Dick and Bentham, of September 20, and October 23, 1790, ibid., fols. 168, 182-83.
84 To Jeremy Bentham, September 28, 1790, ibid., fol. 171.
85 To Jeremy Bentham, undated, ibid., fol. 105.
86 To Jeremiah Bentham, August 31, 1790, ibid., fol. 155.
87 Enough for another inconclusive love affair with “a girl of one of the best families” (To Jeremy Bentham, July 23, 1790, ibid., fol. 139).
88 To Jeremy Bentham, May 3, 1791, ibid., fol. 248.
89 To Jeremiah Bentham, May 12, 1791, ibid., fol. 251.
90 Ibid., fols. 278-81, 299-300, 379-80.
91 To Jeremy Bentham, June 28, 1790, ibid., fol. 270.
92 M. S. Bentham, op. cit., p. gg.
93 Ibid., p. 102.
94 Ibid., pp. 235-47.
95 This estate, Chërnaja Dolina, was alleged to extend to 66,000 desjatins (which seems an impossibly high figure), and in the early nineteenth century had 140 peasants on it. Apparently Bentham and Skadowskij had each a sixth share, Mordvinov the remaining two-thirds (see two undated papers of 1818-19 in Add. MSS. 33554, fols. 199, soi). It continued to be owned jointly until at least i82g (Bentham to Mordvinov, May 26, 1829, Arkhiv Grafov Mordvinovykh [St. Petersburg, 1902], III, 304.
96 A draft of his proposals, in French, can be found in Add. MSS. 33551, fols. 239-54.
97 George Wilson to Jeremy Bentham, February 26, 1787, Bowring, op. cit., X, 171.