The Art of Travel - Alain De Botton [30]
5.
But in Madrid everything was already known; everything had already been measured. The northern side of the Plaza Mayor is 101 metres, 52 centimetres long. It was built by Juan Gómez de Mora in 1619. The temperature that day was 18.5 degrees centigrade, the wind from the West. The equestrian statue of Philip III in the middle of the Plaza Mayor is 5 metres, 43 centimetres high and was crafted by Giambologna and Pietro Tacca. The guidebook occasionally seemed impatient in presenting its facts. It sent me to the Pontificia de San Miguel, a grey building apparently designed to repel the casual glances of passersby and declared:
The basilica by Bonavia is one of the rare Spanish churches to have been inspired by the eighteenth-century Italian baroque. Its convex facade, designed as an interplay of inward and outward curves, is adorned with fine statues. Above the doorway is a low relief of saints Justus and Pastor, to whom the basilica was previously dedicated. The interior is graceful and elegant with an oval cupola, intersecting ribbed vaulting, flowing cornices and abundant stuccowork.
If my level of curiosity was so far removed from Humboldt's (and my impulse to return to bed so strong), it was in part because of the range of advantages with which any traveller on a factual, as opposed to touristic, mission is blessed.
Facts have utility. Knowing the precise dimensions of the northern edge of the Plaza Mayor will be helpful to architects and students of the work of Juan Gómez de Mora. Accurate measurements of the barometric pressure on an April day in central Madrid will be of use to meteorologists. Humboldt's discovery that the circumference of the Cumanän cactus (Tuna macho) was 1.54 metres was of interest to biologists throughout Europe, who had not suspected that cacti could grow so large.
And with utility comes an (approving) audience. When Humboldt returned to Europe with his South American facts in August 1804, he was besieged and feted by interested parties. Six weeks after arriving in Paris, he read his first travel report to a packed audience at the Institut National. He informed his listeners of the respective water temperatures on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of South America, and of the fifteen different species of monkeys he had recorded in the jungles. He opened twenty cases of fossil and mineral specimens, which a crowd pressed around the podium to see. The Bureau of Longitude Studies asked for a copy of his astronomic facts; the observatory requested his barometric measurements. He was invited to dinner by Chateaubriand and Madame de Staél and admitted to the elite Society of Arcueil, a scientific salon whose members included Laplace, Berthollet and Gay-Lussac. In Britain, his work was read by Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker. Charles Darwin learnt large parts of his findings by heart.
As Humboldt walked around a cactus or stuck his thermometer into the Amazon, his own curiosity must have been guided by a sense of others' interests, and bolstered by it in the inevitable moments when lethargy or sickness threatened. It was fortunate for him that almost every existing fact about South America was wrong or questionable. When he sailed into Havana in November 1800, he discovered that even this most important strategic base for the Spanish Navy had not been placed correctly on the map. He unpacked his measuring instruments and worked out the correct geographical latitude. A grateful Spanish admiral invited him to dinner.
6.
Sitting in a café on the Plaza Provincia, I acknowledged the impossibility of new factual discoveries. My guidebook enforced the point with a lecture:
The neoclassical facade of the Iglesia de San Francisco el Grande is by Sabatini, but the building itself a circular edifice with six radial chapels and a large dome 33 metres j 10$ feet wide, is by Francisco Cabezas.
Anything I learnt would have to be justified by private benefit rather than by the interest of others. My discoveries would have to enliven me; they would have in some way to prove ‘life-enhancing'.