Baron Ferdinand Petrovich von Wrangell conducted DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL ‘on a comprehensive tour of the whole of the establishment’ of the Russian American Fir Company at ‘always…beautiful’ Fort Ross

+++  ’I have been informed that you, worthy sir, intend visiting the Russian settlement Ross in the course of the summer and therefor I take this opportunity with special pleasure to inform you of my arrival here, and propose that you grant me the pleasure of welcoming such a dear guest in this solitary region.  ++  ’As you probably will pass San Francisco, I take the liberty of asking you to find out sometime if it would be possible to send a Russian company ship now to San Francisco without having to pay the usual harbor fee as the boat carries no goods and only has to load salted meat and salt. . . . . You would do a great favor to the Company if you could obtain a permit from the California government.  ++  ’Besides this I ask you for 14,000 pounds of English salt which our ship could collect from San Francisco to bring to Bodega, or even part of this quantity.  In case His Excellency the Governor is staying in your neighbourhood at the moment I beg you to assure him at a suitable time of my sincere esteem for his complete and distinguished personal dignity. . . . . I shall seize the first opportunity with true pleasure. . . . to send my written respects to him.  ++  ’As I only arrived today and am in a hurry to send off the messenger to you and as I hope at the same time to welcome you soon here, I shall be brief.’  ++  On August 3, Don Guillermo announced to his father-in-law that he was off next day to Fort Ross, by special invitation to visit ‘el Baron Wrangell, Gobernador de las Colonias Russo-Americanas.’ ++  Always Ross was beautiful, in site and construction, but for the visit of the Governor special decorations and preparations had been made.  The Baron received the friend of Russia with old-world courtesy, and conducted Hartnell on a comprehensive tour of the whole establishment.  Near the anchorage were a few buildings for customs officials, pilots, and others with business at the water’s edge.  Here also the Englishman saw huge warehouses bursting with produce and naval stores.  Still on beach level, a little way along a stream, were workshops for ship and house carpenters, blacksmiths, and coopers.  An ascent of one hundred sixteen steps straight up the bluff led to the fort itself.  The situation was strategic, the view breathtaking.  +++

DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL translated + interpreted Baron von Wrangell’s ‘masterpiece of diplomatic language’ to Mexican Governor Don Manuel Victoria

+++  Headed “Northwest Coast of America, Port of New Archangel” this was the message:  ++  ’SENOR:  ++  ’Presuming on the proximity in which we live and the friendly relations always existing between that country – now made happy under the administration of your illustrious person – and the colonies of the Russian-American company under the protection of His Imperial Majesty, I perform an agreeable duty when I congratulate you on your promotion to the government of a province which till now has only lacked internal peace and quiet, blessings which heaven grants to comfort countries whose administrators are possessed of the brilliant qualities which distinguish you.  ++  Mr. Khlebnikov, my representative, is a person enjoying the confidence of the Company and is next in importance to the Governor of our colonies.  It shall greatly please me if, by a favorable reception, you give him the opportunity again to receive the consideration he has enjoyed in past visits to California.  ++  Your Excellency undoubtedly remembers the friendly relations existing for many years between California and the Russo-American Company, and consequent advantages to both parties.  Abundant produce from the fields and salt-pits of California have enabled this country to share its surplus with other nations, to their mutual advantage.  The boats of the Company often have returned from California ports with cargoes of wheat, cured meat, and salt; and even the waters surrounding its coast have contributed to reciprocal gains by the hunting of sea otter, carried out by the Company’s boats with permission of the Government of California, given in exchange for arrangements most advantageous to that Government.  ++  The object of the mission entrusted to Mr. Khlebnikov, representing the Company, is that of re-establishing on solid and lasting foundations these friendly relations with the Government symbolized by your Excellency.  ++  The certainty I feel that, after your Excellency has weighed the unquestionable advantages accruing in California from the proposal I have the honor to make to you through Mr. Khlebnikov, you will not hesitate to allow us to hunt sea otter along the coast of California.  This certainty, which I so firmly entertain, has led me to order our representative to take on board the frigate ‘Baikal’ a certain number of Aleutians. . . who have earned throughout the world the title of supreme otter hunters.’ . . . +++  

Baron Ferdinand Petrovich von Wrangell, Russian American colonial governor, relied on WILLIAM HARTNELL’s correspondence with Kyrill Khlebnikov for California political information

+++   During 1830 two events occurred, one in California and one in Alaska, which gave increasing hope to the Russian and the Englishman that their dream of international amity might become reality.  The distinguished Baron von Wrangell succeeded a colorless personage named Christiakov as manager of the Russian-American Company and governor of all Russian colonies in America.  Almost simultaneously, the order came from Mexico City that Governor Echeandia was to be displaced by Manuel Victoria, of whom good was said and much was hoped by Echeandia’s many enemies.  ++  Ferdinand Petrovich von Wrangell, thirty-six years old at the time of his appointment, knew the north as did few living men.  A decade previously he had commanded an exploring expedition to the Arctic which consumed four years.  He shared the conviction of Resanov and Baranov that control of Alaska could mean control of the Pacific, and believed that Fort Ross in California was a model for colonization anywhere in the world.  Like Baranov, he thought largely, was dedicated to the service of the czar of the all the Russias, and came to depend on Kyrill Khlebnikov for working out the details of his extensive ideas.  ++  Khlebnikov’s correspondence with William Hartnell became the source of von Wrangell’s unerring information about the political situation in California.  Throughout the years of his governorship (1830 – 1836), the baron performed a series of diplomatic coups which, for their timing, showed access to inside information.  His headquarters were at Sitka of course, but he made frequent inspection tours to outlying Russian territory.  Sometimes he sent Khlebnikov, when it was impossible for him personally to make an appearance among his hard-working subjects.  ++  The first instance of inside information prompting von Wrangell to decisive action occurred on October 20, 1830.  He wrote to Don Manuel Victoria, who was then ‘on his way’ to succeed ‘Echeandia as governor of Baja and Alta California.  The Russian’s letter, carried by Khlebnikov aboard the ‘Baikal,’ must have reached Victoria immediately upon his assumption of office, and is a masterpiece of diplomatic language.  It was translated and interpreted to the new Governor by William Hartnell himself.  At the same time, the Englishman introduced His Excellency to the Russian envoy, Kyrill Khlebnikov. . . +++

Correspondence between Russian Captain Khlebnikov + Californian DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL flourished between 1825 – 1830

+++  . . .  ’From there she takes large quantities of articles which, though they ought to belong exclusively to Mexican commerce, do benefit these intruders alone; and moreover they have intercourse with the tribes of the interior, teaching them the art of war, perhaps with the design of obtaining their friendship either to rob the nation of better lands or to wage a desolating war.’  ++  Echeandia wrote the minister of war in Mexico City for instructions regarding these “Russian intruders.”  He claimed that, regardless of courtesies shown them by himself and Arguello, his predecessor, they were  acting in bad faith, enticing Indian neophytes away from missions near Ross, taking sea otter and seal from Mexican territory, and committing other irregularities which he enumerated before asking for an armed vessel to patrol the coast from Cape San Lucas northward to forty-two degrees.  In June a promise came from the junta, but not the warship.  ++  During the remainder of Echeandia’s administration, relations with the Russians became more strained than ever.  Even for wheat cargoes, formerly picked up in Alta California, Russian ships had to sail all the way to Chile and back again.  The total expense of maintaining the colony of Ross under such conditions mounted to an average of 45,000 rubles a year from 1825 to 1830, while the annual income from all sources dropped to less than 13,000 rubles.  ++  The friends, Khlebnikov and Hartnell, did not see much of each other during this troubled time, but their correspondence flourished.  The Californian clung to his conviction that friendly relations between their two governments were not ended, merely suspended, and could be resumed upon expiration of Echeandia’s term of office.  With trading dull, the Russian took time to improve some property that he had secured for himself in Ross, seventy acres in all.  ’El Rancho Khlebnikov’ became a miniature community, with its own house, barracks, Aleut dormitory, community kitchen, bathhouse, warehouse, workshop, mill, threshing floor, corrals and so on.  Khlebnikov pastured a variety of livestock, and cleared land to plant beans, corn, and tobacco, besides the usual kitchen garden and orchard. . . . +++

DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL suggested to John Begg + Co. in Lima that seal + sea-otter trade with Russians would help business

+++  But Khlebnikov, representing the Russian-American Company, came too soon to California.  The Spanish territory was not officially open to foreign trade.  The ‘Buldakov’ received a rebuff at Yerba Buena; farther south, at Monterey, Governor Sala exchanged grain for Khlebnikov’s cargo, but did not encourage a return visit.  The Russian’s request for sea-otter and seal-hunting privileges he referred to the king of Spain, knowing that years might elapse before a ruling came from across the war-torn world.  ++  To Khlebnikov’s countrymen, along with everyone else, California’s ports were opened by Mexican conquest in 1822.  From that year to 1825, during the governorship of friendly Luis Arguello (brother of Resanov’s fiancee), there was frequent exchange of commodities between the ‘hijos del pais’ and their neighbours from the north.  ++  Californians usually traded clothing, yard goods, steel, liquor, and foodstuffs for furs of all kinds.  Governor Arguello granted hunting as well as trading privileges to Russians in California; and William Hartnell made the suggestion to Begg and Company in Lima, as early as February 1824, that a seal and sea-otter trade with the Russians could become an important part of their business. ++  Mr. Begg did not share the younger man’s vision, but Mr. Brotherston wrote from London later in the year that ‘he’ would be interested in receiving a sample shipment of furs from the west coast “to try what they are worth” in the English capital.  He had heard of the millions made by Russians in trade with the Chinese, who specially valued the the sleekness of sea otter, which abounded in California waters.  ++  Only a change in California governors prevented the project from immediate development.  With the end of an administration friendly to the Russians, new trading methods must be evolved.  The only way to circumvent Echeandia’s harsh restrictions lay in the formation of Russian-Mexican partnerships.  Former Governor Arguello and Captain Cooper, as owner and master, respectively, of the ‘Rover,’ for three years engaged in a Sitka-Canton-Monterey trading venture with silent Russian partners. … +++ 

Alexander Baranov’s Sitka library was an impressive room adorned with furniture, books + paintings once owned by aristocratic Nicolai Petrovich Rezanov

+++  Nine vessels were built in Russian America, nine bought from foreigners.  Baranov received supplies worth 2,800,000 rubles, but sold 3,648,002 worth of furs in Canton and 16,376,696 in Siberian trade by way of Irkutsk.  ”In the cash accounts involving millions I found not one single discrepancy.”  This amazed the orderly Khlebnikov because of Baranov’s habit of writing on mere scraps of paper and keeping them higgledy-piggledy.  ++  When the two Russians first met, Baranov’s appearance actually had startled the young accountant who would become his Boswell.  The great man was small, bald, and scrappily dressed.  For company, like a Winship from Boston, or Astor’s representative from New York, he would don a rusty black suit and ill-fitting wig.  With initial suspicion he would interview the foreigner in his Sitka library.  This was an impressive room adorned with furniture, books, and paintings once owned by the aristocratic Resanov.  From a dais at one end musicians sometimes played stringed instruments, and sang the sad and endless songs of the steppes, in mood close to American cowboy laments.  Sometimes the piano would be played, the one brought round the Horn by Captain Joseph O’Cain for his Russian friend.  ++  ”Honest Joe,” an Irishman from Boston, was the first foreigner to allay Baranov’s suspicion.  Both were blunt men, impatient of diplomatic palaver.  To others who sought a similar relationship, Baranov’s half-Indian daughter Irina would say: “There is only one way of making my father tell his secrets.  He is frank and open only when others are, too.  Father will hide nothing from you when he knows what you want.  Stop playing a game with him.”  ++  Once Irina’s advice had been followed, and confidence established, Baranov’s hospitality became overwhelming, as when Captain John Ebbets arrived with a welcome cargo and business proposals from John Jacob Astor.  Since Astor was sending expeditions by land and sea to found an American settlement on the Columbia, he desired friendly relations with his Russian neighbors.  Envoy Ebbets, successful in the initial interview, found himself night after night answering salvos from a guard of honor, applauding the ‘Pyesnya Baranova’ (Baranov’s Hunting Song), eating strange food, and drinking “raw rum and boiling punch as strong as sulphur.” … +++

DON GUILLLERMO HARTNELL had to tell his ‘comadre’ Dona Concepcion de Arguello y Moraga that her lover Count Resanov had died long ago in Siberia

+++  Dona Concepcion was becoming a legendary figure in Monterey.  Everyone called her ‘La Beata’ because she embodied faithfulness, and spent the years of waiting in doing good works.  Her worldly character had fallen away, and she now seemed like a saint.  ++  From Khlebnikov, Hartnell learned why the count never returned to claim his bride.  It became Don Guillermo’s sad duty to tell his ‘comadre’ that her lover had died long ago.  Resanov had fallen from a horse, somewhere in Siberia, and died of his injuries before reaching St. Petersburg.  His sole purpose in riding across that desolate waste was to ask the czar for permission to wed Dona Concepcion de Arguello y Moraga.  ++  Khlebnikov had other tales to tell of Resanov, of his fruitless mission to Japan, for instance, when he tried with his diplomatic skill to open her ports to Russian trade.  This immediately preceded the voyage to California.  Khlebnikov never had known a good audience such as he met in Hartnell’s home.  Always he had been a listener in councils of the great.  The new role stimulated him.  He even confided to Don Guillermo the project nearest to his heart, of telling to posterity the fabulous story of Alexander Baranov.  Nowhere could it be found in full, save in the notes he himself had kept during nine years of close association with the Lord of Alaska.  ++  From these notes the Englishman learned for himself what courage, what overcoming of obstacles, had gone into Baranov’s extension of the Russian empire.  He saw the figures  assembled by Khlebnikov for Baranov’s successor.  From seasonal seal-hunting camps in the Aleutians, the company’s holdings had expanded in twenty-one years to twenty-four additional year-around establishments, ranging in size from small island stations to New Archangel (Sitka), and representing an investment of two and a half million rubles.  In several places, including Sitka, bloody massacres had been perpetrated by Kalosh Indians.  And everywhere in the settlement north of Fort Ross, the Russians battled fierce weather and barren soil merely to exist.  ++  Khlebnikov claimed that the financial worth of the Russian-American Fur Company increased from five and a half millions (gold rubles) during Baranov’s administration to seven millions in all.  +++  

At the time of DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL’s arrival in Alta California, nothing had been heard from the charlatan Count Resanov for 16 years

+++  The czarist conception of caste kept him tongue-tied during first acquaintance.  But behind his thick glasses, his braIn was busy, reconstructing the romance that was known as well at the Court of St. Petersburg as in the little community of Monterey.  It had flowered before his own arrival in North America.  ++  As a courtier to the mad Czar Paul, Count Resanov first became known to the world.  With supreme diplomacy (and instinctive knowledge of psychiatry) he interested his master in sponsoring the Russian-American Company, and secured his signature on the charter of that dominant firm.  Said Khlebnikov to his English host: “Every other trading firm in the Pacific was ordered to merge with the new or cease business.  The North Pacific was acknowledged as Russian and the new company planned to rule it after the manner in which the British East India company always has controlled its holding.”  ++  When the crazy czar was assassinated at the turn of the century, Alexander I ascended the throne.  With enthusiasm he confirmed the charter, and Resanov’s sun commenced to rise in full effulgence.  A few years later, in 1806, he came as accredited ambassador from Alexander to the capital of Alta California to secure hunting and trading privileges along the Spanish-held coast line of North America.  ++  One of the great love stories commenced when this widower in his forties first met the ‘commandante”s daughter, a girl of sixteen or so.  LIfe in California seemed dull to Chonita.  To this man of the world she complained: “We have a good soil, a warm climate, plenty of grain and cattle, but nothing else.”  ++  Visions of a brilliant future at the Court of St. Petersburg danced before her eyes as she bade her lover farewell.  The imperial chamberlain must sail out across the world to ask permission of his master before he could marry the Spanish girl.  He would plead that she was highborn and beautiful; that marriage into a first family of California could seal a friendship between Russian-Americans and Spanish-Californians.  No real obstacle loomed to halt the course of international romance.  Chonita promised to await his return.  Here Hartnell could take up the story.  At the time of his own arrival in California sixteen years later, nothing had been heard from Count Resanov. +++

DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL befriended Russian-Latvian Captain Kyrill Khlebnikov of the Russian-American Company

+++  William Hartnell knew the Russian settlements only through hearsay.  But as he progressed in his study of the language, he learned a great deal about the founding of the czar’s Pacific empire from a Russian who became his friend, often stayed with him, and would talk far into the night of the subject so interesting to them both.  ++  This was Kyrill Khlebnikov, the man of all men living who knew most about Russian America.  His information had come straight from the lips of Baranov, the already legendary founder of that vast empire, all-powerful manager of the Russian-American Company, and colonial governor from 1799 to 1819; also, from his own experience, first as company clerk, then supercargo, then captain of company ships sailing to all Russian ports in the Pacific.  ++  Khlebnikov, penetrative in intelligence, comprehensive in conversation, was undistinguished in appearance.  Although in the thirties when Hartnell met him, he still resembled the fair-haired bespectacled, very correct young man from Riga,” (according to Chevigny’s ‘Lord of Alaska,’ p. 235), who became chief accountant for Baranov at Sitka in 1810.  Since he was discreet to the point of secretiveness, few besides his English friend suspected the ever active imagination and grandiose plans hidden behind thick glasses.  The disguise was complete, and almost impenetrable.  ++  At first the Khlebnikov-Hartnell conversations were more like lessons.  The Russian had learned sufficient English to act as Baranov’s interpreter on more than one occasion; and from a German trader in Sitka the Englishman procured a German-Russian conversation book filled with common phrases which he soon mastered.  Presently there could be an interchange of real thought.  Letters, books, and newspaper articles they sent to each other for many years, increasingly after the Russian took up residence at Fort Ross.  ++  Khlebnikov sometimes shared Hartnell hospitality with Dona Concepcion Arguello, godmother to Guillermito.  At first he found it hard to believe that a humble accountant like himself could move in the same sphere as the daughter of a Spanish grandee affianced to the courtly, highborn Russian Resanov. . . +++

‘LA CASA ARNEL,’ the Hartnell-de la Guerra home in Monterey ‘became a showplace,’ with English, Russian + ‘an astonishing number’ of ‘honored guests’

+++  After Hartnell’s return from South America his business decreased in volume and he, by necessity, managed it alone.  His former associates, McCulloch, Logan, and Fraser, no longer were in the country; and David Spence went into business for himself when his contract time expired.  He stayed on in Monterey, operating a general store and engaging in various trading ventures.  Canny Spence recognized opportunity when it occurred, but took few real chances; he worked hard and prospered greatly. He remained good friends with his former employer, but Dona Teresa never forgave him for “deserting” them.  ++  Perhaps her coolness arose, though unadmittedly, from Spence’s low opinion of women.  They were classed in his mind with prolific animals like pigs.  Once in a letter to Hartnell he announced the arrival of a new litter to their prize sow before telling of the birth of a new baby to Dona Teresa.  This may have seemed more important to the Scotsman, living in a land of many children and few pigs, but the mother’s indignation was endless.  ++  However much Dona Teresa and her husband differed in feelings toward Don David, they both enjoyed the consideration he showed them, the fine vegetables, fruit trees, and flowering shrubs planted with his own hands around their house.  Through Spence’s early industry and the wonderful soil and air of the seaport, the Hartnell home became a show place.  Every visitor to the capital of Alta California must see it and, from one year’s end to another, an astonishing number entered ‘la casa Arnel’ as honored guests.  ++  A portion of Captain Beechey’s ‘Narrative” is devoted to the Russians he met in California.  With several, he shared guest quarters in the Hartnell home.  This is not strange, since Don Guillermo seems to have been the one man in Monterey who attempted more than a few words with the Russians in their own language.  Russian ships frequently came into the harbor on business from the Russian-American Fur Company’s headquarters at Sitka in Alaska, or from the flourishing colony at Fort Ross, not more than fifty leagues up the coast.  +++