The Foreign Service Journal, May 2009

Tolstoy’s Yasnaya Polyana estate in Oc- tober 1868, where the two men went hunting together. While Tolstoy fin- ished his work on War and Peace , Schuyler helped reorganize his library. During his tour in Moscow, Schuy- ler was a frequent guest of Prince Vladimir Odoyevsky’s literary salon, meeting many of Russia’s leading writ- ers and thinkers. Schuyler also devel- oped a passion for exotic travel that would continue throughout his career. During the summer of 1868, he took time off to journey down the Volga to Orenburg by steamboat, before cross- ing the Urals by carriage and going as far as Kirgizia. And in October 1870 he visited the Grand Duchy of Fin- land, where his work on the English- language edition of the Kalevala was already well known. Not long after Secretary of State Hamilton Fish was sworn in, Schuyler discovered to his great dismay in May 1869 that he had lost his position. Eager to remain in Russia, that No- vember he became consul in Reval (now Tallinn, Estonia), only a few months before the post was closed as a cost-cutting measure. His next assign- ment was as the secretary to the U.S. legation in St. Petersburg, from April 1870 to July 1876. During his long tenure there, Schuyler spent at least 30 months as the chargé d’affaires. And since none of the U.S. ministers for whom he worked (Andrew G. Curtin, James L. Orr, Marshall Jewell and George H. Boker) knew Russian or French, Schuyler was an essential part of the mission for more than six years. Using the capital as a base, Schuy- ler continued to travel extensively across Russia and Central Asia. He provided detailed information on his trips to the National Geographic Soci- ety and wrote a two-volume trave- logue, Turkestan: Notes of a Journey in Russian Turkestan, Khokand, Buk- hara and Kuldja (1876). He also somehow found time to begin research on his two-volume biography Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia , which would be published in 1884. An Eventful Tenure in Constantinople After nine years in the Russian Em- pire, Schuyler became the U.S. consul general in Constantinople — while also assigned to be the secretary for the legation — in 1876. Just before taking up his duties, Schuyler met Gertrude Wallace King, the daughter of Colum- bia College’s recently deceased presi- dent, in Paris. The couple wed on July 12, 1877; it is not known whether they had any children. Schuyler became an international figure known across Europe — and feted by the British royal family, among others — for his work in documenting Ottoman atrocities committed during the 1876 Bulgarian uprising. In fact, Schuyler’s detailed report served as a basis for the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, providing the Russian Em- pire with “just cause” to protect fellow Slavs in the Balkans. By February 1878, the victorious Russian Army was at the gates of Con- stantinople, bringing with it the U.S. military attaché to Russia, Francis Vin- ton Greene. For more than a month, Schuyler and Greene worked together, becoming friends. Schuyler developed an interest in Finnish after being asked to edit the first U.S. edition of Finland’s national epic, the Kalevala . 38 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 0 9