POLAND AND THE POLES.
THE works of no composer of equal importance bear so striking a national impress as those of Chopin. It would, however, be an error to attribute this simply and solely to the superior force of the Polish musician's patriotism. The same force of patriotism in an Italian, Frenchman, German, or Englishman would not have produced a similar result. Characteristics such as distinguish Chopin's music presuppose a nation as peculiarly endowed, constituted, situated, and conditioned, as the Polish—a nation with a history as brilliant and dark, as fair and hideous, as romantic and tragic. The peculiarities of the peoples of western Europe have been considerably modified, if not entirely levelled, by centuries of international intercourse; the peoples of the eastern part of the Continent, on the other hand, have, until recent times, kept theirs almost intact, foreign influences penetrating to no depth, affecting indeed no more than the aristocratic few, and them only superficially. At any rate, the Slavonic races have not been moulded by the Germanic and Romanic races as these latter have moulded each other: east and west remain still apart—strangers, if not enemies. Seeing how deeply rooted Chopin's music is in the national soil, and considering how little is generally known about Poland and the Poles, the necessity of paying in this case more attention to the land of the artist's birth and the people to which he belongs than is usually done in biographies of artists, will be admitted by all who wish to understand fully and appreciate rightly the poet-musician and his works. But while taking note of what is of national origin in Chopin's music, we must be careful not to ascribe to this origin too much. Indeed, the fact that the personal individuality of Chopin is as markedly differentiated, as exclusively self-contained, as the national individuality of Poland, is oftener overlooked than the master's national descent and its significance with regard to his artistic production. And now, having made the reader acquainted with the raison d'etre of this proem, I shall plunge without further preliminaries in medias res.
The palmy days of Poland came to an end soon after the extinction of the dynasty of the Jagellons in 1572. So early as 1661 King John Casimir warned the nobles, whose insubordination and want of solidity, whose love of outside glitter and tumult, he deplored, that, unless they remedied the existing evils, reformed their pretended free elections, and renounced their personal privileges, the noble kingdom would become the prey of other nations. Nor was this the first warning. The Jesuit Peter Skarga (1536—1612), an indefatigable denunciator of the vices of the ruling classes, told them in 1605 that their dissensions would bring them under the yoke of those who hated them, deprive them of king and country, drive them into exile, and make them despised by those who formerly feared and respected them. But these warnings remained unheeded, and the prophecies were fulfilled to the letter. Elective kingship, pacta conventa, [Footnote: Terms which a candidate for the throne had to subscribe on his election. They were of course dictated by the electors—i.e., by the selfish interest of one class, the szlachta (nobility), or rather the most powerful of them.] liberum veto, [Footnote: The right of any member to stop the proceedings of the Diet by pronouncing the words "Nie pozwalam" (I do not permit), or others of the same import.] degradation of the burgher class, enslavement of the peasantry, and other devices of an ever-encroaching nobility, transformed the once powerful and flourishing commonwealth into one "lying as if broken-backed on the public highway; a nation anarchic every fibre of it, and under the feet and hoofs of travelling neighbours." [Footnote: Thomas Carlyle, Frederick the Great, vol. viii., p. 105.] In the rottenness of the social organism, venality, unprincipled ambition, and religious intolerance found a congenial soil; and favoured by and favouring foreign intrigues and interferences, they bore deadly fruit—confederations, civil wars, Russian occupation of the country and dominion over king, council, and diet, and the beginning of the end, the first partition (1772) by which Poland lost a third of her territory with five millions of inhabitants. Even worse, however, was to come. For the partitioning powers—Russia, Prussia, and Austria—knew how by bribes and threats to induce the Diet not only to sanction the spoliation, but also so to alter the constitution as to enable them to have a permanent influence over the internal affairs of the Republic.
The Pole Francis Grzymala remarks truly that if instead of some thousand individuals swaying the destinies of Poland, the whole nation had enjoyed equal rights, and, instead of being plunged in darkness and ignorance, the people had been free and consequently capable of feeling and thinking, the national cause, imperilled by the indolence and perversity of one part of the citizens, would have been saved by those who now looked on without giving a sign of life. The "some thousands" here spoken of are of course the nobles, who had grasped all the political power and almost all the wealth of the nation, and, imitating the proud language of Louis XIV, could, without exaggeration, have said: "L'etat c'est nous." As for the king and the commonalty, the one had been deprived of almost all his prerogatives, and the other had become a rightless rabble of wretched peasants, impoverished burghers, and chaffering Jews. Rousseau, in his Considerations sur le gouvernement de Pologne, says pithily that the three orders of which the Republic of Poland was composed were not, as had been so often and illogically stated, the equestrian order, the senate, and the king, but the nobles who were everything, the burghers who were nothing, and the peasants who were less than nothing. The nobility of Poland differed from that of Other countries not only in its supreme political and social position, but also in its numerousness, character, and internal constitution.
[Footnote: The statistics concerning old Poland are provokingly contradictory. One authority calculates that the nobility comprised 120,000 families, or one fourteenth of the population (which, before the first partition, is variously estimated at from fifteen to twenty millions); another counts only 100,000 families; and a third states that between 1788 and 1792 (i.e., after the first partition) there were 38,314 families of nobles.]
All nobles were equal in rank, and as every French soldier was said to carry a marshal's staff in his knapsack, so every Polish noble was born a candidate for the throne. This equality, however, was rather de jure than de facto; legal decrees could not fill the chasm which separated families distinguished by wealth and fame—such as the Sapiehas, Radziwills, Czartoryskis, Zamoyskis, Potockis, and Branickis—from obscure noblemen whose possessions amount to no more than "a few acres of land, a sword, and a pair of moustaches that extend from one ear to the other," or perhaps amounted only to the last two items. With some insignificant exceptions, the land not belonging to the state or the church was in the hands of the nobles, a few of whom had estates of the extent of principalities. Many of the poorer amongst the nobility attached themselves to their better-situated brethren, becoming their dependents and willing tools. The relation of the nobility to the peasantry is well characterised in a passage of Mickiewicz's epic poem Pan Tadeusz, where a peasant, on humbly suggesting that the nobility suffered less from the measures of their foreign rulers than his own class, is told by one of his betters that this is a silly remark, seeing that peasants, like eels, are accustomed to being skinned, whereas the well-born are accustomed to live in liberty.
Nothing illustrates so well the condition of a people as the way in which justice is administered. In Poland a nobleman was on his estate prosecutor as well as judge, and could be arrested only after conviction, or, in the case of high-treason, murder, and robbery, if taken in the act. And whilst the nobleman enjoyed these high privileges, the peasant had, as the law terms it, no facultatem standi in judicio, and his testimony went for nothing in the courts of justice. More than a hundred laws in the statutes of Poland are said to have been unfavourable to these poor wretches. In short, the peasant was quite at the mercy of the privileged class, and his master could do with him pretty much as he liked, whipping and selling not excepted, nor did killing cost more than a fine of a few shillings. The peasants on the state domains and of the clergy were, however, somewhat better off; and the burghers, too, enjoyed some shreds of their old privileges with more or less security. If we look for a true and striking description of the comparative position of the principal classes of the population of Poland, we find it in these words of a writer of the eighteenth century: "Polonia coelum nobilium, paradisus clericorum, infernus rusticorum."
The vast plain of Poland, although in many places boggy and sandy, is on the whole fertile, especially in the flat river valleys, and in the east at the sources of the Dnieper; indeed, it is so much so that it has been called the granary of Europe. But as the pleasure-loving gentlemen had nobler pursuits to attend to, and the miserable peasants, with whom it was a saying that only what they spent in drink was their own, were not very anxious to work more and better than they could help, agriculture was in a very neglected condition. With manufacture and commerce it stood not a whit better. What little there was, was in the hands of the Jews and foreigners, the nobles not being allowed to meddle with such base matters, and the degraded descendants of the industrious and enterprising ancient burghers having neither the means nor the spirit to undertake anything of the sort. Hence the strong contrast of wealth and poverty, luxury and distress, that in every part of Poland, in town and country, struck so forcibly and painfully all foreign travellers. Of the Polish provinces that in 1773 came under Prussian rule we read that—
the country people hardly knew such a thing as bread, many
had never in their life tasted such a delicacy; few villages
had an oven. A weaving-loom was rare; the spinning-wheel
unknown. The main article of furniture, in this bare scene of
squalor, was the crucifix and vessel of holy-water under
it....It was a desolate land without discipline, without law,
without a master. On 9,000 English square miles lived 500,000
souls: not 55 to the square mile. [Footnote: Carlyle.
Frederick the Great, vol. x., p. 40.]
And this poverty and squalor were not to be found only in one part of Poland, they seem to have been general. Abbe de Mably when seeing, in 1771, the misery of the country (campagne) and the bad condition of the roads, imagined himself in Tartary. William Coxe, the English historian and writer of travels, who visited Poland after the first partition, relates, in speaking of the district called Podlachia, that he visited between Bjelsk and Woyszki villages in which there was nothing but the bare walls, and he was told at the table of the ——— that knives, forks, and spoons were conveniences unknown to the peasants. He says he never saw—
a road so barren of interesting scenes as that from Cracow to
Warsaw—for the most part level, with little variation of
surface; chiefly overspread with tracts of thick forest;
where open, the distant horizon was always skirted with wood
(chiefly pines and firs, intermixed with beech, birch, and
small oaks). The occasional breaks presented some pasture-
ground, with here and there a few meagre crops of corn. The
natives were poorer, humbler, and more miserable than any
people we had yet observed in the course of our travels:
whenever we stopped they flocked around us in crowds; and,
asking for charity, used the most abject gestures....The
Polish peasants are cringing and servile in their expressions
of respect; they bowed down to the ground; took off their
hats or caps and held them in their hands till we were out of
sight; stopped their carts on the first glimpse of our
carriage; in short, their whole behaviour gave evident
symptoms of the abject servitude under which they groaned.
[FOOTNOTE: William Coxe, Travels in Poland, Russia, Sweden,
and Denmark (1784—90).]
The Jews, to whom I have already more than once alluded, are too important an element in the population of Poland not to be particularly noticed. They are a people within a people, differing in dress as well as in language, which is a jargon of German-Hebrew. Their number before the first partition has been variously estimated at from less than two millions to fully two millions and a half in a population of from fifteen to twenty millions, and in 1860 there were in Russian Poland 612,098 Jews in a population of 4,867,124.
[FOOTNOTE: According to Charles Forster (in Pologne, a volume of the historical series entitled L'univers pittoresque, published by Firmin Didot freres of Paris), who follows Stanislas Plater, the population of Poland within the boundaries of 1772 amounted to 20,220,000 inhabitants, and was composed of 6,770,000 Poles, 7,520,000 Russians (i.e., White and Red Russians), 2,110,000 Jews, 1,900,000 Lithuanians, 1,640,000 Germans, 180,000 Muscovites (i.e., Great Russians), and 100,000 Wallachians.]
They monopolise [says Mr. Coxe] the commerce and trade of the
country, keep inns and taverns, are stewards to the nobility,
and seem to have so much influence that nothing can be bought
or sold without the intervention of a Jew.
Our never-failing informant was particularly struck with the number and usefulness of the Jews in Lithuania when he visited that part of the Polish Republic in 1781—
If you ask for an interpreter, they bring you a Jew; if you
want post-horses, a Jew procures them and a Jew drives them;
if you wish to purchase, a Jew is your agent; and this
perhaps is the only country in Europe where Jews cultivate
the ground; in passing through Lithuania, we frequently saw
them engaged in sowing, reaping, mowing, and other works of
husbandry.
Having considered the condition of the lower classes, we will now turn our attention to that of the nobility. The very unequal distribution of wealth among them has already been mentioned. Some idea of their mode of life may be formed from the account of the Starost Krasinski's court in the diary (year 1759) of his daughter, Frances Krasinska. [FOOTNOTE: A starost (starosta) is the possessor of a starosty (starostwo)—i.e., a castle and domains conferred on a nobleman for life by the crown.] Her description of the household seems to justify her belief that there were not many houses in Poland that surpassed theirs in magnificence. In introducing to the reader the various ornaments and appendages of the magnate's court, I shall mention first, giving precedence to the fair sex, that there lived under the supervision of a French governess six young ladies of noble families. The noblemen attached to the lord of the castle were divided into three classes. In the first class were to be found sons of wealthy, or, at least, well-to-do families who served for honour, and came to the court to acquire good manners and as an introduction to a civil or military career. The starost provided the keep of their horses, and also paid weekly wages of two florins to their grooms. Each of these noble-men had besides a groom another servant who waited on his master at table, standing behind his chair and dining on what he left on his plate. Those of the second class were paid for their services and had fixed duties to perform. Their pay amounted to from 300 to 1,000 florins (a florin being about the value of sixpence), in addition to which gratuities and presents were often given. Excepting the chaplain, doctor, and secretary, they did not, like the preceding class, have the honour of sitting with their master at table. With regard to this privilege it is, however, worth noticing that those courtiers who enjoyed it derived materially hardly any advantage from it, for on week-days wine was served only to the family and their guests, and the dishes of roast meat were arranged pyramidally, so that fowl and venison went to those at the head of the table, and those sitting farther down had to content themselves with the coarser kinds of meat—with beef, pork, &c. The duties of the third class of followers, a dozen young men from fifteen to twenty years of age, consisted in accompanying the family on foot or on horseback, and doing their messages, such as carrying presents and letters of invitation. The second and third classes were under the jurisdiction of the house-steward, who, in the case of the young gentlemen, was not sparing in the application of the cat. A strict injunction was laid on all to appear in good clothes. As to the other servants of the castle, the authoress thought she would find it difficult to specify them; indeed, did not know even the number of their musicians, cooks, Heyducs, Cossacks, and serving maids and men. She knew, however, that every day five tables were served, and that from morning to night two persons were occupied in distributing the things necessary for the kitchen. More impressive even than a circumstantial account like this are briefly-stated facts such as the following: that the Palatine Stanislas Jablonowski kept a retinue of 2,300 soldiers and 4,000 courtiers, valets, armed attendants, huntsmen, falconers, fishers, musicians, and actors; and that Janusz, Prince of Ostrog, left at his death a majorat of eighty towns and boroughs, and 2,760 villages, without counting the towns and villages of his starosties. The magnates who distinguished themselves during the reign of Stanislas Augustus (1764—1795) by the brilliance and magnificence of their courts were the Princes Czartoryski and Radziwill, Count Potocki, and Bishop Soltyk of Cracovia. Our often-quoted English traveller informs us that the revenue of Prince Czartoryski amounted to nearly 100,000 pounds per annum, and that his style of living corresponded with this income. The Prince kept an open table at which there rarely sat down less than from twenty to thirty persons. [FOOTNOTE: Another authority informs us that on great occasions the Czartoryskis received at their table more than twenty thousand persons.] The same informant has much to say about the elegance and luxury of the Polish nobility in their houses and villas, in the decoration and furniture of which he found the French and English styles happily blended. He gives a glowing account of the fetes at which he was present, and says that they were exquisitely refined and got up regardless of expense.
Whatever changes the national character of the Poles has undergone in the course of time, certain traits of it have remained unaltered, and among these stands forth predominantly their chivalry. Polish bravery is so universally recognised and admired that it is unnecessary to enlarge upon it. For who has not heard at least of the victorious battle of Czotzim, of the delivery of Vienna, of the no less glorious defeats of Maciejowice and Ostrolenka, and of the brilliant deeds of Napoleon's Polish Legion? And are not the names of Poland's most popular heroes, Sobieski and Kosciuszko, household words all the world over? Moreover, the Poles have proved their chivalry not only by their valour on the battle-field, but also by their devotion to the fair sex. At banquets in the good olden time it was no uncommon occurrence to see a Pole kneel down before his lady, take off one of her shoes, and drink out of it. But the women of Poland seem to be endowed with a peculiar power. Their beauty, grace, and bewitching manner inflame the heart and imagination of all that set their eyes on them. How often have they not conquered the conquerors of their country? [FOOTNOTE: The Emperor Nicholas is credited with the saying: "Je pourrais en finir des Polonais si je venais a bout des Polonaises.">[ They remind Heine of the tenderest and loveliest flowers that grow on the banks of the Ganges, and he calls for the brush of Raphael, the melodies of Mozart, the language of Calderon, so that he may conjure up before his readers an Aphrodite of the Vistula. Liszt, bolder than Heine, makes the attempt to portray them, and writes like an inspired poet. No Pole can speak on this subject without being transported into a transcendental rapture that illumines his countenance with a blissful radiance, and inspires him with a glowing eloquence which, he thinks, is nevertheless beggared by the matchless reality.
The French of the North—for thus the Poles have been called—are of a very excitable nature; easily moved to anger, and easily appeased; soon warmed into boundless enthusiasm, and soon also manifesting lack of perseverance. They feel happiest in the turmoil of life and in the bustle of society. Retirement and the study of books are little to their taste. Yet, knowing how to make the most of their limited stock of knowledge, they acquit themselves well in conversation. Indeed, they have a natural aptitude for the social arts which insures their success in society, where they move with ease and elegance. Their oriental mellifluousness, hyperbolism, and obsequious politeness of speech have, as well as the Asiatic appearance of their features and dress, been noticed by all travellers in Poland. Love of show is another very striking trait in the character of the Poles. It struggles to manifest itself among the poor, causes the curious mixture of splendour and shabbiness among the better-situated people, and gives rise to the greatest extravagances among the wealthy. If we may believe the chroniclers and poets, the entertainments of the Polish magnates must have often vied with the marvellous feasts of imperial Rome. Of the vastness of the households with which these grands seigneurs surrounded themselves, enough has already been said. Perhaps the chief channel through which this love of show vented itself was the decoration of man and horse. The entrance of Polish ambassadors with their numerous suites has more than once astonished the Parisians, who were certainly accustomed to exhibitions of this kind. The mere description of some of them is enough to dazzle one—the superb horses with their bridles and stirrups of massive silver, and their caparisons and saddles embroidered with golden flowers; and the not less superb men with their rich garments of satin or gold cloth, adorned with rare furs, their bonnets surmounted by bright plumes, and their weapons of artistic workmanship, the silver scabbards inlaid with rubies. We hear also of ambassadors riding through towns on horses loosely shod with gold or silver, so that the horse-shoes lost on their passage might testify to their wealth and grandeur. I shall quote some lines from a Polish poem in which the author describes in detail the costume of an eminent nobleman in the early part of this century:—
He was clad in the uniform of the palatinate: a doublet
embroidered with gold, an overcoat of Tours silk ornamented
with fringes, a belt of brocade from which hung a sword with
a hilt of morocco. At his neck glittered a clasp with
diamonds. His square white cap was surmounted by a
magnificent plume, composed of tufts of herons' feathers. It
is only on festive occasions that such a rich bouquet, of
which each feather costs a ducat, is put on.
The belt above mentioned was one of the most essential parts and the chief ornament of the old Polish national dress, and those manufactured at Sluck had especially a high reputation. A description of a belt of Sluck, "with thick fringes like tufts," glows on another page of the poem from which I took my last quotation:—
On one side it is of gold with purple flowers; on the other
it is of black silk with silver checks. Such a belt can be
worn on either side: the part woven with gold for festive
days; the reverse for days of mourning.
A vivid picture of the Polish character is to be found in Mickiewicz's epic poem, Pan Tadeusz, from which the above quotations are taken.
[FOOTNOTE: I may mention here another interesting book illustrative of Polish character and life, especially in the second half of the eighteenth century, which has been of much use to me—namely, Count Henry Rzewuski's Memoirs of Pan Severin Soplica, translated into German, and furnished with an instructive preface by Philipp Lubenstein.]
He handles his pencil lovingly; proclaiming with just pride the virtues of his countrymen, and revealing with a kindly smile their weaknesses. In this truest, perhaps, of all the portraits that have ever been drawn of the Poles, we see the gallantry and devotion, the generosity and hospitality, the grace and liveliness in social intercourse, but also the excitability and changefulness, the quickly inflamed enthusiasm and sudden depression, the restlessness and turbulence, the love of outward show and of the pleasures of society, the pompous pride, boastfulness, and other little vanities, in short, all the qualities, good and bad, that distinguish his countrymen. Heinrich Heine, not always a trustworthy witness, but in this case so unusually serious that we will take advantage of his acuteness and conciseness, characterises the Polish nobleman by the following precious mosaic of adjectives: "hospitable, proud, courageous, supple, false (this little yellow stone must not be lacking), irritable, enthusiastic, given to gambling, pleasure-loving, generous, and overbearing." Whether Heine was not mistaken as to the presence of the little yellow stone is a question that may have to be discussed in another part of this work. The observer who, in enumerating the most striking qualities of the Polish character, added "MISTRUSTFULNESS and SUSPICIOUSNESS engendered by many misfortunes and often-disappointed hopes," came probably nearer the truth. And this reminds me of a point which ought never to be left out of sight when contemplating any one of these portraits—namely, the time at which it was taken. This, of course, is always an important consideration; but it is so in a higher degree in the case of a nation whose character, like the Polish, has at different epochs of its existence assumed such varied aspects. The first great change came over the national character on the introduction of elective kingship: it was, at least so far as the nobility was concerned, a change for the worse—from simplicity, frugality, and patriotism, to pride, luxury, and selfishness; the second great change was owing to the disasters that befell the nation in the latter half of the last century: it was on the whole a change for the better, purifying and ennobling, calling forth qualities that till then had lain dormant. At the time the events I have to relate take us to Poland, the nation is just at this last turning-point, but it has not yet rounded it. To what an extent the bad qualities had overgrown the good ones, corrupting and deadening them, may be gathered from contemporary witnesses. George Forster, who was appointed professor of natural history at Wilna in 1784, and remained in that position for several years, says that he found in Poland "a medley of fanatical and almost New Zealand barbarity and French super-refinement; a people wholly ignorant and without taste, and nevertheless given to luxury, gambling, fashion, and outward glitter."
Frederick II describes the Poles in language still more harsh; in his opinion they are vain in fortune, cringing in misfortune, capable of anything for the sake of money, spendthrifts, frivolous, without judgment, always ready to join or abandon a party without cause. No doubt there is much exaggeration in these statements; but that there is also much truth in them, is proved by the accounts of many writers, native and foreign, who cannot be accused of being prejudiced against Poland. Rulhiere, and other more or less voluminous authorities, might be quoted; but, not to try the patience of the reader too much, I shall confine myself to transcribing a clenching remark of a Polish nobleman, who told our old friend, the English traveller, that although the name of Poland still remained, the nation no longer existed. "An universal corruption and venality pervades all ranks of the people. Many of the first nobility do not blush to receive pensions from foreign courts: one professes himself publicly an Austrian, a second a Prussian, a third a Frenchman, and a fourth a Russian."