Thaddeus of Warsaw

by Jane Porter

The events of this her mortal struggle, in fast union with these faithful sons, and other filial hearts, commemorated in the foregoing narrative of Thaddeus Sobieski, need not be recapitulated here. It amply tells the fate of the great kingdom which had stood as with gates of brass, until the intestine rivalries of an elective monarchy—the worshipped idol alike of presumptuous private ambition and pretended patriotic liberality—the true masked priest of public anarchy—rent them asunder, and the watchful nations, ready for plunder and extended dominion, poured into them a flood like the rivers of Babylon, over all her walls and towers.

We have read that part of her bravest sons were swept away into distant lands; some to die in homeless exile, others to meet the honorable compassion and the cheering hopes of sympathy from a people like themselves, who had formerly fought the good fight for England's laws, liberties, and royal name in Europe. And some were shut up from the light of day in the fettered captivity of foreign prisons, until "the iron entered their souls." Amongst these noble captives were General Kosciusko and his faithful Achates, Niemcivitz, to whom might be justly applied the words of our bard of "The Seasons," affixed to the young brow of Sir Philip Sidney—

"The plume of war, with early chaplets crown'd
The hero's laurel with the poet's bays."

But the Emperor Paul, on his accession to the throne of the Czars, as has before been noted, was too generous a captor to hold in cage so sweet a singing bird and so noble a lion; and he gave them liberty, appending to the act, dearest to a free-born heart, an imperial donation to Kosciusko that might have furnished him with a golden argosy all over the world. But the wounded son of Poland declined it in a manner worthy her name, and with an ingenuous gratitude towards the munificent sovereign who had offered it, not as a bribe for "golden opinions," but as a sincere tribute to high heroic virtue.

The writer of this note was informed of this fact many years ago, by a celebrated English banker, at that time at St. Petersburg, and corresponding between that city and London, with whom the imperial present had been lodged, and through whom General Kosciusko respectfully but decidedly declined its acceptance.

Then it was that, after halting a short time in England, he with his school and camp companion in so many changes, prepared a second crossing over the Atlantic, to revisit its victor President in his olive-grounds at Mount Vernon. But Niemcivitz had another errand. His roving Cupid had long settled its wing, and he eagerly sought to plight, before Heaven's altar in the church, the already sacred vow he had pledged to a fair daughter of that country while sharing the dangers of its battlefields.

It was with great difficulty the portcullis of a friendship strong as death had been raised in old chivalric Kent, to allow departure to so dear and honored a guest as he, who their master had seen fall in his memorable wounds on the plain of Brzesc. But he promised to return again, should the same sweet cherub that sat up aloft on his first voyage to America steer back his little bark in safety; and then he trusted to be once more clasped to the bosom of Poland, in that of his most beloved friend, a dweller in England. [Footnote: The portcullis, the gate, and the armorial crest of Beaufort has descended from the royal founder of the family, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.]

Besides this cherished heir of his earliest remembrances, there were other friends of olden days who had welcomed him with gladdening recollections. Amongst these was the family of Vanderhorst, originally of the Spanish Netherlands, who, from religious rather than political motives, had transferred themselves from certain persecutions in that land during times of papal tyranny to the shelter of the British colonies on the Transatlantic shore, and who, on the separation of those colonies into independent states from the mother country, had removed, in relative grateful duties, to the governing land of their early refuge, and were now dwelling here in prosperity and happy repose, when General Kosciusko set his honored foot on its sea-girt and virtue-bulwarked coast He was their former guest while at New York, and he readily accepted their eager invitation that he would revisit them in their new paternal country. At this period the head of the respected family resided at Bristol, in Queen's Square, (the Grosvenor Square of that opulent city,) and Mr. Vanderhorst inhabited one of the most superb mansions in it. General Kosciusko arrived at his worthy host's door on the 7th of June, 1797, and was greeted by the hearty embrace of his old friend and the blushingly-presented cheeks of his two daughters, young and lovely, in their teens. Their brother, a fine youth, pressed the hand of his father's gallant and revered guest to his lips. Niemcivitz, meanwhile, with dew-like tear-drops glittering over his joyous smiles, greeted every one with the affectionate recognition of a heart that seemed to know only to love. The writer, for one, shall never forget those tears and smiles on that venerable but ever kindly face; yet it was only in his old age that I first knew him. But sweet sisters, whom I began to know in your bright bloom, I can never forget those charming looks of reciprocating welcome that sprang alone from the fulness of a good and truthful virgin heart. They are now before me, though the eyes which then beamed so ingenuously on the honored countenance of the Polish hero are closed in death; or rather, shall I say, re-opened on him in a fairer and never-closing light.

He spent a happy week in that bright circle, in which the present commemorator has often since moved, and heard members of it over and over again describe its happy scenes; sometimes, the younger sister, my own especial friend; at other times the animated brother. The revered father has long been in his respected grave; and the elder sister, after an early marriage with an officer of distinction in the British army, breathed her last sigh in the island of Antigua, leaving an only child, a daughter, Cordelia Duncombe Taylor, a beautiful memorial of the surpassingly lovely mother and aunt from whom she is descended.

During the Bristol sojourn, brief as it was, numerous were the sincere votaries to simple-hearted public virtue who sought it to pay their homage to the modest hero within its hospitable walls. Rufus King, then diplomatic minister from the United States to Great Britain, and the accomplished Turnbull, by pen, pencil, and sword the celebrated compeer of General Washington in his fields of glory, was here also.