Kazimierz Wierzyński: The Patriot

He now played the organ as a well-conducted youth, and together with Jas Matuszynski, a master of the flute, aroused the admiration of the devout. Apparently the trowel and the hammer was not all-powerful with the men who wore this sign, since Eisner too attended church and even directed the lyceum choir during the services.

The incident of the purloined robes had no other consequences of import, and when St. Nicholas’ Day came, the professor could celebrate it in keeping with the proudest family traditions. The drawing room was transformed into an auditorium, with chairs and armchairs set up in rows. The numerous guests were tremendously excited when they heard that an entirely new attraction figured on the program of the soiree. The Chopin home theater was presenting a comedy written by Frederic and Emilia Pichon — as we know, Pichon was the nom de plume of the editor of the Szajarnia Courier, The play was entitled The Mistake, or the Pretended Rogue. The script has unfortunately not come down to us, but on that evening it was a great success, particularly because the authors were also leading members of the cast. The slender Frederic played the paunchy mayor, and Emilia his ethereal daughter. After the performance, when the audience was discussing the play, Emilia emphasized the fact that the comedy was written in verse, and moreover had been turned out by the two authors in a single creative session.

Few Warsaw salons could boast gatherings like those that adorned the salon of the Chopins. Among the visitors were scientists, musicians, poets, actors, all with distinguished names. Eisner and Linde were old friends ; Frederic Skarbek, erstwhile pupil of Monsieur Nicolas, a university professor at the age of twentysix, and author of several important works on law and economics, was almost a member of the family. A frequent visitor at the Chopins’ was Casimir Brodzinski, former soldier of Napoleon and then also a professor at the university ; he was a champion of romanticism and was now publicizing the poems of a young poet from Wilno, Adam Mickiewicz, who had recently been arrested by the Russians. Frederic was particularly fond of Jacob Frederic Hofman; this friend was in his seventies, but his heart was a half century younger, and he made it a point to associate with youth. Frederic Chopin often dropped in at the professor’s apartment in an adjacent building, admired the curios collected there, and played the piano with Madame Hofman or her son, Alexander. The elder Hofman had an exuberant vitality and extraordinary ingenuity, and he suffered from a secret mania for inventions. A passionate naturalist, he founded a mineralogical museum at the university, and through his efforts the vacant lots behind the Casimir Palace were transformed into a botanical garden. His special hobby was to mold plant forms in wax, and he acquired such skill in this pursuit that his artificial ferns and tuberoses were almost indistinguishable from real ones. He invented a device that enabled nonswimmers to traverse a hundred and twenty yards of water in one minute. Unfortunately, in spite of its unique qualities, this invention fell into oblivion. Hofman was more successful with improvements in the musical field. He invented a new instrument, the aeolomelodicon or choraleon, which he asked Brunner, a manufacturer of musical instruments, to construct, and with which he expected to revolutionize music.

Several of these friends of the Chopins’ were first-generation Poles, by choice. Linde had a brother in Danzig who was a sincere German. In the home of the professor of geodesy, Julius Kolberg, born in Mecklenburg, German was not spoken ; his six children grew up as Poles, and one of his sons, Oscar, devoted his life to collecting Polish songs and folk legends. Hofman, who had come to Warsaw as a young physician, worked in the hospitals during the Kosciuszko insurrection and won the praise of the leader.

Frederic was completely at ease in the circle of his father’s friends ; he respected their attainments and liked their picturesque characters. From their reminiscences the boy painted for himself a picture of the recent past of Poland ; and the endless sufferings of his country, to which these made constant allusion, became deeply engraved in his memory.

Like all of Poland, and like Europe, Warsaw at that time was in ferment with ideas of freedom. Count Novosiltsov, special Russian commissioner in Warsaw, was regarded as a symbol of despotism. He was an exponent of police rule: his spies tried to discover what the people were thinking, and his censors tried to prescribe their thinking. In spite of his sixty-three years, he was unable to control his vices — drinking and debauchery. The nightly adventures of this imperial plenipotentiary, who used to elude his bodyguards when he was drunk and was often found in the morning near the walls of a brothel, with his clothes in tatters, were notorious. Grand Duke Constantine contributed to the growing aversion for the Russian rule. Mounted on a white steed, he would indulge in his favorite pastime, military reviews; but one loose button on a soldier’s uniform would suffice to make him behave like an enraged corporal. He occasionally slapped his subordinates in the face, and several of his officers committed suicide after such public humiliation. Novosiltsov and Constantine ignored treaty obligations ; the Polish Diet had not been convened for years, and the liberal constitution was gathering dust in the files of the chancellery.

While Tsar Alexander liked to call himself ‘‘the liberator of Poland,” his rule only fanned the spirit of opposition and revolt. A net of underground organizations — reflecting the revolutionary currents then stirring in many parts of the world — spread ideas of freedom and printed officially suppressed literature. When the police tracked down such secret societies, the conspirators were sent to prison, but their places were soon filled by new conspirators.