A farewell to Żelazowa Wola in verse

In order to clarify the question of Count Fryderyk Florian Skarbek's status as 'godfather' to Fryderyk Chopin, it is wise to peruse the contents of Skarbek's manuscripts dating from the period before and after the composer's birth.1

The diary covering his journey to Paris (Dziennik podróży), begun in mid-October 1809, allows us to establish the date of the 17-year-old Skarbek's departure from Żelazowa Wola, while his letters written in the French capital (and also a letter written by his teacher, Piotr Maleszewski) enable us to determine when he arrived in Paris.

I decided to present a few previously unpublished extracts from Skarbek's 1809 travel diary, which was written in the form of letters to an unidentified, and possibly fictional, 'friend', and also two letters from Skarbek to Samuel Bogumił Linde, written in 1810 and published in 1871. Although these materials do not resolve the question of whether he was indeed Chopin's godfather, they undoubtedly expand our knowledge of Skarbek's life during the period of interest and may provide new leads for researchers.

First page of the manuscript of Count Fryderyk Skarbek's travel journal

The 'first letter' from the travel diary is not dated, but it was certainly written - together with the poem with which Skarbek bade farewell to Żelazowa Wola - a few days before his departure from the family home (so before 15 October 1809).

My travel diary. First letter.2

Dear Friend,

While we were still attending school together, I promised, in the certainty that I would be leaving the homeland for some time, to write you letters in which I would describe my journey. At that time, my plan was different, as I was intending to travel to Göttingen for a course in economics; however, when political circumstances prevented me from pursuing that undertaking, I decided to avail myself of [...] the opportunity presented to me of travelling in the company of several friends to the capital of the arts and sciences, that is, to Paris.

You are no doubt aware that the government sends several prospective professors to that city to hone their knowledge of the subjects to which they are particularly predisposed. So having chosen as the leader of our studies one of those prospective professors, six of us are travelling as his companions. You can well imagine the pleasure that the journey will give us.

The 17-year-old Fryderyk Skarbek was glad to find himself among 'a select group of friends travelling with a single aim - to form their minds'. But he regretted that the addressee of the letter was not accompanying him: it is a pity that 'I cannot share with you the delightful moments that I will spend. But it is pointless to mention this now'. That is because the addressee had decided to devote himself to serving in the army of the Duchy of Warsaw,3 a decision Skarbek learned of with understanding:

Praiseworthy is the intention that keeps you in the land of our fathers: to fulfil the duties of a good son of the homeland by defending it; for my part, before I leave, I wish to bid farewell to it, and particularly to that part of the land in which I have spent my youth.

I send you a song that is poor, but heartfelt, which I was humming before my departure. Forgive the weakness of the verse. I send it to you, trusting in your indulgence and friendship.

Skarbek appended to his letter that 'song', entitled 'West­chnienie do Ziemi Ojczystej' [Sighing for the homeland], a homeland that he identified with Żelazowa Wola. The verse was written a couple of days before 15 October 1809, since on that day - accompanied to Warsaw by his mother and sister - Skarbek joined his travel companions, who were assembled at the designated meeting point (probably the Saxon Palace4). His mother and sister also stayed in Warsaw overnight, probably at the home of Samuel Bogumił Linde, head of the Warsaw Lyceum, who, like Mrs Skarbek, hailed from Toruń.

The journey began on 16 October 1809, early in the morning. On the evening of that day, Skarbek wrote his 'second letter', from Żabia Wola. He included in it a description of his farewell to his loved ones and an account of the first day of travelling. From a rough draft of the letter, Skarbek made a fair copy, omitting some passages and adding new ones (in the quoted passages, 'R' indicates the rough draft and 'F' the fair copy).

(F) Today our journey began in earnest. I rose in the morning and roused all my travel companions with my customary impatience. Dressed to travel, with all my things packed, I was merely awaiting the moment to board. I was not sad, though the farewell with my mother weighed heavily on my heart; for the rest, nothing in Warsaw reminded me of pleasant times. I had made my dutiful farewells the previous day; in a word, nothing attached me to our capital.

The moment of departure arrived. The farewell with my mother was brief, but moved me to tears; it is easier to feel than to express what happens within us at such moments. Moreover, you will get a keener idea of this, dear friend, by recalling a moment when you bade farewell to your own parents. Then add to that the farewell to my cousin, whose friendship - as you know - I value so highly.5 I will always remember the last words she spoke to me, a tender and loving farewell from my dear cousin and sister.

But enough of that parting [...] in a word, I left my mother and made my way to my travel companions, assembled in one place; a fortifying drink gave us heart, we boarded the carriages, the drivers cracked their whips and the journey began. In driving past, I had the satisfaction of seeing my mother and sister in the porch and of bidding them farewell once again. Soon we saw the toll gates, and Warsaw disappeared from view. I was quite cheerful. I had left the past behind, and was not sorry to depart Warsaw. I would only wish:

To find, after travelling far and wide,

Better morals in Warsaw upon my return.

The first village we drove through was Raszyn.

(R) I was in reverent awe when travelling through a field in which the Pole showed himself to be a true son of the homeland. It was sad to see homes partly abandoned or burned down in that village; such are the effects of the treacherous invasion by our foes. I append for you here, dear friend, an elegy that I wrote on the site of that famous battle.6

(F) Throughout that area, one sees signs of poverty and misery all around. Uninhabited villages, abandoned ploughs, the land lying lifeless, yearning for a farmer's hand; in short, all the effects of war [...]. We fed and watered the horses in the village of Nadarzyn. There is a decent inn there and a beautiful church. In the former, I revealed my culinary talents, preparing a first-rate soup with ale; in the latter, I played on the organ. By the way, I shall tell you a little about Nadarzyn:

Jews are ten a penny here, mud is even more,

Ugly when the weather's fine and worse when it is poor.

That day we pulled into Żabia Wola for the night, where, chops cooked, I write this letter to you. Forgive me if I close immediately with those aromatic chops beneath my nose [...]. I will just add that we are to sleep among the rats, in a dirty room...

Żelazowa Wola, Warsaw province. Formerly owned by Count Skarbek

It turned out that the night was not as dreadful as Skarbek had feared. In the 'third letter', written on 17 October in Podstolice, we read:

Our accommodation was not as bad as I thought. No rat dared disturb us in our slumber, and no mouse ventured through our apartment. We had no nightmares, as our appetites had been sufficiently sated the previous evening.

So having bidden farewell to our innkeeper, we set off [from Żabia Wola] in the morning. The sun had only just risen, and its beams radiated beautifully over the hills. The area we travelled through was very beautiful, and one hill with walled barns, very reminiscent of home, reminded me of Żelazowa Wola; that recollection brought back many memories.

Something resembling a hare appeared to us in a field. We leapt from the carriages and set off in armed pursuit of that putative hare, one with a whip, another with an unloaded rifle, a third with a broadsword, a fourth with a pistol without powder or flint, and the rest of us trusting in our legs; our attack was swift, and we chased down the enemy, but some 100 paces from it we noticed, instead of a hare, a dun-coloured cat, and that was the end of our expedition; we scorned such a wretched foe and reboarded the carriages. Before long, Mszczonów appeared before us, with its lofty towers.

In the town's market place, Skarbek noticed a building that served as a town hall, since a poorly painted 'eagle in a snow-white cowl' adorned its apex. But suspended next to the image of the eagle was a branch, which in those days served as the sign of... a tavern! Skarbek did not omit to immortalise that Mszczonów building with an occasional poem:

Four walls hewn by whetted axe,

A sloping roof, stone chimney stack.

Painted high upon a wall,

Noble symbol for us all,

An eagle in a snow-white cowl

Reminiscent of an owl.

Adjoining it a branch of pine,

To which the peasant takes a shine,

For half the house an inn recalls,

The other half a proud town hall.

The slow journey by carriage allowed the young men to observe their surroundings, the 'charms' of which were relentlessly depicted by Skarbek in prose and verse. At times, the company was forced to employ a ruse in order to secure accommodation at the wayside inns. In one place, there was such a throng of local peasants at the inn that our travellers pretended to be in the retinue of a fierce 'General', who would be arriving shortly after.7 On learning from the young men travelling in the first carriage that a General was about to appear, the peasants dispersed, and our travellers were able to prepare a meal and stop overnight.

On the border between the Duchy of Warsaw and 'Prussian' Silesia, by a road running through the southern edge of Wielkopolska (Greater Poland) in the direction of Syców, Oleśnica and Wrocław, Skarbek bade farewell to his homeland by a border post bearing an effigy of the national emblem: a white eagle.8 By the same post, Skarbek also consumed - as he writes - 'the last bottle of Hungarian wine. Then, having buried the bottle beneath the post, I said to our eagle:

I bid you farewell, oh white-feathered eagle,

May you, with your wings, ere I cross broader lands.

Embrace the whole Polish realm, stately and regal,

And dwell where the Lechites' old boundary stands'.9

Skarbek dated his next letter 'Wrocław, 24 October', but we will now bid our own farewell to the young man making his way to Paris by carriage, as his travel diary contains no pertinent references to Mikołaj Chopin or to his wife Tekla Justyna (née Krzyżanowska), who at that time was five months pregnant, without knowing whether she would give birth to a daughter or a son.

On arriving in Paris with his companions, Fryderyk Skarbek began corresponding with his family in Żelazowa Wola, as we learn from two of his Paris letters addressed to Samuel Bogumił Linde, head of the Warsaw Lyceum.

The Skarbeks' manor house in Żelazowa Wola

*

While Kazimierz Władysław Wójcicki, author of a book about Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw, was preparing his lengthy biographical sketch about Fryderyk Skarbek, he came upon what in 1871 was still a large collection of 'manuscripts' left by that man of letters, economist, lawyer, etc., who died on 25 November 1866: 'All the unpublished manuscripts, as well as the works already published and being prepared for a second edition, are in the hands of the late author's eldest son'.10

Aware of the young Skarbek's links to Samuel Bogumił Linde, head of the Warsaw Lyceum, Wójcicki also took the opportunity to leaf through 'papers' left by Linde (author of a six-volume Polish dictionary, who died in 1847), papers that were then in the possession of his daughters. Wójcicki found two letters written to Linde by the eighteen-year-old Skarbek: 'I have found among the papers left by the late S. B. Linde two letters from Count F. Skarbek [...] It is precisely sixty-one years since he wrote them in Paris. I quote them here in full, since they contain interesting details relating to our writer's stay in the capital of the French empire'.

The originals of those letters are held to this day in the Jagiellonian Library in Cracow. I will quote them here in extenso, adding essential commentaries. The first of the two letters was written a month before Fryderyk Chopin entered the world.

Paris, 21 January 1810.

Having learned from my mother's letter that you were so kind as to remember me, I consider it my duty to express my gratitude to you.

The opening sentence of this letter already indicates that on arriving in Paris, Skarbek began corresponding with his family, and in January 1810 he received what was presumably not the first letter from Żelazowa Wola, in which his mother - following a visit to Linde at the Saxon Palace - informed him of Linde's interest in his former pupil's progress in his studies. Skarbek informed Linde:

On arriving at my destination, I endeavoured to follow your advice and devote my time not only to the muses themselves, but also to studies through which I might one day become capable of holding some official post. However, my efforts initially proved in vain, as there is not a single public course in the whole of Paris in the 'cameral' legislature to which I have devoted myself. Most inhabitants of this capital city, including the learned among them, do not even know such sciences by name, let alone anything about them.

It is hardly surprising that Parisian scholars did not know 'cameral' studies 'by name' or indeed 'anything about them', since the term was probably coined by Linde himself with reference to the Prussian term 'kamera', denoting, in the former South Prussia (in the Prussian sector of Poland), an administrative office established by the partitioning power that dealt mainly with public revenue. Ultimately, however, Skarbek succeeded in gaining access to 'cameral' studies:

Yet thanks to the efforts of Mr [Dominik] Krysiński, who deigned to look into the matter, we are now taking private lessons in political economics, according to Smit[h], and treasury administration from Mr St Aubin, a former people's tribune [...]. We are taking four hours of economics a week, and two of treasury administration. From the former, we are keeping written notes; in the latter, we are gaining practical experience, by describing the meaning of expressions used in that department and by producing various reports, in accordance with French procedural prescriptions. These studies with a former tribune are very costly, but Mr St Aubin has assured us that he will complete the course within a year and that by then we will be able to take up positions in that department.

Skarbek did not just take those private lessons in the 'cameral' sciences. He also attended the Coll?ge de France, where he studied both his beloved classics and - significant for his professional future - criminal law: 'In addition, I am attending public courses in Greek and Latin Literature and in Criminal Law at the Coll?ge de France; the former is taught by Mr Gail, a translator of Thucydides and Xenophon; the latter by Mr La Maire, standing in for Mr Legouvé, who since the death of his wife has been suffering from depression, in effect insanity; and also by a third gentleman, Mr Pastoret, who is a count of the state, senator and member of the legislative body, and who is also a very enlightened man and by no means as rigid in his opinions as the others'.

Skarbek was surprised that 'if there are few lovers of Greek among us in Warsaw, there are even fewer admirers of the language of Homer here in Paris; the only public course, given by Mr Gail, has but fifteen students at most'. He also found the course in the literature of ancient Rome very limited in its scope: 'In Latin, Mr de la Maire is translating and analysing The Aeneid; from that course I have learned that the French appreciate only Virgil, whom they rate even more highly than Homer, while they barely mention Horace'. During the inauguration of Mr de la Maire's lectures, writes Skarbek, 'I had the good fortune to see Delille, who was being presented with his laurels for the appended poems'.11

The Coll?ge de France in Paris

Skarbek was utterly absorbed by his studies. Living with his companions in the Latin Quarter, he rarely crossed the Seine into the city. As he remarked years later in his memoirs, 'Our academic activities on one hand, and our meagre funds on the other, prevented us from frequenting the opposite bank of the Seine, and we very rarely allowed ourselves to cross the bridges with the purpose of availing ourselves of the overly expensive pleasures'.12 Skarbek's second letter to Linde is dated 'Paris, 15 September 1810' (Fryderyk Chopin was six months old by then, and almost five months had passed since his 'ceremonial' baptism at the church in Brochów). From the contents of this letter, we learn that Linde had asked 'from time to time' how Skarbek's studies were proceeding, so his mother must have made the occasional visit to Linde in Warsaw. Hence Skarbek felt obliged to give his 'guide' a detailed report on the progress of his Parisian education.

It is a happy obligation for the pupil to pay his respects and express his gratitude to his guide. You have been so kind as to concern yourself with my youth, and although I am far from home, you grace me with your memory, enquiring from time to time about my studies; please receive now, with your customary indulgence for beginners, a short dissertation, which I attach.

Thanks to a fortuitous set of circumstances, the autograph of that 'dissertation' is held in Warsaw University Library (it was published in 1936-1937). Skarbek prepared it - as he stated in the letter to Linde - 'with the sole purpose of being able to give you some evidence that I am striving to deserve the favour which you have bestowed upon me; I trust it will convince you how much I value your advice and teaching'. The dissertation written in Linde's honour concerned... canals, so a subject that was not part of Skarbek's studies! In the letter, we read the following:

Aware from memoirs [articles published in the Pamiętnik Warszawski] that they are thinking of establishing canals back home, I undertook to briefly expound the theory of a system of the latest short canals that could be employed in Poland. I drew information on the subject from a work by Mr Fulton, an American, who invented this system; what I have set out in general terms is taken from the work The Wealth of Nations by Schmith [Smith] or from comments made by my teacher here. I have made some adaptations, but only insofar as the separation from my country and my meagre knowledge have allowed. I submit this short dissertation to your judgment, trusting in your indulgent kindness, which, forgiving the errors found in it, will regard it solely as evidence that I wish to benefit from the learning and advice of my teachers.

The dissertation, entitled 'Jakie by kanały w naszym kraju bić można' [What canals may be employed in our country], was not Skarbek's only Paris work. He also meticulously prepared his notes from lectures on political economics, which he left in a manuscript entitled 'Krótki zarys ogólnych prawideł ekonomii politycznej podług Adama Smitha' [A brief outline of the general laws of political economics according to Adam Smith]. The manuscript of that work has also come down to us (it was published in 1936-1937). In addition - as he wrote to Linde - Skarbek attended public lectures held at the Botanical Gardens in Paris:

We are now completing the private course in economics and finance. The public courses in chemistry and agriculture at the Botanical Gardens I am attending is finishing, and I am devoting the rest of my time in Paris to less public, and more home learning. I have read works focussing on political economics and finance, and I will go over more thoroughly a trade codex with commentaries that I have already secured for myself.

The 18-year-old Skarbek's passion for imbibing knowledge was truly impressive: 'If drier subjects than literature are absorbing me more especially at the moment, I am also trying to devote a little time to the latter. I have resolved to read the whole of Homer and also those Latin poets that I don't yet know. I am now at around book XII of The Iliad, having read the whole of Virgil, the fourth book of the Odes and Horace's Art of Poetry and some of Tibullus' elegies'. Phew! And all the time Skarbek was pursuing his own poetical efforts. As he stated in the letter:

As for my own poetical labours, the morning hours sometimes allow me to commune with the muses. I do not boldly partake of Hippocrene's spring,13 but turning my thoughts towards my homeland, I sing of the charms the birthplace holds for us. You will be surprised when I tell you that I am already finishing a short poem on that subject and that I was able to write two cantos of 600 lines on a single theme.

It is highly likely that this 'short poem' was a description of the 'charms' of Żelazowa Wola. Although not Skarbek's 'birthplace', it was identified by him as his 'homeland', as a place to which he felt 'so strongly attached', as is evidenced - besides the above-mentioned poem from the diary of his journey to Paris - by an interesting para­graph from the letter:

I learned from my mother's letter that she had the pleasure of seeing you at her home and that you took a liking to those places to which I am so strongly attached; I regretted, reading mama's letter, that I could not share her joy and, as a pupil, receive my noble guide in the family home.

This passage contains interesting information. Skarbek's mother informed her son about Linde's visit to Żelazowa Wola. Given the date of Skarbek's letter, we may infer that the visit occurred in August 1810. That was Linde's first visit to Żelazowa Wola (since he 'liked those places' to which Skarbek was 'so strongly attached', he was undoubtedly seeing them for the first time). The visit by the head of the Warsaw Lyceum - given its date - was not of an exclusively social character. Linde undoubtedly travelled to Żelazowa Wola to propose to Mikołaj Chopin that he become a 'collaborator' and accept a post as teacher of French to the younger classes at the Lyceum (in connection with the illness of Professor Mahé, who died soon afterwards). No doubt during Linde's August visit to the Skarbeks' manor, Mikołaj Chopin accepted the proposition, since from 1 October 1810 he was indeed employed at the Warsaw Lyceum. The link between Linde's August visit and the Chopins' move from Żelazowa Wola to Warsaw in September 1810 seems obvious. Skarbek did not refer to the subject in his letter to Linde, so it is likely that his mother, for some reason, did not mention it in her correspondence. Be that as it may, before Skarbek's letter of 15 September reached Linde's flat in the Saxon Palace in Warsaw, Mikołaj and Justyna Chopin, with their little daughter Ludwika and seven-month-old son Fryderyk, were already his neighbours.14

Skarbek stayed in Paris until mid-1811. Contrary to the suggestion of his 'guide', he decided not to seek a certificate for the 'courses' he had completed. He informed Linde of this in the above-cited letter of 15 September 1810:

I have learned [from his mother's letter] that you wished me to dili­gently collect all the certificates, but allow me to explain that Paris certificates carry no weight. Anyone can sign up for a particular course; a professor does not know any of those who attend his lessons, and he does not need to. If someone wants a certificate on completing a course, the professor gives it to him, as long as he is registered, paying no heed to whether he was armed with sufficient attention to [the lessons]. Moreover, those certificates prove nothing other than the fact that someone or other attended those particular lessons. Only the certificates of the special schools of law, medicine and pharmacy are valid and cost 500 francs; but in order to receive them, one must complete a three-year course, as well as taking six half-yearly and one main examination, and besides that paying a quite considerable sum of money. Consequently, I made no effort to secure any certificates and prefer to take all the examinations upon my return rather than producing worthless papers.

Devoting himself solely to acquiring solid knowledge, Skarbek treated his stay in Paris completely differently from other young Poles travelling to the French capital at that time. Kazimierz Władysław Wójcicki, writing about this period in Skarbek's life, stated:

While many of our more affluent young gentlemen had long since been eagerly hastening to that 'capital of the world', as Paris was known at that time, to fritter away their fathers' estate, their personal dignity and their own health on its pleasures, our author did not follow in such ruinous footsteps. Throughout his entire sojourn in that city, full of commotion and charm, he devoted himself exclusively to painstaking work and academic studies, in order to acquire greater knowledge, since that was Skarbek's sole desire and passion in the prime of his life. This is best evidenced by a letter written on 11 June 1811 by the eminent personage Piotr Maleszewski [an outstanding Polish economist], settled permanently in Paris, to S. B. Linde, Skarbek's former guide at the Warsaw Lyceum, precisely at the moment when our author was returning home: 'Mr Skarbek deserves to be the pupil of such a teacher. He leaves here an example to be emulated for young Poles. He is truly a young man who certainly shows every sign [...] of auguring a prosperous future'.

There is much to suggest that more than a decade before Kazimierz Władysław Wójcicki, the letters written by Skarbek and Maleszewski - preserved in the family of Samuel Bogumił Linde - came into the hands of Maurycy Karasowski, the first cellist of the Grand Theatre Orchestra in Warsaw. On 11 February 1855, Karasowski married Aleksandra, the youngest daughter of the then late addressee of the letters sent from Paris by the 18-year-old Skarbek and by Piotr Maleszewski. Although the letters cited here do not contain any direct references to the Chopins, I am convinced that they contributed to Maurycy Karasowski's decision to include in his biography of Fryderyk Chopin two fateful errors, reiterated by subsequent authors: the erroneous date of the composer's birth and the notion that Count Fryderyk Skarbek was his godfather, which held sway up to the end of the nineteenth century.15

Fryderyk Skarbek's painting Brzoza i młyn w Żelazowej Woli [Birch and mill in Żelazowa Wola]

But that - of course - is a subject for another article.

Sighing for the Homeland

Not there, where we would wish, but where our fate decrees,

A fortune glad or unpropitious waxes by degrees!

Not always is it written for a man to walk the earth

There, where heaven chose as the location for his birth.

He leaves behind the places of childhood safe and sweet,

And lives through bitter moments where cruel fate has set his feet.

Not by human judgment, at the will of destiny,

My sighs will soon be flying home, to where I came to be.

Shortly I will leave the places where for all those years

I knew not, as I blithely played, those days would not return.

Here I lived the sweetest years that will return no more,

Never paying heed to what the future had in store.

Later, as I turn towards the autumn of my days

Everything will lead my thoughts back to that cherished place.

The place in which I readied arms in military hands

And [guided] their manoeuvres with my callow lad's [commands]

Was for me, a man of war, a Marsian battlefield

Or a place where Roman men to fate refused to yield.

There my sword clashed valiantly with my brother's sword,

And both of us, with knightly fervour eager and enthralled,

Would run full tilt beyond the trees, the hillocks and the tillage,

Where our arms would slay the daughters of the lovely village,

Or with zeal undaunted would my childish arrows fly

Where flits the airy butterfly up in the summer sky.

The garden where I cultivated tender shoots and buds,

The shady grove wherein I built my charming little huts,

The stream on which my little ship would sail upon the tide,

The lawn on which I whiled away the gentle eventide,

When upon the summertime the moon would shine its face,

Adorning silent nature with a modest charm and grace.

The shady tree where underneath its spreading canopy,

Surrounded by the graceful tunes of birds that sang to me,

The rhymes of Horace were more beautiful than ever since,

And Virgil sang his idylls with a sweetness not eclipsed,

Remind me of the pleasant times of youth that give me pause

And thus impart a whole new charm unto those childhood haunts.

So now I have to venture forth, o tranquil vales of home,

Away from you my hours I'll spend, in foreign climes I'll roam.

My tender recollections will return to you always

And in your gleaming honour my poor paeans will I raise.

I only make unto the gracious skies a humble plea:

Tumultuous and fickle fame please keep away from me,

That I might just experience, while living on our land,

That happiness in peace resides, and not in glory's hand.

[1999]

1810

On the date of Chopin's birth as indicated by his mother

In 1948 the music periodical Ruch Muzyczny published an article arguing that in 1810 Mikołaj [Nicolas] Chopin deliberately - in premeditated fashion, and in collusion with the Brochów parish priest, Jan Duchnowski - falsified the record of his son's birth. The accusation has not been withdrawn to this day, although the case has never been proven.

Of course, there are recognised examples of the falsification of official documents of this kind. I will describe one disreputable example recorded by the nobleman Marcin Matuszewicz, an amateur flautist, in his memoirs, which were compiled in the years 1754-1765 (the memoirs were never intended for publication, but were 'written down for the information of my descendants').

The memoirist's mother, living on an estate in the Vilnius region, was also in possession of an hereditary property near Płock.1 One day, Mrs Matuszewicz travelled 'to Goślice, in Płock voivodeship,2 and found there some disorder. The deputy starosta [senior administrator] in Goślice was Łastowski, a nobleman [...] whom she had flogged so mightily with a horsewhip [...] that this Łastowski, having taken several hundred lashings on his bare body, died within a few days'.3

In order to avoid legal proceedings and the inevitable punishment that would ensue for causing the death of a nobleman by flogging him with a leather riding crop, Mrs Matuszewicz, on the advice of her son-in-law, the lawyer Ruszczyc, decided to falsify Łastowski's certificate of baptism and turn him into a 'non-noble', in effect a peasant. Punishing a peasant by flogging him with a whip was a squire's right. If the peasant gave up the ghost as the result of a flogging, this was 'written in the stars', and the squire, who held manorial sway over his subjects, would not incur any consequences for it. By writing out for the nobleman Łastowski a certificate of baptism recording him as Laboriosus, or peasant, Mrs Matuszewicz aimed to avoid court proceedings.

The memoirist's brother-in-law, the above-mentioned Ruszczyc, proceeded to 'a priest of his acquaintance and took from him the church baptism register, in which there were blank spaces. He persuaded my mother that my handwriting was similar to that of the vicar serving around the time when the late Łastowski would have been born. My mother then approached me with great menace, declaring that it was imperative that I fill in those spaces along lines indicated by Ruszczyc [...]. At my mother's great insistence, I filled in one space, of lesser importance, but I had no wish to continue, having a great aversion to such a service. It was Ruszczyc himself who then made the entries relating to Łastowski's baptism'.4

The motivation for this falsification was to avoid punishment. The same motivation - fear of punishment - allegedly also induced Mikołaj Chopin to deliberately submit false information for the civil records of his son's birth and baptism. In 1936 Raoul Koczalski stated that Mikołaj Chopin 'only gave the false date of 22 February 1810 in order to avoid punishment for having delayed the declaration of the birth' of his son. Koczalski was of the opinion that Fryderyk Chopin was actually born on 1 March 1809, so almost a year earlier than the date given by Mikołaj Chopin for the civil register and the certificate of baptism.

Fryderyk's parents, Justyna and Mikołaj [Nicolas] Chopin

*

In 1948 a discussion was triggered in Ruch Muzyczny by an article written by Bronisław Edward Sydow.5 The two participants in this discussion were in agreement that the officially recorded date of the composer's birth (22 February 1810) was incorrect, but were divided on the question of whether the true date was 1 March 1809 or 1 March 1810.

Mateusz Gliński, an advocate of the hypothesis that 'the only authentic date of Fryderyk Chopin's birth is 1 March 1809', argued as follows: 'On 22 April [1810], Mikołaj Chopin met with the parish priest Revd Jan Duchnowski in Brochów. He dictated, probably in agreement with the priest, a deliberately incorrect date, plucked out of thin air, so to speak, but he did so not without serious purpose. Closest to the truth in his matter was Raoul Koczalski, who wrote that the father gave a false date "to avoid punishment for delaying the declaration of the birth of his child" '.6 Gliński did not explain what the punishment was that the composer's father wished to avoid when submitting the 'false date' of his son's birth; he merely suggested that 'an unjustified delay in registering the birth could have brought many unpleasant consequences, as in some cases the validity of the document could have been questioned (we know, for example, that on enlisting in the army, the relief to which an only son was entitled was withdrawn if the birth had been registered with undue delay). Such were the consequences that Mikołaj Chopin, anxious that his son's documents be "in order", wished to avoid'.

Fryderyk Chopin's record of baptism

So according to Mateusz Gliński, on '22 April' (the civil register and Fryderyk Chopin's certificate of baptism are actually dated 23 April!), Mikołaj Chopin was faced with a dilemma: should he accept the unknown punishment for himself (Gliński remarked that 'admittedly nothing is known today about administrative punishments for delaying the registration of a child in the civil records') and also reconcile himself to 'unpleasant consequences' for his son when in the distant future he would be called up to the army (resulting in the 'withdrawal' of the 'relief to which an only son was entitled') or should he rather, in a criminal 'agreement' with the parish priest Jan Duchnowski, falsify the official document so that his son would have his 'papers in order' in the future? In Gliński's opinion, Mikołaj Chopin chose to falsify the document, making his son 11 months and 22 days younger, since he did not give 'the only authentic date' of his birth, '1 March 1809', but rather the 'false date' 22 February 1810 ('plucked out of thin air').

Were we to follow that assertion through to its logical conclusion, we would have to conclude that the witnesses accompanying Mikołaj to the presbytery, Józef Wyrzykowski and Fryderyk Geszt, must also have been party to the criminal conspiracy, since they approved the contents of the record of Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin's birth in the civil register, read to them by the priest - unless, that is, the entry relating to their presence was also falsified in the register and they did not actually witness the preparation of the document (as might be indicated by the absence of their signatures).

A less drastic accusation was levelled at Mikołaj Chopin by those who argued that Fryderyk Chopin was born on 1 March 1810, citing, among other evidence, the composer's written declaration in a letter to the president of the Polish Literary Society in Paris, dated 16 January 1833. Let us note that the distance between the registered date of 22 February 1810 and this date of 1 March 1810 is not as great, so that in this case it was not necessary for such a drastic hypothesis to be constructed. Bronisław Edward Sydow,7 emphasising the 'sloppiness' of the priests who kept the records at that time (Mikołaj's surname was written 'Chopyn' in the civil register and 'Choppen' on the certificate of baptism), asked, in connection with these mistakes in the spelling of the French surname, 'Is it possible to have absolute trust in other details of the record?'

Sydow also held Mikołaj Chopin responsible for the error in the documentation. On 23 April 1810, the composer's father, he suggests, had a sudden attack of amnesia at the presbytery in Brochów: 'since 54 days had passed since the birth [of his son, on 1 March 1810], and, not being adequately prepared, or simply being a bit scatter-brained, gave the wrong date to the priest's question, exactly one week out - Thursday 22 February instead of 1 March'.

The lively discussion on the pages of Ruch Muzyczny around the turn of 1949 did not bring a clear resolution to the question of the date of Fryderyk Chopin's birth. Neither did it provide any new impetus to further research.

Fryderyk Chopin's birth certificate

A distant echo of that discussion came with Igor Bełza's article published in Ruch Muzyczny in 1960.8 The author drew attention to 'a peculiar circumstance' in which - as he stated - 'we might possibly find the key to understanding the enigma surrounding the date of birth of the greatest Polish composer'. Bełza wrote: 'The question of Chopin's true date of birth cannot be regarded as definitively resolved. Not all of the arguments put forward in the dispute over establishing this date are sufficiently persuasive'. In his article, the author cites an extract from 'the memoirs of Fryderyk Skarbek, where he writes about the date of his own birth'.9 Bełza considered that this passage could provide the 'key to understanding the enigma surrounding the date of birth' of Fryderyk Chopin. In his memoirs, Fryderyk Skarbek wrote:

On which day in February did I enter the world? I cannot say with the utmost certainty, since my mother, who ought to know better than anyone, indicated the date of my birth as 22 February [...], while the official record of my birth, taken from the Church of St John in Toruń, had me born seven days earlier.

The date of 22 February, contrary to the earlier official date 'indicated' by Ludwika Skarbek as that of her son's birth, naturally tempted some to link it to the date 22 February written in the record of Fryderyk Chopin's birth and on his certificate of baptism. Hence Igor Bełza initially proceeded in his reasoning as follows: given that Mrs Skarbek 'indicated' the date of her son's birth 'as 22 February' and celebrated his birthday on that date, 'we may assume that Mikołaj Chopin altered the date in the register so that his son's birthday would be celebrated together with that of Fryderyk Skarbek'. Yet contrary to the officially registered date of his birth, Fryderyk Chopin's birthday was celebrated on 1 March! Thus, rejecting this initial assumption, Bełza wrote the following:

Does the possibility not arise that both changes [those introduced by Ludwika Skarbek and by Mikołaj Chopin] were made so as to celebrate the birthday of Fryderyk Skarbek and Fryderyk Chopin on a day related to some important date in the Skarbek (and so also the Chopin) family, memorable for some reason that it was considered inappropriate to make public...?

I decided to investigate the question of Fryderyk Skarbek's date of birth.

*

Count Fryderyk Skarbek

On 19 September 1823, for official purposes, Fryderyk Skarbek wrote his 'general autobiography', which begins as follows:

I, Fryderyk Floryan, Count Habdank Skarbek, was born to Count Kacper and Ludwika (née Fengier [sic]) Skarbek, in the city of Toruń, as being close to my father's former estate, on 15 February 1792. I confess the Roman Catholic faith of my father. I received my elementary education and developed my scholarly outlook at home until my thirteenth year, under the guidance of Chopin, a schoolmaster at the Warsaw Lyceum distinguished in the teaching profession. I was enrolled in the fourth year at that school in 1805, completed the assigned course of study and, in 1808, received a prize in a public ceremony put together by myself on behalf of the whole senior class. In 1809 I travelled to Paris in order to complete the education thus begun.10

Let us note that already in 1823 Skarbek declared in his official 'autobiography' that he had received his 'elementary education and scholarly disposition' under the guidance of Mikołaj Chopin (as he confirmed years later in the memoirs published after his death). Interesting here is the following reference: 'I confess the Roman Catholic faith of my father'. Does this mean that Skarbek's mother was an Evangelical Protestant? That seems likely. Kacper Skarbek, divorced (before a consistory court?11) from his first wife, Justyna (née Dą[m]bska), probably married his second wife Ludwika (née Fenger) in an Evangelical church, since a copy of the marriage certificate was issued years later by the office of the Evangelical parish in the Old Town district of Toruń. I give here the contents of that document, written in German, in full:

Altstaedt. evang. Gemeinde.

Thorn, den 27 Februar 1902.

Caspar von Skarbek, Besitzer der Herrschaft Izbitz, Ritter des Stanislaus Ordens, Rittmeister der National Cavallerie, ist mit Louise Fenger, Tochter des Jacob von Fenger, in Thorn Ratmannes und Kaufmanns, am 22 (zwei und zwanzigsten) Mai 1791 (ein tausend ein und neunzig) getraut worden.

Vorstehendes wird auf Grund der Trauregister (T. R. II pag. 28 nr. 91) hiermit bescheinigt.

(L. S.) Stachowitz, Pfarrer.12

The wedding took place on 22 May 1791. The bride's father, the merchant Jakub Fenger, was a councillor of Toruń municipality (so he was of the burgher class13), while the groom, heir to the estate of Izbica, was a captain of the 'national cavalry', decorated with the Order of St Stanislaus.

The Evangelical faith of Jakub Fenger (and of his daughter Ludwika) may also be inferred from the recollections of Fryderyk Skarbek, who up to his sixth year did not live with his parents in Izbica, but was brought up by his grandparents ('The writer's early childhood was spent at his grandfather's home, a mansion in the classical style near the old city walls and close to a port on the [river] Vistula').

Skarbek remembered that his grandfather 'took [him] along on rides and on journeys to acquaintances in the neighbourhood; from those visits, [he] recalled an impression of the peaceful and unconstrained life of many German families, including the Lutheran pastor, who led a patriarchal life in the Toruń area within a large family'.14

Kacper and Ludwika Skarbek probably established before their marriage that their children would be brought up in the Roman Catholic faith of their father (hence the mention of this subject in Fryderyk Skarbek's 'autobiography'). The Skarbeks' first-born son was baptised in the parish church of St John in Toruń. I give the contents of the certificate of baptism here according to a certified copy prepared at the beginning of the twentieth century:

Thorn, den 20 Maerz 1902.

In den Taufregistern der St. Johannis-Pfarrkirche ist Nachstehendes eingetragen:

1792 'Die 15 Februaris., Nicolaus Chrzanowski Commendarius.

Infans Fridericus Florianus. Parentes: Perillustris Magnificus D[omi]nus Gaspar Skarbek, centurio Exercitus Regni Polonaie, et Illustris Magnifica D[omi]na Ludovica de Fenger, Mater. Patrini fuere Magnificus Dominus Jacobus von Fenger, Commissarius Exercitus Torunensis et Perillustris D[omi]na Xaveria Mi[e]rosławska, Succameraia Kłocenisis [probably 'Succameraria Plocensis'].

Die wörtliche Uebereinstimmung obiger Abschrift mit dem Original bescheinigt das katolische Pfarramt St. Johann.

(L. S.) Schmeja.15

Fryderyk Florian Skarbek's godparents were the chamberlain's wife Ksawera Mierosławska16 and the grandfather of the infant Jakub Fenger, who at that time was a commissioner on the Civil-Military Disciplinary Commission of Toruń Voivodeship (wealthy townsfolk sometimes sat alongside the gentry and clergy on such commissions, which were established in every voivodeship by the Four-Year Sejm (parliament)).

The date 'Die 15 Februaris' (1792) given in this certificate is the date when the infant was baptised; the date of birth was not given in this document. Fryderyk Florian Skarbek was unquestionably born earlier, before 15 February, since an infant would not have been taken to the church on the day its mother gave birth to it.

Let us note that eight months and 24 days passed between the marriage of Kacper Skarbek and Ludwika Fenger (22 May 1791) and the baptism of their first-born son (15 February 1792). Yet Skarbek had to have been born before his baptism! If he was taken to the church at the age of two weeks or so, then the period between the Skarbeks' marriage and the birth of their son was closer to eight than to nine months!

It is my assumption that Ludwika Skarbek, when 'indicating' her first-born son's date of birth as 22 February, wanted to emphasise that he had been conceived on the wedding night (22 May 1791) and entered the world nine months after the wedding. 'Premature' first children were always the butt of secret speculation and gossip; in celebrating her son's birthday on 22 February - especially during his early years - Mrs Skarbek wished to avoid any rumours.

Yet even if Mrs Skarbek 'indicated' her son's birthday as 22 February for some other reason (which in light of the entry in the Liber Baptisatorum would have meant that Fryderyk Florian had been baptised... a week before his birth!), the crucial point for our further considerations is that the countess did so 'indicate', as Skarbek confirmed in his memoirs.

Let us set in order the facts resulting from this material.

Fryderyk Florian Skarbek was baptised in the presence of his godparents in the parish church of St John in Toruń on 15 February 1792. He was undoubtedly born earlier, before 15 February. Mrs Ludwika Skarbek 'indicated' her son's date of birth (and celebrated his birthday) as 22 February, so a week before his baptism, as documented in the Liber Baptisatorum.

Fryderyk Skarbek saw a copy of his baptism certificate, probably because he needed to present that document in the church before marrying his first wife, Prakseda Gzowska, so before 18 July 1818. Hence, while his mother was still alive, Skarbek declared in his official 'autobiography', written on 19 September 1823, that his date of birth was 15 February, in other words the date of his baptism as noted in the Liber Baptisatorum (and not the date 'indicated' by his mother - 22 February - and celebrated by her as her son's birthday).

*

Why did Igor Bełza consider the curious circumstances surrounding the date of birth of Fryderyk Skarbek a 'key' to solving the riddle of Fryderyk Chopin's date of birth? I believe the answer lies in a putative analogy with how Countess Skarbek proceeded. If Countess Skarbek for some reason could have 'indicated' her son's date of birth as being a week later than the date of his baptism as confirmed by the sources (and later still than his unknown actual date of birth), then might not Justyna Chopin have for some reason proceeded in a similar way, 'indicating' Fryderyk's date of birth as being a few days later than the date noted in the civil register and on his certifi­cate of baptism?

Tadeusz A. Zieliński, an advocate of 1 March 1810 as Fryderyk Chopin's date of birth, rightly pointed out that it is difficult to 'ascribe an error to a mother, for whom giving birth to a child is an act of the greatest significance and exceedingly memorable'.17 Yet do we need to ascribe an 'error' to Justyna Chopin? After all, she could have deliberately 'indicated' and celebrated her son's birthday for some subjectively determined reason, not necessarily tied to the actual date when she gave birth to him. Fryderyk Skarbek noted in his memoirs that 'my mother, who ought to know better than anyone, indicated the date of my birth as 22 February'; yet he was baptised on 15 February, and thus a week before his 'indicated' date of birth! One could hardly ascribe an 'error' to Countess Skarbek, for whom giving birth to her first child would undoubtedly have been 'an act of the greatest significance and exceedingly memorable'.

Not just the case of Countess Ludwika Skarbek, but also details from the biographies of other individuals suggest that discrepancies occurred - in various contexts - between official records and family traditions, according to which the date of birth was 'indicated' at a later date than that inscribed in the Liber Baptisatorum. Jan Pachoński mentions such a case in his biography of General Jan Henryk Dąbrowski: 'Certain discrepancies with regard to Jan Henryk's date of birth arose from the fact that the little church in Niegowić (where he was baptised) burned down in 1761. 18 A new one was built. Gen. Dąbrowski, visiting it in 1809, noted that there was no record of his birth, which he made good with an appropriate declaration in the consistorial records, giving the date 2 August 1755 [...]. That is the date which he gave in his autobiography. The family tradition, however, indicated the date 29 August, which was made public, for instance, on the obelisk erected at Pierzchowiec in 1872'.19

A mother could have had various reasons for 'indicating' a 'family' date of a child's birth, later than the officially recorded date, and this family date might then acquire a kind of pedigree; hence every such date should be considered on an individual basis, with painstaking analysis of the circumstances surrounding a child's birth. In the case of Justyna Chopin, a crucial fact - overlooked by Fryderyk Chopin's biographers - is that her son was baptised 'from water', so there must have been justified fears that the infant would not live for more than a few days. Hence 1 March 1810, when the new-born child 'raised a dead eyelid' (no doubt also the day of his baptism ex aqua), could have been for Mrs Chopin a day of thanksgiving for the Lord's grace, and a few years later became the date when her son's birthday was celebrated within the family. Having his birthday celebrated on 1 March could have led Fryderyk Chopin to grow up in the conviction that that was the very date on which he was born. Did the composer ever learn about the date 22 February noted in his civil record and on his certificate of baptism? There is evidence to suggest that he may well have done,20 so I will deal with that question in the future.

Letter from Justyna Chopin to Fryderyk Chopin in Paris, [Warsaw, second half of February 1848]

*

Fryderyk Chopin's biographers, in questioning his official date of birth (22 February 1810), have tried to prove that it is 'false'. Advocates of the hypothesis that the 'only authentic' date of the composer's birth is 1 March 1809 have accused his father of deliberate falsification, 'in agreement' with the Brochów parish priest, with the aim of avoiding punishment for the belated entry of his son's birth in the civil register. Meanwhile, supporters of the alternative hypothesis - that Fryderyk Chopin was born on 1 March 1810 - have accused Mikołaj Chopin either of reckless falsification (committed 'so as to celebrate the birthday of both Fryderyk Skarbek and Fryderyk Chopin on a day related to some important date for both families') or of amnesia, which would have caused him to enter the wrong date on the official documents.

Analysis of the entry of the composer's birth in the civil register, meanwhile (presented in the chapter 'Chopin baptised "from water" at Żelazowa Wola'21), clearly indicates that the document was prepared in accordance with the many formal and legal security measures introduced by the Napoleonic Codex and other instruments implemented by the Duchy of Warsaw to prevent error or fraud.

The Church of SS Roch and John the Baptist in Brochów

Let us note that Justyna Chopin had an opportunity to check the contents of her son's certificate of baptism two weeks after that document was signed, when she attended the Church of St Roch in Brochów as godmother to Justyna Józefa Kunkówna, whose certifi­cate of baptism was entered into the Liber Baptisatorum just after the certificate of Fryderyk Chopin, and on the very same page. So his mother could have looked out of sheer curiosity to see how Fryderyk's testimonium baptismi was entered there. And a couple of weeks later, Mikołaj Chopin assumed the role of godfather and participated in the act of writing out the certificate of baptism for his godchild (on the same page as Fryderyk's certificate was entered), so he too had the chance to correct the date in his son's document if it were deemed necessary.22

I consider it essential that research into the Brochów parish documents be continued in a more penetrating and meticulous way than hitherto.23 Also fully justified and necessary, however, is research into Justyna Chopin's possible motives for 'indicating' a slightly later date for her son's birth than the one written into the civil register and on the composer's certificate of baptism.

[2001]

Introduction

After many years of scholarship in historical musicology, I decided to try my hand at something quite different. I wrote an historical novel. I had no serious ambition as a novelist, but was curious to see for myself what is involved in writing fiction. The novel, completed a few years ago, is set in the 1820s and 1830s during and shortly after the Greek War of Independence. The setting is Moldavia, mainland Greece and the Ionian Islands, and the central character is a musician. In preparing this novel, I discovered at an early stage that I had to undertake a form of research that was quite different from anything I had attempted in the past. One example will make the point. In the third chapter, the main character, then in his late teens, makes a journey from Iaşi to Tupila?i, an estate in the (Romanian) Neamţ country, in the company of several teenage friends. To bring this journey to life, I had to ascertain exactly how long it would have taken in the 1820s, how many horses the stagecoach would have needed, where the stops would have been made, what kind of terrain they would have passed through, what the travellers would have seen on the way, what they would have eaten when they stopped, and so on and so forth. These are historical questions, but of a kind I had seldom asked in my many years of writing cultural history. The everyday detail was necessary if I were to give a real sense of historical immediacy to the unfolding events of the story.

Exactly this kind of research was staple diet for Henryk Nowaczyk as he engaged with the life of Fryderyk Chopin. For Nowaczyk was concerned above all to reconstruct with the greatest possible accuracy the day-to-day realities of the composer's life and times, and in the process to bring what I earlier called 'a real sense of historical immediacy' to a story whose outline is already well known, but which is held by most of us at a certain distance. Nowaczyk's findings are evidence-based throughout, but at the same time they are informed by an historical imagination that brings the events to colourful, compellingly vivid, life. He was not of course writing fiction, anything but. He was determined to get the facts right, as far as this was possible. But in the course of his investigations, he often entered a world not unlike that of the historical novelist, finding evidence where he could - sometimes in the unlikeliest of places - in order to create a living biography rather than a mere chronicle.

Even where concrete facts might be lacking, Nowaczyk's contextual research enabled him to undertake plausible reconstructions, relying on that 'informed imagination' of which the doyenne of historical novelists, Hilary Mantel, once spoke in connection with her Thomas Cromwell novels.1 We may know all but nothing about Chopin's visit to the salt mines in Wieliczka, for example, but this did not deter Nowaczyk from recreating the visit - and evocatively so - by examining a detailed account written up by a young Englishman from just a few years later, at a time when little had changed in the local facilities and in the arrangements for tours. In like manner, he reconstructed the day-to-day events of Chopin's stay in Reinertz, where he went to 'take the waters', partly by drawing on the reflections of the composer's elder sister Ludwika, just as he recovered the circumstances surrounding Henriette Sontag's visit to Warsaw by scanning the correspondence of Princess Eliza Radziwiłł, and the episode in Berlin by foregrounding contemporary accounts of the Botanical Congress in the Berlin-published Vossische Zeitung, and then counterpointing these against the composer's letters. In all such cases we learn something about Chopin, but we also learn something about what it meant to be alive at that time - and in those places.

Nowaczyk's characteristic method was to shine a light into what we might normally consider marginalia, and then to allow that light to be refracted back to the centre. By delving into little-known sources, often related to other, and sometimes ancillary, characters in the story, he not only provided some unexpected couleur locale in relation to those same characters (we are invited to imagine Mikołaj Chopin in the uniform of a professor at the Military Academy; we learn - perhaps to our surprise - that Fryderyk Skarbek wrote a short 'dissertation' on the canal systems of Poland), but at the same time clarified some of the mysteries surrounding its principal character, not least the hoary old riddle discussed at length in chapter 1, the date of Chopin's birth. In this case 'clarifies' is indeed the mot juste (had I written 'solves', I would have claimed too much). As so often in this volume, the approach here is deconstructive, but not solely deconstructive. There is a positive mission too, and it extends well beyond Chopin to shed light on contemporary social praxes. The question posed in chapter 1 does indeed address Chopin's date of birth, but the answer teaches us about common motivations for falsifying records at the time, and about the several reasons why people might have 'indicated' a date contrary to the civil register, a practice that might need to be distinguished from falsification.

The composer's date of birth is naturally a good starting point for biographical reflections. But in every story related in this volume, the same methodical approach is adopted towards what might be termed 'everyday history' (Altagsgeschichte). Nowaczyk's choice of questions is indicative. What was the seating arrangement for the composer's final class at the Lyceum in Warsaw? How many events of the Berlin Congress did he actually attend? Which hotel did he stay at in Stuttgart? On more than one occasion, I found myself thinking of Janet Malcolm's memorable description of the biographer as 'a professional burglar, breaking into a house, rifling through certain drawers that he has reason to think contain the jewellery and money, and triumphantly bearing his loot away'.2 Then again, Nowaczyk's questions were never arbitrary. They illuminate shadowy corners of what is by now a pedigreed narrative, obliging us to revisit some of the preconceptions underpinning that narrative, and even to recast some of its constituent episodes.

The example I selected from my novel - that stagecoach journey - was not chosen at random. At several points in his early life, Chopin (coincidentally at around the same age as the central character in my novel) made fairly extended journeys by stagecoach, some of them within Poland, some taking him beyond its borders. These journeys are duly chronicled in the many - arguably too many - Chopin biographies. We are told of the youthful visits he made to Kalisz, for example. And, unsurprisingly, we are given rather more detailed and informative accounts of the two journeys that marked out - with symbolic potency - the transition from his Warsaw years to his Paris years: from Warsaw to Vienna and - a more protracted and multi-staged journey - from Vienna to Paris. But only Nowaczyk places the details of these journeys under a magnifying glass, producing what is in effect a closely researched but always accessible micro-history, and one that tracks events on an hour-by-hour basis. Characteristically, he does this with a notable eye for period detail and with real narrative flair.3

Consider those trips to Kalisz. It is typical that Nowaczyk scoured letters and diaries to find contemporaneous accounts of or by people who made exactly the same journey. He also examined the post maps of the time, as well as the weather reports, the system of payment, which changed at a key point in relation to Chopin's journeys, and the special bulletins issued periodically by the General Management of Post Offices, revealing not just innovations as to the upgrade to carriages and timetables, but also as to new stopping points and new times for meals (in a later chapter he likewise perused the Scottish railway timetable for 1848 to resolve an issue about Chopin's journey from London to Edinburgh). Really, thanks to Nowaczyk, there is now very little about those journeys to Kalisz that we don't know. Or consider his careful reconstruction of how a last-minute change in Chopin's plans on his return from his first visit to Vienna (he and his friends decided to extend their trip to take in Dresden) thwarted the intention of his parents to spring a surprise on him in Strzyżew. Here we are taken inside the heads not only of Chopin and his companions, but also of his parents. In effect we are afforded an all too rare glimpse into the more private and playful side of their relationship with their son.

Or think of that fateful day when he left Poland for good, notable for the male choir send-off in Wola, as fellow students bade him farewell with a cantata specially composed by Józef Elsner. The bare bones of this story have always been well known. There was an account in the Kurjer Warszawski on the following day, and for most biographers, myself included, that has been source enough. But it will come as no surprise to discover that Nowaczyk probed more deeply. We learn that Chopin did not travel to Wola on the stagecoach, but arrived there by cab, having already given his luggage to the postilion at some point before 5 pm. After the musical farewell at the 'iron inn' in Wola (the precise location and provenance of this inn are naturally scrutinised), he then boarded the stagecoach, since - although there was no official stop - the coach was obliged to stop there briefly at the tollgate. His seat on the stagecoach would already have been secured, we are told, thanks to recently changed rules governing seating. The rest of the journey is outlined in comparable detail, not excluding the 13 points at which the horses and postilions were changed. This is not pedantry. Rather it might be justly described as a nice exactitude. And it is because of that nice exactitude - because the scene is reconstructed in such meticulous detail - that we are able to feel the grain of history, so that the past becomes part of the present.

Here is another thought from Janet Malcolm, whose own gifts as a biographer in her study of Sylvia Plath have been highly valued. 'Biography', she remarked, 'is the medium through which the remaining secrets of the famous dead are taken from them and dumped out in full view of the world.'4 There are secrets and secrets, of course. Nowaczyk did not trade in the speculations of psychobiography, purporting to uncover the secrets of the mind. Which of us can have confidence that some future biographer (should we be so honoured) might truly gain access to the secrets of our mind, that 'distant inner space [...] where', as Edgard Var?se once put it, 'man is alone in a world of mystery and inner solitude'?5 Nowaczyk was aware that these are spaces 'no telescope can reach', to pursue Var?se's thought and language, and rather sought to unlock more mundane secrets, to solve those maddening riddles that confound anyone trying to reconstruct the events of a life. For he was very well aware that the solutions to such riddles can open windows to further, often little known, vistas. It would be an almost risible under­statement to claim that Nowaczyk had a nose for such secrets. Who was the mysterious Miss F. mentioned in passing in a Chopin letter? Needless-to-say, Nowaczyk not only answered the question, but plausibly reconstructed her interview with Chopin and even ferreted out her true motivation in seeking lessons and in offering concerts in a Warsaw to which she was a stranger. In the process we learn something about the contingencies surrounding what might be termed the 'semi-public' concert life of Warsaw at the time.

Then there was that dinner in Vienna, the one with collops and cabbage. Could we reasonably have expected that a passing reference in a letter to Jan Matuszyński would tell us so much about repression and censorship in the Russian-ruled 'Kingdom of Poland' in the era of Grand Duke Constantine, and about the state of near-panic that prevailed among higher officialdom in the days just prior to the insurrection? The story of Józef Kalasanty Szaniawski, whose volte-face might serve as a locus classicus of shameless political expediency, is just one of the many little vignettes illuminating Polish public life that abound in this volume. But Nowaczyk dug yet deeper into the collops and cabbage. By picking up on Chopin's reference to the Carmelites ('Szaniasio' stuffing himself with 'collops and cabbage [...] like none of the Carmelites could do'), he made a plausible association with the prison on Leszno Street, and from that to a disquisition on the history of prison food - a history, incidentally, in which Fryderyk Skarbek played a prominent role. We learn something of the special status accorded to political prisoners on remand, including the fact that they were in a position to have meals delivered to the prison, either by family and friends, or from nearby restaurants. All this is based on an association, commonly made in Chopin's time, between the Carmelites and the prison, though in fairness it cannot be absolutely ruled out that Chopin may have had in mind a more direct reference to the Carmelite order.

Although the essays in this volume take us well beyond Chopin's Warsaw and Vienna years and into his very different life in Paris, and even his twilight excursion to British shores (in one essay there is an enterprising tussle with aristocratic identities in Britain), it is a Polish perspective that is invariably foregrounded. Thus, Op. 25 No. 11 may have been composed in Paris, but in Nowaczyk's view this etude is haunted by the soundscape of battle, and specifically of the November Uprising, much more so indeed - and there is an irony here, given the pedigreed titles history has assigned to the two works - than Op. 10 No. 12, with which it has often been compared. Elsewhere, we learn about the Towianism (so named after the notorious self-appointed mission of Andrzej Towiański) that was prevalent among the exiled Polish intelligentsia in Paris in the early 1840s: about its ardent supporters, such as Adam Mickiewicz, and about its ardent opponents, such as Stefan Witwicki. Chopin was a well-known figure in such circles, of course, but he was careful to keep the Messianic prophesies at a strategic distance. His amanuensis, Julian Fontana, played a key role in keeping him informed of such activities in Paris while the composer was at Nohant. And since Fontana is such an indispensable member of the dramatis personae of Chopin biography, we may be grateful for a cluster of keenly observed aperçus into his relationship, by no means straightforward, with the composer.

As it happens, these observations are supplemented in a later chapter outlining the part Chopin played in securing his old schoolfriend's employment as an agent for Pleyel pianos in New York, though the fortunes of this business venture were decidedly mixed. And in a further chapter, one of two addressing posthumous tributes, we learn something of Fontana's impossible quandary over a commission to write about someone he had known too well (for Liszt, who knew him too little, there was no such quandary). The composite portrait of Fontana that emerges from these chapters is of the greatest interest, but - in my view at least - it does not represent Nowaczyk at his most forensic and percipient. For that accolade, I am tempted to nominate the remarkable essay in which he ventures backstage of the Op. 50 mazurkas. Of all the later chapters, this one perhaps merits the closest scrutiny. It is a meditation on exile, in which Nowaczyk reconstructs meetings and hoped-for meetings, skilfully fleshes out yet another of those minor characters (Leon Śmitkowski makes two appearances only in Chopin's correspondence), and spins a web of associative threads that enmesh, steadily and decisively, one of the most significant of the composer's later opuses.

Henryk Nowaczyk was a man of his time, and of his place. But he was also a man with a particular temperament and a particular scholarly inclination. A prima vista, it is tempting to suggest that no Polish commentator of his generation would have invested anything other than negative values in the web of myths and half-truths surrounding Chopin. Yet this would be a misreading. After all, reception studies, notoriously relativising in premise and outcomes alike, were given a sympathetic hearing in Poland, and not just among a younger generation of critics. Polish scholars, it should be noted, were prime movers in reception studies on an international scholarly stage. Such studies, concerned with what Hans-Georg Gadamer liked to call the 'effective history' of their subject, were sceptical of objective historicism, recognising the gap-filling and image-making strategies that are involved in the construction of any kind of historical meaning. This is not the place to evaluate such approaches. But it is worth registering that in his quest for 'the real Chopin' Nowaczyk did occasionally investigate the origins and lineage of the myths and half-truths, even if he fell some way short of viewing them as socially formative. In such moments, we glimpse an intriguing might-have-been of scholarship. What if Nowaczyk had adopted an approach to historical enquiry in which the discarded remains were subject to the same level of analytical scrutiny as the recovered entity? This might-have-been, investing the myths with historical value, is indeed a nice conceit, but it is also a treacherous one. To pursue it further, however tantalising the prospect, would be to commit one of the cardinal sins of criticism. It would be to censor Nowaczyk for failing to achieve what was never in his sights.

Jim Samson