John Greenleaf Whittier - "Personal Poems I"

Algernon Charles Swinburne - "Songs before Sunrise"

Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson - "The Greek View of Life"

George Barr McCutcheon - "Viola Gwyn"

Thaddeus of Warsaw

J >> Jane Porter >> Thaddeus of Warsaw



Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.




[Illustration: DR. MIDDLETON.]



THADDEUS OF WARSAW

BY

JANE PORTER

AUTHOR OF "THE SCOTTISH CHIEFS," ETC.




"Loin d'aimer la guerre, il l'abhorre;
En triomphant même il déplore
Les désastres qu'elle produit
Et, couronné par la victoire,
II gémit de sa propre gloire.
Si la paix n'en est pas le fruit."




A NEW AND REVISED EDITION
WITH NEW NOTES, ETC., BY THE AUTHOR




THE AUTHOR,
TO
HER FRIENDLY READERS.


Written for the new edition of "Thaddeus of Warsaw," forming one of
the series called "The Standard Novels."

To such readers alone who, by the sympathy of a social taste, fall in
with any blameless fashion of the day, and, from an amiable interest,
also, in whatever may chance to afford them innocent pleasure, would
fain know something more about an author whose works have brought
them that gratification than the cold letter of a mere literary
preface usually tells: to such readers this--something of an
egotistical--epistle is addressed.

For, in beginning the republication of a regular series of the
novels, or, as they have been more properly called, biographical
romances, of which I have been the author, it has been considered
desirable to make certain additions to each work, in the form of a
few introductory pages and scattered notes, illustrative of the
origin of the tale, of the historical events referred to in it, and
of the actually living characters who constitute its personages, with
some account, also, of the really local scenery described; thus
giving, it is thought, a double zest to the entertainment of the
reader, by bringing him into a previous acquaintance with the persons
he is to meet in the book, and making him agreeably familiar with the
country through which he is to travel in their company. Indeed, the
social taste of the times has lately fully shown how advantageous the
like conversational disclosures have proved to the recent
republications of the celebrated "Waverley Novels," by the chief of
novel-writers; and in the new series of the admirable naval tales by
the distinguished American novelist, both of whom paid to the mother-
country the gratifying tribute of making it their birthplace.

Such evidences in favor of an argument could not fail to persuade me
to undertake the desired elucidating task; feeling, indeed,
particularly pleased to adopt, in my turn, a successful example from
the once Great Unknown--now the not less great avowed author of the
Waverley Novels, in the person of Sir Walter Scott, who did me the
honor to adopt the style or class of novel of which "Thaddeus of
Warsaw" was the first,--a class which, uniting the personages and
facts of real history or biography with a combining and illustrative
machinery of the imagination, formed a new species of writing in that
day, and to which Madame de Staël and others have given the
appellation of "an epic in prose." The day of its appearance is now
pretty far back: for "Thaddeus of Warsaw" (a tale founded on Polish
heroism) and the "Scottish Chiefs" (a romance grounded on Scottish
heroism) were both published in England, and translated into various
languages abroad, many years before the literary wonder of Scotland
gave to the world his transcendent story of Waverley, forming a most
impressive historical picture of the last struggle of the papist, but
gallant, branch of the Stuarts for the British throne. [Footnote: It
was on the publication of these, her first two works, in the German
language that the authoress was honored with being made a lady of the
Chapter of St. Joachim, and received the gold cross of the order from
Wirtemburg.]

"Thaddeus of Warsaw" being the first essay, in the form of such an
association between fact and fancy, was published by its author with
a natural apprehension of its reception by the critical part of the
public. She had not, indeed, written it with any view to publication,
but from an almost resistless impulse to embody the ideas and
impressions with which her heart and mind were then full. It was
written in her earliest youth; dictated by a fervent sympathy with
calamities which had scarcely ceased to exist, and which her eager
pen sought to portray; and it was given to the world, or rather to
those who might feel with her, with all the simple-hearted enthusiasm
which saw no impediment when a tale of virtue or of pity was to be
told.

In looking back through the avenue of life to that time, what events
have occurred, public and private, to the countries and to the
individuals named in that tale! to persons of even as lofty names and
excellences, of our own and other lands, who were mutually affected
with me in admiration and regret for the virtues and the sorrows
described! In sitting down now to my retrospective task, I find
myself writing this, my second preface to the story of "Thaddeus of
Warsaw," just thirty years from the date of its first publication.
Then, I wrote when the struggle for the birthright independence of
Poland was no more; when she lay in her ashes, and her heroes in
their wounds; when the pall of death spread over the whole country,
and her widows and orphans travelled afar.

In the days of my almost childhood,--that is, eight years before I
dipped my pen in their tears,--I remember seeing many of those
hapless refugees wandering about St. James's Park. They had sad
companions in the like miseries, though from different enemies, in
the emigrants from France; and memory can never forget the variety of
wretched yet noble-looking visages I then contemplated in the daily
walks which my mother's own little family group were accustomed to
take there. One person, a gaunt figure, with melancholy and bravery
stamped on his emaciated features, is often present to the
recollection of us all. He was clad in a threadbare blue uniform
great coat, with a black stock, a rusty old hat, pulled rather over
his eyes; his hands without gloves; but his aspect was that of a
perfect gentleman, and his step that of a military man. We saw him
constantly at one hour, in the middle walk of the Mall, and always
alone; never looking to the right nor to the left, but straight on;
with an unmoving countenance, and a pace which told that his thoughts
were those of a homeless and hopeless man--hopeless, at least, of all
that life might bring him. On, on he went to the end of the Mall;
turned again, and on again; and so he continued to do always, as long
as we remained spectators of his solitary walk: once, indeed, we saw
him crossing into St. Martin's Lane. Nobody seemed to know him, for
he spoke to none; and no person ever addressed him, though many, like
ourselves, looked at him, and stopped in the path to gaze after him.
We often longed to be rich, to follow him wherever his wretched abode
might have been, and then silently to send comforts to him from hands
he knew not of. We used to call him, when speaking of him to
ourselves, _Il Penseroso;_ and by that name we yet not unfrequently
talk of him to each other, and never without recurrence to the very
painful, because unavailing, sympathy we then felt for that apparently
friendless man. Such sympathy is, indeed, right; for it is one of the
secondary means by which Providence conducts the stream of his mercies
to those who need the succor of their fellow-creatures; and we cannot
doubt that, though the agency of such Providence was not to be in
our hands, there were those who had both the will and the power
given, and did not, like ourselves, turn and pity that interesting
emigrant in vain.

Some time after this, General Kosciusko, the justly celebrated hero
of Poland, came to England, on his way to the United States; having
been released from his close imprisonment in Russia, and in the
noblest manner, too, by the Emperor Paul, immediately on his
accession to the throne. His arrival caused a great sensation in
London, and many of the first characters of the times pressed forward
to pay their respects to such real patriotic virtue in its adversity.
An old friend of my family was amongst them; his own warm heart
encouraging the enthusiasm of ours, he took my brother Robert to
visit the Polish veteran, then lodging at Sablonière's Hotel, in
Leicester Square. My brother, on his return to us, described him as a
noble looking man, though not at all handsome, lying upon a couch in
a very enfeebled state, from the effects of numerous wounds he had
received in his breast by the Cossacks' lances after his fall, having
been previously overthrown by a sabre stroke on his head. His voice,
in consequence of the induced internal weakness, was very low, and
his speaking always with resting intervals. He wore a black bandage
across his forehead, which covered a deep wound there; and, indeed,
his whole figure bore marks of long suffering.

Our friend introduced my brother to him by name, and as "a boy
emulous of seeing and following noble examples." Kosciusko took him
kindly by the hand, and spoke to him words of generous encouragement,
in whatever path of virtuous ambition he might take. They never have
been forgotten. Is it, then, to be wondered at, combining the mute
distress I had so often contemplated in other victims of similar
misfortunes with the magnanimous object then described to me by my
brother, that the story of heroism my young imagination should think
of embodying into shape should be founded on the actual scenes of
Kosciusko's sufferings, and moulded out of his virtues!

To have made him the ostensible hero of the tale, would have suited
neither the modesty of his feelings nor the humbleness of my own
expectation of telling it as I wished. I therefore took a younger and
less pretending agent, in the personification of a descendant of the
great John Sobieski.

But it was, as I have already said, some years after the partition of
Poland that I wrote, and gave for publication, my historical romance
on that catastrophe. It was finished amid a circle of friends well
calculated to fan the flame which had inspired its commencement some
of the leading heroes of the British army just returned from the
victorious fields of Alexandria and St. Jean d'Acre; and, seated in
my brother's little study, with the war-dyed coat in which the
veteran Abercrombie breathed his last grateful sigh, while, like
Wolfe, he gazed on the boasted invincible standard of the enemy,
brought to him by a British soldier,--with this trophy of our own
native valor on one side of me, and on the other the bullet-torn vest
of another English commander of as many battles,--but who, having
survived to enjoy his fame, I do not name here,--I put my last stroke
to the first campaigns of Thaddeus Sobieski.

When the work was finished, some of the persons near me urged its
being published. But I argued, in opposition to the wish, its
different construction to all other novels or romances which had gone
before it, from Richardson's time-honored domestic novels to the
penetrating feeling in similar scenes by the pen of Henry Mackenzie;
and again, Charlotte Smith's more recent, elegant, but very
sentimental love stories. But the most formidable of all were the
wildly interesting romances of Anne Radcliffe, whose magical wonders
and mysteries were then the ruling style of the day. I urged, how
could any one expect that the admiring readers of such works could
consider my simply-told biographical legend of Poland anything better
than a dull union between real history and a matter-of-fact
imagination?

Arguments were found to answer all this; and being excited by the
feelings which had dictated my little work, and encouraged by the
corresponding characters with whom I daily associated, I ventured the
essay. However, I had not read the sage romances of our older times
without turning to some account the lessons they taught to
adventurous personages of either sex; showing that even the boldest
knight never made a new sally without consecrating his shield with
some impress of acknowledged reverence. In like manner, when I
entered the field with my modern romance of Thaddeus of Warsaw, I
inscribed the first page with the name of the hero of Acre. That
dedication will be found through all its successive editions, still
in front of the title-page; and immediately following it is a second
inscription, added, in after years, to the memory of the magnanimous
patriot and exemplary man, Thaddeus Kosciusko, who had first filled
me with ambition to write the tale, and who died in Switzerland, A.
D. 1817, fuller of glory than of years. Yet, if life be measured by
its vicissitudes and its virtues, we may justly say, "he was gathered
in his ripeness."

After his visit to old friends in the United States,--where, in his
youth, he had learned the art of war, and the science of a noble,
unselfish independence, from the marvel of modern times, General
Washington,--Kosciusko returned to Europe, and abode a while in
France, but not in its capital. He lived deeply retired, gradually
restoring his shattered frame to some degree of health by the peace
of a resigned mind and the occupation of rural employments.
Circumstances led him to Switzerland; and the country of William
Tell, and of simple Christian fellowship, could not but soon be found
peculiarly congenial to his spirit, long turned away from the
pageants and the pomp of this world. In his span he had had all,
either in his grasp or proffered to him. For when nothing remained of
all his military glory and his patriotic sacrifices but a yet
existing fame, and a conscious sense within him of duty performed, he
was content to "eat his crust," with that inheritance alone; and he
refused, though with an answering magnanimity of acknowledgment, a
valuable property offered to him by the Emperor of Russia, as a free
gift from a generous enemy, esteeming his proved, disinterested
virtues. He also declined the yet more dazzling present of a crown
from the then master of the continent, who would have set him on the
throne of Poland--but, of a truth, under the vassalage of the Emperor
of the French! Kosciusko was not to be consoled for Poland by riches
bestowed on himself, nor betrayed into compromising her birthright of
national independence by the casuistry that would have made his
parental sceptre the instrument of a foreign domination.

Having such a theme as his name, and the heroes his co-patriots, the
romance of "Thaddeus of Warsaw" was no sooner published than it
overcame the novelty of its construction, and became universally
popular. Nor was it very long before it fell into General Kosciusko's
hands, though then in a distant land; and he kindly and promptly lost
no time in letting the author know his approbation of the narrative,
though qualified with several modest expressions respecting himself.
From that period she enjoyed many treasured marks of his esteem; and
she will add, though with a sad satisfaction, that amongst her
several relics of the Great Departed who have honored her with
regard, she possesses, most dearly prized, a medal of Kosciusko and a
lock of his hair. About the same time she received a most
incontestable proof of the accuracy of her story from the lips of
General Gardiner, the last British minister to the court of
Stanislaus Augustus. On his reading the book, he was so sure that the
facts it represented could only have been learned on the spot, that
he expressed his surprise to several persons that the author of the
work, an English lady, could have been at Warsaw during all the
troubles there and he not know it. On his repeating this observation
to the late Duke of Roxburgh, his grace's sister-in-law, who happened
to overhear what was said, and knew the writer, answered him by
saying, "The author has never been in Poland." "Impossible!" replied
the general; "no one could describe the scenes and occurrences there,
in the manner it is done in that book, without having been an
eyewitness." The lady, however, convinced the general of the fact
being otherwise, by assuring him, from her own personal knowledge,
that the author of "Thaddeus of Warsaw" was a mere school-girl in
England at the time of the events of the story.

How, then, it has often been asked, did she obtain such accurate
information with regard to those events? and how acquire her familiar
acquaintance with the palaces and persons she represents in the work?
The answer is short. By close questioning every person that came in
her way that knew anything about the object of her interest; and
there were many brave hearts and indignant lips ready to open with
the sad yet noble tale. Thus every illustrious individual she wished
to bring into her narrative gradually grew upon her knowledge, till
she became as well acquainted with all her desired personages as if
they were actually present with her; for she knew their minds and
their actions; and these compose the man. The features of the
country, also, were learned from persons who had trodden the spots
she describes: and that they were indeed correct pictures of their
homes and war-fields, the tears and bursting enthusiasm of many of
Poland's long expatriated sons have more than once borne testimony to
her.

As one instance, out of the number I might repeat, of the
inextinguishable love of those noble wanderers from their native
country, I shall subjoin the copy of a letter addressed to me by one
of those gallant men, then holding a high military post in a foreign
service, and who, I afterwards learned, was of the family of
Kosciusko, whose portrait he sent to me: for the letter was
accompanied with a curiously-wrought ring of pure gold, containing a
likeness of that hero. The letter was in French, and I transcribe it
literally in the words of the writer:--

"Madame!

"Un inconnu ose addresser la parole à l'auteur immortel de Thaddeus
de Warsaw; attaché par tent de liens à l'héros que vous avez chanté,
je m'enhardis à distraire pour un moment vos nobles veilles.

"Qu'il me soit permis de vous offrir, madame, l'hommage de mon
admiration la plus exaltée, en vous présentant la bague qui contient
le buste du Général Kosciusko:--elle a servi de signe de ralliment
aux patriots Polonois, lorsque, en 1794, ils entreprirent de sécouer
leur joug.

"Les anciens déposoient leurs offrandes sur l'autel de leurs
divinités tutélaires;--je ne fais qu'imiter leur exemple. Vous êtes
pour tous les Polonois cette divinité, qui la première ait élevée sa
voix, du fond de l'impériale, Albion, en leur faveur.

"Un jour viendra, et j'ose conserver dans mon coeur cet espoir, que
vos accens, qui ont retenti dans le coeur de l'Europe sensible,
produiront leur effêt célestial, en ressuscitant l'ombre sanglante de
ma chère patrie.

"Daignez agréer, madame, l'hommage respectueuse d'un de vos
serviteurs le plus dévoué, &c. &c."

Probably the writer of the above is now returned to his country, his
vows having been most awfully answered by one of the most momentous
struggles she has ever had, or to which the nations around have ever
yet stood as spectators; for the balance of Europe trembles at the
turning of her scale.

Thus, then, it cannot but be that in the conclusion of this my,
perhaps, last introductory preface to any new edition of "Thaddeus of
Warsaw," its author should offer up a sincerely heartfelt prayer to
the King of kings, the Almighty Father of all mankind, that His all-
gracious Spirit may watch over the issue of this contest, and dictate
the peace of Poland!

ESHER, _May_, 1831.



DEDICATION TO THE FIRST EDITION.

THADDEUS OF WARSAW

is inscribed to

SIR SIDNEY SMITH;

in the hope that, as

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

did not disdain to write a romance,

SIR SIDNEY SMITH

will not refuse to read one.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY CONSIGNED HIS EXCELLENT WORK TO THE
AFFECTION OF A SISTER.

I CONFIDE MY ASPIRING ATTEMPT TO THE
URBANITY OF THE BRAVE; TO THE MAN OF TASTE,
OF FEELING, AND OF CANDOR;

TO HIM WHOSE FRIENDSHIP WILL BESTOW
THAT INDULBENCE ON THE AUTHOR WHICH HIS JUDGMENT
MIGHT HAVE DENIED TO THE BOOK;

TO HIM OF WHOM FUTURE AGES WILL SPEAK WITH HONOR
AND THE PRESENT TIMES BOAST AS THEIR GLORY!

TO

SIR SIDNEY SMITH,

I SUBMIT THIS HUMBLE TRIBUTE OF THE HIGHEST RESPECT
WHICH CAN BE OFFERED BY A BRITON,
OR ANIMATE THE HEART OF
HIS SINCERE FRIEND,

THE AUTHOR.






PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

Having attempted a narrative of the intended description, but
written, in fact, from the mere impulse of sympathy with its subject
still fresh in my own and every pitying memory, it is natural that,
after having made up my mind to assent to its publication, in which
much time and thought has been expended in considering the
responsibility of so doing, from so unpractised a pen, I should feel
an increase of anxiety respecting its ultimate fate.

Therefore, before the reader favors the tale itself with his
attention, I beg leave to offer him a little account of the
principles that actuated its composition, and in regard to which one
of the most honored heads in the author's family urged her "not to
withhold it from the press;" observing, in his persuasions, that the
mistakes which many of my young contemporaries of both sexes
continually make in their estimates of human character, and of the
purposes of human life, require to have a line of difference between
certain splendid vices and some of the brilliant order of virtues to
be distinctly drawn before them. "And," he remarked, "it appeared to
be so done in the pages of my Polish manuscript. Therefore," added
he, "let Thaddeus of Warsaw speak openly for himself!"

This opinion decided me. Though with fear and trembling, yet I felt
an encouraging consciousness that in writing the manuscript narrative
for my own private enjoyment only, and the occasional amusement of
those friends dearest around me, I had wished to portray characters
whose high endowments could not be misled into proud ambitions, nor
the gift of dazzling social graces betray into the selfish triumphs
of worldly vanity,--characters that prosperity could not inflate, nor
disappointments depress, from pious trust and honorable action. The
pure fires of such a spirit declare their sacred origin; and such is
the talisman of those achievements which amaze everybody but their
accomplisher. The eye fixed on it is what divine truth declares it to
be "single!" There is no double purpose in it; no glancing to a man's
own personal aggrandizement on one side and on professing services to
his fellow-creatures on the other; such a spirit has only one aim--
Heaven! and the eternal records of that wide firmament include within
it "all good to man."

What flattered Alexander of Macedon into a madman, and perverted the
gracious-minded Julius Caesar into usurpation and tyranny, has also
been found by Christian heroes the most perilous ordeal of their
virtue; but, inasmuch as they are Christian heroes, and not pagan
men, worshippers of false gods, whose fabled examples inculcated all
these deeds of self-absorbing vain-glory, our heroes of a "better
revelation" have no excuse for failing under their trial, and many
there be who pass through it "pure and undefiled." Such were the
great Alfred of England, Gustavus Vasa of Sweden, and his greater
successor in true glory, Gustavus Adolphus,--all champions of
immutable justice and ministers of peace. And though these may be
regarded as personages beyond the sphere of ordinary emulations, yet
the same principles, or their opposites, prevail in every order of
men from the prince to the peasant; and, perhaps, at no period of the
world more than the present were these divers principles in greater
necessity to be considered, and, according to the just conclusion, be
obeyed. On all sides of us we see public and private society broken
up, as it were by an earthquake: the noblest and the meanest passions
of the human bosom at contention, and the latter often so disguised,
that the vile ambuscade is not even suspected till found within the
heart of the fortress itself. We have, however, one veritable
touchstone, that of the truest observation, "ye shall know a tree by
its fruits." Let us look round, then, for those which bear "good
fruits," wholesome to the taste as well as pleasant to the sight,
whether they grow on high altitudes or in the humbler valleys of the
earth; let us view men of all degrees in life in their actions, and
not in their pretensions,--such men as were some of the Sobieski race
in Poland, in every change of their remarkable lives. When placed at
the summit of mortal fame, surrounded by greatness and glory, and
consequent power, they evinced neither pride to others nor a sense of
self-aggrandizement in themselves; and, when under a reverse
dispensation, national misfortunes pursued them, and family sorrows
pierced their souls, the weakness of a murmur never sunk the dignity
of their sustaining fortitude, nor did the firmness of that virtue
harden the amiable sensibilities of their hearts.

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.