Chopin’s Travels. Glosses to a Biography ebook

Selection of articles

Piotr Mysłakowski

Translated by

John Comber

Content Editor

Jim Samson

Assistant editors

Piotr Wojciechowski, Sylwia Zabieglińska

Iconography

Piotr Mysłakowski, Magdalena Kap-Taborowicz

Indexes

Piotr Wojciechowski

Graphic design and layout

Grzegorz Laszuk

Typesetting

Anna Hegman

Mobile version

Pracownia DTP Aneta Osipiak-Wypiór

© Maria Nowaczyk, Agata Nowaczyk-Łokaj

© Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina

ISBN 978-83-969526-4-6 (print)

ISBN 978-83-68058-00-0 (epub)

ISBN 978-83-68058-01-7 (mobi)

Warsaw 2023

Publisher

Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina

The Fryderyk Chopin Institute

ul. Tamka 43

00-355 Warszawa

www.nifc.pl

Subsidised by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage.

Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

Introduction

1810

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

A farewell to Żelazowa Wola in verse

1820

Professor Chopin at the Military Academy

1825

A brick taken from Copernicus’ house

1826

The summer of 1826 in Reinertz

1827

Chopin reduced to the level of a 14-year-old schoolgirl

1828

Fryderyk Chopin among the pupils of Warsaw Lyceum

Chopin in Berlin with the gentlemen naturalists

1829

Chopin’s walk beneath the surface of the earth

A surprise for Chopin on his travels

How Chopin ‘stagecoached’ to Kalisz

1830

Henriette Sontag made it to Fischbach

A gloss to Chopin’s words about collops with cabbage

The mysterious Miss F. and the enigmatic baron from Chopin’s letters

Chopin’s last journey between the Vistula and the Prosna

1831

And I sit here idle […] grieving at the piano

Chopin’s Stuttgart address

1833

In search of the origins of the Etude in A minor, Op. 25 No. 11

1836

Chopin played for British friends of Poland

1841

On the prophesies from Paris reaching Chopin at Nohant

1842

Mazurkas for a son of Wielkopolska (Greater Poland)

1844

A trace of Fryderyk Chopin’s nightmare during the summer at Nohant in 1844

1848

Chopin recommends ‘dear Herbault’

To whom did Mrs Kalergis recommend Chopin?

Chopin hurtled to Scotland at 50 miles an hour

1849

On Chopin’s words quoted in his obituary

1850

How Fontana ‘gathered himself to write about Chopin’

Henryk Franciszek Nowaczyk (1941–2020)

List of illustrations

Index of people

Index of places

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 Tupilați, 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 Varèse 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 Varèse’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 suggestthat 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

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]

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