Chapter 4 (1)

1

POLISH REFUGEES

ALOYSIUS BERNACKI—STANISLAW WORCELL—THE POLISH AGITATORS BETWEEN 1854 AND 1856—THE DEATH OF WORCELL

Nuovi tormenti e nuovi tormentati!—_Inferno._

Other misfortunes, other sufferers await us. We live on yesterday’s battlefield: all around are the hospitals, the wounded, the prisoners, the dying. The army of Polish emigrants is the oldest of all and the most worn out by suffering, but it has remained obstinately alive. In migrating abroad the Poles, in spite of Danton’s dictum, took their fatherland with them, and with heads erect they have proudly and sternly carried it about the world. Europe has stood aside with respect before the solemn procession of valiant warriors. The peoples have come forward to do them homage; the kings have turned away and averted their eyes to let them pass unnoticed. Europe was awakened for one instant by their footsteps, brought tears and sympathy for them, found money and the spirit to give it.[60] The melancholy image of the Polish refugee, the knight-errant of national independence, has survived in the popular memory. Twenty years in exile have not weakened his faith, and at every momentous crisis, in every hour of conflict and struggle for freedom, the Poles have been the first to answer the roll-call, just as Worcell and the elder Darasz were the first to rally to the Provisional Government of 1848.

But the government of which Lamartine was one had no need of them and did not think of them at all. The most convinced republicans thought of Poland in order to make use of her by the insincere summons to war and revolt of the 15th of May 1848. They saw the deception, but the French bourgeois (with whom Poland was a fad, just as Italy was with the English) have been sulky with Poland ever since. People no longer talked in Paris with the same rhetoric of _Varsovie échevelée_, and the common people only kept, together with many Napoleonic memories, the legend of ‘Poniatowski’ supported by a rough woodcut in which Poniatowski is drowning on horseback in his _chapska_.

The year 1849 marks the beginning of the most depressing time for the Polish exiles. It dragged on wearily up to the Crimean War and the death of Nicholas. Not one real hope, not one drop of living water. The apocalyptic time, foretold by Krasinski, seemed to have come. Cut off from their fatherland, the refugees were cast away on other shores, and, like trees without fresh sap, were withering and fading away; they were becoming aliens to their own people without ceasing to be aliens to the foreigners among whom they lived. The latter to some extent sympathised with them, but their misfortunes lasted too long, and there is no good feeling in man that can stand too long a strain. Moreover, the Polish question was pre-eminently a national question, and only accidentally a revolutionary one, in so far as it was a revolt against a foreign yoke.

The refugees looked backward as much as they looked forward, they were striving to re-establish—as though there were anything worth re-establishing in the past except independence—and independence alone implies nothing: it is a negative conception. Could any country be more independent than Russia? To the complex, laboriously worked-out formula of future social organisation, Poland contributed no new idea, nothing but her historical claim and her readiness to help others in the legitimate hope of reciprocity. The struggle for independence always calls forth warm sympathy, but foreigners can never make it their cause. Only those interests are common to all which by their very essence transcend nationality—such, for instance, as the interests of Catholicism and Protestantism, revolution and reaction, economics and Socialism.

* * * * *

In 1847 I made the acquaintance of the Polish democratic Central Committee. At that time it was held in Versailles, and the most active member was, so I fancied, Wysocki. No real intimacy was possible. The refugees did not want to hear from me what I knew; all they wanted to hear was the confirmation of their hopes and assumptions. They wanted to learn about the conspiracy that was undermining the whole political fabric of Russia, asked whether Yermolov was taking part in it ... and I could tell them of nothing but the radical tendencies among the young people, of Granovsky’s propaganda, of the immense influence of Byelinsky, of the shades of opinion in the two parties struggling at that time in literature and society—the Westerners and the Slavophils. That seemed to them of little consequence.

They had a rich past, we had a great hope; their breast was covered with scars, while we were toughening our muscles to receive them. Beside them we were like recruits beside veterans. The Poles are mystics, we are realists. They are attracted by the mysterious twilight in which outlines are blurred and phantoms hover, in which one can imagine infinite distance, infinite height, because nothing can be seen distinctly. They can live in this half-dreaming state, without analysis, without cold investigation, without gnawing doubts. In the depths of their souls there is an element of mediaevalism alien to us, and a crucifix before which they can pray at moments of grief and fatigue. In Krasinski’s poetry the _Stabat Mater_ drowns the national hymns, and draws us not to the triumph of life, but to the triumph of death, to the Day of Judgment.... We are either _more stupid_ in our faith or _more intelligent_ in our doubt.

This mystical tendency developed to the furthest limit after the time of Napoleon. Mickiewicz, Towianski and even the mathematician Wronski all helped to create the Messianic idea. In old days there were Catholics and Encyclopaedists, but there were no mystics. The old men who had been educated in the eighteenth century were free from theosophic fantasies. The tempering given by the classical tradition of the _grand siècle_ was permanent, like that of Damascus steel. It was my luck to meet two or three specimens of such old Polish Encyclopaedists.

In Paris, and in the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, moreover, there lived from 1831 onwards a nuncio of the Polish Diet, Count Aloysius Bernacki, who was minister of finance at the time of the revolution, and marshal of the nobility of some province; he presented his fellow-nobles to Alexander I., who was playing the Liberal in Poland in 1814.

Completely ruined by the confiscations, he settled in 1831 in Paris, in a small lodging in the Chaussée d’Antin, as I have mentioned already, whence he issued every morning in a dark brown coat to take a walk and read the newspapers, and, at a later hour, came out again in a dark blue coat with gilt buttons to spend the evening with some one; in 1847 I made his acquaintance. The house he lived in was dilapidated, the lady who owned the house wanted to have it repaired. Bernacki wrote a letter to her, which so touched the Frenchwoman (not at all an easy thing to do when it is a question of money) that she entered into negotiations with him and only asked him to leave the house for a time. When she had the house done up, she let Bernacki have his rooms again at the same rent. He saw with grief the new and handsome staircase, the new wallpaper, window-frames, and furniture, but submitted to his fate.

Temperate in all things, absolutely sincere and honourable, the old man was an admirer of Washington and a friend of O’Connell. A true Encyclopaedist, he advocated egoism _bien entendu_ and spent a whole life in self-sacrifice, and had sacrificed everything, from wealth and family to social position and native land, without ever showing any special regret or deigning to complain.

The French police left him in peace and even respected him, knowing that he had been a minister and a nuncio; the prefecture seriously imagined that a nuncio of the Polish Diet was something of the nature of a papal nuncio. This was known among the exiles, and so his comrades and fellow-countrymen were constantly sending him to interview the police on their behalf. Bernacki went without a murmur and wearied the officials with correctly turned complimentary speeches, until they often made concessions to get rid of him. After the complete suppression of the February revolution, the tone changed; no smiles nor tears nor compliments nor grey hairs were of any avail, and just then, as ill luck would have it, the widow of a Polish general who had fought in the Hungarian War arrived in Paris, entirely destitute. Bernacki asked the prefecture to assist her; in spite of the high-sounding title, ‘Son Excellence Monsieur le Nonce,’ the prefecture refused flatly. The old man appealed to Carlier; to get rid of him and at the same time to humiliate him, Carlier replied that assistance was given only to the refugees of 1831. ‘If you feel such sympathy for this lady,’ he added, ‘send in an application for yourself for assistance on the ground of poverty; we will assign you twenty francs a month, and you can make what use you like of them.’

Carlier was caught. Bernacki received the prefect’s suggestion in the most simple-hearted way and at once accepted it, thanking him effusively. From that time forward, the old man went every month to the prefecture, waited for an hour or two in the anteroom, received twenty francs and took the money to the widow.

Bernacki was a good deal over seventy, but he was wonderfully well-preserved; he liked dining with his friends, sitting up with them till two o’clock in the morning and sometimes drinking a glass or two of wine. One night we were going home with him about three o’clock in the morning; we had to pass through the Rue Lepelletier. The Opera House was glowing with lights; _pierrots_ and _débardeurs_, wrapped in shawls, dragoons and police-officers were thronging in the entry. In jest, feeling confident that he would refuse, I said to Bernacki:

‘_Quelle chance!_ Shall we go in?’

‘With the greatest pleasure,’ he answered. ‘I haven’t seen a masked ball for fifteen years.’

‘Bernacki,’ I said to him jestingly, as we went into the hall, ‘when are you going to begin to grow old?’

‘_Un homme comme il faut_,’ he answered laughing, ‘_acquiert des années, mais ne vieillit jamais._’

He kept up his character to the end, and, like a well-bred man, took his leave from life quietly and on good terms with it; he felt unwell in the morning and died in the evening.

At the time of Bernacki’s death I was in London. There soon after my arrival I made friends with a man whose memory is still precious to me and whose coffin I helped to carry to the Highgate Cemetery—I am speaking of Worcell. Of all the Poles I got to know then, he was the one I liked best, and the one who was least antagonistic to Russians. It was not that he was fond of Russians, but he looked at things humanely and so was incapable of wholesale condemnation and narrow-minded hatred. He was the first man with whom I discussed the founding of the Russian printing-press. After listening to me the sick man grew animated, took pencil and paper, began making calculations, reckoning how much type we should require and so on. He made out the chief orders, he introduced me to Czernecki, with whom I worked so much later on.

‘My God, my God,’ he said, as he held the first page of proof in his hand, ‘a free Russian press in London ... how many evil memories are effaced from my mind by that sheet of paper smeared with printer’s ink!’

‘We ought to go hand in hand,’ he often repeated afterwards; ‘our path is one, our cause is one ...’ and he laid his wasted hand on my shoulder.

At the Polish anniversary of the 29th of November 1853, I made a speech at the Hanover Rooms with Worcell in the chair. When I had finished amidst loud applause, Worcell embraced me and kissed me with tears in his eyes.

‘Worcell and you on the platform made a great impression upon me just now,’ one of the Italians (Count Nani) said to me as we went out. ‘It seems to me that that noble, grey-headed, frail-looking old man and your healthy, stalwart figure were the typical representatives of Poland and Russia.’

‘Only add,’ I said, ‘that Worcell in giving me his hand and embracing me _forgave Russia in the name of Poland_.’

Indeed we might have gone hand in hand—but it was not to be.

Worcell was _not alone_.... But first let me speak of him alone.

When Worcell was born, his father, one of the wealthy Polish aristocrats in Lithuania, a kinsman of Eszterhazy, of Potocki, and I do not know of whom else, sent for the village-elders and young women from five of his estates, that they might be present at the christening of the little count, Stanislaw, and might remember all their lives the banquet given by their lord on the occasion. This took place in 1800. The Count gave his son the most brilliant, the most many-sided education; Worcell was a mathematician, a linguist, and familiar with the literatures of five or six countries; in his early youth he had acquired an immense amount of knowledge and at the same time he was a man of the world, belonging to the most aristocratic Polish society at one of the most brilliant periods of its decline, between 1815 and 1830; Worcell married young and was only just entering upon ‘practical’ life, when the rebellion of 1831 broke out. He gave up everything and threw himself heart and soul into the movement. The rebellion was suppressed, Warsaw was taken. Count Stanislaw crossed the frontier like the rest, leaving family and fortune behind.

Instead of following him, his wife cut off all relations with him. As a reward for doing so, part of the property was restored to her. They had two children, a son and a daughter; how they were brought up, we shall see later; to begin with, their mother trained them to forget their father.

Meanwhile Worcell made his way through Austria to Paris and at once found himself in perpetual exile and entirely without means. He was not in the least daunted. Like Bernacki, he adopted a life of monastic self-denial and zealously entered upon his mission, which only ceased twenty-five years afterwards, when he drew his last breath in a little damp basement room, in a wretched lodging-house in gloomy Hunter Street.

To reorganise the Polish party of progress, to extend the propaganda of its principles, to concentrate the refugees’ forces, to prepare for a new rebellion and to advocate this from morning till night, to devote his whole time to it—such was the plan of Worcell’s whole life, from which he never deviated and to which he subordinated everything. With this object he got into touch with all the revolutionists of France, from Godefroi Cavaignac to Ledru-Rollin; with this object he became a freemason, and kept in close relations with the followers of Mazzini, and later on with Mazzini himself. Worcell firmly upheld the banner of the revolutionary party of Poland in opposition to the party of the Czartoryzskis. He was convinced that the aristocracy had been the ruin of the revolution, he looked upon the old nobles as the enemies of his cause, and sought support from the new, the purely democratic Poland.

Worcell was right.

The Polish aristocracy, sincerely devoted as they were to their cause, were in many ways opposed to the tendencies of our times; the image of the Poland of the past was for ever hovering before their eyes, not a new Poland, but the old Poland restored; their ideal was based as much on memories as on hopes. The fetters of Catholicism were quite enough to hold Poland back—the armour of feudal chivalry would have paralysed her completely. In joining hands with Mazzini, Worcell wished to unite the Polish cause with the general European movement for republicanism and democracy. It is clear that he was bound to seek support among the humbler gentry, among townspeople and workmen. It was only in those classes that insurrection could begin. The aristocracy would join the movement, the peasants might be drawn into it, though they never would have taken the initiative.

Worcell may be reproached with stepping into the rut in which the European revolution was already sunk and foundering, for seeing in that path the only way of salvation; but, having once taken it, he was consistent. Circumstances vindicated him completely. Where, indeed, could revolutionary forces be found in Poland, if not in the social layer to which Worcell always turned, and which was forming, growing up and gaining strength between 1831 and 1860?

However different our views may be of revolution and the methods of bringing it about, we cannot deny that everything gained by revolution has been gained by the middle classes and the workers of the towns. And the Polish question was a purely patriotic one; national independence was more precious than social revolution, even to the heart of Worcell himself.

A sort of shudder of awakening ran over slumbering Europe some eighteen months before the revolution of February. The Cracow affair, the trial of Miroslawski, even the war of the Sonderbund and the Italian _risorgimento_ were signs of it. Austria replied with an outbreak of imperial terrorism, Nicholas presented her with Cracow, which did not belong to him—but tranquillity was not restored. Louis-Philippe fell in February 1848, it was a Pole who carried his throne to be burned. Worcell at the head of the Polish democracy came forward to remind the Provisional Government of Poland. Lamartine met him with cold rhetoric. The Republic was more peaceable than the Empire.

There was a moment when it was possible to hope; that moment was missed by Poland, missed by all Western Europe, and Paskevitch announced to Nicholas that Hungary lay at his feet.

After the fall of Hungary, there was nothing more to expect, and Worcell, forced to leave Paris, moved to London.

In London at the end of 1852 I found him a member of the European Committee.[61] He knocked at every door, wrote letters, newspaper articles, worked and hoped, persuaded and entreated—and as, with all that, he had to eat, took to giving lessons in mathematics, in geometrical drawing, and even in French; coughing and breathless from asthma, he walked from one end of London to the other to earn two shillings or at the most half a crown. And then part of what he earned he gave to his comrades.

His spirit never flagged, but his body could not keep pace with it. The London atmosphere, damp, soot-laden, never warmed by the sun, was bad for his weak chest. Worcell was wasting away, but still he persevered. So he lived on to the Crimean War; he could not, I had almost said he _should_ not, have survived that.

‘If Poland does nothing _now_, all is lost, for many years, if not for ever, and I had better close my eyes,’ Worcell said to me, as he set off with Kossuth for a tour round England.

They held meetings in all the principal towns. Worcell and Kossuth were received with loud applause, small sums of money were subscribed for the cause—and that was all. The Government and the Parliament are very good at knowing when public opinion is simply stirred, and when it is insistent. A strong Government after bringing forward a Conspiracy Bill fell in anticipation of a mass-meeting of protest in Hyde Park. There was in the meetings held by Kossuth and Worcell nothing definite, nothing forcible enough to induce the Government and Parliament to acknowledge the rights of Poland and to express sympathy with the Polish cause. The terrible reply of the Conservatives was unanswerable: ‘All is quiet in Poland.’ The English Government would have had, not to recognise an accomplished fact, but to bring it about, to take the initiative in revolution, to rouse Poland. Public opinion in England does not go so far as that. Moreover, _in petto_, every one was longing for the end of the war which had only just begun, was costly and, in reality, quite useless.

At intervals between the meetings Worcell returned to London. He was too intelligent not to realise their failure, he was visibly ageing, he was gloomy and irritable, and, with the feverish energy with which dying men fly to all manner of remedies, he went back to Birmingham or Liverpool, with sinister apprehensions, and obstinate hopes in his heart, to raise his lament for Poland from the platform. I looked at him with great distress. But how could he imagine that England would rouse Poland, that the France of Napoleon III. would stir up revolution? How could he build hopes on the Europe which had let Russia invade Hungary and the French invade Rome? Did not the very presence of Mazzini and Kossuth in London loudly proclaim the degradation of Europe?

... About the same time the long-rankling dissatisfaction of the younger refugees with the Central Committee became articulate. Worcell was petrified—he had not expected this blow, and yet it came quite naturally.

The small group of people immediately surrounding Worcell were far from being on his level. He understood this, but having grown accustomed to his chorus had fallen under its influence. He imagined that he was their leader, while the chorus that followed him directed his course as they wished. Worcell alone rose to the heights on which he could breathe freely, where it was natural for him to be—the chorus, like plebeian relations, dragged him down to the low level of personal squabbles and petty calculations. The leader, old before his time, gasped in this atmosphere from spiritual breathlessness as much as from physical.

These people did not understand the importance of the alliance which I proposed.

They looked upon it as a means of giving a different colour to the cause; their everlasting repetition of commonplaces, their patriotic phrases, their stock memories—had all grown insipid and boring. Association with the Russians would introduce a novel element. Moreover, they hoped to improve their almost bankrupt position at the expense of the Russian propaganda.

From the very beginning, there was no real understanding between the members of the Central Committee and me. Suspicious of everything Russian, they wanted me to write and publish something like a _profession de foi_. I wrote _The Poles Forgive Us_. They asked me to alter certain expressions. I did so, though I was very far from agreeing with them. In reply to my article L. Z. wrote an appeal to the Russians and sent it to me in manuscript. There was not a trace of a new idea in it; there were the same phrases, the same allusions to the past, and outbursts of Catholicism as well. Before translating it into Russian, I pointed out to Worcell the absurdities of the original. Worcell agreed and asked me to explain the matter in the evening to the members of the Central Committee. Then followed the eternal scene between Trissotin and Vadius:[62] the very passages which I criticised were, it appeared, essential to save Poland from ruin. As for the Catholic phrases, they said that whatever their personal convictions might be, they wished to keep with their people; and the people were devoted to their oppressed mother, the Latin Church.

Worcell supported me. But as soon as he began to speak, his comrades made an uproar. Worcell was coughing from the tobacco smoke and could not make himself heard. He promised me to talk to them afterwards and to insist upon the chief corrections. A week later the _Polish Democrat_ came out. Not one word was altered in the appeal; I refused to translate it. Worcell told me that he too was amazed at this proceeding. ‘It is not enough for you to be amazed; why did you not stop it?’ I said to him.

It was evident to me that sooner or later Worcell would be faced with the question, whether to break off from the existing members of the Central Committee and remain in close relations with me, or to break off his association with me and remain on the same terms with his half-baked revolutionists ... Worcell chose the latter course; I was grieved by this, but neither complained of it nor resented it.

At this point I must go into melancholy details. When I set up the printing-press, it was decided that all the expenses of publishing (paper, type, rent, labour, etc.) should fall upon me. The Central Committee undertook the dispatch of the Russian papers and pamphlets at their own expense and through the same channels as the Polish pamphlets. All that they took to send off I gave them free of charge. It would seem that mine was the lion’s share, but apparently it was not enough.

For their own purposes and principally in order to collect funds, the Central Committee arranged to send a delegate to Poland. They even wanted him to go to Kiev and, if possible, to Moscow for propaganda among the Russians, and asked me to give him letters. I refused, afraid of getting people into trouble. Three days before the delegate set off I met Z. in the street in the evening, and he asked me at once: ‘How much are you giving for the expenses of the delegate?’

It struck me as a strange question, but knowing what straits they were in, I said that I would give ten pounds (250 francs), if they liked.

‘What do you mean? You must be joking,’ said Z. frowning. ‘He will need at least sixty pounds and we need forty pounds to make that up. We cannot leave it like that, I will talk to the comrades and come to you.’

He did, in fact, come next day accompanied by Worcell and two other members of the Central Committee. On this occasion Z. simply accused me of refusing to give enough money for the expenses of the delegate, though I had agreed to give him Russian papers to take.

‘Upon my soul,’ I said, ‘you decided to send the delegate, you think it necessary; so the cost of it falls on you. Worcell is present, let him remind you of our agreement.’

‘What’s the use of discussing _trifles_: as though you didn’t know that we haven’t a farthing!’

This tone sickened me at last.

‘I think you haven’t read _Dead Souls_,’ I said, ‘or I would have reminded you of how Nozdryov, showing the boundary of his estate to Tchitchikov, told the latter that the land on both sides of the boundary was his. That is very much like our position: we have divided our work and our burdens by arranging that both parts should fall on my back.’

The little bilious Lithuanian began to lose his temper and make an outcry about honour, and wound up his absurd and discourteous speech by the question, ‘What do you want, then?’

‘That you should not take me for a _bailleur de fonds_ nor a democratic banker, as one German called me in a pamphlet. You think too much of my fortune and, I fancy, too little of me; you are mistaken....’

‘Excuse me, excuse me ...’ cried the Lithuanian, pale with fury.

‘I cannot permit this conversation to go further,’ Worcell, who had been sitting gloomily in the corner, observed, rising to his feet, ‘or you must continue it without me. _Cher_ Herzen, you are right, but think of our position: it is essential to send the delegate and we have not the means.’

I stopped him. ‘In that case you might have asked me whether I could do anything, but you could not demand it; and to demand it in this coarse way is simply disgusting. I will give the money; I do so entirely for your sake, and I give you my word of honour, gentlemen, this is for the last time.’

I handed Worcell the money and they all gloomily withdrew.

The delegate went and returned, having done nothing. The war drew near, began. The _émigrés_ were dissatisfied; the younger section blamed Worcell’s comrades for incapacity, laziness and seeking their own interests instead of those of Poland. Their discontent reached the point of open protests, they talked of demanding accounts from the members of the Central Committee, of making an open declaration of lack of confidence. The one thing that restrained them and made them hesitate was their love and respect for Worcell. I did all I could through Czernecki to strengthen their scruples, but blunder after blunder committed by the Central Committee was enough to drive any one out of patience.

In November 1854 there was another Polish meeting, but its spirit was different from that of the previous year. An M.P., Joshua Wolmsley, was asked to take the chair. The Poles put their cause under English patronage. To prevent the speeches from being too _red_, Worcell wrote notes to some of us, on the same pattern as the one I received from him:

‘You know that we have a meeting on the 20th; we cannot as on the previous occasion ask you to say a few sympathetic words for us; the war and the necessity for securing English support compel us to give a somewhat different tone to the meeting. Herzen, Ledru-Rollin and Pianciani will not speak for us. The speakers will be principally English; of our comrades, only Kossuth will make a speech in order to give an account of our position, etc.’

I answered that ‘I received his invitation _not_ to speak at the meeting, and accepted it the more readily as it was so easy to comply with.’

Support from the English was not forthcoming; concessions were made in vain; even the subscriptions did not amount to much. Wolmsley said that he was ready to give money, but did not wish to put his name down as a subscriber, that as a Member of Parliament he could not take part officially in raising funds for an object not sanctioned by the Government.

All this, and among other things my exclusion from the platform, intensified the irritation of the younger comrades; a statement of the charges against the Central Committee was already being passed from hand to hand. As luck would have it, I was obliged to find fresh quarters for the Russian press. Z., who rented the house in which the Russian as well as the Polish press was installed, was heavily in debt; the bailiffs had been in twice already; they might be expected any day to seize our press together with the furniture. I commissioned Czernecki to move it; Z. made difficulties, was unwilling to let the type and other belongings go; I wrote him a cold letter. In answer to it Worcell, ill and agitated, came to Richmond next day to see me.

‘You are giving us the _coup de grâce_; at the very moment when there is such strife raging among us you are moving the press.’

‘I assure you that I am not doing so for any political reason, any quarrel, or as a protest, but simply I am afraid that everything will be distrained at Z.’s. Can you assure me that that will not happen? I will rely on _your_ word of honour and not move the press.’

‘He certainly is in very great straits.’

‘How can you, then, wish me to risk the loss of my only weapon? Even if I should be able to recover it later on, think of the loss of time. You know how these things are done here.’

Worcell did not speak.

‘I’ll tell you what I can do for you: I will write a letter, saying that for business reasons I am compelled to move the press, but so far from meaning that I am breaking off from you, it will come to our having two presses instead of one. You can publish this letter if you like or show it to any one you please.’

I did in fact write this letter, addressing it to a humble member of the Central Committee, who was in charge of the office.

‘No doubt you have heard,’ asked Worcell, ‘that they are drawing up an act of indictment against us?’

‘I have.’

‘This is how I am rewarded in my old age ... this is what I have been brought to ...’ and he shook his grey head mournfully.

‘I doubt whether you are right, Worcell. They are so accustomed to love and respect you, that it was only through fear of wounding you that things have not come to a head before. You know that it is not with you they have a quarrel, let your comrades go their own way.’

‘Never, never; we have done everything together, we share the responsibility.’

‘You won’t save them.’

‘And what did you say half an hour ago about Russell’s betraying his comrades?’

It was in the evening. I was standing at a little distance from the fireplace, Worcell was sitting at the window with his face towards the fire. His face, worn by illness, with the red glow of the fire quivering over it, struck me as more wasted and suffering than ever—a tear, the bitter tear of age, rolled down his hollow cheek ... several minutes of unbearably painful silence followed ... he got up, I went with him to his bedroom, the great trees were rustling in the garden. Worcell opened the window and said: ‘I should last twice as long here with my poor chest.’

I gripped him with both hands: ‘Worcell,’ I said, ‘stay with me; I will give you a second room, no one shall interfere with you, do as you like, breakfast alone, dine alone if you like; you will rest here for two or three months.... You will not be continually worried, you will be refreshed. I entreat you as a friend, as though I were your younger brother.’

‘I thank you. I thank you with all my heart. I would accept your invitation at once, but under present circumstances it is simply out of the question ... on the one hand, there is the war; on the other, our fellows will take it as meaning that I have deserted them. No, every man must bear his own cross to the end.’

‘Well, sleep well to-night at least,’ I said to him, trying to smile. There was no means of saving him!

In the autumn of 1856 Worcell was advised to go to Nice and to stay a little while first on the warm shores of the Lake of Geneva. When I heard of it I offered him the money necessary. He accepted it, and that brought us together again; we began seeing each other more frequently. But he was a long time preparing to go; the damp London winter with its smoky stifling fog, its everlasting humidity and terrible north-east winds, was beginning. I tried to hurry him off, but already he began to betray a sort of instinctive dread of change, of movement. He was afraid of solitude. I suggested that he should take some one with him to Geneva; there I should have handed him over to Karl Vogt.

He accepted everything, agreed to everything, but did nothing. He lived in an underground basement; it was scarcely ever light in his room, there he was fading away, ill with asthma, without air, breathing coal smoke.

Peter Taylor told Worcell’s landlady to send him every week her bill for his lodging, board and washing; he paid this bill, but gave not a single pound into the old refugee’s hands.

It was definitely too late for him to travel; I offered to take a good room for him in the Brompton Consumption Hospital.

‘Yes, that would be very nice, but it is impossible. Only think what a dreadful distance it is from here.’

‘Well, what of it?’

‘Szabicki lives here and all our affairs are here; _he would have to come every morning to bring me a daily report_.’

At this point self-sacrifice bordered upon madness.

... The war was ending, Nicholas was dead, a new Russia was arising, we lived to see the Paris Peace, and to see the _Polar Star_ and everything we published bought up to the last copy. We began publishing the _Bell_ and it went well.... Worcell and I rarely saw each other; he rejoiced at our success with that inner suppressed but burning pain with which a mother who has lost her son watches the development of another’s boy.... The time of the fatal alternative set by Worcell in his _oggi o mai_ had come, and he was fading out of life....

Three days before his end Czernecki sent for me. Worcell had asked for me—he was very ill, they were expecting the end. When I came in he was in a state of semi-consciousness not unlike a trance; he lay on the sofa, pale and waxen ... his cheeks were terribly sunken, and these fits of unconsciousness had been frequent with him during the last few days, he was slowly growing used to death. A quarter of an hour later Worcell began to come to himself, spoke in a faint voice; he recognised me, sat up and lay half reclining.

‘Have you read the papers?’ he asked me.

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me how the Neufchâtel question is going. I can read nothing.’ I told him, he listened and understood everything.

‘Ah, how I want to sleep! Leave me now, I shall not sleep with you here, and I shall be easier if I sleep.’

Next day he was a little better. He wanted to say something to me ... twice he began and stopped ... and only when he was left alone with me the dying man called me to his side and, feebly taking my hand, said: ‘How right you were ... you don’t know how right you were! ... it has been on my mind to tell you so.’

‘Don’t let us talk any more about them.’

‘Go your own way ...’—he raised his dying but bright and radiant eyes upon me. He could talk no more. I kissed him on the lips, and it was well I did, for our parting was a long one. In the evening he got up, sipped a little warm gin and water with the landlady—an excellent simple-hearted woman, who had a religious reverence for Worcell as a being of a higher order—went back to his own room, and fell asleep. Next morning Szabicki and the landlady asked whether he wanted anything more. He asked them to make a fire and let him sleep again; they did so. Worcell never woke again.

When I came he was gone. His thin, thin face and body were covered by a white sheet. I looked at him, said a last good-bye, and went to fetch a sculptor’s workman to take a mask of him. His last interview, his great agony I have described in another place; I will add one terrible touch to it.

Worcell never spoke of his family. Once he was looking for some letter to give me; rummaging in the table he opened a drawer. There lay a photograph of a well-fed-looking young man with the moustache of an officer. ‘A Pole and a patriot, no doubt,’ I said, more in jest than by way of inquiry.

‘That,’ said Worcell, looking away and hurriedly taking the portrait out of my hand, ‘is my son.’ I learned later that he was in the Russian service in Warsaw.

His daughter had married a count and was living in wealthy style. She did not know her father.

Two days before his death he was dictating his will to Mazzini ... his last message to Poland, his farewell to her and greetings to friends.... ‘That is all,’ said the dying man. Mazzini did not put down the pen. ‘Think a little,’ he said; ‘is there nothing else you want at this moment? Are there no others to whom you should have something to say?’ Worcell understood, his face clouded over and he answered: ‘There is nothing for me to say to them.’

I know no curse which would sound more terrible and lie more heavily upon one than those simple words.

* * * * *

With the death of Worcell the democratic party of the Polish emigrants in London grew pettier. It had rested upon him, upon his beautiful, his revered personality. The radical party fell apart into little cliques, almost hostile to each other. The yearly meetings split up, became poor in numbers and interest. There was still the everlasting requiem, the rehearsal of losses, new and old, and, as always in requiems, the visionary hope of the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting, the faith in the second coming of Buonaparte and the resurrection of Poland.

Two or three worthy old men remained like grand and mournful monuments; like the grey-headed, long-bearded Israelites weeping at the walls of Jerusalem. They pointed, not like leaders, to the path ahead, but like monks, to the grave; they bring us to a standstill with their _Sta viator_!

The best of the best among them had kept a youthful heart in his decrepit body, and a gentle, childishly pure youthful light in his blue eyes. He was already on the brink of the grave, he would soon pass away, and soon, too, his opponent Czartoryzski.

Is not that really _finis Poloniae_?

Before we part for ever from the touching and sympathetic personality of Worcell in the cold Highgate cemetery, I should like to give a few more trifling details about him. So men coming from a funeral check their mourning to tell stories of the dead man.

Worcell was very absent-minded in little daily affairs; he always left behind him his spectacles, spectacle-case, handkerchief, snuff-box; on the other hand, if a handkerchief not his own lay beside him he would put it in his pocket; he came to see me sometimes with three gloves, sometimes with one.

Before he moved to Hunter Street, he lived close by in a semicircle of small houses at 43 Burton Crescent, not far from the New Road. After the English fashion all the houses in the Crescent were single dwellings. The house in which Worcell lived was the fifth from the end and, knowing his absent-mindedness, he always counted the doors. Returning one day from the opposite side of the Crescent, Worcell knocked and, when the door was opened, walked into his room. A girl, probably the daughter of the house, came out of it. Some one coughed twice behind him: a complete stranger was sitting in the armchair. ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Worcell, ‘I am afraid you have been waiting for me.’ ‘Allow me,’ observed the Englishman, ‘before answering, to know with whom I have the honour of speaking.’

‘I am Worcell, and I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance; what can I do for you?’

Here Worcell was suddenly struck by the idea that he had come to the wrong place; looking about him he saw that the furniture and everything else was not his. He told the Englishman of his plight, and apologising went off to the fifth house from the other side. Fortunately the Englishman was a very polite person, which is not a very common find in London.

Three months later the same thing happened again. This time when he knocked, the maid who opened the door, seeing a venerable old man, asked him to walk into the parlour, where the Englishman was having supper with his wife. Seeing Worcell walk in, he held out his hand good-humouredly and said: ‘It’s not here, you live at No. 43.’

In spite of this absent-mindedness, Worcell preserved to the end of his life an extraordinary memory; I used to refer to him as to a lexicon or encyclopaedia. He had read everything in the world and studied everything, mechanics and astronomy, the natural sciences and history. Though he had no Catholic prejudices, from the old _pli_ of the Polish mind he believed in a spiritual world, unnecessary and impossible, but apart from the material world. It was not the religion of Moses, Abraham and Isaac, but the religion of Jean Jacques, of George Sand, of Pierre Leroux, of Mazzini and the rest. But Worcell had less right to it than any of them.

When his asthma was not worrying him very much and he was not very gloomy, Worcell was very charming in company. He told stories superbly, and especially reminiscences of the old life of the Polish nobility. I used to listen attentively to his tales. The world of Pan Tadewsz, the world of Murdelio ... passed before one’s eyes; a world the end of which one could not regret; on the contrary, one rejoices that it is no more, though one cannot refuse to acknowledge a sort of brilliant, unbridled poetry in it entirely lacking in the life of the Russian nobility. West European aristocracy is indeed so completely alien to us that all accounts of our grandees may be reduced to stories of savage luxury, of banquets in which a whole town takes part, of multitudes of house-serfs, of tyrannising over the peasants and poor neighbours, together with slavish cringing before the emperor and the court. The Sheremetyevs and the Golitsyns with all their palaces and great estates were in no way distinguished from their peasants, except by wearing a German coat, reading and writing French, and enjoying wealth and the Tsar’s favour. They were all continually justifying Paul’s dictum, that he had no one about him but servants in high positions; it was to such that he was speaking when he said it. All that is very good, but one ought to recognise it. What can be more pitiful _et moins aristocratique_ than the last representative of Russian nobility and high rank whom I have seen, Prince Sergey Mihailovitch Golitsyn, and what can be more loathsome than an Izmailov?

The manners of the Polish Pans were bad, barbarous, almost unintelligible now; but they were on another plane, due to a different mould of character, and there was not a shade of churlishness in them.

‘Do you know,’ Worcell asked me once, ‘why the Passage Radziwill in the Palais Royal is so called?’

‘No.’

‘You remember the celebrated Radziwill, the friend of the Regent, who drove with his own horses from Warsaw to Paris and bought a house for every night he had to sleep on the journey; the quantity of wine drunk by Radziwill was too much for his less vigorous host; the Duke became so much attached to him, that though he saw him every day, he used to send him notes in the morning. One day Radziwill wanted to tell the Regent something; he sent a lad with a letter to him. The fellow looked and looked, but could not find the place, and came back to confess his failure. “You fool,” the Pan said to him, “come here, look out of window, do you see that big house?” (the Palais Royal).—“Yes, I see it.”—“Well, that is where the greatest Pan here lives. Any one will show it you.” The lad went off and looked and looked, but could not find the place. The fact is that the palace is screened by houses, and one has to make a _détour_ by the Rue Honoré. “Phew, what a bore!” said the Pan; “tell my steward to buy the houses between my house and the Palais Royal, and to make a street, so that this fool won’t lose his way next time I send him to the Regent.”’

I will give another example of how financial operations are conducted as a rule in our world.

After my arrival in London in 1852, while speaking of the low state of the Italian party funds with Mazzini, I told him that in Genoa I had proposed to his friends that they should put a tax on their incomes and pay, those with no families 10 per cent., those with a family less.

‘They will all agree,’ observed Mazzini, ‘but very few will pay it.’

‘That would be shameful; they will pay,’ I said. ‘I have long wished to contribute my mite to the Italian cause, it is as dear to me as my own; I will give 10 per cent. of my income at the same time. That will be about £200. Here is £140, but £60 I will keep for the present.’

In 1853 Mazzini vanished. Soon after his departure two refugees called upon me, one wearing a fur collar because he had ten years previously been in Petersburg; the other with no collar, but with a grey moustache and a little military beard. They came with a message from Ledru-Rollin; he wanted to know whether I was not intending to send a sum of money to the European Committee. I confessed that I had no such intention.

Some days later the same question was put to me by Worcell, ‘Where can Ledru-Rollin have picked up that idea?’

‘Why, you did give some to Mazzini.’

‘That is rather a reason for not giving to any one else.’

‘I believe you still have £60 to give.’

‘Promised to Mazzini.’

‘That is all the same.’

‘I don’t think so.’

A week passed; I had a letter from Mazzoletti, in which he informed me that it had come to his knowledge that I did not know to whom to send £60 still in my hands; for which reason he begged me to send the money to him as the representative of Mazzini in London.

This Mazzoletti really was Mazzini’s secretary. An official and a bureaucrat by nature, he amused us by his official dignity and bureaucratic manner.

When a telegram appeared in the newspapers announcing the rising in Milan of the 3rd of February 1853, I went to Mazzoletti to find out whether he had any news. Mazzoletti asked me to wait; then came out to me with an anxious but valiant air, carrying some papers and accompanied by Bratiano, with whom he was in earnest conversation.

‘I have come to you to find out if you have any news.’

‘No, I only heard myself from _The Times_; I am awaiting a dispatch from hour to hour.’

Two or three others arrived. Mazzoletti was pleased, and so groaned and complained that he had no time to spare. In course of conversation he began to drop hints of news and explanations.

‘How do you know that?’ I asked him.

‘That ... these, of course, are my own deductions,’ Mazzoletti observed, somewhat disconcerted.

‘I will come to you to-morrow morning....’

‘If any news comes to-day I will let you know.’

‘You will oblige me; from seven till nine o’clock this evening I shall be at Verrey’s.’

Mazzoletti did not forget. At seven o’clock I was dining at Verrey’s: an Italian whom I had seen twice walked in, he came up to me, looked about him, waited till the waiter had gone to fetch something, and saying that Mazzoletti had charged him to tell me that there was no telegram, went away.

On receiving the letter from the state secretary of revolution, I answered him jokingly, that he was wrong in picturing me as standing helpless in the midst of London, not knowing to whom to give £60; that without a letter from Mazzini I had no intention of giving the money to any one whatever.

Mazzoletti wrote me a long and somewhat wrathful note, which was intended, without lowering the dignity of the writer or exceeding the limits of parliamentary courtesy, to be sarcastic at the expense of the recipient.

Not a week had passed after these overtures when early one morning Amelia G., one of the women most devoted to Mazzini and an intimate friend of his, called upon me. She told me that the rising in Lombardy had failed, that Mazzini was still in hiding there and asking them to send him money at once, and they had no money.

‘Here,’ I said, ‘is the famous £60; only, don’t forget to tell your privy councillor Mazzoletti, and Ledru-Rollin too if occasion arises, that I did not do so badly in refusing to fling these 1500 francs into the bottomless pit of the European Committee.’

In anticipation of our Russian national inference from my story, I ought to say that no one ever profited by the money so collected.[63] In Russia some one would have stolen it: here it vanished exactly as though someone had burnt the banknotes in a candle without taking the numbers.

2

PATER V. PETCHERIN

‘Yesterday I saw Petcherin.’

I started at the name.

‘What,’ I asked, ‘_the_ Petcherin, is he here?’

‘Who, the Reverend Petcherin? Yes, he is here.’

‘Where is he?’

‘In the Jesuit monastery, Saint Mary’s Chapel, at Clapham.’