Catherine the Great and Poland
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Notes Introduction: The Other East 1. That lineage continues into the twenty-first century. For a very recent example, see the hero Lev of Rose Tremain’s 2007 novel The Road Home. London: Vintage, 2008. 2. The Global Eighteenth Century. Ed. Felicity A. Nussbaum. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni- versity Press, 2003; Travels, Explorations and Empires, 1770–1835: Travel Writings on North America, the Far East, North and South Poles and the Middle East. Eds. Tim Fulford and Peter J. Kitson. 8 vols. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2001. 3. The quote comes from Dobson’s brief introduction, which is not paginated. For indus- trial and economic links between Poland and Scotland in the nineteenth century, see McLeod. 4. Thomas Gladsky, Princes, Peasants and Other Polish Selves. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992; Francois Rosset, L’Arbre de Cracovie: Le mythe polonais dans la littérature française. Paris: Imago, 1996; Hubert Orlowski, Polnische Wirtschaft: Zum deutschen Polendiskurs der Neuzeit. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1996. As I note above, several useful studies focusing on British representations of Russia already exist. 1 ‘That Woman, Lovely Woman! May Have Dominion’: Catherine the Great and Poland 1. Walpole does not clear the Russian people of responsibility. His letter continues, ‘What! are there no poissardes at Petersburg? are they afraid of a greater fury than themselves? – or, don’t they venerate her, because she is a Mirabeau in petticoats, and execrable enough to be a queen to their taste?’ While individual Britons (like Walpole) may note the hypocrisy of their own leaders, the same is not possible in Russia, where Catherine’s followers differ from her only in their degree of baseness. 2. See the indices to volumes 31 and 34 of Walpole’s Correspondence under ‘Catherine II’ for these and other epithets. 3. My biographical sketches of Catherine and Stanisław are especially indebted to works in the bibliography by Alexander, Butterwick, and Zamoyski. 4. In an 1829 ‘Imaginary Conversation’ between Catherine and ‘Princess Dashkof’ [sic], Walter Savage Landor even places her at the scene of the murder: Catherine’s first words are ‘Into his heart! into his heart!’ Landor also has her already planning Ivan’s death: ‘Ivan must follow next: he is heir to the throne’ (7: 106–12). 5. ‘She has now inoculated her son – I wonder she did not, out of magnanimity, try the experiment on him first,’ quipped Horace Walpole (23: 444). 6. Catherine’s play The Deceiver, an attack on freemasonry that includes a caricature of Count Cagliostro, was performed in Russia and Germany during her own lifetime. 7. Walpole was right about revolution but wrong about the pictures’ fate. They remain in the Hermitage. 8. For further images and discussions of British engravings of Catherine II, see Bolton, Caretta, Cross (Catherine 29–44), Komisaruk, O’Quinn, and Schmidt. Bolton and O’Quinn also consider their relationship to Hannah Cowley’s A Day in Turkey; Schmidt adds an interesting discussion of Suvorov. 173 174 Notes 9. Horace Walpole refers to Orlov repeatedly in his letters, for example, ‘it appears that the revolution in Peterberg [sic] has only been in the bedchamber, and that Count Gregory Orlow retains all his other posts as yet’ (23: 444; see also 22: 64–5 and 24: 114). 10. ‘The Polish Prince you mention is our cousin. His Grand Mother, or great Grand Mother, was a daughter of the Marquis of Argyll’s. The King of Poland is the same relation to us.’ The Journal of Lady Mary Coke, 2: 361. Walpole records an amusing anecdote of Stanisław’s visit to the Gordons (35: 82). 11. The former lovers only met once. In 1787, as Catherine sailed down the Dnieper on a six-month journey to survey her new southern empire, she briefly met Stanisław at Kanev. According to John T. Alexander, Stanisław ‘staged a magnificent reception replete with grandiose fireworks – an imitation of Mt. Vesuvius erupting – and asked her to stay several days,’ hoping the meeting would strengthen ties between the two rulers and their nations. But one evening was enough for Catherine. ‘As the Prince de Ligne mordantly summarized Poniatowski’s fiasco: three months and three millions expended for three hours of empty conversation with the Empress’ (259). 12. Burke’s comments were translated into Polish and appeared in Warsaw newspapers. Stanisław awarded him a ‘Merentibus’ medal, making him a member of a private order of the King. Burke responded with ‘a magnificent letter of thanks’ (Butterwick 143; see Burke Correspondence 6: 426–8; 7: 76–9). 13. Edmund Burke critiques Vaughan’s arguments in a 29 July 1792 letter to his son Richard Burke (Correspondence 7: 159). As noted below, Vaughan’s letters were described at length in the Analytical Review. 14. For an extended reading of ‘Why Should Na Poor Folk Mowe’ (which was published after Burns’s death), see McIlvanney 173–7. 15. Here and throughout Chapter 1, ‘E’ stands for David Erdman’s edition of The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake. New York: Doubleday, 1988. 16. For Wollstonecraft, see Chapter 2. Mackintosh refers to Poland in a number of works, including his famous speech in defense of Jean-Gabriel Peltier. See The Trial of John Peltier, Esq. for a libel against Napoleon Buonaparte. London: Cox, Son, and Baylis, 1803, 162–7. 17. An engraving sometimes attributed to Gillray, Queen Catherine’s Dream (pub- lished 4 November 1794 by W. Holland), shows the devil offering Warsaw and Constantinople to Catherine II. The same theatrical reference perhaps inspired Isaac Cruikshank’s 26 December 1796 The Moment of Reflection or A Tale for Future Times (here Figure 1.3). 18. For the centrality of Enitharmon among Blake’s names, see Essick 216. 19. Woodring’s suggestion is bolstered by Thomas Moore’s parody of ‘Kubla Khan,’ ‘A Dream,’ where the setting is Russia: ‘Methought, upon the Neva’s flood / A beau- tiful Ice Palace stood, / A dome of frost-work, on the plan / Of that once built by Empress Anne’ (7–10). ‘A Dream’ opens Moore’s Fables for The Holy Alliance, Rhymes on the Road, &c. &c. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1823. 20. And indeed, years later, Leigh Hunt mistakenly attributed the palace to Catherine. Leigh Hunt’s London Journal 44 (28 January 1835): 25. 21. I discuss ‘To the Continental Despots’ and Coleridge’s ‘Koskiusko’ at greater length in Chapter 2. 22. Depending on the exact date of Blake’s composing this page of Europe, it is possi- ble that his description of the suffering ‘inhabitants of suburbs’ refers specifically to the much-reported November 1794 massacre at Prague, a suburb of Warsaw, which signaled the end of organized Polish resistance to Russian forces. Notes 175 2 ‘A Patriot’s Furrow’d Cheek’: British Responses to the 1794 Kosciuszko´ Uprising 1. Opie adds that ‘the next time that his birthday was commemorated in Paris, I wrote some verses on the occasion, and sent them to him by a private hand’ (Memo- rials 107). If this suggests that Kosciuszko’s´ desire for publicity went unfulfilled, one should remember that his request also inspired the 1831 anecdote, and per- haps another poem Opie published in 1831, ‘Aux Polonais Qui Partent’ (Collected Poems 343). 2. Two writers have collected some of the best-known British poems and prose on Kosciuszko:´ see Zapatka and Drozdowski. For useful biographies of Kosciuszko,´ see Gardner, Haiman, and Storozynski. 3. David Humphreys, who served with Kosciuszko´ at West Point and Saratoga, was also on board, and he commemorated the voyage in the poem ‘An Epistle to Dr. Dwight. On board the Courier de l’Europe, July 30, 1784’: ‘Such my companions, – such the muse shall tell, / Him first, whom once you knew in war full well, / Our Pol- ish friend, whose name still sounds so hard, / To make it rhyme would puzzle any bard’ (73–6). David Humphreys. ‘An Epistle to Dr. Dwight. On board the Courier de l’Europe, July 30, 1784.’ The Miscellaneous Works of David Humphreys. New York: T. and J. Swords, 1804, 211–15. 4. See, for instance, William Aytoun’s 1832 ‘Poland’ (‘Was it so very pleasant to thy heart / To see her blood upon thy garments start’ [71–2]), Janet Hamilton’s 1865 ‘Poland’ (‘None / Will take her by the hand: alone, / Before broad Europe, lost, forlorn, / She lies dismembered, bleeding, torn’) or Algernon Swinburne’s 1878 sonnet ‘Rizpah,’ where Poland is described as a nation that ‘couldst not even scare off with hand or groan / Those carrion birds devouring bone by bone.’ 5. Coleridge’s amusing description deserves to be printed at length: ‘I shall never forget, or recall without a smile ... the impression which the stranger whom I found in the room before dinner, made on me. A striking countenance – poring on the Paper of that day and occasionally turned towards me – At last, he rose, advanced to me with the paper in his hand, & began – “Sir! I apprehend, that you are the Author of this Sonnet on Koskiusko?” I bowed assent. “Sir! it is a very bad composition – a very wretched performance, I assure you.” I again bowed: and with a smile that expressed a little surprize at the oddness, but no offence at the harshness, of this volunteer Address, made some modest reply admitting the too probable appropriateness of the Criticism. “Nay, but, Sir! do not misunderstand me – It is a poem of genius – a proof of great Genius, Sir! You are certainly a man of Genius, Sir! My name is Holcroft – and I should be glad to see you at my House next Sunday, to dine with me – & meet with Mr Porson and Mr Godwin” ’ (4: 830).