Thomas McLean

Nobody's Argument: Jane Porter and the Historical Novel

Despite recent scholarly interest in the historical novel and national tale, Jane Porter has not received the critical attention paid to other Romantic-era novelists like Sir Walter Scott, Maria Edgeworth, and Lady Morgan. This essay argues for the importance of Porters work, in particular her 1803 novel Thaddeus of Warsaw, in the development of the historical novel. The essays first half examines Porters literary and epistolary responses to the novels and celebrity of Sir Walter Scott as well as Scotts responses to Porters work, and then considers explanations for the scholarly neglect of Porter. The second half argues that Thaddeus of Warsaw anticipates several key features of the historical novel identified by Georg Lukács, features that would regularly reappear in the Waverley novels. Porters interest in human virtue links her to eighteenth-century writers like Mackenzie and Richardson, but she differs from those predecessors in focusing on the actions of virtuous individuals in periods of historical disruption, thus moving the man of feeling onto scenes of revolution.

Climate Change: Britain and Poland, 1830–49

Unlike most notable figures of the British Romantic era, Claire Clairmont had first-hand experience of Russia: she lived there from 1824 to 1828, working as a governess. Clairmont’s journals and letters suggest that her experiences ran the gamut from sublime (‘Moscow is the most beautiful city in the world in Summer,’ Correspondence 245) to historically remarkable (she comments on the Decembrist revolt, Journals 393–4), to utterly despairing (‘To stay here is certain death in a year or two,’ Correspondence 248). Her letters and journals tell us almost nothing of her opinion of Poland, though her single foray into fiction suggests a thorough acquaintance with the now-familiar tropes of the Polish exile. In Clairmont’s short story of 1832, ‘The Pole,’ finished by Mary Shelley, the narrator describes the features of her hero Ladislas, a Polish military spy: ‘His countenance, had you taken from it its deep thoughtfulness and its expression of calm intrepid bravery, might have belonged to the most lovely woman, so transparently blooming was his complexion, so regular his features, so blond and luxuriant his hair’ (347). The sign of Kościuszko — between the Lion and Virgin, as Landor had it — clearly remained in the ascendant in the early 1830s. As if to emphasize the point, Clairmont creates a conniving Russian princess named Dashkoff to serve as one of the story’s villains — Princess Catherine Dashkoff, or Dashkova (1743–1810), was a well-known friend of Kościuszko’s nemesis, Catherine the Great. Ladislas is even rewarded with marriage to Idalie, ‘a daughter of one of Kosciusko’s unfortunate followers’ (354).

Afterword: Conrad’s Poles

It seems inadequate to write a book on the Polish hero in nineteenth-century British literature and not include the work of Josef Konrad Korzeniowski. But this is not such an easy task. Joseph Conrad’s Polishness is central to many excellent studies of his work, and countless critics have already identified the influence of Polish history on Conrad’s heroes, most notably Lord Jim. More important to the focus of this study is the fact that, in a lifetime of writing about exiles and foreign lands, Conrad rarely included a Polish character in his work. There are two exceptions: the short stories ‘Amy Foster’ (1901) and ‘Prince Roman’ (1911). Both suggest an author familiar with many of the Romantic and Victorian representations of Poland discussed in this book and attempting, at century’s end, to offer darker, realistic revisions.

Arms and the Circassian Woman

In the late 1830s, Jane Porter became acquainted with the writer and diplomat David Urquhart. Born in the Scottish Highlands, Urquhart travelled widely in his youth, gained the acquaintance and support of Jeremy Bentham and Sir Herbert Taylor (George IV’s private secretary), and eventually attained a diplomatic post in Constantinople. Though his assigned mission was the extension of British trade into Turkey and its neighbors — and, indeed, Urquhart became a leading British authority on Turkish customs and history — his interests turned to the fate of the people of the Caucasus, especially the Circassians, and the threat of Russia’s expanding empire. Porter seems to have first met Urquhart in 1835, but their encounters became more regular in 1838. The chance of getting to know Urquhart must have intrigued Porter, for a number of reasons related to her brother, Sir Robert Ker Porter. As noted in Chapter 3, Porter, in deference to Robert, carefully avoided the anti-Russian rhetoric that usually accompanied calls for Polish sovereignty. Urquhart, in contrast, was an outspoken Russophobe. Furthermore, Robert was considered something of an expert on the Caucasus, the same region Urquhart was now claiming as his own. Robert’s Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia, 1817–1820 was published in 1821, and Porter was anxious to defend her brother’s position of authority.

‘Transform’d, Not Inly Alter’d’: The Resurrection of Kościuszko and the Arrival of Mazeppa

In early 1816 the Prince Regent altered the uniform of some British light dragoon units. The elaborate new costume was based on Polish cavalry who had served at Waterloo as Napoleon’s Lancers of the Imperial Guard. British forces also adopted the uniforms of certain French divisions during the post-war occupation of France, and interest in military dress quickly reached British fashion. In George Cruikshank’s ‘Monstrosities of 1819,’ the visiting Persian Ambassador and his entourage (who will reappear in Chapter 6) are barely visible, riding in the distance, while a lancer joins the latest human oddities in the forefront, his hourglass waist echoing his elaborate czapka (Figure 4.1). A cartoon from the early 1830s — the moment of yet another uprising in Poland — shows a woman being fitted into a stylish variation of the Polish lancer uniform while actual soldiers look on with amusement (Figure 4.2).

‘A Patriot’s Furrow’d Cheek’: British Responses to the 1794 Kościuszko Uprising

In an 1831 article of reminiscences, the poet and novelist Amelia Opie described a remarkable 1802 encounter with Tadeusz Kościuszko. While enjoying an evening at the Paris home of an Irish countess, Opie and her husband, the painter John Opie, spotted the celebrity: ‘I took my husband’s arm,’ she writes, ‘and accompanied him to get a nearer view of the Polish patriot, so long the object to me of interest and admiration’ (Memorials 105). For the Opies, as for any other Britons attending the soiree, the meeting had been preceded by numerous literary and visual substitutes. Since the mid-1790s, Kościuszko’s unsuccessful insurrection against the partitioners of Poland had been the subject of newspaper articles, poetry, and engravings. Opie herself lamented the fate of Poland in her early poem, ‘Ode on the Present Times, 27th January 1795’: Whence yonder groans? O wretched land! Poland, from thee, alas! they came, A despot speaks, and lo! a band, Blaspheming pure Religion’s name, Bid cold deliberate murder live, And death’s dread stroke to helpless thousands give. (19–24) In her memoir she quotes a line from Thomas Campbell, ‘While Freedom shriek’d as Kosciusko fell,’ and mentions owning an image of the patriot: ‘I had so often contemplated a print of him in his Polish dress, which hung in my room, that I thought I should have known him anywhere’ (105–6).

‘That Woman, Lovely Woman! May Have Dominion’: Catherine the Great and Poland

In a 7 July 1792 letter to his sister-in-law Lady Ossory, Horace Walpole makes a provocative comparison between Britain’s latest military success in India and Russia’s contemporaneous invasions of Turkey and Poland. So we are forced to rejoice at Lord Cornwallis’s victory over Tippoo! — for we have usurped India till it is become part of our vitals, and we can no more afford to part with it, than with a great artery — and yet one has the assurance to rail at the Grand Usurpress, who would sluice all the veins of Europe and Asia to add another chapter to her murderous history — Well! if she dies soon, she will find the river Styx turned to a torrent of blood of her shedding! (34: 146) Walpole was among the first to see the hypocrisy in Britain’s opposition to Russian expansionism, coinciding as it did with English imperial enterprises in Scotland, Ireland, and India. Yet Walpole also makes an interesting distinction between Britain’s collective guilt — India ‘is become part of our vitals’ — and the particular blame he assigns to Russia’s ruler, Catherine II. Even Britain’s geographical cannibalism — one nation devouring another — cannot compare to ‘the Grand Usurpress,’ who sluices the veins of whole continents.1 The cataclysmic events of 1792 would inspire other British writers to describe the colossal abilities of Catherine II, but Walpole was already an experienced disparager of the Russian ruler.

Picturing Will: Middlemarch and the Victorian Genealogy of the Polish Hero

In George Eliot’s first published fiction, ‘The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton,’ there is a sly detail which strongly suggests her familiarity with the writings of Jane Porter. Eliot wrote ‘Amos Barton’ in late 1856, hot on the heels of her notorious essay ‘Silly Novels by Lady Novelists.’ Porter is not mentioned in the essay, which focuses on recent publications, but her surname appears most suspiciously in the fiction that followed it. The Reverend Barton comes under the spell of the mysterious and beautiful Countess Czerlaski, but he is also taken by the countess’s romantic tales of her recently deceased husband. According to his neighbor Mr Farquhar, Barton ‘believth the whole thtory about her Polish huthband and hith wonderful ethcapeth; and ath for her — why, he thinkth her perfection’ (38). In a demystifying passage (as if we needed it after Farquhar’s lispy description), we learn that the countess was born lowly Caroline Bridmain, and that she met Czerlaski when she served as governess — and he as dance-instructor — to the daughters of one Lady Porter. Her seven-year marriage to Czerlaski leaves Caroline with ‘not, indeed, any very ripe and comprehensive wisdom, but much external polish,’ the last phrase a near-perfect pun on the measurable depth of Caroline’s nobility in exile (41). Amos Barton falls for the same romantic notions that no doubt charmed the daughters of Lady Porter and the literary daughters of Jane Porter.1

Introduction: The Other East

Early in her 1980 novel Nuns and Soldiers, Iris Murdoch describes a hero-in-waiting, Peter Szczepanski, the son of Polish refugees who settle in London just before the Second World War. Peter’s schoolmates, finding his last name unpronounceable, christen him the Count, a title that follows him into adulthood. Though his father pines to fight for Poland and rescue his homeland first from Nazis then Communists, Peter refuses to take part: ‘He did not want to hear of those centuries of misery, of “partitions” and betrayals … He would not worship Kosciuszko and Mickiewicz or even remember who they were. Worst of all, while his mother was stubbornly refusing to learn English, he was stubbornly refusing to learn Polish’ (14). After the death of his parents, however, lineage (both biological and literary) overtakes the Count. He visits Poland, reads Polish journals, and rediscovers his roots, though he still avoids political activism. ‘Like his father he had, in his own way, interiorised Poland. He was his own Poland, suffering alone … He would never die for Poland, as his father would have done … But he could avoid any baseness which might demean that memory, and could cultivate a narrow moral stiffness with which to resist the world. Such was his honour’ (17–18).

Hero between Genres: Jane Porter’s Thaddeus of Warsaw

As an early experiment in historical fiction, Jane Porter’s 1803 Thaddeus of Warsaw caused some confusion among its first readers. Impressed by Porter’s detailed descriptions of the 1794 Kościuszko Uprising and her use of historical personages like Kościuszko and King Stanislaw as supporting characters, readers were not sure whether to treat the work as fact or fiction. Jane wrote her sister Anna Maria that one friend of the family ‘has read it twice thro’ — and concluded that all the military Scenes, & Speeches were copied from some other work.’1 General William Gardiner, a former British minister to the Polish court, was surprised that he had never met Porter in Warsaw, for he assumed (incorrectly) that only an eyewitness could describe the uprising so realistically.2 Even the naval hero Sir Sidney Smith, to whom Porter dedicated the first edition, requested clarification from the author. After reading the preface and first chapter, he wrote Porter for ‘some key to judge how much is fiction & how much reality — Surely much fiction cannot have been required to render the History of Koskiusko romantic & interesting!’3 Smith’s error is occasionally repeated by contemporary scholars who assume that Thaddeus of Warsaw is a fictionalized biography of Kościuszko, just as Porter’s next novel, The Scottish Chiefs, adapts the story of Scottish national hero William Wallace. In fact Porter did something else in the opening volume of Thaddeus of Warsaw: she created a youthful fictional hero, Thaddeus Sobieski, and placed him in the midst of an epoch-making military campaign, surrounded by historical figures. Eleven years before the publication of Waverley, Porter introduced the fundamental form of the historical novel to British readers.