APPENDIX

1 The Steamer ‘Ward Jackson’

This is what happened two months before the Polish rebellion: a Pole, one Joseph Cwerczakiewicz, who had come for a brief visit from Paris to London, was on his return to Paris seized and arrested, together with C. and M., the latter of whom I have mentioned in connection with the interview with members of the Polish Committee.

There was a good deal that was strange about the whole arrest. C. had arrived between 9 and 10 in the evening; he knew no one in Paris and went straight to M.’s lodging. About 11 o’clock the police made their appearance and asked for his passport.

‘Here it is,’ and C. gave the police officer a passport with another name on it and a perfectly regular visa.

‘To be sure, to be sure,’ said the man, ‘I knew you were travelling under that name. Now your portfolio,’ he asked Cwerczakiewicz. It was lying on the table. The policeman took out the papers, looked through them, and handing his companion a brief letter addressed E. A., said: ‘Here it is.’

All three were arrested, and their papers taken from them; afterwards they were released. C. was kept longer than the rest. For the sake of the prestige of the police they wanted him to tell his name. He would not give them this gratification. He, too, was released a week later. When, a year or more afterwards, the Prussian Government initiated the very absurd Posen Trial, the prosecutor presented among the incriminating documents papers sent him by the Russian police which had belonged to Cwerczakiewicz. When the question how these papers had found their way to Russia was raised, the prosecutor calmly explained that when Cwerczakiewicz was under arrest, some of his papers had been handed over by the French police to the Russian Embassy.

The released Poles were ordered to leave France; they came to London. In London they themselves told me all the details of their arrest, and were very justly most surprised at the police officer’s knowing that they had a letter addressed to E. A. Mazzini had given this letter with his own hands to Cwerczakiewicz, asking him to hand it to Étienne Arago.

‘Did you tell any one about the letter?’ I asked him.

‘No one, absolutely no one,’ answered Cwerczakiewicz.

‘There is some sorcery about it; no suspicion can fall on you or on Mazzini. Think a little.’

Cwerczakiewicz mused. ‘I know one thing,’ he observed. ‘I did go out for a short time, and I remember I left the portfolio in an unlocked drawer.’

‘A clue! A clue! Now, allow me, where were you living?’

‘In So-and-so Street in furnished apartments.’

‘Was the landlord an Englishman?’

‘No, a Pole.’

‘Better still. And his name?’

‘Tur; he is a specialist in agriculture.’

‘And in many other things, since he lets furnished rooms. I know a little of that Tur. Did you ever hear a story about a fellow called Michalowski?’

‘I have heard it alluded to.’

‘Well, I will tell you the story. In the autumn of 1857 I received a letter from Petersburg via Brussels. An unknown person informed me with the fullest details that a shopman at Trübner’s called Michalowski had offered his services to the Third Section for spying on us, asking for two hundred pounds for his trouble; that, in proof of his merit and capacity, he had presented a list of the persons who had been at our house of late, and promised to furnish specimens of manuscripts from the printing-press. Before I had properly considered what to do, I received a second letter to the same effect through Rothschild’s.

‘I had not the slightest doubt of the truth of the information. Michalowski, a cringing, repulsive, drunken, nimble Pole from Galicia, speaking four languages, had every qualification for the calling of a spy and was only waiting the opportunity pour se faire valoir.

‘I made up my mind to go with Ogaryov to Trübner’s to unmask Michalowski and make him commit himself, and in any case to get him dismissed from Trübner’s. To add to the impressiveness of our visit, I invited Pianciani and two Poles to go with me. Michalowski was insolent, loathsome, and denied the charge; he declared that Napoleon Szestacowski, who lived in the same lodging with him, was a spy. I was quite prepared to believe that half of what he said was true, that is, that his friend was also a spy. I told Trübner that I asked for his immediate dismissal from the bookshop. The wretch contradicted himself and could not bring forward anything worth considering in his defence. “It is all envy,” he said. “As soon as one of us has a good coat to wear, the others begin shouting ‘Spy!’” “Why is it then,” Zeno Swentoslawski asked him, “that though you have never had a good coat you have always been looked upon as a spy?” Every one laughed. “You don’t seem to resent it,” said Czenecki. “It is not the first time,” answered the philosopher, “that I have had to do with crazy fellows like you.” “You are used to it,” observed Czenecki.

‘The scoundrel walked away.

‘All the decent Poles abandoned him, with the exception of gamblers who were complete drunkards and drunkards who were completely ruined at cards. Only one decent person has remained on friendly terms with this Michalowski, and that man is your landlord, Tur.’

‘Yes, that is suspicious. I will go at once....’

‘Why at once? You can’t set things right now, but keep an eye on the man. What proofs have you?’

Soon after this, Cwerczakiewicz was appointed by the Polish Committee their diplomatic agent in London. He was allowed to visit Paris; it was just at that time that Napoleon felt that ardent sympathy with the fate of Poland which cost her one whole generation and may perhaps cost her the whole of the next one.

Bakunin was already in Sweden, making friends with every one, opening ways for ‘Land and Freedom’ across Finland, arranging for the despatch of the Kolokol and of books, and interviewing representatives of all the Polish parties. Received by the Ministers and the brother of the King, he assured every one of the approaching insurrection of the peasants and the state of intense mental ferment in Russia. He assured them the more readily as he himself sincerely believed, if not in the actual strength of these movements, at least in their growing power. No one dreamed at that time of Lapinski’s expedition. Bakunin’s intention was, after arranging everything in Sweden, to make his way into Poland and Lithuania.

Cwerczakiewicz came back from Paris with Demontowicz. In Paris he and his friends formed a design of fitting out an expedition to the shores of the Baltic. They wanted to find a steamer and wanted to find a capable leader; and with that end in view came to London. This is how they conducted secret negotiations.

One day I received a little note from Cwerczakiewicz: he asked me to go to see him for a minute, said it was a matter of urgent necessity and that he had caught a chill and was lying in bed with an acute migraine. I went. I did in fact find him ill and in bed. S. Tchorszewski was sitting in the next room, knowing that Cwerczakiewicz had written to me and that he had business with me. Tchorszewski would have gone out, but Cwerczakiewicz stopped him, and I am very glad that there is a living witness of our conversation.

Cwerczakiewicz asked me, laying aside all personal feelings and considerations, to tell him quite sincerely, and of course in dead secret, about a Polish exile in whom he had not complete confidence, though he had been introduced to him by Mazzini and Bakunin. ‘You don’t much care for him, I know, but now, where it is a matter of the utmost importance, I expect from you the truth, and the whole truth.’

‘You are speaking of L. B.?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

I hesitated. I felt that I might injure a man of whom, anyway, I knew nothing particularly bad; on the other hand, I knew what harm I might be doing to the common cause by arguing against Cwerczakiewicz’s perfectly sound instinct of antipathy.

‘Very well, I will speak openly and tell you everything. As regards Mazzini’s and Bakunin’s recommendation, I disregard that completely. You know how I love Mazzini; but he is so accustomed to carve his agents out of every sort of wood and mould them out of any sort of clay, and knows so well how to keep them in hand in the Italian party, that it is hard to rely on his opinion. Besides, though he makes use of everything he can get, Mazzini knows to what degree and with what business to trust each. Bakunin’s recommendation is even worse: he is a great child—“a big Liza,” as Martyanov used to call him—he likes every one. A fisher of men, he is so delighted when he comes upon a “Red,” especially if he is a Slav, that he goes no further. You referred to my personal relations with L. B. I ought to speak of that too. Z. and L. B. tried to exploit me: it was not he but Z. who took the initiative. They did not succeed in that, they were very angry, and I should long ago have forgotten it; but they came between Worcell and me, and that I have not forgiven. I loved Worcell very much, but, being frail in health, he gave way to them and only realised his mistake (or acknowledged that he realised it) the day before his death. As he lay dying, he pressed my hand and whispered in my ear: “Yes, you were right.” (But there were none to hear, and it is easy to appeal to the witness of the dead.) But here is my opinion: taking everything into account, I cannot find a single action, or a single rumour even, which would compel one to suspect the political honesty of L. B., but I should not let him into any important secret. To my thinking, he is a spoilt poseur, filled with French phrases and immensely conceited; anxious to play a part at all costs, he would do everything to spoil the performance if it had not a part for him.’

Cwerczakiewicz got up; he was pale and troubled.

‘Yes, you have taken a weight off my heart; I will do all I can, if it is not too late already.’ Cwerczakiewicz began pacing about the room in perturbation. Soon after I went away with Tchorszewski.

‘Did you hear the whole conversation?’ I asked him as we were going.

‘Yes, I did.’

‘I am very glad of it; don’t forget it; perhaps the day may come when I shall appeal to you ... and do you know, it strikes me that he has told him everything already, and only thought to investigate the grounds of his antipathy afterwards....’

‘Not a doubt of it.’

And we almost burst out laughing, although we were anything but mirthful at heart.

Moral

A fortnight later Cwerczakiewicz entered into negotiations with Blackwood’s Steam Company concerning the hiring of a steamer to make an expedition to the Baltic.

‘Why,’ we said, ‘did you apply to the very company which for years past has carried out all the shipping commissions for the Petersburg Admiralty?’

‘I don’t like it myself, but the company knows the Baltic Sea so well. Besides, it is against its interests to betray us; and it is not in the English character either.’

‘All very true, but what made you think of applying to them?’

‘It was done by our agent.’

‘That is?’

‘Tur.’

‘What, that Tur?’

‘Oh, you can set your mind at rest about him. He was most highly recommended to us by L. B.’

For a minute all the blood rushed to my head. I was overwhelmed with the feeling of fury, indignation, resentment—yes, yes, personal resentment—while the delegate of Poland, observing nothing, went on: ‘He has a splendid knowledge of English.’

‘Both of the language and of the laws.’

‘I have no doubt of it.’

‘Tur has been in prison in London for some rather shady affair; and he was employed as an official interpreter in the law courts.’

‘How was that?’

‘You must ask L. B. or Michalowski; don’t you know him?’

‘No.’

Tur was indeed a fellow! He had been a specialist in agriculture, but here he was a specialist in marine affairs. But now all eyes were turned on the head of the expedition, Colonel Lapinski, who arrived upon the scene.

2 Colonel Lapinski and Aide-de-Camp Polles

At the beginning of 1863 I received a letter written in a tiny, extraordinarily fine handwriting, and headed with the text: Licite Venire Parvulos. In the most elaborately flattering and cringing expressions the parvulus, whose name was Polles, asked permission to call upon me. I did not like the letter at all. The man himself I liked even less. A cringing, subdued, furtive man, with a shaven chin and a pomaded head, he told me that he had been at a dramatic school in Petersburg and had received some sort of pension there. He almost overdid the patriotic Pole, and after sitting a quarter of an hour with me, confided that he came from France, that he had been miserable in Paris, and that the centre of everything there was Napoleon.

‘Do you know, it has often struck me, and I am more and more convinced that I am right: the thing to do is to kill Napoleon.’

‘What prevents you then?’

‘What do you think about it?’ Parvulus asked, somewhat embarrassed.

‘I don’t think about it at all. Why, it is you who are thinking about it.’ And I immediately told him the story which I always make use of when people rave about bloody deeds and ask advice concerning them.

‘No doubt you know that when Charles V. was in Rome a page took him over the Pantheon. On returning home, the boy told his father that the idea had occurred to him to push the emperor down from the top gallery. The father flew into a rage: “You” (here I vary the term of abuse to suit the character of the would-be Tsaricide⁠[44]⁠) “wretch, scoundrel, fool, and so on. How can such criminal ideas occur to you? If they can, they are sometimes acted upon, but never spoken of.”’

When Polles had gone, I made up my mind not to be at home to him again. A week later he met me near my house; he told me that he had called twice and had not found me in, talked some sort of nonsense, and added: ‘I called to see you partly to tell you of an invention I have made for sending anything secretly by post, to Russia for instance. You are probably often in need of communicating something in secret?’

‘Quite the contrary, never. I never write to any one in secret. Good morning.’

‘Good-bye. Remember, if ever you or Ogaryov would like a little music, my violoncello and I are at your service.’

‘Very much obliged to you.’

And I lost sight of him in the full conviction that he was a spy—whether a Russian or a French one, I don’t know; perhaps international, as the paper Le Nord is international.

He never turned up among the real Polish exiles, and not one of them knew him.

After a prolonged search, Demontowicz and his Parisian friends had pitched on Colonel Lapinski as the most capable military leader for the expedition. He had fought for a long time in the Caucasus on the side of the Circassians, and understood mountain warfare so thoroughly that there could be no doubt of his skill on the sea. It could not be called a bad choice. Lapinski was in the fullest sense of the word a condottiere. He had no settled political convictions. He could have fought on the side of the White or the Red, the clean or the dirty; belonging by birth to the Galician gentry, by education to the Austrian army, he was strongly inclined towards Vienna. Russia and everything Russian he hated with a savage, irrational and incorrigible hatred. He probably knew his trade, he had spent years in active warfare and had written a remarkable book about the Caucasus.

‘This is what happened to me once in the Caucasus,’ Lapinski used to tell. ‘A Russian major, living with a whole household not far from us, seized some of our people, I don’t know how or why. I heard about it and said to my men, “Look here, it is a sin and a shame; are you stolen like women? Go to his place, take everything you find and bring it here.” They are mountaineers, you know; you don’t need to say much to them. A day or two afterwards they brought me the whole family—servants, wife and children—but they did not find the major himself at home. I sent word to him that if he released our people and paid a ransom, we would give him back our prisoners at once. Of course they sent our men, paid the fine, and we released our Moscow visitors. The next day a Circassian came to me: “Look here,” he said, “what’s happened; when we let the Russians go yesterday,” he said, “a boy of four was forgotten; he was asleep, so he was forgotten; what is to be done?”

‘“Ah, you dogs, you can’t do anything properly; where’s the child?”

‘“With me. He screamed and screamed—well, I was sorry for him and took him home.”

‘“Allah has sent you luck, it seems; I won’t hinder it. Let them know that they have forgotten the child and you have found him, and ask for a ransom.” My Circassian’s eyes fairly sparkled. Of course the father and mother were in a fluster, they gave anything he liked to ask. It was funny.’

‘Very.’

Here is another trait showing the character of the future hero of Polish independence.

Before he set off, Lapinski came to see me. He arrived not alone, and somewhat disconcerted by the expression on my face, made haste to say: ‘Allow me to introduce my adjutant.’

‘I have had the pleasure of meeting him already.’

It was Polles.

‘Do you know him well?’ Ogaryov asked Lapinski when they were alone.

‘I met him in the boarding-house in which I am staying now. He seems a nice fellow and very obliging.’

‘But do you trust him?’

‘Of course. Besides, he plays the violoncello charmingly and will entertain us on the voyage.’

It was said that the colonel found him entertaining in other ways.

We told Demontowicz later on that to our thinking Polles was a very suspicious character. Demontowicz observed: ‘Yes, I don’t trust either of them much, but they won’t play us any tricks’; and he took his revolver out of his pocket.

The preparations proceeded slowly; rumours of the expedition spread more and more widely. At first the company furnished a steamer which on being inspected by an experienced sailor, Count S., turned out to be good for nothing. All the cargo had to be shifted. When everything was ready and a good part of London knew all about it, the following incident occurred: Cwerczakiewicz and Demontowicz informed all who were taking part in the expedition that they were to assemble at ten o’clock on such and such a railway platform to go to Hull by a special train provided by the railway company. And so at ten o’clock the future warriors began to assemble. Among them were Italians and a few Frenchmen; poor, reckless men, sick of a life spent in homeless wandering, and men who were true lovers of Poland. And ten o’clock came and eleven o’clock, but still no train appeared. Little by little, rumours of this long journey reached the homes from which our heroes had mysteriously vanished, and by twelve o’clock the future warriors were joined in the station waiting-rooms by a troop of women, inconsolable Didos deserted by their fierce adorers, and ferocious landladies who had not been paid, probably for fear they should spread the news abroad. In violent excitement they raised a furious uproar, and wanted to complain to the police; some of them had children; all the latter screamed and all the mothers screamed. The English stood round, staring in astonishment at the picture of ‘The Exodus.’ In vain some of the elders of the party inquired whether the special train would soon come in, and showed their tickets. The railway officials had never heard of any such train. The scene was becoming more and more uproarious ... when suddenly a messenger from the leaders galloped up to tell the waiting warriors that they had all gone mad, that the train was at ten o’clock in the evening, not in the morning, and that they had thought this so evident that they had not even written it. The poor warriors returned with their bags and their wallets to their deserted Didos and softened landladies.

At ten o’clock in the evening they went off. The English gave them three cheers.

Next morning a marine officer whom I knew came to me from one of the Russian steamers.

The steamer had received an order the previous evening to set off full steam next morning and follow the Ward Jackson.

Meanwhile the Ward Jackson had stopped at Copenhagen for water, had spent some hours at Malmö waiting for Bakunin, who was intending to go with them to incite the peasants in Lithuania to rise, and had been seized by the orders of the Swedish Government.

The details of this affair and of Lapinski’s second attempt have been described by himself in the papers. I will only add that even in Copenhagen the captain had said he would not take the steamer to the coast of Russia, as he did not want to expose it and himself to danger; that even before they reached Malmö things had come to such a pass that Demontowicz threatened not Lapinski but the captain with his revolver. He did, however, quarrel with Lapinski too, and sworn foes they went to Stockholm, leaving their luckless followers at Malmö.

‘Do you know,’ Cwerczakiewicz or some of his associates said to me, ‘the person who is most suspected of being chiefly responsible for the vessel being stopped at Malmö is Tugenbold?’

‘I don’t know him at all. Who is he?’

‘Oh yes, you do, you have seen him with us: a young fellow without a beard—Lapinski brought him to see you once.’

‘Then you are speaking of Polles?’

‘That is his pseudonym, his real name is Tugenbold.’

‘What are you saying?’ and I rushed to my writing-table. Among letters I had put aside as of special importance I found one sent me two months previously. This letter was from Petersburg; it warned me that a certain Dr. Tugenbold was in relations with the Third Section, that he had returned, but had left his younger brother as his agent, and that the younger brother was to come to London.

That Polles and he were one and the same person there could be no doubt. I let my hands fall in despair.

‘Did you know before the expedition started that Polles was Tugenbold?’

‘Yes I knew. It was said he had changed his name because his brother was known in the country for a spy.’

‘Why didn’t you say a word to me?’

‘Oh, it just didn’t come up.’

And Tchitchikov’s Selifan⁠[45] knew that the chaise was broken and did not say a word.

We had to telegraph to Malmö after the arrest. Even then neither Demontowicz nor Bakunin⁠[46] could do anything effective; they quarrelled. Polles was thrown into prison over some diamonds collected from Swedish ladies for the Polish cause and spent by him on riotous living.

At the same time that a crowd of armed Poles, a large quantity of expensive ammunition, and the Ward Jackson remained honourable prisoners on the coast of Sweden, another expedition was being got up by the Whites; it was to go by way of the Straits of Gibraltar. At the head of it was Count Sbyszewski, brother of the man who wrote the remarkable pamphlet, La Pologne et la Cause de l’Ordre. He was a first-rate naval officer in the Russian service, but he abandoned it when the insurrection broke out, and now took a steamer, which had been secretly equipped, to the Black Sea. He had been to Turin for a secret interview with the leaders of the opposition there, among others with Mordini.

‘The day after my interview with Sbyszewski,’ Mordini himself told me, ‘the Minister of Internal Affairs drew me aside in the evening and said: “Do please be more careful; you were visited yesterday by a Polish emissary who wants to take a steamer through the Straits of Gibraltar; be that as it may, why do they chatter about it beforehand?”’

The steamer, however, did not reach the shores of Italy: it was seized at Cadiz by the Spanish Government. When they no longer needed them, both the Governments allowed the Poles to sell their arms and let the steamers go.

Disappointed and incensed, Lapinski arrived in London. ‘The only thing left to do,’ he said, ‘is to form a society of assassins and kill the greater number of all the rulers and their advisers, or to go back again to the East, to Turkey.’

Disappointed and incensed, Sbyszewski arrived.

‘Well, are you going off to kill kings, like Lapinski?’

‘No, I am going to America.... I am going to fight for the Republic. By the way,’ he asked Tchorszewski, ‘where can one enlist here? I have a few comrades with me, and all without bread to eat.’

‘Simply, at the Consul’s.’

‘No, we want to go on to the South; they are short of men now, and they offer more favourable conditions.’

‘Impossible; you could not go to the South!’

... Fortunately Tchorszewski guessed right; they did not go to the South.

May 3, 1869.