The best known Pole to visit Paris in the second half of the 18th century was undoubtedly Stanisław August Poniatowski, the latter King of Poland. He stayed in the French capital for half a year at the turn of 1753. Years later, he reported the trip in his memoirs, which he wrote in French. The account of his trip to France is limited to the capital and two suburban residences of the royal court: Versailles and Fontainebleau. There is little information about the city as such, its architecture, peculiarities or inhabitants. Instead, the descriptions focus on people: figures from social circles, public persons; the author discusses the customs of the social elite and interpersonal relations. The main scene of the observations is the drawing room of Madame Geoffrin at Saint Honoré Street, where the "entire" Paris arrived every Wednesday evening. The Przemyśl Starosta (senior) appeared there, recommended by his father Stanisław, who had stayed in Paris as the ambassador of August III from 1741 to 1742. In his memoirs, the king picturesquely portrayed his much older host and her daughter. "(…) three days later, I had to return to Paris [from Pontoise – PU] with madame de la Ferté-Imbault, who was getting deaf, but remained very talkative and liked to laugh at her own talkativeness; in fact, she was a good and kind person. She lived with her mother, her only child.
The mother did many good things and respected her daughter, but did not at all enjoy her company." Madame Geoffrin told me many times: "My daughter has a good character and brain, but we are completely unsuitable for each other. Thus, although I liked them both, I preferred no to see the two of them together, because to see madame Geoffrin in a good mood and the same madame Geoffrin troubled by some whim was like the clearest of skies in the happiest of climates juxtaposed with dangerous hurricane of the least temperate zone. This unusual woman has for the last forty years enjoyed invariable respect of almost all honoured, talented or beautiful citizens of France, due to the charm of her mind and her services rendered with a hot heart and rare skill, and numerous noble deeds. (…) Despite her seventy years of age, she goes on foot, writes, serves her friends and reprimands them and even tyrannises them with her vigour that is equally intense like thirty years ago. Her main aspiration is deep knowledge of people and although she makes some mistakes in this respect, the same as in artistic matters, poor is the man who dares to show her that he knows about her mistake. Her exceptional liveliness makes her praises and rebukes particularly significant and sometimes even carries her away, but, despite her liveliness, madame Geoffrin has always conducted herself well and controlled her business, and knew how to skilfully win the favours of the mighty of the world as well as many celebrities."
The people young Poniatowski met in madame Geoffrin's drawing room were not only social entertainers. In his memoirs, he describes two outstanding French intellectuals of the epoch. "I met there President [of the Parliament in Bordeaux] Montesquieu - the King describes his meeting with the already famous author of thePersian Letters and The Spirit of the Laws - who was very friendly to her but was not her admirer (...). I will never forget listening to the famous man sing his own song to the famous duchess de la Vallière, known to have been young and beautiful to the age of fifty-seven years; I saw her, too, at madame Geoffrin's, her friend for the last thirty years. One had to know president Montesquieu so well and intimately as madame Geoffrin to see through his incredible simplicity, shyness and modesty that covered him like a veil and sometimes even embarrassed him; he seemed to be completely unaware of the respect surrounding the fame of his writings. Madame Geoffrin sometimes invited me to dinner together with some scholars; I was lucky to meet Fontenelle [writer, who died in 1757 at the age of one hundred years - PU] when he was still alive; madame Geoffrin would put a small iron radiator next to him to keep him in the temperature that he needed at the age of 96 or 97 years. In the past, when I visited my grandmother, I learned how to talk to the deaf: you should not shout, but rather pronounce words very slowly and carefully; this skill enabled me to have a few very flattering for me conversations with Fontenelle. In his old age, he maintained this mental coquetry and exaggeration in speech that he had when he was at his best. Once, he asked me very seriously if I spoke Polish as fluently as French."
For a young Polish magnate, the morality of Parisians was sometimes surprising, but his experiences enabled him to get used to the otherness that was not known to the inhabitants of Polish and Lithuanian noble manors and magnate palaces. "I cannot help but mention - the young diarist excused himself - a certain man too weird to be omitted. He is duke de Gèvres, the Paris governor at that time. I was introduced to him at noon. He was lying in his bed and the curtains on both sides of the bed were raised and tied at the wall, as if he was an old woman receiving guests in an advanced stage of weakness. He was 60 years old, wearing a female cap tied under his chin and he was crocheting something when I met him. He used to be a war leader, but his female ways did not surprise anyone, to the contrary, most were happy about them." The encounter with the original person made Poniatowski conclude: "I told myself: the point of travelling is to see what you would never see in your own land, appearances deceive and you have to learn not to be surprised by anything."
The future Polish king's attention was also attracted by duke Conti, whose aspirations to the Polish crown lay at the foundations of Louis XV's "secret," i.e. a parallel branch of the official French diplomacy. "For some time, duke Conti would work with the king without the participation of any of the ministers, who supposedly did not envy him for that, as they expected that various coincidences would prevent the duke from getting the Polish crown. Nonetheless, he was so preoccupied by that thought, that someone joked that three days after the Final Judgement, duke Conti would still be plotting how to become the Polish king. He decided to be extra polite to each Pole visiting France. He was the most generous with me too, so I saw him regularly and closely. Despite the popular principles he initially showed off with, he sometimes revealed such traits of character that showed that, if he ever was to become a Polish king, he would be a master in the full meaning of the word. Nice and gentle in company, he liked entertainment and comfort, and numerous parties at his own house. When I talked to him, he seemed to be not only knowledgeable but also hard-working and diligent; although many people in France did not like him, claiming that he had a bad character, most agreed that he had superior talents, too. What surprised me the most was the fact that although everyone spoke of his very bold projects during the war, some doubted about his private bravery."
Even his accidental blunders, mercilessly pointed out to him by madame Geoffrin, were an opportunity for Poniatowski to ponder about the nature of human relations in the country he was visiting. "Even though these reproaches - wrote the then Przemyśl starosta - seemed unjustified to me at that time, I later understood that in a world like the one in Paris, where so many people occupy themselves with doing nothing for their entire lives, much attention is paid to the exclusive knowledge of millions of trifles, new events, certain stories and certain ways with people that single that world out from the crowd of foreigners, raising in their own eyes the refinement of French customs. One must know these secrets and struggle to be allowed to share them; it is good to know all this to avoid ridiculousness, but one must also sometimes pretend to be unaware of all this in order to gain the merit of humility in the eyes of those who are considered masters, asking them for instructions. A foreigner visiting Paris for the first time should pretend, there more than in any other capital, that he thinks himself inferior to the matchless intelligence of its inhabitants, as they like to play the role of protectors."
His social duties were sometimes burdensome for young Poniatowski, like for example playing cards, which he did not like. He even complained that "every night, I returned home tired and I felt that I was bored; however, it changed five months later when I was ordered to go to England and discovered that I was sorry to leave Paris."
It seems that by the end of his stay in Paris, Poniatowski realised what it was that seduced him there. "It seems to me, the Przemyśl starosta commended on his stay in France, that French women, despite their apparent lightness, are of a stronger character than men; and since they are more educated than any other women, and their clothes and fashions and other inventions of charm and taste as if double their lives, then it is impossible to not be seduced by their enchanting influence that even the strictest souls become submitted to and not to desire to live among this nation, so frank and easy-going and almost always cheerful; whose country people are truly good, townspeople are hard-working and ingenious and where, despite the superficial lightness, you can meet all sorts of respectable examples."
Poniatowski's phrase is the same as the opinion formulated by French immigrants who visited Poland half a century later. Anotai Malfillâtre wrote: "(...) added to that, there exists a kinship in good and bad inclinations to which we owe a stronger sympathy between Poles and the French, evident and long-known and a one that cannot be denied, as well as an antipathy of Poles to their neighbours. For me, too, it was one more argument in favour of Paris."
Another Polish traveller, August Fryderyk Moszyński, omitted Paris in his accounts. He may have visited France during his first foreign trip in 1747, but it is not certain. He set off on his second and last journey to France in 1784. Moszyński, who was nearly the age of the last king of Poland, was also his friend. In the early years of Stanisław August Poniatowski's reign, he played an important role in the king's artistic sponsorship as the director of royal constructions and the theatre. His great passion for collecting things that he shared with the king led him into debt and family problems. Troubled by them, the old erudite decided, with Stanisław August's permit, to travel to the South of France and to Italy. Poniatowski also dreamed to visit Italy, but that dream never came true for him. At that time, Italy was a fashionable destination, especially for collectors of ancient objects, like Moszyński. His itinerary led through: Krakow, Paris, Nuremberg, Strasbourg, Lion, Vienna, Avignon, Nîmes, Arles, Marseilles, Toulon and Nice. From there, Moszyński sailed to Genoa in March 1785 and continued to Padua, where he died in June 1786. He left a manuscript memoir of his trip, written in French and published in the 20th century.
Moszyński's memoir not only describes buildings and works of art, but also everyday and cultural life of people living in the South of France, even those of the lower social classes, who did not at all interest Stanisław August Poniatowski.
Like most educated Europeans of those days, Moszyński was interested in the theatre. His account does not omit the theatre in Marseilles. "Everything you look at in Marseilles - reported the Polish collector and erudite - is full of harmony, and although Aix is only eight miles away from here, one might think that he is surrounded by a completely different nation. In Aix, everything is sad and deserted, and noiseless. Here - everything is merry, noisy, lively and active. On the third day of the feast, I went to the theatre - it was full to the brim, even though they played the terrible Samson tragedy. It seemed to me that I was at a witches' sabbath or in a synagogue. What a mess! What a noise! People whistling, talking, clapping their hands. You would not hear a thunder, let alone the symphony or music during intervals. There were some moments of profound silence during the performance, but they were interrupted at the least opportunity. On the next day, I went to see the same performance; the theatre was full again, but it seems that with a different kind of audience: they were much less noisy but applauded more loudly. A young and pretty actress with a sweet voice played in the Master's Law opera. She looked modest and innocent; when the play praised her virtues, the ground floor applauded her beyond measure, but terrible uproar arose when the same praise was addressed to someone else; this seems to prove that there is some kind of respect for the virtues of those who seem unlikely to have them. It should be noted that Marseilles is one of the French cities where moral laxity is the most extreme. In fact, everywhere on the streets and in windows, you see women dressed in a way that suggests their profession: at least it seems a quite far-reaching coquetry."
Information about two Poles who recently stayed in Marseilles and ran into trouble because of debts was an opportunity for Moszyński to ponder about Poles' presence abroad in general. The first was the Bar Confederate, Kazimierz Pułaski, sentenced to death in absentia by the Sejm court in Warsaw for planning a coup on Stanisław August; the other was the infamous Primate Gabriel Junosza Podoski. "In Marseilles, writes Moszyński, the famous Pułaski was seen. When Duke Podoski was about to be arrested, instead of negotiating, he wanted to throw the commissionaire out of the window. Also, the Duke was seen with his mistress here. When he died, there was no money to pay for his funeral. At least that is what <> said. Many Poles were seen here who are not highly esteemed. At times, I am not happy that I have admitted to be Polish here and in other cities, because the reputation of my dear compatriots gives no reason to be proud to be Polish here in France."
Moszyński also looked through dark glasses on people living in the South of France, which was probably due to some extent to his generally depressive state of spirit. In particular, he disapproved of all manifestations of the ardent Southern temperament. "I give these examples here - claimed the Polish traveller - to show the nature of the Marseilles people; they are thoroughly Republican and eager to revolt in the case of the slightest violation of their privileges. I heard them boast of the privilege that in their theatres, the only soldiers are town guards, and they, too, are well hidden. The climate and the sea that those people incessantly travel are the reason for the exaltation of their minds. In other cities, I saw that people are more gentle and even subdued, especially that the authority of the government is growing.
The city council decided a few years ago to double the guards, install street lights and sweep streets twice a day. The people haughtily disapprove of these orders; they interfere with the council. At the same time, the same city council did not dare to order that beggars swarming the streets be removed, as this could likely cause a rebellion. Speaking of beggars, in the carnival, an artist dressed up like one and he collected fifty pounds in one day. That proves that these people turn the virtue of mercy, which is apparently very developed here, into an offence."
As it seems, such bitter observations were not only caused by Moszyński's mood. They also reveal the fear of a member of the social elite of the rebellious and unpredictable activity of the people, as if the Polish traveller sensed that a revolutionary wave was coming.
Translation: Lingua Lab
