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CRACOW PRIVATE LIFE IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY

100%

Homola-Skapska I.

Studia Historyczne

2008

vol. 51

issue 1(201)

31-58

This article is an attempt at probing Cracow private life in the first half of the 19th century. The concept of private life covers a wide spectrum of issues of considerable complexity, ranging from material culture to traditions, customs, upbringing, education, leisure, love, marriage, social and family life. Our investigations are hindered by the fact that a great deal of private life was kept from view and jealously guarded. Its traces, recorded in memoirs and private journals, are on the whole few and scanty. Still, we do find there a family chronicle, accounts of some aspects of the life of the authors' parents or grandparents, reports from various social occasions, comments on the way boys and girls were brought up, and, of course, descriptions of balls and dances in the carnival season, opinions on dresses and current fashions, a record of theatre visits and walks. As literature kept impressing on the public mind the picture of an ideal wife, a paragon of virtue and obedience, who spends all of her time on work, the upbringing of children and prayer, the feminist stirrings in Galicia were relatively modest and restrained. Still, the causes of many a young woman's predicament were no less evident to them than to women in more enlightened times: excessive dependence on parents (that refers to young people of both sexes), low educational level, lack of sexual education (especially in the case of girls). In the homes of the aristocracy and well-heeled landed gentry wives were expected to focus their attention exclusively on the family, social life and charity. Married women from gentry families of slender means were busy bringing up children and supervising the servants. In the urban middle-class homes the role of the wife could include, in line with the family's more precarious material status, chores like cooking and cleaning. Although women usually had to give up their personal ambitions and interests upon entering marriage, in the long 19th century, a time when Poland was under foreign rule, they enhanced their status and authority by incorporating into their private lives the cultivation of the distinctive marks of Polish identity, ie. national customs, language, and religion.

KAZIMIERZ GORDON'S MISSION TO THE CAUCASUS IN 1846

80%

Thlon J.

Studia Historyczne

2008

vol. 51

issue 2(202)

153-170

As the long war between Russia and the Caucasian mountaineers flared up with unexpected intensity in the mid-1840s the leaders of the Polish Great Emigration in Paris decided that the developments in the Caucasus afforded a good opportunity to galvanize Hotel Lambert's eastern politics. Polish envoys were to be dispatched to the Caucasian rebels. One of them was Kazimierz Gordon, a diplomatic agent of Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, who sailed out of Istambul on 8 June 1846 and after a few days' journey disembarked in Ubykhia, near the mouth of the Sochi River. Unfortunately, his mission went disastrously wrong. He did not get on with his host, a local chieftain named Kerandunk, and died in mysterious circumstances, probably in early 1847. Polish plans envisaged active support for the Caucasian freedom fighters with a view of weakening Russia and thus creating a political situation in which the Polish question could once again be put on the agenda. The agents sent out to prepare the ground for further initiatives achieved little in spite of their determination and daring. They had to traverse wild, unmapped territory, seek contact with people of an alien culture, and make do with very slender resources. The fate of Gordon's colleagues made the danger of the whole undertaking only too clear. Aleksander Wereszczynski fell ill and died; Ludwik Zwierkowski-Lenoir was badly wounded; Kazimierz Gordon disappeared without a trace. And the most painstakingly prepared mission, that of Józef Mikorski, came to naught even before it properly began: he failed to reach the Chekess coast. Later attempts to smuggle Polish agents ino the Caucasus proved equally ill-fated. In spite of the failure of Hotel Lambert's ambitious plans, the very effort deserves due acknowledgement. After all, the Polish émigrés round Prince Adam Czartoryski did come up with a remarkable initiative which Russia could not but see as a threat.

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2 Studia Historyczne

1 Homola-Skapska I.

1 Thlon J.

2 2008

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CRACOW PRIVATE LIFE IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY

KAZIMIERZ GORDON'S MISSION TO THE CAUCASUS IN 1846