In my time, I have known and much liked many Poles, gentlemen as well as ladies, but I must confess that I have never had confidence in, or much sympathy for, Polish refugee patriots. With this old soldier, this companion in arms of Kosciusko, this man of letters, feeling, and imagination, I became rather intimate in 1831-32.
Lord Dover, ultra-Whiggish as he then was, used to say that the poor old Count was the only very interesting man that the Warsaw revolution of 1830 had thrown on our shore. With me, he did not talk of present or passing politics, but of the future destinies of the Slav race, with re-constructed Poland at its head.
Panslavism, though taken as a novelty in 1847-48, is far from being one. As a young man I could not dispute with one who was almost an octogenarian; and I hope I had too much kindness of heart ever to attempt to disturb the visions which solaced the aged and amiable exile. Though not left to want, he was poor, and debarred from many of the comforts to which he had been accustomed at home. Like myself, he was a frequent visitor at the house of the Hon. Mrs. Buchanan, aunt to the present Lord Elibank.
Late one night, one stormy winter night, when no
| 204 | COUNT NIEMCEWITZ | [CHAP. XX |
Some Polish refugees were little better than impostors, or idle beggars, and became a downright nuisance. Lord Dudley Stewart, whom I had known in the days of his youth when he was living with his mother, the Marchioness of Bute, at Naples, and who afterwards became entirely possessed by Polomania, used to stock the Reading Room at the British Museum with them, by giving them introductory or recommendatory letters to good-natured old Sir Henry Ellis, at that time Chief Librarian. Now, unfortunately for me, for my friend Craik and others who had work to do and neither time nor much money to spare, too many of these patriots made the place a begging-beat, and begged in it importunately.
One morning, a tall, lank, sallow, rather ferocious-looking man, wrapped
up in a camlet cloak, vexed me with a direfully long tale of woe and want, and he ended it
by saying, “Monsieur, je n’ai ni patrie, ni pas
même une chemise!” and by opening the folds of his
cover-all to certify the truth of the last assertion. Though patronized by Lord Dudley and others, many of these Polish refugees were
common, uneducated men who had been artisans in their own country, and who might have found
work at their several trades in England if they had been so inclined. But
| CHAP. XX] | POLISH REFUGEES | 205 |
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