An Involuntary Adventurer

Upon having left, or rather lost, his position serving Humiecka, Boruwłaski became an independent man for the first time in his life. But this was not a very autonomous sort of independence. His royal salary of 120 ducats proved to be insufficient for a married couple that had been accustomed to an affluent lifestyle, and especially so given their prospects for a rapidly growing family – their first child, a daughter, was born in January 1781. And so, following the persuasion of the King’s brother, Boruwłaski decided to travel around the courts of Europe once again in order to entertain the world’s great figures, this time on his own. In a certain sense he was choosing to take the path of the famous eighteenth-century adventurers. Just like them he became something of a citizen of the world, constantly changing location, possessing nothing and growing attached to nothing; just like them he tried to win the support of people from the highest strata, without actually himself fitting into the structure of eighteenth-century society. But the differences here are more distinct than the similarities. Such men as Casanova, Cagliostro, or their less well-known imitators consciously chose the fate of eternal wanderers, themselves remaining outside society; they concealed their true past and real origins; they avoided stabilisation, work, family. Boruwłaski’s decisions, on the other hand, were made for him by nature and chance. He lived the life of an involuntary adventurer, one constantly trying to find a way out of the adventurer’s lifestyle – and for a long time unsuccessfully so. His life for the next 25 years between 1780 and 1805 amounts to a ceaseless but futile attempt to find stabilisation, to find a place for himself in both the geographical and social senses. Such was the objective not only of his efforts to gain a stable income, but also of his stubbornly stressing that he was a Polish nobleman, the father of a family, in other words a man worthy of respect despite his oddity, one who deserved a certain place in society. Boruwłaski did not seek to blur his own past or origins; to the contrary for him they were an important element of his identity. Just how important is shown by the pride with which he stressed in his memoirs that the King of England had treated him not as ‘an interesting curiosity’ but as a Polish nobleman. Necessity had forced him to become perhaps not so much an adventurer as something along the lines of a peddler of his own body – although he never accepted that role and whenever he could he tried to liberate himself from it. This was not easy, because this role was something obvious to those around him, including his aristocratic ‘benefactors.’ They did not see anything wrong with the notion that a man whose sensitivity, intelligence, and high-society elegance they admired should put himself on display for money. They even considered it their duty to show him this as his rightful place, sometimes doing so quite brutally, like the French ambassador in Vienna, de Breteuil: ‘you must needs give up pride, or choose misery; and if you do not intend to lead the most unhappy life; if you wish to enjoy, in future, a state of tranquillity, it is indispensable you should resolve to make exhibition of yourself.’ Boruwłaski’s account of the encounter continues: ‘The next day the Prince de Kaunitz spoke to me in the same manner amidst a crowded levee.’ He cites these comments in his memoirs without commentary, but from other of Boruwłaski’s statements we can surmise that they must have come as substantial shocks to him. Especially since he probably was quietly hoping to find a permanent spot for himself in the household of some great lord or lady. For the first year of his travels he managed to avoid complying with that advice. As Kazimierz Poniatowski had anticipated, the German courts he visited still remembered his visit with Countess Humiecka, and his changed personal situation plus the romantic story of his love triggered considerable interest and a favourable reception. However, already then his predicament was quite strange – on the one hand he was received among the best society and monarchic courts, but on the other hand he lacked the money to meet his own basic needs. While still in Austria he tried to cope with this by giving numerous concerts. This, too, was essentially a form of exhibiting himself for money, but it was one he perceived as not as humiliating as what he would be forced to do later. In any event, he could believe, or at least tried to believe that the gathered audience was interested in his skill as a virtuoso – he did play both the guitar and violin quite well. Sometimes he was accompanied in these performances by professional musicians, like by the orchestra of the Count de Thü or later in England by Wilhelm Cramer, a member of the royal orchestra. Aside from that, these were events intended for a closed audience – mostly for high society, in view of both the price of the tickets (which in England was half a guinea, or more than the cost of supporting a modest family for a week) and the fact that most of them, sometimes all of them, were held among the circle of Boruwłaski’s aristocratic protectors. He describes this custom in his memoirs, and in a surviving letter to Charles James Fox he persuades the prominent politician to buy tickets for his concert. ¹ Such a performance still fit to some extent within the role he had been accustomed to, as a decoration and plaything of the salons. He would also exhibit himself together with his wife and sometimes children and relate his life story, but he was still doing so among the same type of people who had long been his audience – now they were just paying for it. Besides, they supported him financially in other ways as well. This portion of his memoirs is reminiscent of scrupulous accounting records, noting all the presents and gratification received from ‘gracious benefactors’: 30 ducats from the Countess Fekètè, a certain sum from the Elector of Bavaria, an ivory case from the Electress Dowager, a present of gold from the Prince de la Tour and Taxis, 40 luis-d’ors from the Margrave of Ansbach … This list could be continued at length. Boruwłaski scrupulously tried to keep track of all his debts of gratitude – his memoirs were after all addressed to the givers of those presents, whom he did not want to and could not afford to slight by neglecting to mention them. On the other hand, this had an unfortunate impact on the concluding section of the memoirs’ first edition, making it read somewhat like an accounting ledger. This was realised by the publisher of the second edition in 1792 who, despite the author’s protests, removed most of these expressions of gratitude. ²