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The car comes to a stop. After several years of absence, I am in Poland again. The sun sheds upon the snow myriads of sparks, which glisten like so many precious gems; a purple strip of mist rises above the distant forest of dark, pointed pines, which form a background to white, humble huts, throbbing with lives of patience and toil, under the iron hand of the ruler... I feel a mysterious glow penetrating into the very depth of my heart, tears rise to my eyes; I humbly bow my head and whisper, "Hail, beloved..." "Einsteigen, meine Herrschaften,” shouts the metallic voice of the conductor, waking me from my revery, and by his sudden cry in a foreign language brutally recalling to my mind the misfortunes of my country.
As we proceed further through German Poland we look in vain for any outward sign of the nationality of the inhabitants; there is none. No Polish inscriptions, no Polish names of the stations, no railroad employees allowed to speak Polish; yet crowds of peasants and workingmen hurrying to the fourth-class cars speak only the vernacular. Strange to say, there is one thing that all the efforts of the repressive governmental system cannot destroy, and that is the deep-rooted patriotism of the people, nor can they
make of no avail their heroic struggle to preserve their mother-tongue.

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Publié par	Read Books Ltd.
Date de parution	08 janvier 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781528760461
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

MEMORIES AND IMPRESSIONS
OF
HELENA MODJESKA
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
ILLUSTRATED
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1910
All rights reserved
C OPYRIGHT , 1910,
B Y THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1910.
Contents
Introduction
Part I Childhood and Youth
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Part II Poland
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Part III The New World
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XL
Chapter XLI
Chapter XLII
Chapter XLIII
Chapter XLIV
Chapter XLV
Chapter XLVI
Chapter XLVII
Chapter XLVIII
Chapter XLIX
Chapter L
Chapter LI
Oration of Michael Tarasiewicz at Funeral of Modjeska1
Index
LIST OF PLATES
Madame Modjeska as Portia (1891)
Madame Modjeska as Ophelia (1871)
Madame Modjeska as Adrienne Lecouvreur
Madame Modjeska (Photograph)
Madame Modjeska as Marie Stuart
Madame Modjeska (Photograph by Steckel)
Madame Modjeska as Sappho (Photograph by Sarony)
Madame Modjeska (Portrait by Carolus Duran)
Madame Modjeska in Heartsease
Madame Modjeska as Mary Stuart (1880)
Madame Modjeska in Les Chouans (1887)
Madame Modjeska as Isabella in Measure for Measure (Photograph by Stein)
Madame Modjeska as Viola (Photograph by Falk)
Madame Modjeska as Cleopatra (Photograph by Thors, 1901)
Madame Modjeska as Lady Macbeth
Madame Modjeska as Marie Antoinette (Photograph by Schumacher, 1891)

Photograph by Sarony
ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT
Church of Panna Marya, Cracow
The Royal Palace, Cracow
The Rynek, Cracow
Wincenty Rapacki
Karol Bozenta Chlapowski in 1866
Bozenta Chlapowski (on the left) and his friend Syp. Neiwicz in prison during the Polish Insurrection
The Warsaw Theatre
Jan Richter, of the Warsaw Theatre
Open-air Theatre in the Public Park, Warsaw
One of the Residences of the Chlapowski Family, near Posen
Madame Modjeska (1869)
Zolkowski, of the Warsaw Theatre
Rapacki in a Favorite R le
Madame Modjeska with her brother, Felix Benda, taken after her illness in Warsaw
The De Reszke Family
Henryk Sienkiewicz, in 1876
Ludwig Grossman
Anton Rubinstein
Charlotte Wolter
Madame Ristori
Madame Mouchanoff, Daughter of Count Nesselrode
Stanislaw Witkiewicz, Painter and Author
Agnes Booth Schoeffel
F. C. Bangs
Mrs. Florence
Edwin Booth
Madame Modjeska s First Home in California, the Farm at Anaheim
Shanty in Santiago Ca on
The Return from America, Caricature by Paprocki, 1876
Mrs. John Drew
E. A. Sothern
Charles Coghlan
Adelaide Neilson
John McCullough
William Winter
Mary Anderson
Dion Boucicault as Conn in The Shaughraun
S. W. Couldock
Thomas Whiffen
William Warren
Longfellow
Walt Whitman
Lotta (Charlotte Crabtree)
Clara Morris
Sarah Jewett
Joseph Jefferson
Henry Irving as Louis XI
Madame Modjeska in Heartsease
Wilson Barrett as Hamlet
Sarah Bernhardt as Pauline Blanchard
Forbes Robertson
Ellen Terry as Imogene
M. Coquelin
Mrs. Langtry
Genevieve Ward
Laurence Alma-Tadema
Lord Leighton, from the Portrait by G. F. Watts
Madame Seinbrich
Madame Modjeska as Juana
Maurice Barrymore
Mary Shaw
Madame Modjeska s Country Residence, near Cracow
Antonin Dvo k
Paderewski
Joseph Joachim
E. H. Vanderfelt
Madame Modjeska s California Residence
Robert Tabor
Lawrence Barrett
Charlotte Cushman
Otis Skinner
National Theatre, Cracow
Richard Mansfield
Minnie Maddern Fiske
Madame Modjeska
Tommaso Salvini
Eleanora Duse
Madame Modjeska as Magda
Three Views on Madame Modjeska s California Estate
Library in Madame Modjeska s California Residence
Interior View of Library
Library of Madame Modjeska
Ada Rehan as Portia
James O Neill
A Family Breakfast Party
Fireplace at Arden, Madame Modjeska pouring Tea
Last Home of Madame Modjeska, in East Newport, California
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
T HE car comes to a stop. After several years of absence I am in Poland again. The sun sheds upon the snow myriads of sparks, which glisten like so many precious gems; a purple strip of mist rises above the distant forest of dark, pointed pines, which form a background to white, humble huts, throbbing with lives of patience and toil, under the iron hand of the ruler. . . . I feel a mysterious glow penetrating into the very depth of my heart, tears rise to my eyes; I humbly bow my head and whisper, Hail, beloved . . . Einsteigen, meine Herrschaften, shouts the metallic voice of the conductor, waking me from my revery, and by his sudden cry in a foreign language brutally recalling to my mind the misfortunes of my country.
As we proceed further through German Poland we look in vain for any outward sign of the nationality of the inhabitants; there is none. No Polish inscriptions, no Polish names of the stations, no railroad employees allowed to speak Polish; yet crowds of peasants and workingmen hurrying to the fourth-class cars speak only the vernacular. Strange to say, there is one thing that all the efforts of the repressive governmental system cannot destroy, and that is the deep-rooted patriotism of the people, nor can they make of no avail their heroic struggle to preserve their mother-tongue.
It was almost dark when we reached a station with a name evidently Polish, but so distorted by the Germanizing process that we could not make it out. Here our train stopped. We had been delayed and had missed the connection. The prospect of spending the night in some awful inn in this out-of-the-way place appeared most unpleasant. My husband tried to charter a special train to Oswiecim (the Austrian frontier station), thirty miles away, where we could make connection for Cracow, but there was not the slightest chance of getting such a luxury in that small place.
While we were still holding council on the course to take, the station-master, a jovial, good-natured German, proposed to us to go this short distance by a freight-train; and laughing, he invited us to the conductor s box. In Germany they have no regular caboose on the freight-train, but at the end of the rear car there is a kind of covered box or cage perched near the roof where the conductor remains confined between stations.
My American friend, Miss L. B. F., who, prompted by the extravagant idea of visiting the land of Thaddeus of Warsaw, had joined us in our travels, was elated with the station-master s suggestion. With all the vigor of youth, good health, and good humor, she hastily climbed the steep, ladder-like stairs conducting to the box. We followed more leisurely. There we sat, five of us, my buoyant American, my husband, my grumbling maid, the conductor, and I, on very narrow seats, in a very tight place, and in an overheated, suffocating atmosphere, making the best of our queer situation.
The conductor, a young man with a pale, sad face, seeing us nearly smothered with rugs and furs, from which we tried in vain to extricate ourselves, speaks with a strangely patient and sympathetic voice, marked by a foreign accent. Evidently he is a Pole, but does not dare to address us in Polish, lest he lose his position. . . . I happened to complain in Polish of the heat; the conductor, without a word, puts his pencil behind his ear and opens the window. It is dark and foggy. The earth and sky are both the same dull gray,-like the background of a picture,-upon which the breath of the engine disgorges clouds of white smoke, studded with millions of red sparks, glittering like dancing, leaping, floating stars. Some of them shoot high in the air, only to fall down with the same speed, and to die in the snow; others, less ambitious, keep lower above ground and disappear in the wallowing clouds of smoke. Poor evanescent stars!
The fog is so dense that it is impossible to distinguish the earth from the sky, the whole seeming a sombre immensity of space and smoke. For a while I imagine myself embarked on some fantastic journey in an airship, and indulge in fanciful dreams, admiring the wonderful performance of those artificial clouds which with such unearthly speed rush through the air, furiously pushing and destroying each other, until they gradually melt away, and vanish in the mist of the night. The train stops. Fallen Sie nicht, meine Damen ( Do not fall, ladies ), says the patient voice of the conductor, who offers his slender hand to lead us down the steep steps, and for which I give him a German Ich danke. He smiles faintly, and whispers Dobranoc in Polish. 1
Oswiecim! This is the frontier between Prussia and Austria, and we enter that part of Poland which is n