Climate Change: Britain and Poland, 1830–49

Abstract

Unlike most notable figures of the British Romantic era, Claire Clairmont had first-hand experience of Russia: she lived there from 1824 to 1828, working as a governess. Clairmont’s journals and letters suggest that her experiences ran the gamut from sublime (‘Moscow is the most beautiful city in the world in Summer,’ Correspondence 245) to historically remarkable (she comments on the Decembrist revolt, Journals 393–4), to utterly despairing (‘To stay here is certain death in a year or two,’ Correspondence 248). Her letters and journals tell us almost nothing of her opinion of Poland, though her single foray into fiction suggests a thorough acquaintance with the now-familiar tropes of the Polish exile. In Clairmont’s short story of 1832, ‘The Pole,’ finished by Mary Shelley, the narrator describes the features of her hero Ladislas, a Polish military spy: ‘His countenance, had you taken from it its deep thoughtfulness and its expression of calm intrepid bravery, might have belonged to the most lovely woman, so transparently blooming was his complexion, so regular his features, so blond and luxuriant his hair’ (347). The sign of Kościuszko — between the Lion and Virgin, as Landor had it — clearly remained in the ascendant in the early 1830s. As if to emphasize the point, Clairmont creates a conniving Russian princess named Dashkoff to serve as one of the story’s villains — Princess Catherine Dashkoff, or Dashkova (1743–1810), was a well-known friend of Kościuszko’s nemesis, Catherine the Great. Ladislas is even rewarded with marriage to Idalie, ‘a daughter of one of Kosciusko’s unfortunate followers’ (354).