Smarting Recollections: A Polish Christmas

Abstract

Smarting Recollections: A Polish Christmas * Gerald Williams (bio) I, George Bridgetower, was born on the 29th of February, 1779, in Biala, Poland, when Prussia, Russia, and Austria ruled over that aggrieved land. My mother was Prussian and as white as whey; my father (“the African Prince”) was as black as black ever was. They say that I demonstrated musical talent at a very early age, but who could have imagined at that time that I was to become the lead violinist in the Prince of Wales’s orchestra and perform at the Brighton Pavilion and at the Carlton House, or that Beethoven would compose a sonata for me. Now, infirm and at an advanced age, when gloating over my successes could provide some sure comfort, my memory instead dwells on those childhood events that may have had a greater role in making me what I am . . . what I have become. On the eve of my eighth Christmas, the entire Biala landscape was covered with a thin layer of powdery snow. At evening, from the outskirts where we lived, the town proper with its candle-lit windows and smoking chimneys resembled the miniature display in my uncle’s store window more than reality. From the main road near our house, Biala’s unrelieved flatness seemed all the more level because of the blue-black sky’s vast overhanging expanse and the profusion of twinkling stars that designated its milliard galaxies. It was as if Biala were a white plate and the heavens an immense and inverted blue bowl. The air, hushed, was fragrant with smoldering peat and pine. I sat next to my mother in the lurching droshky. She held my brother, Friedrich (then 4), in her lap; only his little nutmeg-brown head poked out from under her avalanching wrap of winter furs. It was to be a demanding evening for me. I was to play the black king in the school pageant. I sat rigidly on the edge of the seat for fear of rumpling my costume. I myself had made the yellow paper crown that sat firmly on my head. The material for my costume—purple velvet cloak, its high collar bordered with golden brocade—came from Ehrlich u. Sohnes, my uncle’s store, and had been perfectly assembled and sewn with loving care by Bozena, the slow-witted, lovable charwoman—a task that no one would have imagined her capable of. For my regal staff, I used my father’s African walking stick with its entwined serpents, an object that he—in his great haste to flee Biala, his gambling debts, and accusations of espionage (I was much later to understand)—had inadvertantly left behind. Of the majestic trio, the ruler from the Dark Continent would—I was sure because of these superior accoutrements—seem the most kingly. (And was I not of regal lineage, anyway, I reasoned? My father, after all, was an African prince!) [End Page 466] I had my violin beside me for, after the school pageant, I was to play in the orchestra at St. Luke’s church in a performance of Christmas music. I would be the only child musician in the group—indeed, an honor. The third event that awaited us that evening was Christmas Eve dinner at Ehrlich u. Sohnes, with Uncle Ulrich, his family, and the store employees. We rode silently toward town, the surrounding quiet rhythmically punctuated by the jangle of the clustered holiday bells attached to the horses’ reigns. My costume too easily put me in mind of my father. My thoughts focused on him as we drew nearer to the town proper, wondering where he might be and when I would see him again. My mother never mentioned his name since his abrupt departure, and once when I brought it up, she pretended she hadn’t heard. It was on the very road that we were then traveling that my father and I would take our walks to town during the past summer. He, lean and grand in his black linen suit, starched white wing-tipped collar, set off by his satin scarlet waistcoat across which was draped a gold pocket watch chain ending in a...