Letter of Wincenty Pol to Prince Józef Lubomirski

Prince Jerzy Henryk Lubomirski (1817-1872), a conservative and Slavophile by conviction, was active as a politician and social and educational activist in Galicia and was also a member of the Viennese Parliament. As curator of the Ossoliński National Institute in Lviv (in 1847-1851 and 1869-1872), he had to deal with the financial problems that the institution was facing at that time, and at the same time he made a considerable contribution to its development by donating his library and armoury to it.

Appointed at the beginning of 1847 as the editor of the journal of Biblioteka Zakładu Naukowego imienia Ossolińskich, Wincenty Pol received a contract for six years, which obliged him to publish twelve issues a year. Hoping for a steady income, he incurred many expenses and liabilities, wrote a few articles of his own, and to acquire subjects, authors and subscribers, he travelled for almost three months through Wrocław, Cieplice, Poznań, Berlin, all the way to Rugen. However, after fifteen issues had been published, due to the financial problems of the Department, the publication of the periodical was suspended, and the bills for only the first two years were settled with the editor.

In the letter presented here, Wincenty Pol strongly urges his former employer to return the amount due. The letter shows that he had been making efforts for a long time, and its tone testifies to the desperation of the writer. Before we express our surprise as to why this man of honour, who did not seem to attach much importance to his possessions, appears here as a person counting every penny (incidentally, the dispute was over a substantial sum for him, because it amounted to over two years of his income; the relevant calculations can be found in the earlier correspondence), it is worth noting the moment in which he decided to write this letter. It was a year or a year and a half after he had lost his professorial post at Jagiellonian University, when his wife Kornelia became seriously ill and needed money for doctors, medicines, and a trip to the waters, and when his four dependent children were still in school.