Tadeusz Bobrowski

Tadeusz BobrowskiTadeusz Bobrowski (1829–1894) was a Polish landowner living in Ukraine, best known outside Poland as the guardian and mentor of his nephew Józef Konrad Korzeniowski, who would later become the well-known English-language novelist Joseph Conrad.

Bobrowski's memoir, as well as providing valuable insights into Conrad's life, is deemed a reliable picture of the Polish society of its time, in the Kresy (borderlands).

Life

Early life Born March 19, 1829, in Terechów, a village in Berdychiv County, Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire), he was the son of Józef and Teofilia, née Pilchowska, and brother of Stefan Bobrowski, a leader of the Polish January 1863 Uprising. Tadeusz attended secondary school till 1839 in Żytomierz, then in Kiev.

In 1844 he matriculated in law at Kiev; two years later, he transferred to St. Petersburg. Very gifted, in his 22nd year (1850) he left university with a master's degree in international law. He declined an offer to assume the chair in that subject at Kazan University, as he intended instead to devote himself to an administrative career. The Memoirs''' second volume, drawn from the Commission's minutes, is a valuable source on the history of the granting of farmland to Ukraine's peasants. Before Conrad's father died in 1869, the boy was under Bobrowski's care in 1866-67, and later Bobrowski became his guardian. At first opposed to the boy's desire to become a sailor, he ultimately relented. Bobrowski went to him in March 1878; in the summer of 1883 they met in the Czech spa towns of Marienbad and Teplice; in 1890 and 1893 Conrad spent two months, on each occasion, at his uncle's Kazimierówka. But, via ongoing correspondence, the uncle systematically influenced his nephew, admonished him—in particular, taught him constancy and fidelity to obligations once undertaken—and aided him financially.

Bobrowski was Conrad's constant link with Poland, and exerted much influence on him. Whatever positive aspects his character possessed, the novelist would later write, he owed to his uncle's devotion, solicitude and influence. "There is," writes Wiktor Weintraub, "naturally much exaggeration in this assertion of Conrad's, but it is a very characteristic exaggeration." Both of Conrad's autobiographical books, The Mirror of the Sea and especially A Personal Record, contain heartfelt reminiscences of Bobrowski. Conrad dedicated his first novel, Almayer's Folly'', to his memory.