| Nicolas Chopin | |
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Nicolas Chopin. Photo of lost painting by Ambroży Mieroszewski, 1829 |
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| Born | 15 April 1771 Marainville-sur-Madon, Vosges, Frances |
| Died | 3 May 1844 (aged 73) Warsaw, Poland |
| Cause of death | Tuberculosis |
| Spouse | Justyna Krzyżanowska |
| Children | Ludwika Chopin, later Jędrzejewicz Frédéric Chopin Izabella Chopin Emilia Chopin |
| Parents | François Chopin Marguerite Deflin |
Nicolas Chopin (in Polish: Mikołaj Chopin; 15 April 1771 – 3 May 1844) was a teacher of French language in Prussian- and Russian-ruled Poland, and father of Polish composer Frédéric Chopin.[1]
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Nicolas Chopin was born in the village of Marainville-sur-Madon (Vosges department), in the province of Lorraine, France. He was the son of François Chopin, a wheelwright, and Marguerite, née Deflin.[2] The boy attracted the attention of the Polish manager, Adam Weydlich, of the estate (belonging to a Pole, Michał Jan Pac) where Nicolas lived with his family.
In 1787, when Weydlich was returning to Poland, he took sixteen-year-old Nicolas with him and engaged him in his Warsaw tobacco factory. For the next several years, Nicolas worked there as a clerk and bookkeeper. After three years, despite an opportunity to do so, he did not visit his native land, with which he did not keep in touch to the end of his life. In connection with the 1789 outbreak of the French Revolution and the possibility of being conscripted into the French Army, he declined to go to Strasbourg, as requested, on business for Pac.
The year 1792 saw the Second Partition of Poland, and Weydlich's factory was closed down. In view of the limited prospects of employment in Warsaw, Nicolas considered returning to France. His plans came to naught due to illness, which lifted shortly before the 1794 outbreak of the Kościuszko Uprising. Nicolas joined the Warsaw municipal militia, rising to the rank of lieutenant. After a year he was wounded, just as the uprising was collapsing.
Finding himself again unemployed, he was soon engaged at Czerniewo, in Mazowsze Province, as tutor to the Łączyński family (one of whose daughters, Maria, after later marrying Anastazy Walewski, would gain fame as mistress to Napoleon Bonaparte). Nicolas spent some six years with them. Central and Eastern Europe was then flooded with refugees from areas affected by revolution, and many of them found the same kind of employment as Nicolas. On Polish lands it became fashionable for even modestly well-to-do nobility to have a French aristocrat in their homes. Nicolas was not "well-born," so his position bespoke the substantial education and social graces that he had acquired during his previous seven years among his adoptive Polish compatriots.
Nicolas spent the next several years at Żelazowa Wola with Countess Ludwika Skarbek and her family (relatives of the Łączyńskis), tutoring the four children. On 2 June 1806,[3] he married a poor relation of the Skarbeks who lived with them and ran the household, Tekla Justyna Krzyżanowska (daughter of Jakub Krzyżanowski and Antonina, née Kołomińska, of Długie in Włocławek County). Justyna's brother would be the father of Włodzimierz Krzyżanowski, later a Union general in the American Civil War.[4]
A year later their first daughter was born, Ludwika (Louise), and they moved to a larger house on the estate.
In 1810 their only son Fryderyk was born. His godfather was Fryderyk Skarbek, who had been tutored by Nicolas Chopin.
Count Skarbek had fallen into debt and fled the Duchy of Warsaw, leaving his wife and four children. At their age they no longer required a tutor, so it was clear the Countess would no longer be able to employ the Chopins. Probably Nicolas had been thinking of moving to Warsaw even before the birth of his son Fryderyk.
In July that year, Nicolas and Justyna and their children moved to Warsaw, to the Saxon Palace, which housed the Warsaw Lyceum where he would teach French language. In October 1810, Nicolas was appointed "collaborator" (kollaborant) and, in June 1814, regular professor of French language at the Lyceum. He held this post until the lyceum's closure in 1833.[5]
Apart from these positions, in 1812 he was appointed professor of French language at an Elementary Artillery and Engineers School (Szkoła Elementarna Artylerii i Inżynierów), and in 1820 at a Military Training School (Szkoła Aplikacyjna Wojskowa), where he was active until the school was closed down in 1831.[6]
In 1833, with the reorganization of the educational system following the November 1830 Uprising, Chopin was to have received a position at a planned Pedagogical Institute. While awaiting the new appointment, he received half-wages and evaluated French-teacher candidates and French works proposed for use in public schools. In 1837, when the Institute failed to materialize, Chopin retired. Nevertheless, he continued on the Examining Committee till 1841. In addition, for a brief period in 1837, he was lecturer in French language at the Roman Catholic Clerical Academy (Akademia Duchowna) in Warsaw.[7]
Nicolas Chopin died of tuberculosis in Warsaw on 3 May 1844, aged seventy-three.[8] He is interred with his wife at Powązki Cemetery.
On 2 June 1806, Chopin married Justyna née Krzyżanowska. The couple produced four children: Ludwika, born 1807, who married Józef Jędrzejewicz; their only son, Fryderyk Franciszek, born 1810, a pianist and composer best known as Frédéric Chopin; Izabela, born 9 July 1811, who married Antoni Barciński; and Emilia, born 1813, who died of tuberculosis in 1827, aged fourteen.[9]
In 1829 Ambroży Mieroszewski painted oil portraits of Mikołaj (Nicolas) Chopin and Justyna Chopin (died October 1861, aged 81) and their surviving children: Fryderyk (the earliest known portrait of him, and one of the most convincing); Fryderyk's older sister Ludwika; and his younger sister Izabela. (That same year, Mieroszewski also painted Fryderyk's first professional piano teacher, Wojciech Żywny.[10]
Nicolas Chopin was, according to Wincenty Łopaciński, a man of great intelligence and culture, universally esteemed, a model teacher, solicitous of his brilliant son Frédéric. Though he had come from a foreign country, with time he became completely polonized and "undoubtedly considered himself a Pole."[11]