Donia Sol, Lord Pilgrim i Aleksander hrabia Przezdziecki. Prawda, zmyślenia, zagadki

The February 1868 issue of the Paris magazine L’Artiste featured a portrait of H. Modjeska. It was a lithography made in J. Lemercier’s study which presented the actress in the costume of Donia Sol. The image was supplemented with a sonnet and a letter of ‘a curious one’ to his friend, signed ‘Lord Pilgrim.’ Apart from a description of Krakow, the letter praised the acting talents of the Polish artist. All this was meant as a publicity stunt and as it turned out, the project was originated by Aleksander Przezdziecki, scholar and theater expert, who borrowed the penname of ‘Lord Pilgrim’ from Arsène Houssaye, an editor in L’Artiste and a writer. Therefore, it was wrongly assumed that Lord Pilgrim was Aleksander Przezdziecki, as repeated by many Modjeska’s biographers for a long time. Houssaye continued to publish his texts in L’Artiste under this penname for years after Przezdziecki’s death. Modjeska did not perform in Paris. However, Count Przezdziecki was making efforts to bring her to the stage of the Warsaw Government Theaters (WGT). He had many influential friends in Warsaw, was widely respected and won the trust of Sergey Mukhanov, the president of the WGT, who let the Krakow actress perform in Warsaw on her own conditions and subsequently be hired. The account of the events is retained in extant letters. In the context of these developments, the article presents the person of Aleksander Przezdziecki, a great Polish patriot and an eminent historian of Poland who sought out items connected with Poland all over Europe. He catalogued and described them in detail and authored important publications based on sources that got irretrievably lost afterwards. Until today, these texts continue to be used by researchers in their publications.