Beautiful, witty and talented, Delfina Potocka was the ideal of her romantic era. Exemplarily reserved and at the same time liberated from convention, she reigned undivided in the Parisian salons. Her life, however, hid many secrets, and the remarkably modest tombstone in Montmorency, where she spent her last years, is a harbinger of them.

Montmorency cemetery - the pantheon of Polish emigration
A dozen or so kilometres from Paris is Montmorency. In the 18th century, Jean Jacques Rousseau made this town famous with his stays here. The author of the Social Contract was followed by his apologists who longed for the idyllic charms of the summer resort. Our compatriots, too, could not resist the place. The first was General Karol Otto Kniaziewicz, a participant in the Kościuszko Uprising, who brought his friend Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz here. In accordance with their last will, both were buried in the collegiate Montmorency cemetery, in a unique double tomb.

After the fall of the November Rising, it was here, in the suburbs of the French capital, that a peculiar Polish diaspora gathered, both the living one, created by artists, writers and émigré politicians, and the funerary one. The local Les Champeaux cemetery was the site of burials of great Poles who died in France (including Adam Czartoryski, Cyprian Norwid and Olga Boznańska), and even - as if to emphasise the importance of this necropolis - the remains of Celina Mickiewiczowa were transferred here from the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris to be buried next to her husband Adam and son Władysław. At one point it was even said that the necropolis in Paris was the "pantheon of Polish emigration".

Let us emphasise, however, that the significance of the Montmorency cemetery did not resound with the restoration of Poland's independence. After the Second World War, soldiers of the Polish Armed Forces in the West or activists of the independence emigration were buried in the cemetery near Paris, according to the stanzas of Maria Konopnicka:

. You graves, you homeland graves, / You graves full of life, / You are not an altar of vain mourning / but a fortress of strength.

Delfina Potocka - the muse of Polish Romantics
One would like to say of Delfina Potocka (1807-1877) that she was buried among friends, although in the context of this place, this would sound too trivial. She was, therefore, not so much a lady of the Great Emigration, as she rather avoided politics, but rather a muse and friend to the many resting in Montmorency. How did she get there in life?

Delfina Potocka, née Komar, grew up in a wealthy but not very respectable family. However, her improbable beauty, which brought her as much profit as problems, combined with a not inconsiderable fortune, meant that she was quickly married off. In 1825, the happy, or as it was soon to turn out unhappy, spouse was Mieczysław Potocki. The son of Stanisław Szczęsny, marshal of the Targowice Confederation, he was the owner of Tulczyn and extensive estates in Ukraine. He was regarded as the richest man in the Commonwealth, but due to his explosive and adventurous disposition, he suffered from a family curse. His marriage to Delfina was fraught with violence, sadness and misunderstanding.

Paradoxically, some solace for Potocka was brought by the outbreak of the November Rising, when she travelled to the French capital with her parents and siblings. In the salons of Paris, she flourished, winning the approval of the greats of the world - from the French marquises, through Balzac, Norwid and Napoleon's nephew Hieronymus, to Fryderyk Chopin, whom she also accompanied in the last moments of his life. And it was she, a pupil of 'Dear Mr Chopin', as she affectionately wrote in her letters, who played, and perhaps even sang, a few last pieces to the dying composer. This was immortalised in a painting by Félix-Joseph Barrias. On the other hand, Potocka's epistolary love affair with Zygmunt Krasiński resulted in several hundred letters, about which the literary critic Jan Kott wrote that it was 'the greatest novel of Polish Romanticism'. Juliusz Słowacki was not indifferent to Delfina Potocka's charm either, describing her in Fantazy in the form of Florentine, who listens to the poet / And has garlands spiked on her braids, / Like a storm.

Delfina Potocka's marble tombstone in Les Champeaux
It remains an open secret that both Słowacki and Krasiński were mutually jealous of their feelings for the beautiful Polish woman. Of the three bardic poets, only Mickiewicz remained indifferent or sometimes even hostile towards her, calling her, for example, 'the greatest sinner'. Paradoxically, it was he who was closest to Delfina after her death, as she was laid to rest in the Les Champeaux cemetery in 1877 (Mickiewicz's ashes were transferred to Kraków in 1890).

Historians say that she outlived her era, and that the end of her life was already in the conservative and strongly restrained Victorian period. Could this be why Delfina Potocka was buried against the very wall - albeit, we should add, the inner wall - of the cemetery? Were it not for the surviving archival photographs, one might wonder whether this is not the result of changes in the topography of the necropolis. However, this hypothesis is refuted by a photograph from the second half of the 19th century.

In fact, the entire gravestone, quite modest, in the form of a low tumulus placed on a stone pedestal, has not undergone any major transformations over a century and a half. Originally, it was surrounded by a cast-iron fence and planted with bushes on three sides. Today, it is devoid of a fence and part of the stone base has been replaced with gravel. The vegetation has also changed its place - it now only separates the gravestone from the wall.

Słowacki once wrote of Delfina that she was a "marble person" and so is her tomb - made of white, noble rock, devoid of any ornamentation, with a simple, flat cross and epitaphs carved in marble. Note, however, that towards the end of her life, already seriously ill, Potocka devoted herself to charitable work for poor girls, precisely from Montmorency. Perhaps, then, she herself wished for a commemoration that was modest in form?

Potocka - a sad heroine
A researcher of Delfina Potocka's life said in a radio programme in the 1970s that she "would have made a great heroine for a sad film". Almost half a century has passed since then and still, despite several attempts, the idea has not been realised. In this context, it is comforting to note that both the Dauphin's grave and the Montmorency cemetery itself are increasingly well looked after. This is also thanks to the Polonica Institute, whose funds were recently used to restore another monument at Les Champeaux, the grave of Cyprian Norwid, an artist otherwise close to Potocka. So perhaps future generations will also succumb to the charm of this beautiful and mysterious lady, and at the same time become more familiar with the works that have been dedicated to her.