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4 ( A Colonial Party and the California Dream From Tourist to Settler ModrzejewskatraveledwithoutherphalansteryinJuly1876,butshegreatly relished her leisure time, distance from the Polish stage, and the sea’s hypnotizing Romantic landscape. Her transatlantic diary is happily self-­ indulgent: Is there no regret for my country left in me? Or is it that the ocean, with its immortal beauty, has filled my soul to the very brim, leaving no room for anything else? I do not care to analyze the present state of my mind; I only know it is made of happiness and peace. My soul, lulled by that strange nurse, is dreaming. What are these dreams? Ah, there are no words in human language to express them. The thoughts are as unseizable as birds in their flight, like clouds which scarcely take shape ere they change into mist and melt away. This is bliss! A sharp and fragrant air strokes my brow: I take it in with full lungs—I nearly faint away under its caressing breath, drawing from it strength and health.1 Modrzejewska’s passage to America did not transform her into the poet or playwright she sometimes desired to be, but it made of her an inveterate letter writer to ever more distant family and friends. The actress had to transfer her performance to paper and to play the right roles before various correspondents. Her 13 August 1876 letter to Witkiewicz, written from New York after they had toured the city and visited Philadelphia’s Centennial Exposition , obliged the painter and critic with local snapshots and acerbic judgments . “New York,” she declared, “is a monstrous, untidy bazaar. The buildings are large, but without style. Brick or chocolate houses (the latter called A Colonial Party and the California Dream 117 here brownstone), with green window-­ shades, look simply awful. The whole city is as ugly as can be. But what makes the streets look still more unattrac­ tive are the soles of men’s boots in the windows. Imagine that men have here the singular custom of sitting in rocking-­ chairs and putting their feet up on the window sills.”2 With the same audience awareness, Modrzejewska conjured up lush pictures of jungle flora for the old Romantic poet Kornel Ujejski as her party traveled across Panama, evoking for him a “living bower of lianas” fit for a water nymph, a “wreath of blue butterflies circling the shore,” and a black woman resembling a bronze Greek sculpture in her beauty and dignity.3 The master plan of Modrzejewska’s debut on the Ameri­ can stage never strayed far from her dreaming mind, as her correspondence and insistent patronage of New York theaters clearly indicated. In the same letter in which she complained to Witkiewicz about ugly New York, she acknowledged that “when I get mastery over the new language, I may come here; for, however unattractive New York seems to me, it is the metropolis of America, and it will give me pleasure to conquer it.”4 Yet she and her husband and son were enjoying their vacation immensely and making their way west with much pleasure and little hurry. In lieu of racing to California on the newly completed cross-­ country railroad, they opted for a slower, cheaper steamer down to Panama, a two-­ hour trip across the Isthmus, and then a three-­ week passage on The Constitution, “a very old side-­wheeler,” up the coast to San Francisco.5 An accident on their first ship, The Colon out of New York, delayed them another week when the bursting of the ship’s main steam pipe meant they had to be towed back to their starting point, an inconvenience tempered by “a champagne dinner every day while we remained in dock.”6 They traveled on unfazed . Modrzejewska’s 8 Sep­tem­ber 1876 letter to her mother dwelled contentedly on their daily routine of eating, napping, chatting, strolling the deck, and sky watching. Until her “colonial party,” as she dubbed them, reached their presumably final destination in Anaheim, where Chłapowski and Sypniewski could commence being California farmers, the actress easily slipped into the lifestyle and point of view of an affluent, educated tourist, a refined lady whose touring was strictly a private affair. Modrzejewska’sprojected class and manners thoroughly distinguished her from the typical Polish immigrant to the United States in the 1870s. Her memoirs delicately distance her from familiar immigrant types among the miserable third-­ class passengers on the Donau. Modrzejewska professes disgust [3.17...

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