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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 June 2021
Letter from Gibson to Mary Gibson
Warsaw, Friday, January 1, 1920, New Year's Day
… This was what might be called a busy day. It was thawing and mushy under foot and rainy overhead, but the Poles were bent on celebrating and the streets were jammed all day.
At eleven we set off for the little palace by the Lake Łazienki, where we were received by the chief of state. I took the mere civilians in my car and Farman with brutal soldiery. By some magic the palace had been heated and everybody in the world was there. The Diplomatic Corps was assembled in solemn dignity in a salon set aside like a contagious war; they were all there: the nuncio and his robes, the British [Rumbold] and French [Pralon] and Belgian [Ypersele] ministers in solid gold uniforms and decorations; the Romanian charge in an outfit that looked like a lion tamer's and a miscellaneous lot of others, Italians, Spaniards, military and naval, all sorts and conditions. The Americans and the Russians were the only ones without a uniform. How low Russia has sunk!
After we had been lined up in proper order; first the nuncio, then the French minister as dean, and I next, we set off into the state reception room, preceded and accompanied by Przeździecki as chef du protocole and many ADCs in glittering uniforms. The big reception room was cleared of furniture; the chief of state in an ostentatiously simple uniform something like that of a brakeman stood before a roaring wood fire just under a gigantic statue of Hercules. Behind him were ranged the new cabinet, his ADCs and a private chaplain, a distinguished looking person with white hair and a crushed-strawberry cassock. The whole scene might have come straight out of the middle of the eighteenth century. After we had lined up on the edge of the rug and made our little bow, the nuncio stepped forward and made his speech of congratulations on behalf of the Diplomatic Corps. He did it at considerable length and the chief of state replied from a typewritten slip in about two minutes.
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