Aniela Zagórska

[1] When in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I Conrad had returned to his native Poland for the first time since departing it, he had taken refuge with his family in the southern-mountain resort town of Zakopane.

A few days after arrival there, they had moved to the Konstantynówka pension operated by Conrad's cousin Aniela Zagórska, the namesake mother of the future translator; the pension had earlier been frequented by celebrities including the statesman Józef Piłsudski and Conrad's acquaintance, the young concert pianist Artur Rubinstein.

Conrad roused interest among the Poles as a famous writer and an exotic compatriot from abroad.

However, the double Nobel laureate Maria Skłodowska-Curie's physician sister, Bronisława Dłuska, scolded him for having used his great talent for purposes other than bettering the future of his native land[3] But thirty-two-year-old Aniela Zagórska (daughter of the pension keeper), Conrad's niece who would translate his works into Polish in 1923–39, idolized him, kept him company, and provided him with books.

He particularly delighted in the stories and novels of the ten-years-older, recently deceased Bolesław Prus,[4][5] read everything by his fellow victim of Poland's 1863 Uprising – "my beloved Prus" – that he could get his hands on, and pronounced him "better than Dickens" – a favorite English novelist of Conrad's.