Cognac from Mrs Solecka
Genowefa Solecka, whom the composer described as a “a woman of principles typical of the Poznań society”, supervised both the construction of the house in Cracow and the renovation of the Lusławice Manor. In those hard times, she would obtain the hard-to-get building materials for a bottle of cognac. As she once said,
I believe my [son-in-law] was quite unaware of the scale of the necessary renovation. After five years of repair work, it cost 10 times more than planned. It was to be a summer house at first, but the professor loved the manor so much that he decided to overhaul it so that it would also be inhabitable in the winter.