Bolesław Prus spent part of his childhood in Lublin, and memories of the city’s streets, shops and residents later found their way into The Doll (Lalka). One place that left a lasting impression was Jan Nepomucen Mincel’s shop on Krakowskie Przedmieście. Prus described it in detail, from a window display filled with toys to its older owner, who wore a blue cotton jacket and a white apron. The writer’s wife, Oktawia Głowacka, later recalled that these details came directly from a real shop in Lublin.
Mincel was born in 1795 in Horní Prysk, in what is now the Czech Republic, and arrived in Lublin as a young man. Józef Wencl, a German merchant who had settled there after the Third Partition of Poland, brought him to the city. Mincel first worked as an assistant, then opened his own shop at 12 Krakowskie Przedmieście. His career changed after he married the widow of Antoni Wencl and took over another shop at number 6. That path resembles Wokulski’s: Prus’s character also begins as an assistant and enters the merchant class through marriage to his employer’s widow.
Prus knew Mincel personally and followed his life while staying with his aunt Domicela on nearby Olejna Street. Visits to the shop and stories from Mincel’s sons gave the future novelist a close view of the merchant and his business. The buildings at numbers 6 and 12, the Church of the Holy Spirit where Mincel married Tekla Podkowińska, and Olejna Street still mark places associated with the story.
Mincel joined Lublin’s merchants’ assembly in 1819, ran one of the city’s best-known trading businesses, dealt in lottery tickets in the Kingdom of Poland and supported local charities. After his first wife, Tekla, died, he lived with Józefa, who helped manage the household. They officially married a week before his death in 1864, after eighteen years together. His children did not take over the family business; the tenement was sold and the estate divided.