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Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician — Volume 2

by Frederick Niecks · English · Gutenberg #4972 · 874,947 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician — Volume 2

Author: Frederick Niecks


        
Release date: January 1, 2004 [eBook #4972]
                Most recently updated: June 4, 2026

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FREDERICK CHOPIN, AS A MAN AND MUSICIAN — VOLUME 2 ***




Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician, Volume 2 (of 2)

Frederick Niecks

Third Edition (1902)



TABLE OF CONTENTS

     CHAPTERS XX-XXXII
     APPENDICES I-IX
     REMARKS PRELIMINARY TO THE LIST OF CHOPIN'S WORKS.
     LIST OF CHOPIN'S PUBLISHED WORKS



CHAPTER XX.



1836--1838.



THE LOVES OF CELEBRITIES.--VARIOUS ACCOUNTS OF CHOPIN AND GEORGE
SAND'S FIRST MEETING.--CHOPIN'S FIRST IMPRESSION OF HER.--A
COMPARISON OF THE TWO CHARACTERS.--PORTRAYALS OF CHOPIN AND
GEORGE SAND.--HER POWER OF PLEASING.--CHOPIN'S PUBLICATIONS IN
1837 AND 1838.--HE PLAYS AT COURT AND AT CONCERTS IN PARIS AND
ROUEN.--CRITICISM.



THE loves of famous men and women, especially of those connected
with literature and the fine arts, have always excited much
curiosity. In the majority of cases the poet's and artist's
choice of a partner falls on a person who is incapable of
comprehending his aims and sometimes even of sympathising with
his striving. The question "why poets are so apt to choose their
mates, not for any similarity of poetical endowment, but for
qualities which might make the happiness of the rudest
handicrafts-man as well as that of the ideal craftsman" has
perhaps never been better answered than by Nathaniel Hawthorne,
who remarks that "at his highest elevation the poet needs no
human intercourse; but he finds it dreary to descend, and be a
stranger." Still, this is by no means a complete solution of the
problem which again and again presents itself and challenges our
ingenuity. Chopin and George Sand's case belongs to the small
minority of loves where both parties are distinguished
practitioners of ideal crafts. Great would be the mistake,
however, were we to assume that the elective affinities of such
lovers are easily discoverable On the contrary, we have here
another problem, one which, owing to the higher, finer, and more
varied factors that come into play, is much more difficult to
solve than the first. But before we can engage in solving the
problem, it must be properly propounded. Now, to ascertain facts
about the love-affairs of poets and artists is the very reverse
of an easy task; and this is so partly because the parties
naturally do not let outsiders into all their secrets, and partly
because romantic minds and imaginative litterateurs are always
busy developing plain facts and unfounded rumours into wonderful
myths. The picturesqueness of the story, the piquancy of the
anecdote, is generally in inverse proportion to the narrator's
knowledge of the matter in question. In short, truth is only too
often most unconscionably sacrificed to effect. Accounts, for
instance, such as L. Enault and Karasowski have given of Chopin's
first meeting with George Sand can be recommended only to those
who care for amusing gossip about the world of art, and do not
mind whether what they read is the simple truth or not, nay, do
not mind even whether it has any verisimilitude. Nevertheless, we
will give these gentlemen a hearing, and then try if we cannot
find some firmer ground to stand on.

L. Enault relates that Chopin and George Sand met for the first
time at one of the fetes of the Marquis de C., where the
aristocracy of Europe assembled--the aristocracy of genius, of
birth, of wealth, of beauty, &c.:--

  The last knots of the chaine anglaise had already been untied,
  the brilliant crowd had left the ball-room, the murmur of
  discreet conversation was heard in the boudoirs: the fetes of
  the intimate friends began. Chopin seated himself at the
  piano. He played one of those ballads whose words are written
  by no poet, but whose subjects, floating in the dreamy soul of
  nations, belong to the artist who likes to take them. I
  believe it was the Adieux du Cavalier...Suddenly, in the
  middle of the ballad, he perceived, close to the door,
  immovable and pale, the beautiful face of Lelia. [FOOTNOTE:
  This name of the heroine of one of her romances is often given
  to George Sand. See Vol. I., p. 338.] She fixed her passionate
  and sombre eyes upon him; the impressionable artist felt at
  the same time pain and pleasure...others might listen to him:
  he played only for her.

  They met again.

  From this moment fears vanished, and these two noble souls
  understood each other...or believed they understood each
  other.

Karasowski labours hard to surpass Enault, but is not like him a
master of the ars artem celare. The weather, he tells us, was
dull and damp, and had a depressing effect on the mind of Chopin.
No friend had visited him during the day, no book entertained
him, no musical idea gladdened him. It was nearly ten o'clock at
night (the circumstantiality of the account ought to inspire
confidence) when he bethought himself of paying a visit to the
Countess C. (the Marquis, by some means, magical or natural, has
been transformed into a Countess), this being her jour fixe, on
which an intellectual and agreeable company was always assembled
at her house.

  When he ascended the carpet-covered stairs [Unfortunately we
  are not informed whether the carpet was Turkey, Brussels, or
  Kidderminster], it seemed to him as if he were followed by a
  shadow that diffused a fragrance of violets [Ah!], and a
  presentiment as if something strange and wonderful were going
  to happen to him flashed through his soul. He was on the point
  of turning back and going home, but, laughing at his own
  superstition, he bounded lightly and cheerfully over the last
  steps.

Skipping the fine description of the brilliant company assembled
in the salon, the enumeration of the topics on which the
conversation ran, and the observation that Chopin, being
disinclined to talk, seated himself in a corner and watched the
beautiful ladies as they glided hither and thither, we will join
Karasowski again where, after the departure of the greater number
of the guests, Chopin goes to the piano and begins to improvise.

  His auditors, whom he, absorbed in his own thoughts and
  looking only at the keys, had entirely forgotten, listened
  with breathless attention. When he had concluded his
  improvisation, he raised his eyes, and noticed a plainly-
  dressed lady who, leaning on the instrument, seemed to wish to
  read his soul with her dark fiery eyes. [Although a severe
  critic might object to the attitude of a lady leaning on a
  piano as socially and pictorially awkward, he must admit that
  from a literary point of view it is unquestionably more
  effective than sitting or standing by the door.] Chopin felt
  he was blushing under the fascinating glances of the lady
  [Bravo! This is a master-touch]; she smiled [Exquisite!], and
  when the artist was about to withdraw from the company behind
  a group of camellias, he heard the peculiar rustling of a silk
  dress, which exhaled a fragrance of violets [Camellias,
  rustling silks, fragrance of violets! What a profusion of
  beauty and sweetness!], and the same lady who had watched him
  so inquiringly at the piano approached him accompanied by
  Liszt. Speaking to him with a deep, sweet voice, she made some
  remarks on his playing, and more especially on the contents of
  his improvisation. Frederick listened to her with pleasure and
  emotion, and while words full of sparkling wit and
  indescribable poetry flowed from the lady's eloquent lips
  [Quite a novel representation of her powers of conversation],
  he felt that he was understood as he had never been.

All this is undoubtedly very pretty, and would be invaluable in a
novel, but I am afraid we should embarrass Karasowski were we to
ask him to name his authorities.

Of this meeting at the house of the Marquis de C.--i.e., the
Marquis de Custine--I was furnished with a third version by an
eye-witness--namely, by Chopin's pupil Adolph Gutmann. From him I
learned that the occasion was neither a full-dress ball nor a
chance gathering of a jour fixe, but a musical matinee. Gutmann,
Vidal (Jean Joseph), and Franchomme opened the proceedings with a
trio by Mayseder, a composer the very existence of whose once
popular chamber-music is unknown to the present generation.
Chopin played a great deal, and George Sand devoured him with her
eyes. Afterwards the musician and the novelist walked together a
long time in the garden. Gutmann was sure that this matinee took
place either in 1836 or in 1837, and was inclined to think that
it was in the first-mentioned year.

Franchomme, whom I questioned about the matinee at the Marquis de
Custine's, had no recollection of it. Nor did he remember the
circumstance of having on this or any other occasion played a
trio of Mayseder's with Gutmann and Vidal. But this friend of the
Polish pianist--composer, while confessing his ignorance as to
the place where the latter met the great novelist for the first
time, was quite certain as to the year when he met her. Chopin,
Franchomme informed me, made George Sand's acquaintance in 1837,
their connection was broken in 1847, and he died, as everyone
knows, on October 17, 1849. In each of these dates appears the
number which Chopin regarded with a superstitious dread, which he
avoided whenever he could-for instance, he would not at any price
take lodgings in a house the number of which contained a seven--
and which may be thought by some to have really exercised a fatal
influence over him. It is hardly necessary to point out that it
was this fatal number which fixed the date in Franchomme's
memory.

But supposing Chopin and George Sand to have really met at the
Marquis de Custine's, was this their first meeting?

[FOONOTE: That they were on one occasion both present at a party
given by the Marquis de Custine may be gathered from Freiherr von
Flotow's Reminiscences of his life in Paris (published in the
"Deutsche Revue" of January, 1883, p. 65); but not that this was
their first meeting, nor the time when it took place. As to the
character of this dish of reminiscences, I may say that it is
sauced and seasoned for the consumption of the blase magazine
reader, and has no nutritive substance whatever.]

I put the question to Liszt in the course of a conversation I had
with him some years ago in Weimar. His answer was most positive,
and to the effect that the first meeting took place at Chopin's
own apartments. "I ought to know best," he added, "seeing that I
was instrumental in bringing the two together." Indeed, it would
be difficult to find a more trustworthy witness in this matter
than Liszt, who at that time not only was one of the chief
comrades of Chopin, but also of George Sand. According to him,
then, the meeting came about in this way. George Sand, whose
curiosity had been excited both by the Polish musician's
compositions and by the accounts she had heard of him, expressed
to Liszt the wish to make the acquaintance of his friend. Liszt
thereupon spoke about her to Chopin, but the latter was averse to
having any intercourse with her. He said he did not like literary
women, and was not made for their society; it was different with
his friend, who there found himself in his element. George Sand,
however, did not cease to remind Liszt of his promise to
introduce her to Chopin. One morning in the early part of 1837
Liszt called on his friend and brother-artist, and found him in
high spirits on account of some compositions he had lately
finished. As Chopin was anxious to play them to his friends, it
was arranged to have in the evening a little party at his rooms.

This seemed to Liszt an excellent opportunity to redeem the
promise which he had given George Sand when she asked for an
introduction; and, without telling Chopin what he was going to
do, he brought her with him along with the Comtesse d'Agoult. The
success of the soiree was such that it was soon followed by a
second and many more.

In the foregoing accounts the reader will find contradictions
enough to exercise his ingenuity upon. But the involuntary tricks
of memory and the voluntary ones of imagination make always such
terrible havoc of facts that truth, be it ever so much sought and
cared for, appears in history and biography only in a more or
less disfigured condition. George Sand's own allusion to the
commencement of the acquaintance agrees best with Liszt's
account. After passing in the latter part of 1836 some months in
Switzerland with Liszt and the Comtesse d'Agoult, she meets them
again at Paris in the December of the same year:--

  At the Hotel de France, where Madame d'Agoult had persuaded me
  to take quarters near her, the conditions of existence were
  charming for a few days. She received many litterateurs,
  artists, and some clever men of fashion. It was at Madame
  d'Agoult's, or through her, that I made the acquaintance of
  Eugene Sue, Baron d'Eckstein, Chopin, Mickiewicz, Nourrit,
  Victor Schoelcher, &c. My friends became also hers. Through me
  she got acquainted with M. Lamennais, Pierre-Leroux, Henri
  Heine, &c. Her salon, improvised in an inn, was therefore a
  reunion d'elite over which she presided with exquisite grace,
  and where she found herself the equal of all the eminent
  specialists by reason of the extent of her mind and the
  variety of her faculties, which were at once poetic and
  serious. Admirable music was performed there, and in the
  intervals one could instruct one's self by listening to the
  conversation.

To reconcile Liszt's account with George Sand's remark that
Chopin was one of those whose acquaintance she made at Madame
d'Agoult's or through her, we have only to remember the intimate
relation in which Liszt stood to this lady (subsequently known in
literature under the nom de plume of Daniel Stern), who had left
her husband, the Comte d'Agoult, in 1835.

And now at last we can step again from the treacherous quicksand
of reminiscences on the terra firma of documents. The following
extracts from some letters of George Sand's throw light on her
relation to Chopin in the early part of 1837:--


  Nohant, March 28, 1837.

  [To Franz Liszt.]...Come and see us as soon as possible. Love,
  esteem, and friendship claim you at Nohant. Love (Marie
  [FOOTNOTE: The Comtesse d'Agoult.]) is some what ailing,
  esteem (Maurice and Pelletan [FOOTNOTE: The former, George
  Sand's son; the latter, Eugene Pelletan, Maurice's tutor.])
  pretty well, and friendship (myself) obese and in excellent
  health.

  Marie told me that there was some hope of Chopin. Tell Chopin
  that I beg of him to accompany you; that Marie cannot live
  without him, and that I adore him.

  I shall write to Grzymala personally in order to induce him
  also, if I can, to come and see us. I should like to be able
  to surround Marie with all her friends, in order that she also
  may live in the bosom of love, esteem, and friendship.

[FOOTNOTE: Albert Grzymala, a man of note among the Polish
refugees. He was a native of Dunajowce in Podolia, had held
various military and other posts--those of maitre des requites,
director of the Bank of Poland, attache to the staff of Prince
Poniatowski, General Sebastiani, and Lefebvre, &c.--and was in
1830 sent by the Polish Government on a diplomatic mission to
Berlin, Paris, and London. (See L'Amanach de L'Emigration
polonaise, published at Paris some forty years ago.) He must not
be confounded with the publicist Francis Grzymala, who at Warsaw
was considered one of the marechaux de plume, and at Paris was
connected with the Polish publication Sybilla. With one exception
(Vol. I., p. 3), the Grzymala spoken of in these volumes is
Albert Grzymala, sometimes also called Count Grzymala. This
title, however, was, if I am rightly informed, only a courtesy
title. The Polish nobility as such was untitled, titles being of
foreign origin and not legally recognised. But many Polish
noblemen when abroad assume the prefix de or von, or the title
"Count," in order to make known their rank.]


  Nohant, April 5, 1837.

  [To the Comtesse d'Agoult.]...Tell Mick....[FOOTNOTE:
  Mickiewicz, the poet.] (non-compromising manner of writing
  Polish names) that my pen and my house are at his service, and
  are only too happy to be so; tell Grzy. ..., [FOOTNOTE:
  Gryzmala] whom I adore, Chopin, whom I idolatrise, and all
  those whom you love that I love them, and that, brought by
  you, they will be welcome. Berry in a body watches for the
  maestro's [FOOTNOTE: Liszt's] return in order to hear him play
  the piano. I believe we shall be obliged to place le garde-
  champetre and la garde nationals of Nohant under arms in order
  to defend ourselves against the dilettanti berrichoni.


  Nohant, April 10, 1837.

  [To the Comtesse d'Agoult.] I want the fellows, [FOOTNOTE:
  "Fellows" (English) was the nickname which Liszt gave to
  himself and his pupil Hermann Cohen.] I want them as soon and
  as LONG as possible. I want them a mort. I want also Chopin
  and all the Mickiewiczs and Grzymalas in the world. I want
  even Sue if you want him. What more would I not want if that
  were your fancy? For instance, M. de Suzannet or Victor
  Schoelcher! Everything, a lover excepted.


  Nohant, April 21, 1837.

  [To the Comtesse d'Agoult.] Nobody has permitted himself to
  breathe the air of your room since you left it. Arrangements
  will be made to put up all those you may bring with you. I
  count on the maestro, on Chopin, on the Rat, [FOOTNOTE:
  Liszt's pupil, Hermann Cohen.] if he does not weary you too
  much, and all the others at your choice.

Chopin's love for George Sand was not instantaneous like that of
Romeo for Juliet. Karasowski remembers having read in one of
those letters of the composer which perished in 1863: "Yesterday
I met George Sand...; she made a very disagreeable impression
upon me." Hiller in his Open Letter to Franz Liszt writes:--

  One evening you had assembled in your apartments the
  aristocracy of the French literary world--George Sand was of
  course one of the company. On the way home Chopin said to me
  "What a repellent [antipathische] woman the Sand is! But is
  she really a woman? I am inclined to doubt it."

Liszt, in discussing this matter with me, spoke only of Chopin's
"reserve" towards George Sand, but said nothing of his "aversion"
to her. And according to this authority the novelist's
extraordinary mind and attractive conversation soon overcame the
musician's reserve. Alfred de Musset's experience had been of a
similar nature. George Sand did not particularly please him at
first, but a few visits which he paid her sufficed to inflame his
heart with a violent passion. The liaisons of the poet and
musician with the novelist offer other points of resemblance
besides the one just mentioned: both Musset and Chopin were
younger than George Sand--the one six, the other five years; and
both, notwithstanding the dissimilarity of their characters,
occupied the position of a weaker half. In the case of Chopin I
am reminded of a saying of Sydney Smith, who, in speaking of his
friends the historian Grote and his wife, remarked: "I do like
them both so much, for he is so lady-like, and she is such a
perfect gentleman." Indeed, Chopin was described to me by his
pupil Gutmann as feminine in looks, gestures, and taste; as to
George Sand, although many may be unwilling to admit her perfect
gentlemanliness, no one can doubt her manliness:--

  Dark and olive-complexioned Lelia! [writes Liszt] thou hast
  walked in solitary places, sombre as Lara, distracted as
  Manfred, rebellious as Cain, but more fierce [farouche], more
  pitiless, more inconsolable than they, because thou hast found
  among the hearts of men none feminine enough to love thee as
  they have been loved, to pay to thy virile charms the tribute
  of a confiding and blind submission, of a silent and ardent
  devotion, to suffer his allegiance to be protected by thy
  Amazonian strength!

The enthusiasm with which the Poles of her acquaintance spoke of
their countrywomen, and the amorous suavity, fulness of feeling,
and spotless nobleness which she admired in the Polish composer's
inspirations, seem to have made her anticipate, even before
meeting Chopin, that she would find in him her ideal lover, one
whose love takes the form of worship. To quote Liszt's words:
"She believed that there, free from all dependence, secure
against all inferiority, her role would rise to the fairy-like
power of some being at once the superior and the friend of man.
"Were it not unreasonable to regard spontaneous utterances--
expressions of passing moods and fancies, perhaps mere flights of
rhetoric--as well-considered expositions of stable principles,
one might be tempted to ask: Had George Sand found in Chopin the
man who was "bold or vile enough" to accept her "hard and clear"
conditions? [FOOTNOTE: See extract from one of her letters in the
preceding chapter, Vol. I., p. 334.]

While the ordinary position of man and woman was entirely
reversed in this alliance, the qualities which characterised them
can nevertheless hardly ever have been more nearly diametrically
opposed. Chopin was weak and undecided; George Sand strong and
energetic. The former shrank from inquiry and controversy; the
latter threw herself eagerly into them. [FOOTNOTE: George Sand
talks much of the indolence of her temperament: we may admit this
fact, but must not overlook another one--namely, that she was in
possession of an immense fund of energy, and was always ready to
draw upon it whenever speech or action served her purpose or
fancy.] The one was a strict observer of the laws of propriety
and an almost exclusive frequenter of fashionable society; the
other, on the contrary, had an unmitigated scorn for the so-
called proprieties and so-called good society. Chopin's manners
exhibited a studied refinement, and no woman could be more
particular in the matter of dress than he was. It is
characteristic of the man that he was so discerning a judge of
the elegance and perfection of a female toilette as to be able to
tell at a glance whether a dress had been made in a first-class
establishment or in an inferior one. The great composer is said
to have had an unlimited admiration for a well-made and well-
carried (bien porte) dress. Now what a totally different picture
presents itself when we turn to George Sand, who says of herself,
in speaking of her girlhood, that although never boorish or
importunate, she was always brusque in her movements and natural
in her manners, and had a horror of gloves and profound bows. Her
fondness for male garments is as characteristic as Chopin's
connoisseurship of the female toilette; it did not end with her
student life, for she donned them again in 1836 when travelling
in Switzerland.

The whole of Chopin's person was harmonious. "His appearance,"
says Moscheles, who saw him in 1839, "is exactly like his music
[ist identificirt mit seiner Musik], both are tender and
schwarmerisch."

[FOOTNOTE: I shall not attempt to translate this word, but I will
give the reader a recipe. Take the notions "fanciful," "dreamy,"
and "enthusiastic" (in their poetic sense), mix them well, and
you have a conception of schwarmerisck.]

A slim frame of middle height; fragile but wonderfully flexible
limbs; delicately-formed hands; very small feet; an oval, softly-
outlined head; a pale, transparent complexion; long silken hair
of a light chestnut colour, parted on one side; tender brown
eyes, intelligent rather than dreamy; a finely-curved aquiline
nose; a sweet subtle smile; graceful and varied gestures: such
was the outward presence of Chopin. As to the colour of the eyes
and hair, the authorities contradict each other most thoroughly.
Liszt describes the eyes as blue, Karasowski as dark brown, and
M. Mathias as "couleur de biere." [FOOTNOTE: This strange
expression we find again in Count Wodzinski's Les trois Romans de
Frederic Chopin, where the author says: "His large limpid,
expressive, and soft eyes had that tint which the English call
auburn, which the Poles, his compatriots, describe as piwne (beer
colour), and which the French would denominate brown."] Of the
hair Liszt says that it was blonde, Madame Dubois and others that
it was cendre, Miss L. Ramann that it was dark blonde, and a
Scotch lady that it was dark brown. [FOOTNOTE: Count Wodzinski
writes: "It was not blonde, but of a shade similar to that of his
eyes: ash-coloured (cendre), with golden reflections in the
light."] Happily the matter is settled for us by an authority to
which all others must yield--namely, by M. T. Kwiatkowski, the
friend and countryman of Chopin, an artist who has drawn and
painted the latter frequently. Well, the information I received
from him is to the effect that Chopin had des yeux bruns tendres
(eyes of a tender brown), and les cheveux blonds chatains
(chestnut-blonde hair). Liszt, from whose book some of the above
details are derived, completes his portrayal of Chopin by some
characteristic touches. The timbre of his voice, he says, was
subdued and often muffled; and his movements had such a
distinction and his manners such an impress of good society that
one treated him unconsciously like a prince. His whole appearance
made one think of that of the convolvuli, which on incredibly
slender stems balance divinely-coloured chalices of such
vapourous tissue that the slightest touch destroys them.

And whilst Liszt attributes to Chopin all sorts of feminine
graces and beauties, he speaks of George Sand as an Amazon, a
femme-heros, who is not afraid to expose her masculine
countenance to all suns and winds. Merimee says of George Sand
that he has known her "maigre comme un clou et noire comme une
taupe." Musset, after their first meeting, describes her, to whom
he at a subsequent period alludes as femme a l'oeil sombre, thus:-
-

  She is very beautiful; she is the kind of woman I like--brown,
  pale, dull-complexioned with reflections as of bronze, and
  strikingly large-eyed like an Indian. I have never been able
  to contemplate such a countenance without inward emotion. Her
  physiognomy is rather torpid, but when it becomes animated it
  assumes a remarkably independent and proud expression.

The most complete literary portrayal of George Sand that has been
handed down to us, however, is by Heine. He represents her as
Chopin knew her, for although he published the portrait as late
as 1854 he did not represent her as she then looked; indeed, at
that time he had probably no intercourse with her, and therefore
was obliged to draw from memory. The truthfulness of Heine's
delineation is testified by the approval of many who knew George
Sand, and also by Couture's portrait of her:--

  George Sand, the great writer, is at the same time a beautiful
  woman. She is even a distinguished beauty. Like the genius
  which manifests itself in her works, her face is rather to be
  called beautiful than interesting. The interesting is always a
  graceful or ingenious deviation from the type of the
  beautiful, and the features of George Sand bear rather the
  impress of a Greek regularity. Their form, however, is not
  hard, but softened by the sentimentality which is suffused
  over them like a veil of sorrow. The forehead is not high, and
  the delicious chestnut-brown curly hair falls parted down to
  the shoulders. Her eyes are somewhat dim, at least they are
  not bright, and their fire may have been extinguished by many
  tears, or may have passed into her works, which have spread
  their flaming brands over the whole world, illumined many a
  comfortless prison, but perhaps also fatally set on fire many
  a temple of innocence. The authoress of "Lelia" has quiet,
  soft eyes, which remind one neither of Sodom nor of Gomorrah.
  She has neither an emancipated aquiline nose nor a witty
  little snub nose. It is just an ordinary straight nose. A good-
  natured smile plays usually around her mouth, but it is not
  very attractive; the somewhat hanging under-lip betrays
  fatigued sensuality. The chin is full and plump, but
  nevertheless beautifully proportioned. Also her shoulders are
  beautiful, nay, magnificent. Likewise her arms and hands,
  which, like her feet, are small. Let other contemporaries
  describe the charms of her bosom, I confess my incompetence.
  The rest of her bodily frame seems to be somewhat too stout,
  at least too short. Only her head bears the impress of
  ideality; it reminds one of the noblest remains of Greek art,
  and in this respect one of our friends could compare the
  beautiful woman to the marble statue of the Venus of Milo,
  which stands in one of the lower rooms of the Louvre. Yes, she
  is as beautiful as the Venus of Milo; she even surpasses the
  latter in many respects: she is, for instance, very much
  younger. The physiognomists who maintain that the voice of man
  reveals his character most unmistakably would be much at a
  loss if they were called upon to detect George Sand's
  extraordinary depth of feeling [Innigkeit] in her voice. The
  latter is dull and faded, without sonority, but soft and
  agreeable. The naturalness of her speaking lends it some
  charm. Of vocal talent she exhibits not a trace! George Sand
  sings at best with the bravura of a beautiful grisette who has
  not yet breakfasted or happens not to be in good voice. The
  organ of George Sand has as little brilliancy as what she
  says. She has nothing whatever of the sparkling esprit of her
  countrywomen, but also nothing of their talkativeness. The
  cause of this taciturnity, however, is neither modesty nor
  sympathetic absorption in the discourse of another. She is
  taciturn rather from haughtiness, because she does not think
  you worth squandering her cleverness [Geist] upon, or even
  from selfishness, because she endeavours to absorb the best of
  your discourse in order to work it up afterwards in her works.
  That out of avarice George Sand knows how never to give
  anything and always to take something in conversation, is a
  trait to which Alfred de Musset drew my attention. "This gives
  her a great advantage over us," said Musset, who, as he had
  for many years occupied the post of cavaliere servente to the
  lady, had had the best opportunity to learn to know her
  thoroughly. George Sand never says anything witty; she is
  indeed one of the most unwitty Frenchwomen I know.

While admiring the clever drawing and the life-like appearance of
the portrait, we must, however, not overlook the exaggerations
and inaccuracies. The reader cannot have failed to detect the
limner tripping with regard to Musset, who occupied not many
years but less than a year the post of cavaliere servente. But
who would expect religious adherence to fact from Heine, who at
all times distinguishes himself rather by wit than
conscientiousness? What he says of George Sand's taciturnity in
company and want of wit, however, must be true; for she herself
tells us of these negative qualities in the Histoire de ma Vie.

The musical accomplishments of Chopin's beloved one have, of
course, a peculiar interest for us. Liszt, who knew her so well,
informed me that she was not musical, but possessed taste and
judgment. By "not musical" he meant no doubt that she was not in
the habit of exhibiting her practical musical acquirements, or
did not possess these latter to any appreciable extent. She
herself seems to me to make too much of her musical talents,
studies, and knowledge. Indeed, her writings show that, whatever
her talents may have been, her taste was vague and her knowledge
very limited.

When we consider the diversity of character, it is not a matter
for wonder that Chopin was at first rather repelled than
attracted by the personality of George Sand. Nor is it, on the
other hand, a matter for wonder that her beauty and power of
pleasing proved too strong for his antipathy. How great this
power of pleasing was when she wished to exercise it, the reader
may judge from the incident I shall now relate. Musset's mother,
having been informed of her son's projected tour to Italy, begged
him to give it up. The poet promised to comply with her request:
"If one must weep, it shall not be you," he said. In the evening
George Sand came in a carriage to the door and asked for Madame
Musset; the latter came out, and after a short interview gave her
consent to her son's departure. Chopin's unsuccessful wooing of
Miss Wodzinska and her marriage with Count Skarbek in this year
(1837) may not have been without effect on the composer. His
heart being left bruised and empty was as it were sensitised (if
I may use this photographic term) for the reception of a new
impression by the action of love. In short, the intimacy between
Chopin and George Sand grew steadily and continued to grow till
it reached its climax in the autumn of 1838, when they went
together to Majorca. Other matters, however, have to be adverted
to before we come to this passage of Chopin's life. First I shall
have to say a few words about his artistic activity during the
years 1837 and 1838.

Among the works composed by Chopin in 1837 was one of the
Variations on the March from I Puritani, which were published
under the title Hexameron: Morceau de Concert. Grandes variations
de bravoure sur la marche des Puritains de Bellini, composees
pour le concert de Madame la Princesse Belgiojoso au benefice des
pauvres, par M.M. Liszt, Thalberg, Pixis, H. Herz, Czerny, et
Chopin. This co-operative undertaking was set on foot by the
Princess, and was one of her many schemes to procure money for
her poor exiled countrymen. Liszt played these Variations often
at his concerts, and even wrote orchestral accompaniments to
them, which, however, were never published.

Chopin's publications of the year 1837 are: in October, Op. 25,
Douze Etudes, dedicated to Madame la Comtesse d'Agoult; and in
December, Op. 29, Impromptu (in A flat major), dedicated to
Mdlle. la Comtesse de Lobau; Op. 30, Quatre Mazurkas, dedicated
to Madame la Princesse de Wurtemberg, nee Princesse Czartoryska;
Op. 31, Deuxieme Scherzo (B flat minor), dedicated to Mdlle. la
Comtesse Adele de Furstenstein; and Op. 32, Deux Nocturnes (B
major and A flat major), dedicated to Madame la Baronne de
Billing. His publications of the year 1838 are: in October, Op.
33, Quatre Mazurkas, dedicated to Mdlle. la Comtesse Mostowska;
and, in December, Op. 34, Trois Valses brillantes (A flat major,
A minor, and F major), respectively dedicated to Mdlle. de Thun-
Hohenstein, Madame G. d'Ivri, and Mdlle. A. d'Eichthal. This last
work appeared at Paris first in an Album des Pianistes, a
collection of unpublished pieces by Thalberg, Chopin, Doehler,
Osborne, Liszt, and Mereaux. Two things in connection with this
album may yet be mentioned--namely, that Mereaux contributed to
it a Fantasia on a mazurka by Chopin, and that Stephen Heller
reviewed it in the Gazette musicale. Chopin was by no means
pleased with the insertion of the waltzes in Schlesinger's Album
des Pianistes. But more of this and his labours and grievances as
a composer in the next chapter.

There are also to be recorded some public and semi-public
appearances of Chopin as a virtuoso. On February 25, 1838, the
Gazette musicale informs its readers that Chopin, "that equally
extraordinary and modest pianist," had lately been summoned to
Court to be heard there en cercle intime. His inexhaustible
improvisations, which almost made up the whole of the evening's
entertainment, were particularly admired by the audience, which
knew as well as a gathering of artists how to appreciate the
composer's merits. At a concert given by Valentin Alkan on March
3, 1838, Chopin performed with Zimmermann, Gutmann, and the
concert-giver, the latter's arrangement of Beethoven's A major
Symphony (or rather some movements from it) for two pianos and
eight hands. And in the Gazette musicale of March 25, 1838, there
is a report by M. Legouve of Chopin's appearance at a concert
given by his countryman Orlowski at Rouen, where the latter had
settled after some years stay in Paris. From a writer in the
Journal de Rouen (December 1, 1849) we learn that ever since this
concert, which was held in the town-hall, and at which the
composer played his E minor Concerto with incomparable
perfection, the name of Chopin had in the musical world of Rouen
a popularity which secured to his memory an honourable and
cordial sympathy. But here is what Legouve says about this
concert. I transcribe the notice in full, because it shows us
both how completely Chopin had retired from the noise and strife
of publicity, and how high he stood in the estimation of his
contemporaries.

  Here is an event which is not without importance in the
  musical world. Chopin, who has not been heard in public for
  several years; Chopin, who imprisons his charming genius in an
  audience of five or six persons; Chopin, who resembles those
  enchanted isles where so many marvels are said to abound that
  one regards them as fabulous; Chopin, whom one can never
  forget after having once heard him; Chopin has just given a
  grand concert at Rouen before 500 people for the benefit of a
  Polish professor. Nothing less than a good action to be done
  and the remembrance of his country could have overcome his
  repugnance to playing in public. Well! the success was
  immense! immense! All these enchanting melodies, these
  ineffable delicacies of execution, these melancholy and
  impassioned inspirations, and all that poesy of playing and of
  composition which takes hold at once of your imagination and
  heart, have penetrated, moved, enraptured 500 auditors, as
  they do the eight or ten privileged persons who listen to him
  religiously for whole hours; every moment there were in the
  hall those electric fremissements, those murmurs of ecstasy
  and astonishment which are the bravos of the soul. Forward
  then, Chopin! forward! let this triumph decide you; do not be
  selfish, give your beautiful talent to all; consent to pass
  for what you are; put an end to the great debate which divides
  the artists; and when it shall be asked who is the first
  pianist of Europe, Liszt or Thalberg, let all the world reply,
  like those who have heard you..."It is Chopin."

Chopin's artistic achievements, however, were not unanimously
received with such enthusiastic approval. A writer in the less
friendly La France musicale goes even so far as to stultify
himself by ridiculing, a propos of the A flat Impromptu, the
composer's style. This jackanapes--who belongs to that numerous
class of critics whose smartness of verbiage combined with
obtuseness of judgment is so well-known to the serious musical
reader and so thoroughly despised by him--ignores the spiritual
contents of the work under discussion altogether, and condemns
without hesitation every means of expression which in the
slightest degree deviates from the time-honoured standards. We
are told that Chopin's mode of procedure in composing is this. He
goes in quest of an idea, writes, writes, modulates through all
the twenty-four keys, and, if the idea fails to come, does
without it and concludes the little piece very nicely (tres-
bien). And now, gentle reader, ponder on this momentous and
immeasurably sad fact: of such a nature was, is, and ever will be
the great mass of criticism.



CHAPTER XXI.



CHOPIN'S VISITS TO NOHANT IN 1837 AND 1838.--HIS ILL HEALTH.--HE
DECIDES TO GO WITH MADAME SAND AND HER CHILDREN TO MAJORCA.--
MADAME SAND'S ACCOUNT OF THIS MATTER AND WHAT OTHERS THOUGHT
ABOUT IT.--CHOPIN AND HIS FELLOW--TRAVELLERS MEET AT PERPIGNAN IN
THE BEGINNING OF NOVEMBER, 1838, AND PROCEED BY PORT-VENDRES AND
BARCELONA TO PALMA.--THEIR LIFE AND EXPERIENCES IN THE TOWN, AT
THE VILLA SON-VENT, AND AT THE MONASTERY OF VALDEMOSA, AS
DESCRIBED IN CHOPIN'S AND GEORGE SAND'S LETTERS, AND THE LATTER'S
"MA VIE" AND "UN HIVER A MAJORQUE."--THE PRELUDES.--RETURN TO
FRANCE BY BARCELONA AND MARSEILLES IN THE END OF FEBRUARY, 1839.



In a letter written in 1837, and quoted on p. 313 of Vol. I.,
Chopin said: "I may perhaps go for a few days to George Sand's."
How heartily she invited him through their common friends Liszt
and the Comtesse d'Agoult, we saw in the preceding chapter. We
may safely assume, I think, that Chopin went to Nohant in the
summer of 1837, and may be sure that he did so in the summer of
1838, although with regard to neither visit reliable information
of any kind is discoverable. Karasowski, it is true, quotes four
letters of Chopin to Fontana as written from Nohant in 1838, but
internal evidence shows that they must have been written three
years later.

We know from Mendelssohn's and Moscheles' allusions to Chopin's
visit to London that he was at that time ailing. He himself wrote
in the same year (1837) to Anthony Wodzinski that during the
winter he had been again ill with influenza, and that the doctors
had wanted to send him to Ems. As time went on the state of his
health seems to have got worse, and this led to his going to
Majorca in the winter of 1838-1839. The circumstance that he had
the company of Madame Sand on this occasion has given rise to
much discussion. According to Liszt, Chopin was forced by the
alarming state of his health to go to the south in order to avoid
the severities of the Paris winter; and Madame Sand, who always
watched sympathetically over her friends, would not let him
depart alone, but resolved to accompany him. Karasowski, on the
other hand, maintains that it was not Madame Sand who was induced
to accompany Chopin, but that Madame Sand induced Chopin to
accompany her. Neither of these statements tallies with Madame
Sand's own account. She tells us that when in 1838 her son
Maurice, who had been in the custody of his father, was
definitively entrusted to her care, she resolved to take him to a
milder climate, hoping thus to prevent a return of the rheumatism
from which he had suffered so much in the preceding year.
Besides, she wished to live for some time in a quiet place where
she could make her children work, and could work herself,
undisturbed by the claims of society.

  As I was making my plans and preparations for departure [she
  goes on to say], Chopin, whom I saw every day and whose genius
  and character I tenderly loved, said to me that if he were in
  Maurice's place he would soon recover. I believed it, and I
  was mistaken. I did not put him in the place of Maurice on the
  journey, but beside Maurice. His friends had for long urged
  him to go and spend some time in the south of Europe. People
  believed that he was consumptive. Gaubert examined him and
  declared to me that he was not. "You will save him, in fact,"
  he said to me, "if you give him air, exercise, and rest."
  Others, knowing well that Chopin would never make up his mind
  to leave the society and life of Paris without being carried
  off by a person whom he loved and who was devoted to him,
  urged me strongly not to oppose the desire he showed so a
  propos and in a quite unhoped-for way.

  As time showed, I was wrong in yielding to their hopes and my
  own solicitude. It was indeed enough to go abroad alone with
  two children, one already ill, the other full of exuberant
  health and spirits, without taking upon myself also a terrible
  anxiety and a physician's responsibility.

  But Chopin was just then in a state of health that reassured
  everybody. With the exception of Grzymala, who saw more
  clearly how matters stood, we were all hopeful. I nevertheless
  begged Chopin to consider well his moral strength, because for
  several years he had never contemplated without dread the idea
  of leaving Paris, his physician, his acquaintances, his room
  even, and his piano. He was a man of imperious habits, and
  every change, however small it might be, was a terrible event
  in his life.

Seeing that Liszt--who was at the time in Italy--and Karasowski
speak only from hearsay, we cannot do better than accept George
Sand's account, which contains nothing improbable. In connection
with this migration to the south, I must, however, not omit to
mention certain statements of Adolph Gutmann, one of Chopin's
pupils. Here is the substance of what Gutmann told me. Chopin was
anxious to go to Majorca, but for some time was kept in suspense
by the scantiness of his funds. This threatening obstacle,
however, disappeared when his friend the pianoforte-maker and
publisher, Camille Pleyel, paid him 2,000 francs for the
copyright of the Preludes, Op. 28. Chopin remarked of this
transaction to Gutmann, or in his hearing: "I sold the Preludes
to Pleyel because he liked them [parcequ'il les. aimait]." And
Pleyel exclaimed on one occasion: "These are my Preludes [Ce sont
mes Preludes]." Gutmann thought that Pleyel, who was indebted to
Chopin for playing on his instruments and recommending them,
wished to assist his friend in a delicate way with some money,
and therefore pretended to be greatly taken with these
compositions and bent upon possessing them. This, however, cannot
be quite correct; for from Chopin's letters, which I shall quote
I presently, it appears that he had indeed promised Pleyel the
Preludes, but before his departure received from him only 500
francs, the remaining 1,500 being paid months afterwards, on the
delivery of the manuscript. These letters show, on the other
hand, that when Chopin was in Majorca he owed to Leo 1,000
francs, which very likely he borrowed from him to defray part of
the expenses of his sojourn in the south.

[FOOTNOTE: August Leo, a Paris banker, "the friend and patron of
many artists," as he is called by Moscheles, who was related to
him through his wife Charlotte Embden, of Hamburg. The name of
Leo occurs often in the letters and conversations of musicians,
especially German musicians, who visited Paris or lived there in
the second quarter of this century. Leo kept house together with
his brother-in-law Valentin. (See Vol. I., p. 254.)]

Chopin kept his intention of going with Madame Sand to Majorca
secret from all but a privileged few. According to Franchomme, he
did not speak of it even to his friends. There seem to have been
only three exceptions--Fontana, Matuszynski, and Grzymala, and in
his letters to the first he repeatedly entreats his friend not to
talk about him. Nor does he seem to have been much more
communicative after his return, for none of Chopin's
acquaintances whom I questioned was able to tell me whether the
composer looked back on this migration with satisfaction or with
regret; still less did they remember any remark made by him that
would throw a more searching light on this period of his life.

Until recently the only sources of information bearing on
Chopin's stay in Majorca were George Sand's "Un Hiver a Majorque"
and "Histoire de ma Vie." But now we have also Chopin's letters
to Fontana (in the Polish edition of Karasowski's "Chopin") and
George Sand's "Correspondance," which supplement and correct the
two publications of the novelist. Remembering the latter's
tendency to idealise everything, and her disinclination to
descend to the prose of her subject, I shall make the letters the
backbone of my narrative, and for the rest select my material
cautiously.

Telling Chopin that she would stay some days at Perpignan if he
were not there on her arrival, but would proceed without him if
he failed to make his appearance within a certain time, Madame
Sand set out with her two children and a maid in the month of
November, 1838, for the south of France, and, travelling for
travelling's sake, visited Lyons, Avignon, Vaucluse, Nimes, and
other places. The distinguished financier and well-known Spanish
statesman Mendizabal, their friend, who was going to Madrid, was
to accompany Chopin to the Spanish frontier. Madame Sand was not
long left in doubt as to whether Chopin would realise his reve de
voyage or not, for he put in his appearance at Perpignan the very
next day after her arrival there. Madame Sand to Madame Marliani,
[FOOTNOTE:  The wife of the Spanish politician and author, Manuel
Marliani. We shall hear more of her farther on.] November, 1838:-
-

  Chopin arrived at Perpignan last night, fresh as a rose, and
  rosy as a turnip; moreover, in good health, having stood his
  four nights of the mail-coach heroically. As to ourselves, we
  travelled slowly, quietly, and surrounded at all stations by
  our friends, who overwhelmed us with kindness.

As the weather was fine and the sea calm Chopin did not suffer
much on the passage from Port-Vendres to Barcelona. At the latter
town the party halted for a while-spending some busy days within
its walls, and making an excursion into the country-and then took
ship for Palma, the capital of Majorca and the Balearic Isles
generally. Again the voyagers were favoured by the elements.

  The night was warm and dark, illumined only by an
  extraordinary phosphorescence in the wake of the ship;
  everybody was asleep on board except the steersman, who, in
  order to keep himself awake, sang all night, but in a voice so
  soft and so subdued that one might have thought that he feared
  to awake the men of the watch, or that he himself was half
  asleep. We did not weary of listening to him, for his singing
  was of the strangest kind. He observed a rhythm and
  modulations totally different from those we are accustomed to,
  and seemed to allow his voice to go at random, like the smoke
  of the vessel carried away and swayed by the breeze. It was a
  reverie rather than a song, a kind of careless divagation of
  the voice, with which the mind had little to do, but which
  kept time with the swaying of the ship, the faint sound of the
  dead water, and resembled a vague improvisation, restrained,
  nevertheless, by sweet and monotonous forms.

When night had passed into day, the steep coasts of Majorca,
dentelees au soleil du matin par les aloes et les palmiers, came
in sight, and soon after El Mallorquin landed its passengers at
Palma. Madame Sand had left Paris a fortnight before in extremely
cold weather, and here she found in the first half of November
summer heat. The newcomers derived much pleasure from their
rambles through the town, which has a strongly-pronounced
character of its own and is rich in fine and interesting
buildings, among which are most prominent the magnificent
Cathedral, the elegant Exchange (la lonja), the stately Town-
Hall, and the picturesque Royal Palace (palacio real). Indeed, in
Majorca everything is picturesque,

  from the hut of the peasant, who in his most insignificant
  buildings has preserved the tradition of the Arabic style, to
  the infant clothed in rags and triumphant in his "malproprete
  grandiose," as Heine said a propos of the market-women of
  Verona. The character of the landscape, whose vegetation is
  richer than that of Africa is in general, has quite as much
  breadth, calm, and simplicity. It is green Switzerland under
  the sky of Calabria, with the solemnity and silence of the
  East.

But picturesqueness alone does not make man's happiness, and
Palma seems to have afforded little else. If we may believe
Madame Sand, there was not a single hotel in the town, and the
only accommodation her party could get consisted of two small
rooms, unfurnished rather than furnished, in some wretched place
where travellers are happy to find "a folding-bed, a straw-
bottomed chair, and, as regards food, pepper and garlic a
discretion." Still, however great their discomfort and disgust
might be, they had to do their utmost to hide their feelings;
for, if they had made faces on discovering vermin in their beds
and scorpions in their soup, they would certainly have hurt the
susceptibilities of the natives, and would probably have exposed
themselves to unpleasant consequences. No inhabitable apartments
were to be had in the town itself, but in its neighbourhood a
villa chanced to be vacant, and this our party rented at once.

Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Palma, November 14, 1838:--

  I am leaving the town, and shall establish myself in the
  country: I have a pretty furnished house, with a garden and a
  magnificent view, for fifty francs per month. Besides, two
  leagues from there I have a cell, that is to say, three rooms
  and a garden full of oranges and lemons, for thirty-five
  francs PER YEAR, in the large monastery of Valdemosa.

The furniture of the villa was indeed of the most primitive kind,
and the walls were only whitewashed, but the house was otherwise
convenient, well ventilated--in fact, too well ventilated--and
above all beautifully situated at the foot of rounded, fertile
mountains, in the bosom of a rich valley which was terminated by
the yellow walls of Palma, the mass of the cathedral, and the
sparkling sea on the horizon.

Chopin to Fontana; Palma, November 15, 1838:--

[FOOTNOTE: Julius Fontana, born at Warsaw in 1810, studied music
(at the Warsaw Conservatoire under Elsner) as an amateur and law
for his profession; joined in 1830 the Polish insurrectionary
army; left his country after the failure of the insurrection;
taught the piano in London; played in 1835 several times with
success in Paris; resided there for some years; went in 1841 to
Havannah; on account of the climate, removed to New York; gave
there concerts with Sivori; and returned to Paris in 1850. This
at least is the account we get of him in Sowinski's "Les
Musiciens polonais et slaves." Mr. A. J. Hipkins, who became
acquainted with Fontana during a stay which the latter made in
London in 1856 (May and early part of June), described him to me
as "an honourable and gentlemanly man." From the same informant I
learned that Fontana married a lady who had an income for life,
and that by this marriage he was enabled to retire from the
active exercise of his profession. Later on he became very deaf,
and this great trouble was followed by a still greater one, the
death of his wife. Thus left deaf and poor, he despaired, and,
putting a pistol to one of his ears, blew out his brains.
According to Karasowski he died at Paris in 1870. The
compositions he published (dances, fantasias, studies, &c.) are
of no importance. He is said to have published also two books,
one on Polish orthography in 1866 and one on popular astronomy in
1869. The above and all the following letters of Chopin to
Fontana are in the possession of Madame Johanna Lilpop, of
Warsaw, and are here translated from Karasowski's Polish edition
of his biography of Chopin. Many of the letters are undated, and
the dates suggested by Karasowski generally wrong. There are,
moreover, two letters which are given as if dated by Chopin; but
as the contents point to Nohant and 1841 rather than to Majorca
and 1838 and 1839, I shall place them in Chapter XXIV., where
also my reasons for doing so will be more particularly stated. A
third letter, supposed by Karasowski to be written at Valdemosa
in February, I hold to be written at Marseilles in April. It will
be found in the next chapter.]

  My dear friend,--I am at Palma, among palms, cedars, cactuses,
  aloes, and olive, orange, lemon, fig, and pomegranate trees,
  &c., which the Jardin des Plantes possesses only thanks to its
  stoves. The sky is like a turquoise, the sea is like lazuli,
  and the mountains are like emeralds. The air? The air is just
  as in heaven. During the day there is sunshine, and
  consequently it is warm--everybody wears summer clothes.
  During the night guitars and songs are heard everywhere and at
  all hours. Enormous balconies with vines overhead, Moorish
  walls...The town, like everything here, looks towards
  Africa...In one word, a charming life"!

  Dear Julius, go to Pleyel--the piano has not yet arrived--and
  ask him by what route they have sent it.

  The Preludes you shall have soon.

  I shall probably take up my quarters in a delightful monastery
  in one of the most beautiful sites in the world: sea,
  mountains, palm trees, cemetery, church of the Knights of the
  Cross, ruins of mosques, thousand-year-old olive trees!...Ah,
  my dear friend, I am now enjoying life a little more; I am
  near what is most beautiful--I am a better man.

  Letters from my parents and whatever you have to send me give
  to Grzymala; he knows the safest address.

  Embrace Johnnie. [FOOTNOTE: The Johnnie so frequently
  mentioned in the letters to Fontana is John Matuszynski.] How
  soon he would recover here!

  Tell Schlesinger that before long he will receive MS. To
  acquaintances speak little of me. Should anybody ask, say that
  I shall be back in spring. The mail goes once a week; I write
  through the French Consulate here.

  Send the enclosed letter as it is to my parents; leave it at
  the postoffice yourself.

     Yours,

       CHOPIN.

George Sand relates in "Un Hiver a Majorque" that the first days
which her party passed at the Son-Vent (House of the Wind)--this
was the name of the villa they had rented--were pretty well taken
up with promenading and pleasant lounging, to which the delicious
climate and novel scenery invited. But this paradisaic condition
was suddenly changed as if by magic when at the end of two or
three weeks the wet season began and the Son-Vent became
uninhabitable.

  The walls of it were so thin that the lime with which our
  rooms were plastered swelled like a sponge. For my part I
  never suffered so much from cold, although it was in reality
  not very cold; but for us, who are accustomed to warm
  ourselves in winter, this house without a chimney was like a
  mantle of ice on our shoulders, and I felt paralysed. Chopin,
  delicate as he was and subject to violent irritation of the
  larynx, soon felt the effects of the damp.

  We could not accustom ourselves to the stifling odour of the
  brasiers, and our invalid began to ail and to cough.

  From this moment we became an object of dread and horror to
  the population. We were accused and convicted of pulmonary
  phthisis, which is equivalent to the plague in the prejudices
  regarding contagion entertained by Spanish physicians. A rich
  doctor, who for the moderate remuneration of forty-five francs
  deigned to come and pay us a visit, declared, nevertheless,
  that there was nothing the matter, and prescribed nothing.

  Another physician came obligingly to our assistance; but the
  pharmacy at Palma was in such a miserable state that we could
  only procure detestable drugs. Moreover, the illness was to be
  aggravated by causes which no science and no devotion could
  efficiently battle against.

  One morning, when we were given up to serious fears on account
  of the duration of these rains and these sufferings which were
  bound up together, we received a letter from the fierce Gomez
  [the landlord], who declared, in the Spanish style, that we
  held a person who held a disease which carried contagion into
  his house, and threatened prematurely the life of his family;
  in consequence of which he requested us to leave his palace
  with the shortest delay possible.

  This did not cause us much regret, for we could no longer stay
  there without fear of being drowned in our rooms; but our
  invalid was not in a condition to be moved without danger,
  especially by such means of transport as are available in
  Majorca, and in the weather then obtaining. And then the
  difficulty was to know where to go, for the rumour of our
  phthisis had spread instantaneously, and we could no longer
  hope to find a shelter anywhere, not even at a very high price
  for a night. We knew that the obliging persons who offeredto
  take us in were themselves not free from prejudices, and that,
  moreover, we should draw upon them, in going near them, the
  reprobation which weighed upon us. Without the hospitality of
  the French consul, who did wonders in order to gather us all
  under his roof, we were threatened with the prospect of
  camping in some cavern like veritable Bohemians.

  Another miracle came to pass, and we found an asylum for the
  winter. At the Carthusian monastery of Valdemosa there was a
  Spanish refugee, who had hidden himself there for I don't know
  what political reason. Visiting the monastery, we were struck
  with the gentility of his manners, the melancholy beauty of
  his wife, and the rustic and yet comfortable furniture of
  their cell. The poesy of this monastery had turned my head. It
  happened that the mysterious couple wished to leave the
  country precipitately, and--that they were as delighted to
  dispose to us of their furniture and cell as we were to
  acquire them. For the moderate sum of a thousand francs we had
  then a complete establishment, but such a one as we could have
  procured in France for 300 francs, so rare, costly, and
  difficult to get are the most necessary things in Majorca.

The outcasts decamped speedily from the Son-Vent. But before
Senor Gomez had done with his tenants, he made them pay for the
whitewashing and the replastering of the whole house, which he
held to have been infected by Chopin.

And now let us turn once more from George Sand's poetical
inventions, distortions, and exaggerations, to the comparative
sobriety and trustworthiness of letters.

Chopin to Fontana; Palma, December 3, 1838:--

  I cannot send you the MSS. as they are not yet finished.
  During the last two weeks I have been as ill as a dog, in
  spite of eighteen degrees of heat, [FOOTNOTE: That is,
  eighteen degrees Centigrade, which are equal to about sixty-
  four degrees Fahrenheit.] and of roses, and orange, palm, and
  fig trees in blossom. I caught a severe cold. Three doctors,
  the most renowned in the island, were called in for
  consultation. One smelt what I spat, the second knocked whence
  I spat, the third sounded and listened when I spat. The first
  said that I would die, the second that I was dying, the third
  that I had died already; and in the meantime I live as I was
  living. I cannot forgive Johnnie that in the case of bronchite
  aigue, which he could always notice in me, he gave me no
  advice. I had a narrow escape from their bleedings,
  cataplasms, and such like operations. Thanks to Providence, I
  am now myself again. My illness has nevertheless a pernicious
  effect on the Preludes, which you will receive God knows when.

  In a few days I shall live in the most beautiful part of the
  world. Sea, mountains...whatever you wish. We are to have our
  quarters in an old, vast, abandoned and ruined monastery of
  Carthusians whom Mend [FOOTNOTE: Mendizabal] drove away as it
  were for me. Near Palma--nothing more wonderful: cloisters,
  most poetic cemeteries. In short, I feel that there it will be
  well with me. Only the piano has not yet come! I wrote to
  Pleyel. Ask there and tell him that on the day after my
  arrival here I was taken very ill, and that I am well again.
  On the whole, speak little about me and my manuscripts. Write
  to me. As yet I have not received a letter from you.

  Tell Leo that I have not as yet sent the Preludes to the
  Albrechts, but that I still love them sincerely, and shall
  write to them shortly.

  Post the enclosed letter to my parents yourself, and write as
  soon as possible.

  My love to Johnnie. Do not tell anyone that I was ill, they
  would only gossip about it.

[FOOTNOTE: to Madame Dubois I owe the information that Albrecht,
an attache to the Saxon legation (a post which gave him a good
standing in society) and at the same time a wine-merchant (with
offices in the Place Vendome--his specialty being "vins de
Bordeaux"), was one of Chopin's "fanatic friends." In the letters
there are allusions to two Albrechts, father and son; the
foregoing information refers to the son, who, I think, is the T.
Albrecht to whom the Premier Scherzo, Chopin's Op. 20, is
dedicated.]


Chopin to Fontana; Palma, December 14, 1838:--

  As yet not a word from you, and this is my third or fourth
  letter. Did you prepay? Perhaps my parents did not write.
  Maybe some misfortune has befallen them. Or are you so lazy?
  But no, you are not lazy, you are so obliging. No doubt you
  sent my two letters to my people (both from Palma). And you
  must have written to me, only the post of this place, which is
  the most irregular in the world, has not yet delivered your
  letters.

  Only to-day I was informed that on the ist of December my
  piano was embarked at Marseilles on a merchant vessel. The
  letter took fourteen days to come from that town. Thus there
  is some hope that the piano may pass the winter in the port,
  as here nobody stirs when it rains. The idea of my getting it
  just at my departure pleases me, for in addition to the 500
  francs for freight and duty which I must pay, I shall have the
  pleasure of packing it and sending it back. Meanwhile my
  manuscripts are sleeping, whereas I cannot sleep, but cough,
  and am covered with plasters, waiting anxiously for spring or
  something else.

  To-morrow I start for this delightful monastery of Valdemosa.
  I shall live, muse, and write in the cell of some old monk who
  may have had more fire in his heart than I, and was obliged to
  hide and smother it, not being able to make use of it.

  I think that shortly I shall be able to send you my Preludes
  and my Ballade. Go and see Leo; do not mention that I am ill,
  he would fear for his 1,000 francs.

  Give my kind remembrances to Johnnie and Pleyel.


Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Palma, December 14, 1838:--

  ...What is really beautiful here is the country, the sky, the
  mountains, the good health of Maurice, and the radoucissement
  of Solange. The good Chopin is not in equally brilliant
  health. He misses his piano very much. We received news of it
  to-day. It has left Marseilles, and we shall perhaps have it
  in a fortnight. Mon Dieu, how hard, difficult, and miserable
  the physical life is here! It is beyond what one can imagine.

  By a stroke of fortune I have found for sale a clean suite of
  furniture, charming for this country, but which a French
  peasant would not have. Unheard-of trouble was required to get
  a stove, wood, linen, and who knows what else. Though for a
  month I have believed myself established, I am always on the
  eve of being so. Here a cart takes five hours to go three
  leagues; judge of the rest. They require two months to
  manufacture a pair of tongs. There is no exaggeration in what
  I say. Guess about this country all I do not tell you. For my
  part I do not mind it, but I have suffered a little from it in
  the fear of seeing my children suffer much from it.

  Happily, my ambulance is doing well. To-morrow we depart for
  the Carthusian monastery of Valdemosa, the most poetic
  residence on earth. We shall pass there the winter, which has
  hardly begun and will soon end. This is the sole happiness of
  this country. I have never in my life met with a nature so
  delicious as that of Majorca.

  ...The people of this country are generally very gracious,
  very obliging; but all this in words...

  I shall write to Leroux from the monastery at leisure. If you
  knew what I have to do! I have almost to cook. Here, another
  amenity, one cannot get served. The domestic is a brute:
  bigoted, lazy, and gluttonous; a veritable son of a monk (I
  think that all are that). It requires ten to do the work which
  your brave Mary does. Happily, the maid whom I have brought
  with me from Paris is very devoted, and resigns herself to do
  heavy work; but she is not strong, and I must help her.
  Besides, everything is dear, and proper nourishment is
  difficult to get when the stomach cannot stand either rancid
  oil or pig's grease. I begin to get accustomed to it; but
  Chopin is ill every time that we do not prepare his food
  ourselves. In short, our expedition here is, in many respects,
  a frightful fiasco.

On December 15, 1838, then, the Sand party took possession of
their quarters in the monastery of Valdemosa, and thence the next
letters are dated.

Chopin to Fontana; "Palma, December 28, 1838, or rather
Valdemosa, a few miles distant from Palma":--

  Between rocks and the sea, in a great abandoned Carthusian
  monastery, in one of the cells with doors bigger than the
  gates in Paris, you may imagine me with my hair uncurled,
  without white gloves, pale as usual. The cell is in the shape
  of a coffin, high, and full of dust on the vault. The window
  small, before the window orange, palm, and cypress trees.
  Opposite the window, under a Moorish filigree rosette, stands
  my bed. By its side an old square thing like a table for
  writing, scarcely serviceable; on it a leaden candlestick (a
  great luxury) with a little tallow-candle, Works of Bach, my
  jottings, and old scrawls that are not mine, this is all I
  possess. Quietness...one may shout and nobody will hear...in
  short, I am writing to you from a strange place.

  Your letter of the 9th of December I received the day before
  yesterday; as on account of the holidays the express mail does
  not leave till next week, I write to you in no great hurry. It
  will be a Russian month before you get the bill of exchange
  which I send you.

  Sublime nature is a fine thing, but one should have nothing to
  do with men--nor with roads and posts. Many a time I came here
  from Palma, always with the same driver and always by another
  road. Streams of water make roads, violent rains destroy them;
  to-day it is impossible to pass, for what was a road is
  ploughed; next day only mules can pass where you were driving
  yesterday. And what carriages here! That is the reason,
  Julius, why you do not see a single Englishman, not even an
  English consul.

  Leo is a Jew, a rogue! I was at his house the day before my
  departure, and I told him not to send me anything here. I
  cannot send you the Preludes, they are not yet finished. At
  present I am better and shall push on the work. I shall write
  and thank him in a way that will make him wince.

  But Schlesinger is a still worse dog to put my Waltzes
  [FOOTNOTE: "Trois Valses brillantes," Op. 34.] in the Album,
  and to sell them to Probst [FOOTNOTE: Heinrich Albert Probst
  founded in 1823 a music-shop and publishing-house at Leipzig.
  In 1831 Fr. Kistner entered the business (Probst-Kistner),
  which under his name has existed from 1836 down to this day.
  In the Chopin letters we meet Probst in the character of
  Breitkopf and Hartel's agent.] when I gave him them because he
  begged them for his father in Berlin. [FOOTNOTE: Adolf Martin
  Schlesinger, a music-publisher like his son Maurice Adolph of
  Paris, so frequently mentioned in these letters.] All this
  irritates me. I am only sorry for you; but in one month at the
  latest you will be clear of Leo and my landlord. With the
  money which you receive on the bill of exchange, do what is
  necessary. And my servant, what is he doing? Give the portier
  twenty francs as a New Year's present.

  I do not remember whether I left any debts of importance. At
  all events, as I promised you, we shall be clear in a month at
  the latest.

  To-day the moon is wonderful, I never saw it more beautiful.

  By the way, you write that you sent me a letter from my
  people. I neither saw nor heard of one, and I am longing so
  much for one! Did you prepay when you sent them the letter?

  Your letter, the only one I have hitherto received, was very
  badly addressed. Here nature is benevolent, but the people are
  thievish. They never see any strangers, and therefore do not
  know what to ask of them. For instance, an orange they will
  give you for nothing, but ask a fabulous sum for a coat-
  button.

  Under this sky you are penetrated with a kind of poetical
  feeling which everything seems to exhale. Eagles alarmed by no
  one soar every day majestically over our heads.

  For God's sake write, always prepay, and to Palma add always
  Valdemosa.

  I love Johnnie, and I think it is a pity that he did not
  altogether qualify himself as director of the children of some
  benevolent institution in some Nuremberg or Bamberg. Get him
  to write to me, were it only a few words.

  I enclose you a letter to my people...I think it is already
  the third or fourth that I send you for my parents.

  My love to Albrecht, but speak very little about me.


Chopin to Fontana; Valdemosa, January 12, 1839:--

  I send you the Preludes, make a copy of them, you and Wolf;
  [FOOTNOTE: Edouard Wolff] I think there are no mistakes. You
  will give the transcript to Probst, but my manuscript to
  Pleyel. When you get the money from Probst, for whom I enclose
  a receipt, you will take it at once to Leo. I do not write and
  thank him just now, for I have no time. Out of the money which
  Pleyel will give you, that is 1,500 francs, you will pay the
  rent of my rooms till the New Year, 450 francs and you will
  give notice of my giving them up if you have a chance to get
  others from April. If not it will be necessary to keep them
  for a quarter longer. The rest of the amount, or 1,000 francs,
  you will return from me to Nougi. Where he lives you will
  learn from Johnnie, but don't tell the latter of the money,
  for he might attack Nougi, and I do not wish that anyone but
  you and I should know of it. Should you succeed in finding
  rooms, you could send one part of the furniture to Johnnie and
  another to Grzymala. You will tell Pleyel to send letters
  through you.

  I sent you before the New Year a bill of exchange for Wessel;
  tell Pleyel that I have settled with Wessel.

  [FOOTNOTE: The music-publisher Christian Rudolph Wessel, of
  Bremen, who came to London in 1825. Up to 1838 he had Stodart,
  and from 1839 to 1845 Stapleton, as partner. He retired in
  1860, Messrs. Edwin Ashdown and Henry Parry being his
  successors. Since the retirement of Mr. Parry, in 1882, Mr.
  Ashdown is the sole proprietor. Mr. Ashdown, whom I have to
  thank for the latter part of this note, informs me that Wessel
  died in 1885.]

  In a few weeks you will receive a Ballade, a Polonaise, and a
  Scherzo.

  Until now I have not yet received any letters from my parents.

  I embrace you.

  Sometimes I have Arabian balls, African sun, and always before
  my eyes the Mediterranean Sea.

  I do not know when I shall be back, perhaps as late as May,
  perhaps even later.


Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Valdemosa, January 15, 1839:--

  ...We inhabit the Carthusian monastery of Valdemosa, a really
  sublime place, which I have hardly the time to admire, so many
  occupations have I with my children, their lessons, and my
  work.

  There are rains here of which one has elsewhere no idea: it is
  a frightful deluge! The air is on account of it so relaxing,
  so soft, that one cannot drag one's self along; one is really
  ill. Happily, Maurice is in admirable health; his constitution
  is only afraid of frost, a thing unknown here. But the little
  Chopin [FOOTNOTE: Madame Marliani seems to have been in the
  habit of calling Chopin "le petit."  In another letter to her
  (April 28, 1839) George Sand writes of Chopin as votre petit.
  This reminds one of Mendelssohn's Chopinetto.] is very
  depressed and always coughs much. For his sake I await with
  impatience the return of fine weather, which will not be long
  in coming. His piano has at last arrived at Palma; but it is
  in the clutches of the custom-house officers, who demand from
  five to six hundred francs duty, and show themselves
  intractable.

  ...I am plunged with Maurice in Thucydides and company; with
  Solange in the indirect object and the agreement of the
  participle. Chopin plays on a poor Majorcan piano which
  reminds me of that of Bouffe in "Pauvre Jacques." I pass my
  nights generally in scrawling. When I raise my nose, it is to
  see through the sky-light of my cell the moon which shines in
  the midst of the rain on the orange trees, and I think no more
  of it than she.


Madame Sand to M. A. M. Duteil; Valdemosa, January 20, 1839:--

  ...This [the slowness and irregularity of the post] is not the
  only inconvenience of the country. There are innumerable ones,
  and yet this is the most beautiful country. The climate is
  delicious. At the time I am writing, Maurice is gardening in
  his shirt-sleeves, and Solange, seated under an orange tree
  loaded with fruit, studies her lesson with a grave air. We
  have bushes covered with roses, and spring is coming in. Our
  winter lasted six weeks, not cold, but rainy to a degree to
  frighten us. It is a deluge! The rain uproots the mountains;
  all the waters of the mountain rush into the plain; the roads
  become torrents. We found ourselves caught in them, Maurice
  and I. We had been at Palma in superb weather. When we
  returned in the evening, there were no fields, no roads, but
  only trees to indicate approximately the way which we had to
  go. I was really very. frightened, especially as the horse
  refused to proceed, and we were obliged to traverse the
  mountain on foot in the night, with torrents across our legs.

Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Valdemosa, February 22, 1839:--

  ...You see me at my Carthusian monastery, still sedentary, and
  occupied during the day with my children, at night with my
  work. In the midst of all this, the warbling of Chopin, who
  goes his usual pretty way, and whom the walls of the cell are
  much astonished to hear.

  The only remarkable event since my last letter is the arrival
  of the so much-expected piano. After a fortnight of
  applications and waiting we have been able to get it out of
  the custom-house by paying three hundred francs of duty.
  Pretty country this! After all, it has been disembarked
  without accident, and the vaults of the monastery are
  delighted with it. And all this is not profaned by the
  admiration of fools-we do not see a cat.

  Our retreat in the mountains, three leagues from the town, has
  freed us from the politeness of idlers.

  Nevertheless, we have had one visitor, and a visitor from
  Paris!--namely, M. Dembowski, an Italian Pole whom Chopin
  knew, and who calls himself a cousin of Marliani--I don't know
  in what degree.

  ...The fact is, that we are very much pleased with the freedom
  which this gives us, because we have work to do; but we
  understand very well that these poetic intervals which one
  introduces into one's life are only times of transition and
  rest allowed to the mind before it resumes the exercise of the
  emotions. I mean this in the purely intellectual sense; for,
  as regards the life of the heart, it cannot cease for a
  moment...

This brings us to the end of the known letters written by Chopin
and Madame Sand from Majorca. And now let us see what we can find
in George Sand's books to complete the picture of the life of her
and her party at Valdemosa, of which the letters give only more
or less disconnected indications. I shall use the materials at my
disposal freely and cautiously, quoting some passages in full,
regrouping and summing-up others, and keeping always in mind--
which the reader should likewise do--the authoress's tendency to
emphasise, colour, and embellish, for the sake of literary and
moral effect.

Not to extend this chapter too much, I refer the curious to
George Sand's "Un Hiver a Majorque" for a description of the
"admirable, grandiose, and wild nature" in the midst of which the
"poetic abode" of her and her party was situated--of the grandly
and beautifully-varied surface of the earth, the luxuriant
southern vegetation, and the marvellous phenomena of light and
air; of the sea stretching out on two sides and meeting the
horizon; of the surrounding formidable peaks, and the more
distant round-swelling hills; of the eagles descending in the
pursuit of their prey down to the orange trees of the monastery
gardens; of the avenue of cypresses serpentining from the top of
the mountain to the bottom of the gorge; of the torrents covered
with myrtles; in short, of the immense ensemble, the infinite
details, which overwhelm the imagination and outvie the poet's
and painter's dreams. Here it will be advisable to confine
ourselves to the investigation of a more limited sphere, to
inspect rather narrow interiors than vast landscapes.

As the reader has gathered from the preceding letters, there was
no longer a monastic community at Valdemosa. The monks had been
dispersed some time before, and the monastery had become the
property of the state. During the hot summer months it was in
great part occupied by small burghers from Palma who came in
quest of fresh air. The only permanent inhabitants of the
monastery, and the only fellow-tenants of George Sand's party,
were two men and one woman, called by the novelist respectively
the Apothecary, the Sacristan, and Maria Antonia. The first, a
remnant of the dispersed community, sold mallows and couch-grass,
the only specifics he had; the second was the person in whose
keeping were the keys of the monastery; and the third was a kind
of housekeeper who, for the love of God and out of neighbourly
friendship, offered her help to new-comers, and, if it was
accepted, did not fail to levy heavy contributions.

The monastery was a complex of strongly-constructed, buildings
without any architectural beauty, and such was, its circumference
and mass of stones that it would have been easy to house an army
corps. Besides the dwelling of the superior, the cells of the lay-
brothers, the lodgings for visitors, the stables, and other
structures, there were three cloisters, each consisting of twelve
cells and twelve chapels. The most ancient of these cloisters,
which is also the smallest, dates from the 15th century.

  It presents a charming coup d'oeil. The court which it
  encloses with its broken-down walls is the ancient cemetery of
  the monks. No inscription distinguishes these tombs...The
  graves are scarcely indicated by the swellings of the turf.

In the cells were stored up the remains of all sorts of fine old
furniture and sculpture, but these could only be seen through the
chinks, for the cells were carefully locked, and the sacristan
would not open them to anyone. The second cloister, although of
more recent date, was likewise in a dilapidated state, which,
however, gave it character. In stormy weather it was not at all
safe to pass through it on account of the falling fragments of
walls and vaults.

  I never heard the wind sound so like mournful voices and utter
  such despairing howls as in these empty and sonorous
  galleries. The noise of the torrents, the swift motion of the
  clouds, the grand, monotonous sound of the sea, interrupted by
  the whistling of the storm and the plaintive cries of sea-
  birds which passed, quite terrified and bewildered, in the
  squalls; then thick fogs which fell suddenly like a shroud and
  which, penetrating into the cloisters through the broken
  arcades, rendered us invisible, and made the little lamp we
  carried to guide us appear like a will-o'-the-wisp wandering
  under the galleries; and a thousand other details of this
  monastic life which crowd all at once into my memory: all
  combined made indeed this monastery the most romantic abode in
  the world.

  I was not sorry to see for once fully and in reality what I
  had seen only in a dream, or in the fashionable ballads, and
  in the nuns' scene in Robert le Diable at the Opera. Even
  fantastic apparitions were not wanting to us. [FOOTNOTE: "Un
  Hiver a Majorque," pp. 116 and 117.]

In the same book from which the above passage is extracted we
find also a minute description of the new cloister; the chapels,
variously ornamented, covered with gilding, decorated with rude
paintings and horrible statues of saints in coloured wood, paved
in the Arabic style with enamelled faience laid out in various
mosaic designs, and provided with a fountain or marble conch; the
pretty church, unfortunately without an organ, but with wainscot,
confessionals, and doors of most excellent workmanship, a floor
of finely-painted faience, and a remarkable statue in painted
wood of St. Bruno; the little meadow in the centre of the
cloister, symmetrically planted with box-trees, &c., &c.

George Sand's party occupied one of the spacious, well-
ventilated, and well-lighted cells in this part of the monastery.
I shall let her describe it herself.

  The three rooms of which it was composed were spacious,
  elegantly vaulted, and ventilated at the back by open
  rosettes, all different and very prettily designed. These
  three rooms were separated from the cloister by a dark passage
  at the end of which was a strong door of oak. The wall was
  three feet thick. The middle room was destined for reading,
  prayer, and meditation; all its furniture consisted of a large
  chair with a praying-desk and a back, from six to eight feet
  high, let into and fixed in the wall. The room to the right of
  this was the friar's bed-room; at the farther end of it was
  situated the alcove, very low, and paved above with flags like
  a tomb. The room to the left was the workshop, the refectory,
  the store-room of the recluse. A press at the far end of the
  room had a wooden compartment with a window opening on the
  cloister, through which his provisions were passed in. His
  kitchen consisted of two little stoves placed outside, but
  not, as was the strict rule, in the open air; a vault, opening
  on the garden, protected the culinary labours of the monk from
  the rain, and allowed him to give himself up to this
  occupation a little more than the founder would have wished.
  Moreover, a fire-place introduced into this third room
  indicated many other relaxations, although the science of the
  architect had not gone so far as to make this fire-place
  serviceable.

  Running along the back of the rooms, on a level with the
  rosettes, was a long channel, narrow and dark, intended for
  the ventilation of the cell, and above was a loft in which the
  maize, onions, beans, and other simple winter provisions were
  kept. On the south the three rooms opened on a flower garden,
  exactly the size of the cell itself, which was separated from
  the neighbouring gardens by walls ten feet high, and was
  supported by a strongly-built terrace above a little orange
  grove which occupied this ledge of the mountain. The lower
  ledge was covered with a beautiful arbour of vines, the third
  with almond and palm trees, and so on to the bottom of the
  little valley, which, as I have said, was an immense garden.

  The flower garden of each cell had all along its right side a
  reservoir, made of freestone, from three to four feet in width
  and the same in depth, receiving through conduits placed in
  the balustrade of the terrace the waters of the mountain, and
  distributing them in the flower garden by means of a stone
  cross, which divided it into four equal squares.

  As to this flower garden, planted with pomegranate, lemon, and
  orange trees, surrounded by raised walks made of bricks which,
  like the reservoir, were shaded by perfumed arbours, it was
  like a pretty salon of flowers and verdure, where the monk
  could walk dry-footed on wet days.

Even without being told, we should have known that the artists
who had now become inmates of the monastery were charmed with
their surroundings. Moreover, George Sand did her utmost to make
life within doors comfortable. When the furniture bought from the
Spanish refugee had been supplemented by further purchases, they
were, considering the circumstances, not at all badly off in this
respect. The tables and straw-bottomed chairs were indeed no
better than those one finds in the cottages of peasants; the sofa
of white wood with cushions of mattress cloth stuffed with wool
could only ironically be called "voluptuous"; and the large
yellow leather trunks, whatever their ornamental properties might
be, must have made but poor substitutes for wardrobes. The
folding-beds, on the other hand, proved irreproachable; the
mattresses, though not very soft, were new and clean, and the
padded and quilted chintz coverlets left nothing to be desired.
Nor does this enumeration exhaust the comforts and adornments of
which the establishment could boast. Feathers, a rare article in
Majorca, had been got from a French lady to make pillows for
Chopin; Valenciennes matting and long-fleeced sheep skins covered
the dusty floor; a large tartan shawl did duty as an alcove
curtain; a stove of somewhat eccentric habits, and consisting
simply of an iron cylinder with a pipe that passed through the
window, had been manufactured for them at Palma; a charming clay
vase surrounded with a garland of ivy displayed its beauty on the
top of the stove; a beautiful large Gothic carved oak chair with
a small chest convenient as a book-case had, with the consent of
the sacristan, been brought from the monks' chapel; and last, but
not least, there was, as we have already read in the letters, a
piano, in the first weeks only a miserable Majorcan instrument,
which, however, in the second half of January, after much
waiting, was replaced by one of Pleyel's excellent cottage
pianos.

[FOOTNOTE: By the way, among the many important and unimportant
doubtful points which Chopin's and George Sand's letters settle,
is also that of the amount of duty paid for the piano. The sum
originally asked by the Palma custom-house officers seems to have
been from 500 to 600 francs, and this demand was after a
fortnight's negotiations reduced to 300 francs. That the
imaginative novelist did not long remember the exact particulars
of this transaction need not surprise us. In Un Hiver a Majorque
she states tha the original demand was 700 francs, and the sum
ultimately paid about 400 francs.]

These various items collectively and in conjunction with the
rooms in which they were gathered together form a tout-ensemble
picturesque and homely withal. As regards the supply of
provisions, the situation of our Carthusians was decidedly less
brilliant. Indeed, the water and the juicy raisins, Malaga
potatoes, fried Valencia pumpkins, &c., which they had for
dessert, were the only things that gave them unmixed
satisfaction. With anything but pleasure they made the discovery
that the chief ingredient of Majorcan cookery, an ingredient
appearing in all imaginable and unimaginable guises and
disguises, was pork. Fowl was all skin and bones, fish dry and
tasteless, sugar of so bad a quality that it made them sick, and
butter could not be procured at all. Indeed, they found it
difficult to get anything of any kind. On account of their non-
attendance at church they were disliked by the villagers of
Valdemosa, who sold their produce to such heretics only at twice
or thrice the usual price. Still, thanks to the good offices of
the French consul's cook, they might have done fairly well had
not wet weather been against them. But, alas, their eagerly-
awaited provisions often arrived spoiled with rain, oftener still
they did not arrive at all. Many a time they had to eat bread as
hard as ship-biscuits, and content themselves with real
Carthusian dinners. The wine was good and cheap, but,
unfortunately, it had the objectionable quality of being heady.

These discomforts and wants were not painfully felt by George
Sand and her children, nay, they gave, for a time at least, a new
zest to life. It was otherwise with Chopin. "With his feeling for
details and the wants of a refined well-being, he naturally took
an intense dislike to Majorca after a few days of illness." We
have already seen what a bad effect the wet weather and the damp
of Son-Vent had on Chopin's health. But, according to George
Sand, [FOOTNOTE: "Un Hiver a Marjorque," pp. 161-168. I suspect
that she mixes up matters in a very unhistorical manner; I have,
however, no means of checking her statements, her and her
companion's letters being insufficient for the purpose. Chopin
certainly was not likely to tell his friend the worst about his
health.] it was not till later, although still in the early days
of their sojourn in Majorca, that his disease declared itself in
a really alarming manner. The cause of this change for the worse
was over-fatigue incurred on an excursion which he made with his
friends to a hermitage three miles [FOOTNOTE: George Sand does
not say what kind of miles] distant from Valdemosa; the length
and badness of the road alone would have been more than enough to
exhaust his fund of strength, but in addition to these hardships
they had, on returning, to encounter a violent wind which threw
them down repeatedly. Bronchitis, from which he had previously
suffered, was now followed by a nervous excitement that produced
several symptoms of laryngeal phthisis. [FOOTNOTE: In the
Histoire de ma Vie George Sand Bays: "From the beginning of
winter, which set in all at once with a diluvian rain, Chopin
showed, suddenly also, all the symptoms of pulmonary affection."]
The physician, judging of the disease by the symptoms that
presented themselves at the time of his visits, mistook its real
nature, and prescribed bleeding, milk diet, &c. Chopin felt
instinctively that all this would be injurious to him, that
bleeding would even be fatal. George Sand, who was an experienced
nurse, and whose opportunities for observing were less limited
than those of the physician, had the same presentiment. After a
long and anxious struggle she decided to disregard the strongly-
urged advice of the physician and to obey the voice that said to
her, even in her sleep: "Bleeding will kill him; but if you save
him from it, he will not die," She was persuaded that this voice
was the voice of Providence, and that by obeying it she saved her
friend's life. What Chopin stood most in need of in his weakness
and languor was a strengthening diet, and that, unfortunately,
was impossible to procure:--

  What would I not have given to have had some beef-tea and a
  glass of Bordeaux wine to offer to our invalid every day! The
  Majorcan food, and especially the manner in which it was
  prepared when we were not there with eye and hand, caused him
  an invincible disgust. Shall I tell you how well founded this
  disgust was? One day when a lean chicken was put on the table
  we saw jumping on its steaming back enormous Mattres Floh,
  [FOOTNOTE: Anglice "fleas."] of which Hoffmann would have made
  as many evil spirits, but which he certainly would not have
  eaten in gravy. My children laughed so heartily that they
  nearly fell under the table.

Chopin's most ardent wish was to get away from Majorca and back
to France. But for some time he was too weak to travel, and when
he had got a little stronger, contrary winds prevented the
steamer from leaving the port. The following words of George Sand
depict vividly our poor Carthusian friends' situation in all its
gloom:--

  As the winter advanced, sadness more and more paralysed my
  efforts at gaiety and cheerfulness. The state of our invalid
  grew always worse; the wind wailed in the ravines, the rain
  beat against our windows, the voice of the thunder penetrated
  through our thick walls and mingled its mournful sounds with
  the laughter and sports of the children. The eagles and
  vultures, emboldened by the fog, came to devour our poor
  sparrows, even on the pomegranate tree which shaded my window.
  The raging sea kept the ships in the harbours; we felt
  ourselves prisoners, far from all enlightened help and from
  all efficacious sympathy. Death seemed to hover over our heads
  to seize one of us, and we were alone in contending with him
  for his prey.

If George Sand's serenity and gaiety succumbed to these
influences, we may easily imagine how much more they oppressed
Chopin, of whom she tells us that--

  the mournful cry of the famished eagle and the gloomy
  desolation of the yew trees covered with snow saddened him
  much longer and more keenly than the perfume of the orange
  trees, the gracefulness of the vines, and the Moorish song of
  the labourers gladdened him.

The above-quoted letters have already given us some hints of how
the prisoners of Valdemosa passed their time. In the morning
there were first the day's provisions to be procured and the
rooms to be tidied--which latter business could not be entrusted
to Maria Antonia without the sacrifice of their night's rest.
[FOOTNOTE: George Sand's share of the household work was not so
great as she wished to make the readers of Un Hiver a Majorque
believe, for it consisted, as we gather from her letters, only in
giving a helping hand to her maid, who had undertaken to cook and
clean up, but found that her strength fell short of the
requirements.] Then George Sand would teach her children for some
hours. These lessons over, the young ones ran about and amused
themselves for the rest of the day, while their mother sat down
to her literary studies and labours. In the evening they either
strolled together through the moonlit cloisters or read in their
cell, half of the night being generally devoted by the novelist
to writing. George Sand says in the "Histoire de ma Vie" that she
wrote a good deal and read beautiful philosophical and historical
works when she was not nursing her friend. The latter, however,
took up much of her time, and prevented her from getting out
much, for he did not like to be left alone, nor, indeed, could he
safely be left long alone. Sometimes she and her children would
set out on an expedition of discovery, and satisfy their
curiosity and pleasantly while away an hour or two in examining
the various parts of the vast aggregation of buildings; or the
whole party would sit round the stove and laugh over the
rehearsal of the morning's transactions with the villagers. Once
they witnessed even a ball in this sanctuary. It was on Shrove-
Tuesday, after dark, that their attention was roused by a
strange, crackling noise. On going to the door of their cell they
could see nothing, but they heard the noise approaching. After a
little there appeared at the opposite end of the cloister a faint
glimmer of white light, then the red glare of torches, and at
last a crew the sight of which made their flesh creep and their
hair stand on end--he-devils with birds' heads, horses' tails,
and tinsel of all colours; she-devils or abducted shepherdesses
in white and pink dresses; and at the head of them Lucifer
himself, horned and, except the blood-red face, all black. The
strange noise, however, turned out to be the rattling of
castanets, and the terrible-looking figures a merry company of
rich farmers and well-to-do villagers who were going to have a
dance in Maria Antonia's cell. The orchestra, which consisted of
a large and a small guitar, a kind of high-pitched violin, and
from three to four pairs of castanets, began to play indigenous
jotas and fandangos which, George Sand tells us, resemble those
of Spain, but have an even bolder form and more original rhythm.
The critical spectators thought that the dancing of the Majorcans
was not any gayer than their singing, which was not gay at all,
and that their boleros had "la gravite des ancetres, et point de
ces graces profanes qu'on admire en Andalousie." Much of the
music of these islanders was rather interesting than pleasing to
their visitors. The clicking of the castanets with which they
accompany their festal processions, and which, unlike the broken
and measured rhythm of the Spaniards, consists of a continuous
roll like that of a drum "battant aux champs," is from time to
time suddenly interrupted in order to sing in unison a coplita on
a phrase which always recommences but never finishes. George Sand
shares the opinion of M. Tastu that the principal Majorcan
rhythms and favourite fioriture are Arabic in type and origin.

Of quite another nature was the music that might be heard in
those winter months in one of the cells of the monastery of
Valdemosa. "With what poesy did his music fill this sanctuary,
even in the midst of his most grievous troubles!" exclaims George
Sand. I like to picture to myself the vaulted cell, in which
Pleyel's piano sounded so magnificently, illumined by a lamp, the
rich traceries of the Gothic chair shadowed on the wall, George
Sand absorbed in her studies, her children at play, and Chopin
pouring out his soul in music.

It would be a mistake to think that those months which the
friends spent in Majorca were for them a time of unintermittent
or even largely-predominating wretchedness. Indeed, George Sand
herself admits that, in spite of the wildness of the country and
the pilfering habits of the people, their existence might have
been an agreeable one in this romantic solitude had it not been
for the sad spectacle of her companion's sufferings and certain
days of serious anxiety about his life. And now I must quote a.
long but very important passage from the "Histoire de ma Vie":--

   The poor great artist was a detestable patient. What I had
   feared, but unfortunately not enough, happened. He became
   completely demoralised. Bearing pain courageously enough, he
   could not overcome the disquietude of his imagination. The
   monastery was for him full of terrors and phantoms, even when
   he was well. He did not say so, and I had to guess it. On
   returning from my nocturnal explorations in the ruins with my
   children, I found him at ten o'clock at night before his
   piano, his face pale, his eyes wild, and his hair almost
   standing on end. It was some moments before he could
   recognise us.

   He then made an attempt to laugh, and played to us sublime
   things he had just composed, or rather, to be more accurate,
   terrible or heartrending ideas which had taken possession of
   him, as it were without his knowledge, in that hour of
   solitude, sadness, and terror.

   It was there that he composed the most beautiful of those
   short pages he modestly entitled "Preludes." They are
   masterpieces. Several present to the mind visions of deceased
   monks and the sounds of the funeral chants which beset his
   imagination; others are melancholy and sweet--they occurred
   to him in the hours of sunshine and of health, with the noise
   of the children's laughter under the window, the distant
   sound of guitars, the warbling of the birds among the humid
   foliage, and the sight of the pale little full-blown roses on
   the snow.

   Others again are of a mournful sadness, and, while charming
   the ear, rend the heart. There is one of them which occurred
   to him on a dismal rainy evening which produces a terrible
   mental depression. We had left him well that day, Maurice and
   I, and had gone to Palma to buy things we required for our
   encampment. The rain had come on, the torrents had
   overflowed, we had travelled three leagues in six hours to
   return in the midst of the inundation, and we arrived in the
   dead of night, without boots, abandoned by our driver, having
   passed through unheard-of dangers. We made haste,
   anticipating the anxiety of our invalid. It had been indeed
   great, but it had become as it were congealed into a kind of
   calm despair, and he played his wonderful prelude weeping. On
   seeing us enter he rose, uttering a great cry, then he said
   to us, with a wild look and in a strange tone: "Ah! I knew
   well that you were dead!"

   When he had come to himself again, and saw the state in which
   we were, he was ill at the retrospective spectacle of our
   dangers; but he confessed to me afterwards that while waiting
   for our return he had seen all this in a dream and that, no
   longer distinguishing this dream from reality, he had grown
   calm and been almost lulled to sleep while playing the piano,
   believing that he was dead himself. He saw himself drowned in
   a lake; heavy and ice-cold drops of water fell at regular
   intervals upon his breast, and when I drew his attention to
   those drops of water which were actually falling at regular
   intervals upon the roof, he denied having heard them. He was
   even vexed at what I translated by the term imitative
   harmony. He protested with all his might, and he was right,
   against the puerility of these imitations for the ear. His
   genius was full of mysterious harmonies of nature, translated
   by sublime equivalents into his musical thought, and not by a
   servile repetition of external sounds. His composition of
   this evening was indeed full of the drops of rain which
   resounded on the sonorous tiles of the monastery, but they
   were transformed in his imagination and his music into tears
   falling from heaven on his heart.

Although George Sand cannot be acquitted of the charge of
exaggerating the weak points in her lover's character, what she
says about his being a detestable patient seems to have a good
foundation in fact. Gutmann, who nursed him often, told me that
his master was very irritable and difficult to manage in
sickness. On the other hand, Gutmann contradicted George Sand's
remarks about the Preludes, saying that Chopin composed them
before starting on his journey. When I mentioned to him that
Fontana had made a statement irreconcilable with his, and
suggested that Chopin might have composed some of the Preludes in
Majorca, Gutmann maintained firmly that every one of them was
composed previously, and that he himself had copied them. Now
with Chopin's letters to Fontana before us we must come to the
conclusion that Gutmann was either under a false impression or
confirmed a rash statement by a bold assertion, unless we prefer
to assume that Chopin's labours on the Preludes in Majorca were
confined to selecting, [FOOTNOTE: Internal evidence suggests that
the Preludes consist (to a great extent at least) of pickings
from the composer's portfolios, of pieces, sketches, and
memoranda written at various times and kept to be utilised when
occasion might offer.] filing, and polishing. My opinion--which
not only has probability but also the low opus number (28) and
the letters in its favour--is that most of the Preludes, if not
all, were finished or sketched before Chopin went to the south,
and that a few, if any, were composed and the whole revised at
Palma and Valdemosa. Chopin cannot have composed many in Majorca,
because a few days after his arrival there he wrote: from Palma
(Nov. 15, 1838) to Fontana that he would send the Preludes soon;
and it was only his illness that prevented him from doing so.
There is one statement in George Sand's above-quoted narrative
which it is difficult to reconcile with other statements in "Un
Hiver a Majorque" and in her and Chopin's letters. In the just-
mentioned book (p. 177) she says that the journey in question was
made for the purpose of rescuing the piano from the hands of the
custom-house officers; and in a letter of January 15, 1839, to
her friend Madame Marliani (quoted on p. 31), which does not
contain a word about adventures on a stormy night, [They are
first mentioned in the letter of January 20, 1839, quoted on p.
32.] she writes that the piano is still in the clutches of the
custom-house officers. From this, I think, we may conclude that
it must have taken place after January 15. But, then, how could
Chopin have composed on that occasion a Prelude included in a
work the manuscript of which he sent away on the lath? Still,
this does not quite settle the question. Is it not possible that
Chopin may have afterwards substituted the new Prelude for one of
those already forwarded to France? To this our answer must be
that it is possible, but that the letters do not give any support
to such an assumption. Another and stronger objection would be
the uncertainty as to the correctness of the date of the letter.
Seeing that so many of Chopin's letters have been published with
wrong dates, why not also that of January 12? Unfortunately, we
cannot in this case prove or disprove the point by internal
evidence. There is, however, one factor we must be especially
careful not to forget in our calculations--namely, George Sand's
habitual unconscientious inaccuracy; but the nature of her
narrative will indeed be a sufficient warning to the reader, for
nobody can read it without at once perceiving that it is not a
plain, unvarnished recital of facts.

It would be interesting to know which were the compositions that
Chopin produced at Valdemosa. As to the Prelude particularly
referred to by George Sand, it is generally and reasonably
believed to be No. 6 (in B minor). [FOOTNOTE: Liszt, who tells
the story differently, brings in the F sharp minor Prelude. (See
Liszt's Chopin, new edition, pp. 273 and 274.)] The only
compositions besides the Preludes which Chopin mentions in his
letters from Majorca are the Ballade, Op, 38, the Scherzo, Op.
39, and the two Polonaises, Op. 40. The peevish, fretful, and
fiercely-scornful Scherzo and the despairingly-melancholy second
Polonaise (in C minor) are quite in keeping with the moods one
imagines the composer to have been in at the time. Nor is there
anything discrepant in the Ballade. But if the sadly-ailing
composer really created, and not merely elaborated and finished,
in Majorca the superlatively-healthy, vigorously-martial,
brilliantly-chivalrous Polonaise in A major, we have here a
remarkable instance of the mind's ascendency over the body, of
its independence of it. This piece, however, may have been
conceived under happier circumstances, just as the gloomy Sonata,
Op. 35 (the one in B flat minor, with the funeral march), and the
two Nocturnes, Op. 37--the one (in G minor) plaintive, longing,
and prayerful; the other (in G major) sunny and perfume-laden--
may have had their origin in the days of Chopin's sojourn in the
Balearic island. A letter of Chopin's, written from Nohant in the
summer of 1839, leaves, as regards the Nocturnes, scarcely room
for such a conjecture. On the other hand, we learn from the same
letter that he composed at Palma the sad, yearning Mazurka in E
minor (No. 2 of Op. 41).

As soon as fair weather set in and the steamer resumed its.
weekly courses to Barcelona, George Sand and her party hastened
to leave the island. The delightful prospects of spring could not
detain them.

  Our invalid (she says) did not seem to be in a state to stand
  the passage, but he seemed equally incapable of enduring
  another week in Majorca. The situation was frightful; there
  were days when I lost hope and courage. To console us, Maria
  Antonia and her village gossips repeated to us in chorus the
  most edifying discourses on the future life. "This consumptive
  person," they said, "is going to hell, first because he is
  consumptive, secondly, because he does not confess. If he is
  in this condition when he dies, we shall not bury him in
  consecrated ground, and as nobody will be willing to give him
  a grave, his friends will have to manage matters as well as
  they can. It remains to be seen how they will get out of the
  difficulty; as for me, I will have Inothing to do with it,--
  Nor I--Nor I: and Amen!"

In fact, Valdemosa, which at first was enchanting to them, lost
afterwards much of its poesy in their eyes. George Sand, as we
have seen, said that their sojourn was I in many respects a
frightful fiasco; it was so certainly as far as Chopin was
concerned, for he arrived with a cough and left the place
spitting blood.

The passage from Palma to Barcelona was not so pleasant as that
from Barcelona to Palma had been. Chopin suffered much from
sleeplessness, which was caused by the noise and bad smell of the
most favoured class of passengers on board the Mallorquin--i.e.,
pigs. "The captain showed us no other attention than that of
begging us not to let the invalid lie down on the best bed of the
cabin, because according to Spanish prejudice every illness is
contagious; and as our man thought already of burning the couch
on which the invalid reposed, he wished it should be the worst."
[FOOTNOTE: "Un Hiver a Majorque," pp. 24--25.]

On arriving at Barcelona George Sand wrote from the Mallorquin
and sent by boat a note to M. Belves, the officer in command at
the station, who at once came in his cutter to take her and her
party to the Meleagre, where they were well received by the
officers, doctor, and all the crew. It seemed to them as if they
had left the Polynesian savages and were once more in civilised
society. When they shook hands with the French consul they could
contain themselves no longer, but jumped for joy and cried "Vive
La France!"

A fortnight after their leaving Palma the Phenicien landed them
at Marseilles. The treatment Chopin received from the French
captain of this steamer differed widely from that he had met with
at the hands of the captain of the Mallorquin; for fearing that
the invalid was not quite comfortable in a common berth, he gave
him his own bed. [FOOTNOTE: "Un Hiver a Majorque," p. 183.]

An extract from a letter written by George Sand from Marseilles
on March 8, 1839, to her friend Francois Rollinat, which contains
interesting details concerning Chopin in the last scenes of the
Majorca intermezzo, may fitly conclude this chapter.

  Chopin got worse and worse, and in spite of all offers of
  service which were made to us in the Spanish manner, we should
  not have found a hospitable house in all the island. At last
  we resolved to depart at any price, although Chopin had not
  the strength to drag himself along. We asked only one--a first
  and a last service--a carriage to convey him to Palma, where
  we wished to embark. This service was refused to us, although
  our FRIENDS had all equipages and fortunes to correspond. We
  were obliged to travel three leagues on the worst roads in a
  birlocho [FOOTNOTE: A cabriolet. In a Spainish Dictionary I
  find a birlocho defined as a vehicle open in front, with two
  seats, and two or four wheels. A more detailed description is
  to be found on p. 101 of George Sand's "Un Hiver a
  Marjorque."] that is to say, a brouette.

  On arriving at Palma, Chopin had a frightful spitting of
  blood; we embarked the following day on the only steamboat of
  the island, which serves to transport pigs to Barcelona. There
  is no other way of leaving this cursed country. We were in
  company of 100 pigs, whose continual cries and foul odour left
  our patient no rest and no respirable air. He arrived at
  Barcelona still spitting basins full of blood, and crawling
  along like a ghost. There, happily, our misfortunes were
  mitigated! The French consul and the commandant of the French
  maritime station received us with a hospitality and grace
  which one does not know in Spain. We were brought on board a
  fine brig of war, the doctor of which, an honest and worthy
  man, came at once to the assistance of the invalid, and
  stopped the hemorrhage of the lung within twenty-four hours.

  From that moment he got better and better. The consul had us
  driven in his carriage to an hotel. Chopin rested there a
  week, at the end of which the same vessel which had conveyed
  us to Spain brought us back to France. When we left the hotel
  at Barcelona the landlord wished to make us pay for the bed in
  which Chopin had slept, under the pretext that it had been
  infected, and that the police regulations obliged him to burn
  it.



Chapter XXII.



STAY AT MARSEILLES (FROM MARCH TO MAY, 1839) AS DESCRIBED IN
CHOPIN'S AND MADAME SAND'S LETTERS.--HIS STATE OF HEALTH.--
COMPOSITIONS AND THEIR PUBLICATION.--PLAYING THE ORGAN AT A
FUNERAL SERVICE FOR NOURRIT.--AN EXCURSION TO GENOA.--DEPARTURE
FOR NOHANT.

As George Sand and her party were obliged to stop at Marseilles,
she had Chopin examined by Dr. Cauviere. This celebrated
physician thought him in great danger, but, on seeing him recover
rapidly, augured that with proper care his patient might
nevertheless live a long time. Their stay at Marseilles was more
protracted than they intended and desired; in fact, they did not
start for Nohant till the 22nd of May. Dr. Cauviere would not
permit Chopin to leave Marseilles before summer; but whether this
was the only cause of the long sojourn of the Sand party in the
great commercial city, or whether there were others, I have not
been able to discover. Happily, we have first-hand information--
namely, letters of Chopin and George Sand--to throw a little
light on these months of the pianist-composer's life. As to his
letters, their main contents consist of business matters--
wranglings about terms, abuse of publishers, &c. Here and there,
however, we find also a few words about his health,
characteristic remarks about friends and acquaintances,
interesting hints about domestic arrangements and the like--the
allusion (in the letter of March 2, 1839) to a will made by him
some time before, and which he wishes to be burned, will be read
with some curiosity.

An extract or two from the letter which George Sand wrote on
March 8, 1839, to Francois Rollinat, launches us at once in
medias res.

  At last we are in Marseilles. Chopin has stood the passage
  very well. He is very weak here, but is doing infinitely
  better in all respects, and is in the hands of Dr. Cauviere,
  an excellent man and excellent physician, who takes a paternal
  care of him, and who answers for his recovery. We breathe at
  last, but after how many troubles and anxieties!...Write to me
  here to the address of Dr. Cauviere, Rue de Rome, 71.

  Chopin charges me to shake you heartily by the hand for him.
  Maurice and Solange embrace you. They are wonderfully well.
  Maurice has completely recovered.


Chopin to Fontana; Marseilles, March 2, 1839:--

  You no doubt learned from Grzymala of the state of my health
  and my manuscripts. Two months ago I sent you from Palma my
  Preludes. After making a copy of them for Probst and getting
  the money from him, you were to give to Leo 1,000 francs; and
  out of the 1,500 francs which Pleyel was to give you for the
  Preludes I wrote you to pay Nougi and one term to the
  landlord. In the same letter, if I am not mistaken, I asked
  you to give notice of my leaving the apartments; for were this
  not done before April, I should be obliged to retain them for
  the next quarter, till July.

  The second batch of manuscripts may have now reached you; for
  it must have remained a long time at the custom-house, on the
  sea, and again at the custom-house.

  I also wrote to Pleyel with the Preludes that I give him the
  Ballade (which I sold to Probst for Germany) for 1,000 francs.
  For the two Polonaises I asked 1,500 francs for France,
  England, and Germany (the right of Probst is confined to the
  Ballade). It seems to me that this is not too dear.

  In this way you ought to get, on receiving the second batch of
  manuscripts, from Pleyel 2,500 francs, and from Probst, for
  the Ballade, 500 or 600 francs, I do not quite remember, which
  makes altogether 3,000 francs.

  I asked Grzymala if he could send me immediately at least 500
  francs, which need not prevent him from sending me soon the
  rest. Thus much for business.

  Now if, which I doubt, you succeed in getting apartments from
  next month, divide my furniture amongst you three: Grzymala,
  Johnnie, and you. Johnnie has the most room, although not the
  most sense, judging from the childish letter he wrote to me.
  For his telling me that I should become a Camaldolite, let him
  take all the shabby things. Do not overload Grzymala too much,
  and take to your house what you judge necessary and
  serviceable to you, as I do not know whether I shall return to
  Paris in summer (keep this to yourself). At all events, we
  will always write one another, and if, as I expect, it be
  necessary to keep my apartments till July, I beg of you to
  look after them and pay the quarterly rent.

  For your sincere and truly affectionate letter you have an
  answer in the second Polonaise. [FOOTNOTE: See next foot-
  note.] It is not my fault that I am like a mushroom that
  poisons when you unearth and taste it. I know I have never in
  anything been of service to anyone, but also not of much to
  myself.

  I told you that in the first drawer of my writing-desk near
  the door there was a paper which you or Grzymala or Johnnie
  might unseal on a certain occasion. Now I beg of you to take
  it out and, WITHOUT READING IT, BURN IT. Do this, I entreat
  you, for friendship's sake. This paper is now of no use.

  If Anthony leaves without sending you the money, it is very
  much in the Polish style; nota bene, do not say to him a word
  about it. Try to see Pleyel; tell him I have received no word
  from him, and that his pianino is entrusted to safe hands.
  Does he agree to the transaction I proposed to him?

  The letters from home reached me all three together, with
  yours, before going on board the vessel. I again send you one.

  I thank you for the friendly help you give me, who am not
  strong. My love to Johnnie, tell him that I did not allow
  them, or rather that they were not permitted, to bleed me;
  that I wear vesicatories, that I am coughing a very little in
  the morning, and that I am not yet at all looked upon as a
  consumptive person. I drink neither coffee nor wine, but milk.
  Lastly, I keep myself warm, and look like a girl.


Chopin to Fontana; Marseilles, March 6, 1839:--

  My health is still improving; I begin to play, eat, walk, and
  speak, like other men; and when you receive these few words
  from me you will see that I again write with ease. But once
  more of business. I would like very much that my Preludes
  should be dedicated to Pleyel (surely there is still time, for
  they are not yet printed) and the Ballade to Robert Schumann.
  The Polonaises, as they are, to you and to Kessler. If Pleyel
  does not like to give up the dedication of the Ballade, you
  will dedicate the Preludes to Schumann.

  [FOOTNOTE: The final arrangement was that Op. 38, the
  "Deuxieme Ballade," was dedicated to Robert Schumann; Op. 40,
  the "Deux Polonaises," to Julius Fontana; the French and the
  English edition of Op. 28, "Vingt-quatre Preludes," to Camille
  Pleyel, and the German editon to J. C. Kessler.]

  Garczynski called upon me yesterday on his way back from Aix;
  he is the only person that I have received, for I keep the
  door well shut to all amateurs of music and literature.

  Of the change of dedication you will inform Probst as soon as
  you have arranged with Pleyel.

  From the money obtained you will give Grzymala 500 francs, the
  rest, 2,500 francs, you will send me as soon as possible.

  Love me and write.

  Pardon me if I overwhelm you too much with commissions, but do
  not be afraid, these are not the last. I think you do
  willingly what I ask you.

  My love to Johnnie.


Chopin to Fontana; Marseilles, March 10, 1839:--

  Thanks for your trouble. I did not expect Jewish tricks from
  Pleyel; but if it is so, I beg of you to give him the enclosed
  letter, unless he makes no difficulties about the Ballade and
  the Polonaises. On the other hand, on receiving for the
  Ballade 500 francs from Probst, you will take it to
  Schlesinger. If one has to deal with Jews, let it at least be
  with orthodox ones. Probst may cheat me still worse; he is a
  bird you will not catch. Schlesinger used to cheat me, he
  gained enough by me, and he will not reject new profit, only
  be polite to him. Though a Jew, he nevertheless wishes to pass
  for something better.

  Thus, should Pleyel make the least difficulties, you will go
  to Schlesinger, and tell him that I give him the Ballade for
  France and England for 800 francs, and the Polonaises for
  Germany, England, and France for 1,500 francs (should he not
  be inclined to give so much, give them for 1,400, 1,300, and
  even for 1,200 francs). If he mentions the Preludes, you may
  say that it is a thing long ago promised to Pleyel--he wished
  to be the publisher of them; that he asked them from me as a
  favour before my departure from Paris--as was really the case.
  You see, my very dear friend, for Pleyel I could break with
  Schlesinger, but for Probst I cannot. What is it to me if
  Schlesinger makes Probst pay dearer for my manuscripts? If
  Probst pays dear for them to Schlesinger, it shows that the
  latter cheats me, paying me too little. After all, Probst has
  no establishment in Paris. For all my printed things
  Schlesinger paid me at once, and Probst very often made me
  wait for money. If he will not have them all, give him the
  Ballade separately, and the Polonaises separately, but at the
  latest within two weeks. If he does not accept the offer, then
  apply to Probst. Being such an admirer of mine, he must not
  pay less than Pleyel. You will deliver my letter to Pleyel
  only if he makes any difficulties.

  Dear me! this Pleyel who is such an adorer of mine! He thinks,
  perhaps, that I shall never return to Paris alive. I shall
  come back, and shall pay him a visit, and thank him as well as
  Leo.

  I enclose a note to Schlesinger, in which I give you full
  authority to act in this matter.

  I feel better every day; nevertheless, you will pay the
  portier these fifty francs, to which I completely agree, for
  my doctor does not permit me to move from here before summer.

  Mickiewicz's "Dziady" I received yesterday. What shall you do
  with my papers?

  The letters you will leave in the writing-desk, and send the
  music to Johnnie, or take it to your own house. In the little
  table that stands in the anteroom there are also letters; you
  must lock it well.

  My love to Johnnie, I am glad he is better.


Chopin to Fontana; March 17, 1839:--

  I thank you for all your efforts. Pleyel is a scoundrel,
  Probst a scape-grace. He never gave me 1,000 francs for three
  manuscripts. Very likely you have received my long letter
  about Schlesinger, therefore I wish you and beg of you to give
  that letter of mine to Pleyel, who thinks my manuscripts too
  dear. If I have to sell them cheap, I would rather do so to
  Schlesinger than look for new and improbable connections. For
  Schlesinger can always count upon England, and as I am square
  with Wessel, he may sell them to whomsoever he likes. The same
  with the Polonaises in Germany, for Probst is a bird whom I
  have known a long time. As regards the money, you must make an
  unequivocal agreement, and do not give the manuscripts except
  for cash. I send you a reconnaissance for Pleyel, it
  astonishes me that he absolutely wants it, as if he could not
  trust me and you.

  Dear me, this Pleyel who said that Schlesinger paid me badly!
  500 francs for a manuscript for all the countries seems to him
  too dear! I assure you I prefer to deal with a real Jew. And
  Probst, that good-for-nothing fellow, who pays me 300 francs
  for my mazurkas! You see, the last mazurkas brought me with
  ease 800 francs--namely, Probst 300 francs, Schlesinger 400,
  and Wessel 100. I prefer giving my manuscripts as formerly at
  a very low price to stooping before these...I prefer being
  submissive to one Jew to being so to three. Therefore go to
  Schlesinger, but perhaps you settled with Pleyel.

  Oh, men, men! But this Mrs. Migneron, she too is a good one!
  However, Fortune turns round, I may yet live and hear that
  this lady will come and ask you for some leather; if, as you
  say, you are aiming at being a shoemaker. I beg of you to make
  shoes neither for Pleyel nor for Probst.

  Do not yet speak to anyone of the Scherzo [Op. 39]. I do not
  know when I shall finish it, for I am still weak and cannot
  write.

  As yet I have no idea when I shall see you. My love to
  Grzymala; and give him such furniture as he will like, and let
  Johnnie take the rest from the apartments. I do not write to
  him, but I love him always. Tell him this, and give him my
  love.

  Wodzinski still astonishes me.

  When you receive the money from Pleyel, pay first the
  landlord's rent, and send me immediately 500 francs. I left on
  the receipt for Pleyel the Op. blank, for I do not remember
  the following number.


Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Marseilles, April 22, 1839:--

  ...I was also occupied with the removal from one hotel to
  another. Notwithstanding all his efforts and inquiries, the
  good doctor was not able to find me a corner in the country
  where to pass the month of April.

  I am pretty tired of this town of merchants and shopkeepers,
  where the intellectual life is wholly unknown; but here I am
  still shut up for the month of April.


Further on in the letter, after inviting Madame Marliani and her
husband to come to Nohant in May, she proceeds thus:--

  He [M. Marliani] loves the country, and I shall be a match for
  him as regards rural pleasures, while you [Madame Marliani]
  will philosophise at the piano with Chopin. It can hardly be
  said that he enjoys himself in Marseilles; but he resigns
  himself to recover patiently.


The following letter of Chopin to Fontana, which Karasowski
thinks was written at Valdemosa in the middle of February, ought
to be dated Marseilles, April, 1839:--

  As they are such Jews, keep everything till my return. The
  Preludes I have sold to Pleyel (I received from him 500
  francs). He is entitled to do with them what he likes. But as
  to the Ballades and Polonaises, sell them neither to
  Schlesinger nor to Probst. But whatever may happen, with no
  Schonenberger [FOOTNOTE: A Paris music-publisher] will I have
  anything to do. Therefore, if you gave the Ballade to Probst,
  take it back, even though he offered a thousand. You may tell
  him that I have asked you to keep it till my return, that when
  I am back we shall see.

  Enough of these...Enough for me and for you.

  My very life, I beg of you to forgive me all the trouble; you
  have really been busying yourself like a friend, and now you
  will have still on your shoulders my removal. I beg Grzymala
  to pay the cost of the removal. As to the portier, he very
  likely tells lies, but who will prove it? You must give, in
  order to stop his barking.

  My love to Johnnie, I will write to him when I am in better
  spirits. My health is improved, but I am in a rage. Tell
  Johnnie that from Anthony as well as from me he will have
  neither word nor money.

  Yesterday I received your letter, together with letters from
  Pleyel and Johnnie.

  If Clara Wieck pleased you, that is good, for nobody can play
  better than she does. When you see her give her my
  compliments, and also to her father.

  Did I happen to lend you Witwicki's songs? I cannot find them.
  I only ask for them in case you should chance to have them.


Chopin to Fontana; Marseilles, March 25 [should no doubt be April
25], 1839:--

  I received your letter, in which you let me know the
  particulars of the removal. I have no words to thank you for
  your true, friendly help. The particulars were very
  interesting to me. But I am sorry that you complain, and that
  Johnnie is spitting blood. Yesterday I played for Nourrit on
  the organ, you see by this that I am better. Sometimes I play
  to myself at home, but as yet I can neither sing nor dance.

  Although the news of my mother is welcome, its having been
  originated by Plat...is enough to make one consider it a
  falsehood.

  The warm weather has set in here, and I shall certainly not
  leave Marseilles before May, and then go somewhere else in the
  south of France.

  It is not likely that we shall soon have news from Anthony.
  Why should he write? Perhaps to pay his debts? But this is not
  customary in Poland. The reason Raciborski appreciates you so
  much is that you have no Polish habits, nota bene, not those
  Polish habits you know and I mean.

  You are staying at No. 26 [Chaussee d'Antin]. Are you
  comfortable? On what floor, and how much do you pay? I take
  more and more interest in these matters, for I also shall be
  obliged to think of new apartments, but not till after my
  return to Paris.

  I had only that letter from Pleyel which he sent through you--
  it is a month ago or more. Write to the same address, Rue et
  Hotel Beauveau.

  Perhaps you did not understand what I said above about my
  having played for Nourrit. His body was brought from Italy and
  carried to Paris. There was a Requiem Mass for his soul. I was
  asked by his friends to play on the organ during the
  Elevation.

  Did Miss Wieck play my Etude well? Could she not select
  something better than just this etude, the least interesting
  for those who do not know that it is written for the black
  keys? It would have been far better to do nothing at all.
  [FOOTNOTE: Clara Wieck gave a concert in Paris on April 16,
  1839. The study in question is No. 5 of Op. 10 (G flat major).
  Only the right hand plays throughout on black keys.]

  In conclusion, I have nothing more to write, except to wish
  you good luck in the new house. Hide my manuscripts, that they
  may not appear printed before the time. If the Prelude is
  printed, that is Pleyel's trick. But I do not care.
  Mischievous Germans, rascally Jews...! Finish the litany, for
  you know them as well as I do.

  Give my love to Johnnie and Grzymaia if you see them.--Your

     FREDERICK.

One subject mentioned in this letter deserves a fuller
explanation than Chopin vouchsafes. Adolphe Nourrit, the
celebrated tenor singer, had in a state of despondency, caused by
the idea that since the appearance of his rival Duprez his
popularity was on the wane, put an end to his life by throwing
himself out of a window at Naples on the 8th of March, 1839.
[FOOTNOTE:  This is the generally-accepted account of Nourrit's
death. But Madame Garcia, the mother of the famous Malibran, who
at the time was staying in the same house, thought it might have
been an accident, the unfortuante artist having in the dark
opened a window on a level with the floor instead of a door. (See
Fetis: Biographie universelle des Musiciens.)] Madame Nourrit
brought her husband's body to Paris, and it was on the way
thither that a funeral service was held at Marseilles for the
much-lamented man and singer.

Le Sud, Journal de la Mediterranee of April 25, 1839, [FOOTNOTE:
Quoted in L. M. Quicherat's Adolphe Nourrit, sa vie, son talent,
son caractere] shall tell us of Chopin's part in this service:--

  At the Elevation of the Host were heard the melancholy tones
  of the organ. It was M. Chopin, the celebrated pianist, who
  came to place a souvenir on the coffin of Nourrit; and what a
  souvenir! a simple melody of Schubert, but the same which had
  so filled us with enthusiasm when Nourrit revealed it to us at
  Marseilles--the melody of Les Astres. [FOOTNOTE: Die gestirne
  is the original German title of this song.]

A less colourless account, one full of interesting facts and free
from conventional newspaper sentiment and enthusiasm, we find in
a letter of Chopin's companion.


Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Marseilles, April 28, 1839:--

  The day before yesterday I saw Madame Nourrit with her six
  children, and the seventh coming shortly...Poor unfortunate
  woman! what a return to France! accompanying this corpse, and
  she herself super-intending the packing, transporting, and
  unpacking [charger, voiturer, deballer] of it like a parcel!

  They held here a very meagre service for the poor deceased,
  the bishop being ill-disposed. This was in the little church
  of Notre-Dame-du-Mont. I do not know if the singers did so
  intentionally, but I never heard such false singing. Chopin
  devoted himself to playing the organ at the Elevation, what an
  organ! A false, screaming instrument, which had no wind except
  for the purpose of being out of tune. Nevertheless, YOUR
  LITTLE ONE [votre petit] made the most of it. He took the
  least shrill stops, and played Les Astres, not in a proud and
  enthusiastic style as Nourrit used to sing it, but in a
  plaintive and soft style, like the far-off echo from another
  world. Two, at the most three, were there who deeply felt
  this, and our eyes filled with tears.

  The rest of the audience, who had gone there en masse, and had
  been led by curiosity to pay as much as fifty centimes for a
  chair (an unheard-of price for Marseilles), were very much
  disappointed; for it was expected that he would make a
  tremendous noise and break at least two or three stops. They
  expected also to see me, in full dress, in the very middle of
  the choir; what not? They did not see me at all; I was hidden
  in the organ-loft, and through the balustrade I descried the
  coffin of poor Nourrit.

Thanks to the revivifying influences of spring and Dr. Cauviere's
attention and happy treatment, Chopin was able to accompany
George Sand on a trip to Genoa, that vaga gemma del mar, fior
delta terra. It gave George Sand much pleasure to see again, now
with her son Maurice by her side, the beautiful edifices and
pictures of the city which six years before she had visited with
Musset. Chopin was probably not strong enough to join his friends
in all their sight-seeing, but if he saw Genoa as it presents
itself on being approached from the sea, passed along the Via
Nuova between the double row of magnificent palaces, and viewed
from the cupola of S. Maria in Carignano the city, its port, the
sea beyond, and the stretches of the Riviera di Levante and
Riviera di Ponente, he did not travel to Italy in vain. Thus
Chopin got at last a glimpse of the land where nine years before
he had contemplated taking up his abode for some time.

On returning to Marseilles, after a stormy passage, on which
Chopin suffered much from sea-sickness, George Sand and her party
rested for a few days at the house of Dr. Cauviere, and then set
out, on the 22nd of May, for Nohant.


Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Marseilles, May 20, 1839:--

  We have just arrived from Genoa, in a terrible storm. The bad
  weather kept us on sea double the ordinary time; forty hours
  of rolling such as I have not seen for a long time. It was a
  fine spectacle, and if everybody had not been ill, I would
  have greatly enjoyed it...

  We shall depart the day after to-morrow for Nohant. Address
  your next letter to me there, we shall be there in eight days.
  My carriage has arrived from Chalon at Arles by boat, and we
  shall post home very quietly, sleeping at the inns like good
  bourgeois.



CHAPTER XXIII.



JUNE TO OCTOBER, 1839.



GEORGE SAND AND CHOPIN'S RETURN TO NOHANT.--STATE OF HIS HEALTH.-
-HIS POSITION IN HIS FRIEND'S HOUSE.--HER ACCOUNT OF THEIR
RELATIONSHIP.--HIS LETTERS TO FONTANA, WHICH, AMONG MANY OTHER
MATTERS, TREAT OF HIS COMPOSITIONS AND OF PREPARATIONS TO BE MADE
FOR HIS AND GEORGE SAND'S ARRIVAL IN PARIS.



The date of one of George Sand's letters shows that the
travellers were settled again at Nohant on the 3rd of June, 1839.
Dr. Papet, a rich friend of George Sand's, who practised his art
only for the benefit of the poor and his friends, took the
convalescent Chopin at once under his care. He declared that his
patient showed no longer any symptoms of pulmonary affection, but
was suffering merely from a slight chronic laryngeal affection
which, although he did not expect to be able to cure it, need not
cause any serious alarm.

On returning to Nohant, George Sand had her mind much exercised
by the question how to teach her children. She resolved to
undertake the task herself, but found she was not suited for it,
at any rate, could not acquit herself of it satisfactorily
without giving up writing. This question, however, was not the
only one that troubled her.

  In the irresolution in which I was for a time regarding the
  arrangement of my life with a view to what would be best for
  my dear children, a serious question was debated in my
  conscience. I asked myself if I ought to entertain the idea
  which Chopin had formed of taking up his abode near me. I
  should not have hesitated to say "no," had I known then for
  how short a time the retired life and the solemnity of the
  country suited his moral and physical health. I still
  attributed his despair and horror of Majorca to the excitement
  of fever and the exces de caractere of that place. Nohant
  offered pleasanter conditions, a less austere retreat,
  congenial society, and resources in case of illness. Papet was
  to him an enlightened and kind physician. Fleury, Duteil,
  Duvernet, and their families, Planet, and especially Rollinat,
  were dear to him at first sight. All of them loved him also,
  and felt disposed to spoil him as I did.

Among those with whom the family at Nohant had much intercourse,
and who were frequent guests at the chateau, was also an old
acquaintance of ours, one who had not grown in wisdom as in age,
I mean George Sand's half-brother, Hippolyte Chatiron, who was
now again living in Berry, his wife having inherited the estate
of Montgivray, situated only half a league from Nohant.

  His warmth of manner, his inexhaustible gaiety, the
  originality of his sallies, his enthusiastic and naive
  effusions of admiration for the genius of Chopin, the always
  respectful deference which he showed to him alone, even in the
  inevitable and terrible apres-boire, found favour with the
  eminently-aristocratic artist. All, then, went very well at
  first, and I entertained eventually the idea that Chopin might
  rest and regain his health by spending a few summers with us,
  his work necessarily calling him back to Paris in the winter.

  However, the prospect of this kind of family union with a
  newly-made friend caused me to reflect. I felt alarmed at the
  task which I was about to undertake, and which I had believed
  would be limited to the journey in Spain.

In short, George Sand presents herself as a sister of mercy, who,
prompted by charity, sacrifices her own happiness for that of
another. Contemplating the possibility of her son falling ill and
herself being thereby deprived of the joys of her work, she
exclaims: "What hours of my calm and invigorating life should I
be able to devote to another patient, much more difficult to
nurse and comfort than Maurice?"

The discussion of this matter by George Sand is so characteristic
of her that, lengthy as it is, I cannot refrain from giving it in
full.

  A kind of terror seized me in presence of a new duty which I
  was to take upon me. I was not under the illusion of passion.
  I had for the artist a kind of maternal adoration which was
  very warm, very real, but which could not for a moment contend
  with maternal love, the only chaste feeling which may be
  passionate.

  I was still young enough to have perhaps to contend with love,
  with passion properly so called. This contingency of my age,
  of my situation, and of the destiny of artistic women,
  especially when they have a horror of passing diversions,
  alarmed me much, and, resolved as I was never to submit to any
  influence which might divert me from my children, I saw a
  less, but still possible danger in the tender friendship with
  which Chopin inspired me.

  Well, after reflection, this danger disappeared and even
  assumed an opposite character--that of a preservative against
  emotions which I no longer wished to know. One duty more in my
  life, already so full of and so overburdened with work,
  appeared to me one chance more to attain the austerity towards
  which I felt myself attracted with a kind of religious
  enthusiasm.

If this is a sincere confession, we can only wonder at the height
of self-deception attainable by the human mind; if, however, it
is meant as a justification, we cannot but be surprised at the
want of skill displayed by the generally so clever advocate. In
fact, George Sand has in no instance been less happy in defending
her conduct and in setting forth her immaculate virtuousness. The
great words "chastity" and "maternity" are of course not absent.
George Sand could as little leave off using them as some people
can leave off using oaths. In either case the words imply much
more than is intended by those from whose mouths or pens they
come. A chaste woman speculating on "real love" and "passing
diversions," as George Sand does here, seems to me a strange
phenomenon. And how charmingly naive is the remark she makes
regarding her relations with Chopin as a "PRESERVATIVE against
emotions which she no longer wished to know"! I am afraid the
concluding sentence, which in its unction is worthy of Pecksniff,
and where she exhibits herself as an ascetic and martyr in all
the radiance of saintliness, will not have the desired effect,
but will make the reader laugh as loud as Musset is said to have
done when she upbraided him with his ungratefulness to her, who
had been devoted to him to the utmost bounds of self-abnegation,
to the sacrifice of her noblest impulses, to the degradation of
her chaste nature.

George Sand, looking back in later years on this period of her
life, thought that if she had put into execution her project of
becoming the teacher of her children, and of shutting herself up
all the year round at Nohant, she would have saved Chopin from
the danger which, unknown to her, threatened him--namely, the
danger of attaching himself too absolutely to her. At that time,
she says, his love was not so great but that absence would have
diverted him from it. Nor did she consider his affection
exclusive. In fact, she had no doubt that the six months which
his profession obliged him to pass every year in Paris would,
"after a few days of malaise and tears," have given him back to
"his habits of elegance, exquisite success, and intellectual
coquetry." The correctness of the facts and the probability of
the supposition may be doubted. At any rate, the reasons which
led her to assume the non-exclusiveness of Chopin's affection are
simply childish. That he spoke to her of a romantic love-affair
he had had in Poland, and of sweet attractions he had afterwards
experienced in Paris, proves nothing. What she says about his
mother having been his only passion is still less to the point.
But reasoning avails little, and the strength of Chopin's love
was not put to the test. He went, indeed, in the autumn of 1839
to Paris, but not alone; George Sand, professedly for the sake of
her children's education, went there likewise. "We were driven by
fate," she says, "into the bonds of a long connection, and both
of us entered into it unawares." The words "driven by fate," and
"entered into it unawares," sound strange, if we remember that
they apply not to a young girl who, inexperienced and confiding,
had lost herself in the mazes of life, but to a novelist skilled
in the reading of human hearts, to a constantly-reasoning and
calculating woman, aged 35, who had better reasons than poor
Amelia in Schiller's play for saying "I have lived and loved."

After all this reasoning, moralising, and sentimentalising, it is
pleasant to be once more face to face with facts, of which the
following letters, written by Chopin to Fontana during the months
from June to October, 1839, contain a goodly number. The rather
monotonous publishing transactions play here and there again a
prominent part, but these Nohant letters are on the whole more
interesting than the Majorca letters, and decidedly more varied
as regards contents than those he wrote from Marseilles--they
tell us much more of the writer's tastes and requirements, and
even reveal something of his relationship to George Sand. Chopin,
it appears to me, did not take exactly the same view of this
relationship as the novelist. What will be read with most
interest are Chopin's directions as to the decoration and
furnishing of his rooms, the engagement of a valet, the ordering
of clothes and a hat, the taking of a house for George Sand, and
certain remarks made en passant on composers and other less-known
people.

  [I.]

  ...The best part of your letter is your address, which I had
  already forgotten, and without which I do not know if I would
  have answered you so soon; but the worst is the death of
  Albrecht. [FOOTNOTE: See p.27 foot-note 7.]

  You wish to know when I shall be back. When the misty and
  rainy weather begins, for I must breathe fresh air.

  Johnnie has left. I don't know if he asked you to forward to
  me the letters from my parents should any arrive during his
  absence and be sent to his usual address. Perhaps he thought
  of it, perhaps not. I should be very sorry if any of them
  miscarried. It is not long since I had a letter from home,
  they will not write soon, and by this time he, who is so kind
  and good, will be in good health and return.

  I am composing here a Sonata in B flat minor, in which will be
  the Funeral March which you have already. There is an allegro,
  then a "Scherzo" in E flat minor, the "March," and a short
  "Finale" of about three pages. The left hand unisono with the
  right hand are gossiping [FOOTNOTE: "Lewa reka unisono z
  prawa, ogaduja po Marszu."] after the March. I have a new
  "Nocturne" in G major, which will go along with the Nocturne
  in G minor, [FOOTNOTE: "Deux Nocturnes," Op.37.] if you
  remember such a one.

  You know that I have four new mazurkas: one from Palma in E
  minor, three from here in B major, A flat major, and C sharp
  minor. [FOOTNOTE: Quatre mazurkas, Op. 41.] They seem to me
  pretty, as the youngest children usually do when the parents
  grow old.

  Otherwise I do nothing; I correct for myself the Parisian
  edition of Bach; not only the stroke-makers' [FOOTNOTE: In
  Polish strycharz, the usual meaning of which is "brickmaker."
  Chopin may have played upon the word. A mistake, however, is
  likewise possible, as the Polish for engraver is sztycharz.]
  (engravers') errors, but, I think, the harmonic errors
  committed by those who pretend to understand Bach. I do not do
  it with the pretension that I understand him better than they,
  but from a conviction that I sometimes guess how it ought to
  be.

  You see I have praised myself enough to you.

  Now, if Grzymata will visit me (which is doubtful), send me
  through him Weber for four hands. Also the last of my Ballade
  in manuscript, as I wish to change something in it. I should
  like very much to have your copy of the last mazurkas, if you
  have such a thing, for I do not know if my gallantry went so
  far as to give you a copy.

  Pleyel wrote to me that you were very obliging, and have
  corrected the Preludes. Do you know how much Wessel paid him
  for them? It would be well to know this for the future.

  My father has written to me that my old sonata has been
  published by Haslinger, and that the Germans praise it.
  [FOOTNOTE: There must have been some misunderstanding; the
  Sonata, Op. 4, was not published till 1851.]

  I have now, counting those you have, six manuscripts; the
  devil take them if they get them for nothing. Pleyel did not
  do me any service with his offers, for he thereby made
  Schlesinger indifferent about me. But I hope this will be set
  right, f wrote to ask him to let me know if he had been paid
  for the piano sent to Palma, and I did so because the French
  consul in Majorca, whom I know very well, was to be changed,
  and had he not been paid, it would have been very difficult
  for me to settle this affair at such a distance. Fortunately,
  he is paid, and very liberally, as he wrote to me only last
  week.

  Write to me what sort of lodgings you have. Do you board at
  the club?

  Woyciechowski wrote to me to compose an oratorio. I answered
  him in the letter to my parents. Why does he build a sugar-
  refinery and not a monastery of Camaldolites or a nunnery of
  Dominican sisters!


  [2.]

  I give you my most hearty thanks for your upright, friendly,
  not English but Polish soul.

  Select paper (wall-paper) such as I had formerly, tourterelle
  (dove colour), only bright and glossy, for the two rooms, also
  dark green with not too broad stripes. For the anteroom
  something else, but still respectable. Nevertheless, if there
  are any nicer and more fashionable papers that are to your
  liking, and you think that I also will like them, then take
  them. I prefer the plain, unpretending, and neat ones to the
  common shopkeeper's staring colours. Therefore, pearl colour
  pleases me, for it is neither loud nor does it look vulgar. I
  thank you for the servant's room, for it is much needed.

  Now, as to the furniture: you will make the best of it if you
  look to it yourself. I did not dare to trouble you with it,
  but if you will be so kind, take it and arrange it as it ought
  to be. I shall ask Grzymala to give money for the removal. I
  shall write to him about it at once. As to the bed and writing-
  desk, it may be necessary to give them to the cabinet-maker to
  be renewed. In this case you will take the papers out of the
  writing-desk, and lock them up somewhere else. I need not tell
  you what you ought to do. Act as you like and judge what is
  necessary. Whatever you may do will be well done. You have my
  full confidence: this is one thing.

  Now the second.

  You must write to Wessel--doubtless you have already written
  about the Preludes. Let him know that I have six new
  manuscripts, for which I want 300 francs each (how many pounds
  is that?). If you think he would not give so much, let me know
  first. Inform me also if Probst is in Paris. Further look out
  for a servant. I should prefer a respectable honest Pole. Tell
  also Grzymala of it. Stipulate that he is to board himself; no
  more than 80 francs. I shall not be in Paris before the end of
  October--keep this, however, to yourself.

  My dear friend, the state of Johnnie's health weighs sometimes
  strangely on my heart. May God give him what he stands in need
  of, but he should not allow himself to be cheated...However,
  this is neither here nor there. The greatest truth in the
  world is that I shall always love you as a most honest and
  kind man and Johnnie as another.

  I embrace you both, write each of you and soon, were it of
  nothing more than the weather.--Your old more than ever long-
  nosed

        FREDERICK.


  [3.]

  According to your description and that of Grzymala you have
  found such capital rooms that we are now thinking you have a
  lucky hand, and for this reason a man--and he is a great man,
  being the portier of George's house--who will run about to
  find a house for her, is ordered to apply to you when he has
  found a few; and you with your elegant tact (you see how I
  flatter you) will also examine what he has found, and give
  your opinion thereon. The main point is that it should be
  detached, if possible; for instance, a little hotel. Or
  something in a courtyard, with a view into a garden, or, if
  there be no garden, into a large court-yard; nota bene, very
  few lodgers--elegant--not higher than the second story.
  Perhaps some corps de logis, but small, or something like
  Perthuis's house, or even smaller. Lastly, should it be in
  front, the street must not be noisy. In one word, something
  you judge would be good for her. If it could be near me, so
  much the better; but if it cannot be, this consideration need
  not prevent you.

  It seems to me that a little hotel in the new streets--such as
  Clichy, Blanche, or Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, as far as Rue des
  Martyrs--would be most suitable. Moreover, I send you a list
  of the streets where Mr. Mardelle--the portier of the Hotel
  Narbonne, Rue de la Harpe, No. 89, which belongs to George--
  will look for a house. If in your leisure time you also looked
  out for something in our part of the town, it would be very
  nice. Fancy, I don't know why, but we think that you will find
  something wonderfully good, although it is already late.

  The price she wishes to pay is from 2,000 to 2,500 francs, you
  might also give a couple of hundred francs more if anything
  extra fine should turn up. Grzymala and Arago promised to look
  out for something, but in spite of Grzymala's efforts nothing
  acceptable has thus far been found. I have written to him that
  he should employ you also in this business of mine (I say of
  MINE, for it is just the same as if it were mine). I shall
  write to him again to-day and tell him that I have asked you
  to give your help and use all your talents. It is necessary
  that there should be three bedrooms, two of which must be
  beside each other and one separated, for instance, by the
  drawing-room. Adjoining the third there will be required a
  well-lighted cabinet for her study. The other two may be
  small, this one, the third, also not very large. Besides this
  a drawing-room and dining-room in proportion. A pretty large
  kitchen. Two rooms for the servants, and a coal-cellar. The
  rooms must of course have inlaid floors, be newly laid, if
  possible, and require no repairs. But a little hotel or a
  separate part of a house in a court-yard looking into a garden
  would be most desirable. There must be tranquillity,
  quietness, no blacksmith in the neighbourhood. Respectable
  stairs. The windows exposed to the sun, absolutely to the
  south. Further, there must be no smoke, no bad odour, but a
  fine view, a garden, or at least a large court. A garden would
  be best. In the Faubourg St. Germain are many gardens, also in
  the Faubourg St. Honore. Find something quickly, something
  splendid, and near me. As soon as you have any chance, write
  immediately, don't be lazy; or get hold of Grzymala, go and
  see, both of you, take et que cela finisse. I send you a plan
  of the arrangement of the apartments. If you find something
  like this, draw the plan, or take it at once, which will be
  better than letting it slip out of your hands.

  Mr. Mardelle is a decent man, and no fool, he was not always a
  portier. He is ordered to go and see you whenever he finds
  anything. You must also on your part be on the look-out, but
  let us keep that between us. I embrace you and Johnnie also.
  You will have our true gratitude when you find a house.

  [a diagram of the apartments is inserted here in the letter.]

  +----------------------------------------------------------------+
  |        |          |               |          |                 |
  | Study  | Bedroom. | Drawing room. | Bedroom. | Servants' room. |
  |        |          |               |          |                 |
  |----------------------------------------------------------------|
  |                   |               |                            |
  |                   | Dining room   |                            |
  |                   |               |                            |
  |----------------------------------------------------------------|
  |                   |               |                            |
  |                   |     Lobby     |                            |
  |                   |               |                            |
  +----------------------------------------------------------------+

  Pas de voisinage, surtout blacksmith, nor anything that
  belongs to him. For God's sake I beg of you take an active
  interest in the matter, my dear friend!


  [4.]

  I thank you for all your kind actions.

  In the anteroom you will direct the grey curtains to be hung
  which were in my cabinet with the piano, and in the bedroom
  the same that were in the bedroom, only under them the white
  muslin ones which were under the grey ones.

  I should like to have a little press in my bedroom, unless
  there be not room enough, or the drawing-room be too bare
  between the windows.

  If the little sofa, the same which stood in the dining-room,
  could be covered with red, with the same stuff with which the
  chairs are covered, it might be placed in the drawing-room;
  but as it would be necessary to call in the upholsterer for
  that, it may be difficult.

  It is a good thing that Domaradzki is going to be married, for
  surely he will give me back the 80 francs after the wedding. I
  should like also to see Podczaski married, and Nakw.
  (Nakwaska), and Anthony also. Let this remain between this
  paper, myself, and you.

  Find me a valet. Kiss Madame Leo (surely the first commission
  will be the more pleasant to you, wherefore I relieve you of
  the second if you will do the first).

  Let me know about Probst, whether he is in Paris or not. Do
  not forget Wessel. Tell Gutmann that I was much pleased that
  he asked for me at least once. To Moscheles, should he be in
  Paris, order to be given an injection of Neukomm's oratorios,
  prepared with Berlioz's "Cellini" and Doehler's Concerto. Give
  Johnnie from me for his breakfast moustaches of sphinxes and
  kidneys of parrots, with tomato sauce powdered with little
  eggs of the microscopic world. You yourself take a bath in
  whale's infusion as a rest from all the commissions I give
  you, for I know that you will do willingly as much as time
  will permit, and I shall do the same for you when you are
  married--of which Johnnie will very likely inform me soon.
  Only not to Ox, for that is my party.


  [5.]

  My dear friend,--In five, six, or seven days I shall be in
  Paris. Get things prepared as quickly as possible; if not all,
  let me find at least the rooms papered and the bed ready.

  I am hastening my arrival as the presence of George Sand is
  necessary on account of a piece to be played. [FOOTNOTE:
  "Cosima." The first representation, at the Comedie Francaise,
  did not take place until April, 1840.] But this remains
  between us. We have fixed our departure for the day after to-
  morrow; thus, counting a few days for delay, we shall see each
  other on Wednesday or Thursday.

  Besides the different commissions I gave you, especially that
  in the last letter about her house, which after our arrival
  will be off your shoulders--but till then, for God's sake, be
  obliging--besides all this, I say, I forgot to ask you to
  order for me a hat from my Duport in your street, Chaussee
  d'Antin. He has my measure, and knows how light I want it and
  of what kind. Let him give the hat of this year's shape, not
  too much exaggerated, for I do not know how you are dressing
  yourself just now. Again, besides this, call in passing at
  Dautremont's, my tailor's, on the Boulevards, and order him to
  make me at once a pair of grey trousers. You will yourself
  select a dark-grey colour for winter trousers; something
  respectable, not striped, but plain and elastic. You are an
  Englishman, so you know what I require. Dautremont will be
  glad to hear that I am coming. Also a quiet black velvet
  waistcoat, but with very little and no loud pattern, something
  very quiet but very elegant. Should he not have the best
  velvet of this kind, let him make a quiet, fine silk
  waistcoat, but not too much open. If the servant could be got
  for less than 80 francs, I should prefer it; but as you have
  already found one, let the matter rest.

  My very dear friend, pardon me once more for troubling you,
  but I must. In a few days we shall see each other, and embrace
  for all this.

  I beg of you, for God's sake, do not say to any Poles that I
  am coming so soon, nor to any Jewess either, as I should like
  to reserve myself during the first few days only for you,
  Grzymala, and Johnnie. Give them my love; to the latter I
  shall write once more.

  I expect that the rooms will be ready. Write constantly to me,
  three times a day if you like, whether you have anything to
  say or not. Before leaving here I shall once more write to
  you.


  Monday.

  You are inappreciable! Take Rue Pigal [Pigalle], both houses,
  without asking anybody. Make haste. If by taking both houses
  you can diminish a little the price, well; if not, take them
  for 2,500 francs. Do not let them slip out of your hands, for
  we think them the best and most excellent. SHE regards you as
  my most logical and best--and I would add: the most splenetic,
  Anglo-Polish, from my soul beloved--friend.


  [6.]

  The day after to-morrow, Thursday, at five o'clock in the
  morning, we start, and on Friday at three, four, certainly at
  five o'clock, I shall be in Rue Tronchet, No. 5. I beg of you
  to inform the people there of this, I wrote to Johnnie to-day
  to retain for me that valet, and order him to wait for me at
  Rue Tronchet on Friday from noon. Should you have time to call
  upon me at that time, we would most heartily embrace each
  other. Once more my and my companion's most sincere thanks for
  Rue Pigalle.

  Now, keep a sharp look-out on the tailor, he must have the
  clothes ready by Friday morning, so that I can change my
  clothes as soon as I come. Order him to take them to Rue
  Tronchet, and deliver them there to the valet Tineau--if I
  mistake not, that is his name. Likewise the hat from Dupont,
  [FOOTNOTE: In the preceding letter it was Duport] and for that
  I shall alter for you the second part of the Polonaise till
  the last moment of my life. Yesterday's version also may not
  please you, although I racked my brains with it for at least
  eighty seconds.

  I have written out my manuscripts in good order. There are six
  with your Polonaises, not counting the seventh, an impromptu,
  which may perhaps be worthless--I do not know myself, it is
  too new. But it would be well if it be not too much in the
  style of Orlowski, Zimmermann, or Karsko-Konski, [FOOTNOTE:
  Chopin's countryman, the pianist and composer Antoine Kontski]
  or Sowinski, or other similar animals. For, according to my
  reckoning, it might fetch me about 800 francs. That will be
  seen afterwards.

  As you are such a clever man, you might also arrange that no
  black thoughts and suffocating coughs shall annoy me in the
  new rooms. Try to make me good. Change, if you can, many
  episodes of my past. It would also not be a bad thing if I
  should find a few years of great work accomplished. By this
  you will greatly oblige me, also if you would make yourself
  younger or bring about that we had never been born.--Your old

  FREDERICK.



CHAPTER XXIV.



1839-1842.



RETURN OF GEORGE SAND AND CHOPIN TO PARIS.--GEORGE SAND IN THE
RUE PIGALLE.--CHOPIN IN THE RUE TRONCHET: REMINISCENCES OF
BRINLEY RICHARDS AND MOSCHELES.--SOIREES AT LEO'S AND ST. CLOUD.-
-CHOPIN JOINS MADAME SAND IN THE RUE PIGALLE.--EXTRACTS FROM
GEORGE SAND'S CORRESPONDANCE; A LETTER OF MADAME SAND'S TO
CHOPIN; BALZAC ANECDOTES.--MADAME SAND AND CHOPIN DO NOT GO TO
NOHANT IN 1840.--COMPOSITIONS OF THIS PERIOD.--ABOUT CHOPIN AS A
PIANIST.--LETTERS WRITTEN TO FONTANA IN THE SUMMER AND AUTUMN OF
1841.



Although Chopin and George Sand came to Paris towards the end of
October, 1839, months passed before the latter got into the house
which Fontana had taken for her. This we learn from a letter
written by her to her friend Gustave Papet, and dated Paris,
January, 1840, wherein we read:--

  At last I am installed in the Rue Pigalle, 16, only since the
  last two days, after having fumed, raged, stormed, and sworn
  at the upholsterers, locksmith, &c., &c. What a long,
  horrible, unbearable business it is to lodge one's self here!

  [FOOTNOTE: In the letter, dated Paris, October, 1839,
  preceding, in the George Sand "Correspondance," the one from
  which the above passage is extracted, occur the following
  words: "Je suis enfin installee chez moi a Paris." Where this
  chez moi was, I do not know.]

How greatly the interiors of George Sand's pavilions in the Rue
Pigalle differed from those of Senor Gomez's villa and the cells
in the monastery of Valdemosa, may be gathered from Gutmann's
description of two of the apartments.

[FOOTNOTE: I do not guarantee the correctness of all the
following details, although I found them in a sketch of Gutmann's
life inspired by himself ("Der Lieblings-schuler Chopin's", No. 3
of "Schone Geister," by Bernhard Stavenow, Bremen, 1879), and
which he assured me was trustworthy. The reasons of my scepticism
are--1, Gutmann's imaginative memory and tendency to show himself
off to advantage; 2, Stavenow's love of fine writing and a good
story; 3, innumerable misstatements that can be indisputably
proved by documents.]

Regarding the small salon, he gives only the general information
that it was quaintly fitted up with antique furniture. But of
George Sand's own room, which made a deeper impression upon him,
he mentions so many particulars--the brown carpet covering the
whole floor, the walls hung with a dark-brown ribbed cloth
(Ripsstoff), the fine paintings, the carved furniture of dark
oak, the brown velvet seats of the chairs, the large square bed,
rising but little above the floor, and covered with a Persian rug
(Teppich)--that it is easy to picture to ourselves the tout-
ensemble of its appearance. Gutmann tells us that he had an early
opportunity of making these observations, for Chopin visited his
pupil the very day after his arrival (?), and invited him at once
to call on George Sand in order to be introduced to her. When
Gutmann presented himself in the small salon above alluded to, he
found George Sand seated on an ottoman smoking a cigarette. She
received the young man with great cordiality, telling him that
his master had often spoken to her of him most lovingly. Chopin
entered soon after from an adjoining apartment, and then they all
went into the dining-room to have dinner. When they were seated
again in the cosy salon, and George Sand had lit another
cigarette, the conversation, which had touched on a variety of
topics, among the rest on Majorca, turned on art. It was then
that the authoress said to her friend: "Chop, Chop, show Gutmann
my room that he may see the pictures which Eugene Delacroix
painted for me."

Chopin on arriving in Paris had taken up his lodgings in the Rue
Tronchet, No. 5, and resumed teaching. One of his pupils there
was Brinley Richards, who practised under him one of the books of
studies. Chopin also assisted the British musician in the
publication, by Troupenas, of his first composition, having
previously looked over and corrected it. Brinley Richards
informed me that Chopin, who played rarely in these lessons,
making his corrections and suggestions rather by word of mouth
than by example, was very languid, indeed so much so that he
looked as if he felt inclined to lie down, and seemed to say: "I
wish you would come another time."

About this time, that is in the autumn or early in the winter of
1839, Moscheles came to Paris. We learn from his diary that at
Leo's, where he liked best to play, he met for the first time
Chopin, who had just returned from the country, and whose
acquaintance he was impatient to make. I have already quoted what
Moscheles said of Chopin's appearance--namely, that it was
exactly like [identificirt mit] his music, both being delicate
and dreamy [schwarmerisch]. His remarks on his great
contemporary's musical performances are, of course, still more
interesting to us.

  He played to me at my request, and now for the first time I
  understand his music, and can also explain to myself the
  enthusiasm of the ladies. His ad libitum playing, which with
  the interpreters of his music degenerates into disregard of
  time, is with him only the most charming originality of
  execution; the dilettantish harsh modulations which strike me
  disagreeably when I am playing his compositions no longer
  shock me, because he glides lightly over them in a fairy-like
  way with his delicate fingers; his piano is so softly breathed
  forth that he does not need any strong forte in order to
  produce the wished-for contrasts; it is for this reason that
  one does not miss the orchestral-like effects which the German
  school demands from a pianoforte-player, but allows one's self
  to be carried away, as by a singer who, little concerned about
  the accompaniment, entirely follows his feeling. In short, he
  is an unicum in the world of pianists. He declares that he
  loves my music very much, and at all events he knows it very
  well. He played me some studies and his latest work, the
  "Preludes," and I played him many of my compositions.

In addition to this characterisation of the artist Chopin,
Moscheles' notes afford us also some glimpses of the man. "Chopin
was lively, merry, nay, exceedingly comical in his imitations of
Pixis, Liszt, and a hunchbacked pianoforte-player." Some days
afterwards, when Moscheles saw him at his own house, he found him
an altogether different Chopin:--

  I called on him according to agreement with Ch. and E., who
  are also quite enthusiastic about him, and who were
  particularly struck with the "Prelude" in A flat major in 6/8
  time with the ever-recurring pedal A flat. Only the Countess
  O. [Obreskoff] from St. Petersburg, who adores us artists en
  bloc, was there, and some gentlemen. Chopin's excellent pupil
  Gutmann played his master's manuscript Scherzo in C sharp
  minor. Chopin himself played his manuscript Sonata in B flat
  minor with the Funeral March.

Gutmann relates that Chopin sent for him early in the morning of
the day following that on which he paid the above-mentioned visit
to George Sand, and said to him:--

  Pardon me for disturbing you so early in the morning, but I
  have just received a note from Moscheles, wherein he expresses
  his joy at my return to Paris, and announces that he will
  visit me at five in the afternoon to hear my new compositions.
  Now I am unfortunately too weak to play my things to him; so
  you must play. I am chiefly concerned about this Scherzo.

Gutmann, who did not yet know the work (Op. 39), thereupon sat
down at Chopin's piano, and by dint of hard practising managed to
play it at the appointed hour from memory, and to the
satisfaction of the composer. Gutmann's account does not tally in
several of its details with Moscheles'. As, however, Moscheles
does not give us reminiscences, but sober, business-like notes
taken down at the time they refer to, and without any attempt at
making a nice story, he is the safer authority. Still, thus much
at least we may assume to be certain:--Gutmann played the
Scherzo, Op. 39, on this occasion, and his rendering of it was
such as to induce his master to dedicate it to him.

Comte de Perthuis, the adjutant of King Louis Philippe, who had
heard Chopin and Moscheles repeatedly play the latter's Sonata in
E flat major for four hands, spoke so much and so
enthusiastically about it at Court that the royal family, wishing
"to have also the great treat," invited the two artists to come
to St. Cloud. The day after this soiree Moscheles wrote in his
diary:--

  Yesterday was a memorable day...at nine o'clock Chopin and I,
  with Perthuis and his amiable wife, who had called for us,
  drove out to St. Cloud in the heaviest showers of rain, and
  felt so much the more comfortable when we entered the
  brilliant, well-lighted palace. We passed through many state-
  rooms into a salon carre, where the royal family was assembled
  en petit comite. At a round table sat the queen with an
  elegant work-basket before her (perhaps to embroider a purse
  for me?); near her were Madame Adelaide, the Duchess of
  Orleans, and ladies-in-waiting. The noble ladies were as
  affable as if we had been old acquaintances...Chopin played
  first a number of nocturnes and studies, and was admired and
  petted like a favourite. After I also had played some old and
  new studies, and been honoured with the same applause, we
  seated ourselves together at the instrument--he again playing
  the bass, which he always insists on doing. The close
  attention of the little circle during my E flat major Sonata
  was interrupted only by the exclamations "divine!"
  "delicious!" After the Andante the queen whispered to a lady-
  in-waiting: "Would it not be indiscreet to ask them to play it
  again?" which naturally was equivalent to a command to repeat
  it, and so we played it again with increased abandon. In the
  Finale we gave ourselves up to a musical delirium. Chopin's
  enthusiasm throughout the whole piece must, I believe, have
  infected the auditors, who now burst forth into eulogies of
  us. Chopin played again alone with the same charm, and called
  forth the same sympathy as before; then I improvised...

  [FOOTNOTE: In the "Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik" of November 12,
  1839, we read that Chopin improvised on Grisar's "La Folle,"
  Moscheles on themes by Mozart. La Folle is a romance the
  success of which was so great that a wit called it une folie
  de salon. It had for some years an extraordinary popularity,
  and made the composer a reputation.]

To show his gratitude, the king sent the two artists valuable
presents: to Chopin a gold cup and saucer, to Moscheles a
travelling case. "The king," remarked Chopin, "gave Moscheles a
travelling case to get the sooner rid of him." The composer was
fond of and had a talent for throwing off sharp and witty
sayings; but it is most probable that on this occasion the words
were prompted solely by the fancy, and that their ill-nature was
only apparent. Or must we assume that the man Moscheles was less
congenial to Chopin than the artist? Moscheles was a Jew, and
Chopin disliked the Jews. As, however, the tempting opportunity
afforded by the nature of the king's present to Moscheles is
sufficient to account for Chopin's remark, and no proofs
warranting a less creditable explanation are forthcoming, it
would be unfair to listen to the suggestions of suspicion.

George Sand tells us in the "Histoire de ma Vie" that Chopin
found his rooms in the Rue Tronchet cold and damp, and felt
sorely the separation from her. The consequence of this was that
the saintly woman, the sister of mercy, took, after some time,
pity upon her suffering worshipper, and once more sacrificed
herself. Not to misrepresent her account, the only one we have,
of this change in the domestic arrangements of the two friends, I
shall faithfully transcribe her delicately-worded statements:--

  He again began to cough alarmingly, and I saw myself forced
  either to give in my resignation as nurse, or to pass my life
  in impossible journeyings to and fro. He, in order to spare me
  these, came every day to tell me with a troubled face and a
  feeble voice that he was wonderfully well. He asked if he
  might dine with us, and he went away in the evening, shivering
  in his cab. Seeing how he took to heart his exclusion from our
  family life, I offered to let to him one of the pavilions, a
  part of which I could give up to him. He joyfully accepted. He
  had there his room, received there his friends, and gave there
  his lessons without incommoding me. Maurice had the room above
  his; I occupied the other pavilion with my daughter.

Let us see if we cannot get some glimpses of the life in the
pavilions of the Rue Pigalle, No. 16. In the first months of
1840, George Sand was busy with preparations for the performance
of her drama Cosima, moving heaven and earth to bring about the
admission of her friend Madame Dorval into the company of the
Theatre-Francais, where her piece, in which she wished this lady
to take the principal part, was to be performed. Her son Maurice
passed his days in the studio of Eugene Delacroix; and Solange
gave much time to her lessons, and lost much over her toilet. Of
Grzymala we hear that he is always in love with all the beautiful
women, and rolls his big eyes at the tall Borgnotte and the
little Jacqueline; and that Madame Marliani is always up to her
ears in philosophy. This I gathered from George Sand's
Correspondance, where, as the reader will see presently, more is
to be found.

George Sand to Chopin; Cambrai, August 13, 1840:--

  I arrived at noon very tired, for it is 45 and 35 leagues from
  Paris to this place. We shall relate to you good stories of
  the bourgeois of Cambrai. They are beaux, they are stupid,
  they are shopkeepers; they are the sublime of the genre. If
  the Historical Procession does not console us, we are capable
  of dying of ennui at the politeness which people show us. We
  are lodged like princes. But what hosts, what conversations,
  what dinners! We laugh at them when we are by ourselves, but
  when we are before the enemy, what a pitiable figure we
  selves, make! I am no longer desirous to see you come; but I
  aspire to depart very quickly, and I understand why you do not
  wish to give concerts. It is not unlikely that Pauline Viardot
  may not sing the day after to-morrow, for want of a hall. We
  shall, perhaps, leave a day sooner. I wish I were already far
  away from the Cambresians, male and female.

  Good night! I am going to bed, I am overcome with fatigue.

  Love your old woman [votre vieille] as she loves you.

From a letter written two days later to her son, we learn that
Madame Viardot after all gave two concerts at Cambrai. But
amusing as the letter is, we will pass it over as not concerning
us here. Of another letter (September 20,1840), likewise
addressed to her son, I shall quote only one passage, although it
contains much interesting matter about the friends and visitors
of the inmates of the pavilions of the Rue Pigalle, No. 16:--

  Balzac came to dine here the day before yesterday. He is quite
  mad. He has discovered the blue rose, for which the
  horticultural societies of London and Belgium have promised a
  reward of 500,000 francs (qui dit, dit-il). He will sell,
  moreover, every grain at a hundred sous, and for this great
  botanic production he will lay out only fifty centimes.
  Hereupon Rollinat asked him naively:--

  "Well, why, then, do you not set about it at once?"

  To which Balzac replied:

  "Oh! because I have so many other things to do; but I shall
  set about it one of these days."

Stavenow, in Schone Geister (see foot-note, p. 70), tells an
anecdote of Balzac, which may find a place here:--

  One day Balzac had invited George Sand, Chopin, and Gutmann to
  dinner. On that occasion he related to them that the next day
  he would have to meet a bill of 30,000 francs, but that he had
  not a sou in his pocket. Gutmann asked what he intended to do?
  "Well," replied Balzac, "what shall I do? I wait quietly.
  Before to-morrow something unexpected may turn up, and give me
  the means to pay the sum." Scarcely had he said this when the
  door bell rang. The servant entered and announced that a
  gentleman was there who urgently wished to speak with M.
  Balzac.

  Balzac rose and left the room. After a quarter of an hour he
  came back in high spirits and said:

  "The 30,000 francs are found. My publisher wishes to bring out
  a new edition of my works, and he offers me just this sum."

  George Sand, Chopin, and Gutmann looked at each other with a
  smile, and thought--"Another one!"


George Sand to her son; Paris, September 4, 1840:--

  We have had here great shows of troops. They have fione the
  gendarme and cuisse the national guardsman. All Paris was in
  agitation, as if there were to be a revolution. Nothing took
  place, except that some passers-by were knocked down by the
  police.

  There were places in Paris where it was dangerous to pass, as
  these gentlemen assassinated right and left for the pleasure
  of getting their hands into practice. Chopin, who will not
  believe anything, has at last the proof and certainty of it.

  Madame Marliani is back. I dined at her house the day before
  yesterday with the Abbe de Lamennais. Yesterday Leroux dined
  here. Chopin embraces you a thousand times. He is always qui,
  qui, qui, me, me, me. Rollinat smokes like a steam-boat.
  Solange has been good for two or three days, but yesterday she
  had a fit of temper [acces de fureur]. It is the Rebouls, the
  English neighbours, people and dogs, who turn her head.

In the summer of 1840 George Sand did not go to Nohant, and
Chopin seems to have passed most of, if not all, the time in
Paris. From a letter addressed to her half-brother, we learn that
the reason of her staying away from her country-seat was a wish
to economise:--

  If you will guarantee my being able to pass the summer at
  Nohant for 4,000 francs, I will go. But I have never been
  there without spending 1,500 francs per month, and as I do not
  spend here the half of this, it is neither the love of work,
  nor that of spending, nor that of glory, which makes me
  stay...

George Sand's fits of economy never lasted very long. At any
rate, in the summer of 1841 we find her again at Nohant. But as
it is my intention to treat of Chopin's domestic life at Nohant
and in Paris with some fulness in special chapters, I shall now
turn to his artistic doings.

In 1839 there appeared only one work by Chopin, Op. 28, the
"Preludes," but in the two following years as many as sixteen--
namely, Op. 35-50. Here is an enumeration of these compositions,
with the dates of publication and the dedications.

[FOOTNOTE: Both the absence of dedications in the case of some
compositions, and the persons to whom others are dedicated, have
a biographical significance. They tell us of the composer's
absence from Paris and aristocratic society, and his return to
them.]

The "Vingt-quatre Preludes," Op. 28, published in September,
1839, have a twofold dedication, the French and English editions
being dedicated a son ami Pleyel, and the German to Mr. J. C.
Kessler. The publications of 1840 are: in May--Op. 35, "Sonate"
(B flat minor); Op. 36, "Deuxieme Impromptu" (F sharp minor); Op.
37, "Deux Nocturnes" (G minor and G major); in July--Op. 42,
"Valse" (A flat major); in September--Op. 38, "Deuxieme Ballade"
(F major), dedicated to Mr. R. Schumann; in October--Op. 39,
"Troisieme Scherzo" (C sharp minor), dedicated to Mr. A. Gutmann;
in November--Op. 40, "Deux Polonaises" (A major and C minor),
dedicated to Mr. J. Fontana; and in December--Op. 41, "Quatre
Mazurkas" (C sharp and E minor, B and A flat major), dedicated to
E. Witwicki. Those of 1841 are: in October--Op. 43, "Tarantelle"
(A flat major), without any dedication; and in November--Op. 44,
"Polonaise" (F sharp minor), dedicated to Madame la Princesse
Charles de Beauvau; Op. 45, "Prelude" (C sharp minor), dedicated
to Madame la Princesse Elizabeth Czernicheff; Op. 46, "Allegro de
Concert" (A major), dedicated to Mdlle. F. Muller; Op. 47,
"Troisieme Ballade" (A flat major), dedicated to Mdlle. P. de
Noailles; Op. 48, "Deux Nocturnes" (C minor and F sharp minor),
dedicated to Mdlle. L. Duperre; Op. 49, "Fantaisie" (F minor),
dedicated to Madame la Princesse C. de Souzzo; and Op. 50, "Trois
Mazurkas" (G and A flat major, and C sharp minor), dedicated to
Mr. Leon Smitkowski.

Chopin's genius had now reached the most perfect stage of its
development, and was radiating with all the intensity of which
its nature was capable. Notwithstanding such later creations as
the fourth "Ballade," Op. 52, the "Barcarolle," Op. 60, and the
"Polonaise," Op. 53, it can hardly be said that the composer
surpassed in his subsequent works those which he had published in
recent years, works among which were the first three ballades,
the preludes, and a number of stirring polonaises and charming
nocturnes, mazurkas, and other pieces.

However, not only as a creative artist, but also as an executant,
Chopin was at the zenith of his power. His bodily frame had
indeed suffered from disease, but as yet it was not seriously
injured, at least, not so seriously as to disable him to
discharge the functions of a musical interpreter. Moreover, the
great majority of his compositions demanded from the executant
other qualities than physical strength, which was indispensable
in only a few of his works. A writer in the "Menestrel" (April
25, 1841) asks himself the question whether Chopin had progressed
as a pianist, and answers: "No, for he troubles himself little
about the mechanical secrets of the piano; in him there is no
charlatanism; heart and genius alone speak, and in these respects
his privileged organisation has nothing to learn." Or rather let
us say, Chopin troubled himself enough about the mechanical
secrets of the piano, but not for their own sakes: he regarded
them not as ends, but as means to ends, and although mechanically
he may have made no progress, he had done so poetically. Love and
sorrow, those most successful teachers of poets and musicians,
had not taught him in vain.

It was a fortunate occurrence that at this period of his career
Chopin was induced to give a concert, and equally fortunate that
men of knowledge, judgment, and literary ability have left us
their impressions of the event. The desirability of replenishing
an ever-empty purse, and the instigations of George Sand, were no
doubt the chief motive powers which helped the composer to
overcome his dislike to playing in public.

"Do you practise when the day of the concert approaches?" asked
Lenz. [FOOTNOTE: Die grossen Pianoforte-Virtusen unstrer Zeit, p.
36.] "It is a terrible time for me," was Chopin's answer; "I
dislike publicity, but it is part of my position. I shut myself
up for a fortnight and play Bach. That is my preparation; I never
practise my own compositions." What Gutmann told me confirms
these statements. Chopin detested playing in public, and became
nervous when the dreaded time approached. He then fidgeted a
great deal about his clothes, and felt very unhappy if one or the
other article did not quite fit or pinched him a little. On one
occasion Chopin, being dissatisfied with his own things, made use
of a dress-coat and shirt of his pupil Gutmann. By the way, the
latter, who gave me this piece of information, must have been in
those days of less bulk, and, I feel inclined to add, of less
height, than he was when I became acquainted with him.

Leaving the two concerts given by Chopin in 1841 and 1842 to be
discussed in detail in the next chapter, I shall now give a
translation of the Polish letters which he wrote in the summer
and autumn of 1841 to Fontana. The letters numbered 4 and 5 are
those already alluded to on p. 24 (foot-note 3) which Karasowski
gives as respectively dated by Chopin: "Palma, November 17,
1838"; and "Valdemosa, January 9, 1839." But against these dates
militate the contents: the mention of Troupenas, with whom the
composer's business connection began only in 1840 (with the
Sonata, Op. 35); the mention of the Tarantelle, which was not
published until 1841; the mention (contradictory to an earlier
inquiry--see p. 30) of the sending back of a valet nowhere else
alluded to; the mention of the sending and arrival of a piano,
irreconcilable with the circumstances and certain statements in
indisputably correctly-dated letters; and, lastly, the absence of
all mention of Majorca and the Preludes, those important topics
in the letters really from that place and of that time.
Karasowski thinks that the letters numbered 1, 2, 3, and 9 were
of the year 1838, and those numbered 6, 7, and 8 of the year
1839; but as the "Tarantelle," Op. 43, the "Polonaise," Op. 44,
the "Prelude," Op. 45, the "Allegro de Concert," Op. 46, the
third "Ballade," Op. 47, the two "Nocturnes," Op. 48, and the
"Fantaisie," Op. 49, therein mentioned, were published in 1841, I
have no doubt that they are of the year 1841. The mention in the
ninth letter of the Rue Pigalle, 16, George Sand's and Chopin's
abode in Paris, of Pelletan, the tutor of George Sand's son
Maurice, and of the latter's coming to Paris, speaks likewise
against 1838 and for 1841, 1840 being out of the question, as
neither George Sand nor Chopin was in this year at Nohant. What
decides me especially to reject the date 1839 for the seventh
letter is that Pauline Garcia had then not yet become the wife of
Louis Viardot. There is, moreover, an allusion to a visit of
Pauline Viardot to Nohant in the summer of 1841 in one of George
Sand's letters (August 13, 1841). In this letter occurs a passage
which is important for the dating both of the fifth and the
seventh letter. As to the order of succession of the letters, it
may be wrong, it certainly does not altogether satisfy me; but it
is the result of long and careful weighing of all the pros and
cons. I have some doubt about the seventh letter, which, read by
the light of George Sand's letter, ought perhaps to be placed
after the ninth. But the seventh letter is somewhat of a puzzle.
Puzzles, owing to his confused statements and slipshod style,
are, however, not a rare thing in Chopin's correspondence. The
passage in the above-mentioned letter of George Sand runs thus:
"Pauline leaves me on the 16th [of August]; Maurice goes on the
17th to fetch his sister, who should be here on the 23rd."


  [I.] Nohant [1841].

  My very dear friend,--I arrived here yesterday, Thursday. For
  Schlesinger [FOOTNOTE: The Paris music-publisher.] I have
  composed a Prelude in C sharp minor [Op. 45], which is short,
  as he wished it. Seeing that, like Mechetti's [FOOTNOTE: The
  Vienna music-publisher.] Beethoven, this has to come out at
  the New Year, do not yet give my Polonaise to Leo (although
  you have already transcribed it), for to-morrow I shall send
  you a letter for Mechetti, in which I shall explain to him
  that, if he wishes something short, I will give him for the
  Album instead of the mazurka (which is already old) the NEW
  prelude. It is well modulated, and I can send it without
  hesitation. He ought to give me 300 francs for it, n'est-ce
  pas? Par-dessus le marche he may get the mazurka, only he must
  not print it in the Album.

  Should Troupenas, [FOOTNOTE: Eugene Troupenas, the Paris music-
  publisher.] that is, Masset, [FOOTNOTE: Masset (his daughter,
  Madame Colombier, informed me) was the partner of Troupenas,
  and managed almost the whole business, Troupenas being in weak
  health, which obliged him to pass the last ten winters of his
  life at Hyeres.] make any difficulties, do not give him the
  pieces a farthing cheaper, and tell him that if he does not
  wish to print them all--which I should not like--I could sell
  them at a better price to others.

  Now of something else.

  You will find in the right-hand drawer of my writing-desk (in
  the place where the cash-box always is) a sealed parcel
  addressed to Madame Sand. Wrap this parcel in wax-cloth, seal
  it, and send it by post to Madame Sand's address. Sew on the
  address with a strong thread, that it may not come off the wax-
  cloth. It is Madame Sand who asks me to do this. I know you
  will do it perfectly well. The key, I think, is on the top
  shelf of the little cabinet with the mirror. If it should not
  be there, get a locksmith to open the drawer.

  I love you as an old friend. Embrace Johnnie.--Your

      FREDERICK.


  [2.] Nohant [1841].

  Thanks for forwarding the parcel. I send you the Prelude, in
  large characters for Schlesinger and in small characters for
  Mechetti. Clip the MS. of the Polonaise to the same size,
  number the pages, and fold it like the Prelude, add to the
  whole my letter to Mechetti, and deliver it into Leo's own
  hands, praying him to send it by the first mail, as Mechetti
  is waiting for it.

  The letter to Haslinger [FOOTNOTE: The Vienna music-
  publisher.] post yourself; and if you do not find Schlesinger
  at home leave the letter, but do not give him the MS. until he
  tells you that he accepts the Prelude as a settlement of the
  account. If he does not wish to acquire the right of
  publication for London, tell him to inform me of it by letter.
  Do not forget to add the opus on the Polonaise and the
  following number on the Prelude--that is, on the copies that
  are going to Vienna.

  I do not know how Czerniszewowa is spelt. Perhaps you will
  find under the vase or on the little table near the bronze
  ornament a note from her, from her daughter, or from the
  governess; if not, I should be glad if you would go--they know
  you already as my friend--to the Hotel de Londres in the Place
  Vendome, and beg in my name the young Princess to give you her
  name in writing and to say whether it is Tscher or Tcher. Or
  better still, ask for Mdlle. Krause, the governess; tell her
  that I wish to give the young Princess a surprise; and inquire
  of her whether it is usual to write Elisabeth and
  Tschernichef, or ff. [FOOTNOTE: Chopin dedicated the Prelude,
  Op. 45, to Mdlle. la Princesse Elisabeth Czernicheff.]

  If you do not wish to do this, don't be bashful with me, and
  write that you would rather be excused, in which case I shall
  find it out by some other means. But do not yet direct
  Schlesinger to print the title. Tell him I don't know how to
  spell. Nevertheless, I hope that you will find at my house
  some note from them on which will be the name....

  I conclude because it is time for the mail, and I wish that my
  letter should reach Vienna without fail this week.


  [3.] Nohant, Sunday [1841].

  I send you the Tarantella [Op. 43]. Please to copy it. But
  first go to Schlesinger, or, better still, to Troupenas, and
  see the collection of Rossini's songs published by Troupenas.
  In it there is a Tarantella in F. I do not know whether it is
  written in 6/8 or 12/8 time. As to my composition, it does not
  matter which way it is written, but I should prefer it to be
  like Rossini's. Therefore, if the latter be in 12/8 or in C
  with triplets, make in copying one bar out of two. It will be
  thus: [here follows one bar of music, bars four and five of
  the Tarantella as it is printed.] [FOOTNOTE: This is a
  characteristic instance of Chopin's carelessness in the
  notation of his music. To write his Tarantella in 12/8 or C
  would have been an egregious mistake. How Chopin failed to see
  this is inexplicable to me.]

  I beg of you also to write out everything in full, instead of
  marking repeats. Be quick, and give it to Leo with my letter
  to Schubert. [FOOTNOTE: Schuberth, the Hamburg music-
  publisher.] You know he leaves for Hamburg before the 8th of
  next month, and I should not like to lose 500 francs.

  As regards Troupenas, there is no hurry. If the time of my
  manuscript is not right, do not deliver the latter, but make a
  copy of it. Besides this, make a third copy of it for Wessel.
  It will weary you to copy this nasty thing so often; but I
  hope I shall not compose anything worse for a long time. I
  also beg of you to look up the number of the last opus--
  namely, the last mazurkas, or rather the waltz published by
  Paccini [FOOTNOTE: Pacini, a Paris music-publisher. He
  published the Waltz in A flat major, Op. 42, in the summer of
  1840, if not earlier.]--and give the following number to the
  Tarantella.

  I am keeping my mind easy, for I know you are willing and
  clever. I trust you will receive from me no more letter

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