Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician

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Karasowski relates the affair very differently. He says Chopin,
who knew the brothers Wodzinski in Poland, met them again in
Paris, and through them made the acquaintance of their sister
Maria, whose beauty and amiability inspired him at once with an
interest which soon became ardent love. But that Chopin had known
her in Poland may be gathered from the above letter to Felix
Wodzinski, quite apart from the distinct statements of the author
of Les trois Romans that Chopin was a frequent visitor at
Sluzewo, and a great friend of Maria's. Further, Karasowski, who
does not mention at all the meeting of Chopin and the Wodzinskis
at Dresden in 1835, says that Chopin went in the middle of July,
1836, to Marienbad, where he knew he would find Maria and her
mother, and that there he discovered that she whom he loved
reciprocated his affection, the consequence being an engagement
approved of by her relations. When the sojourn in Marienbad came
to an end, the whole party betook itself to Dresden, where they
remained together for some weeks, which they spent most
pleasantly.

[FOOTNOTE: Karasowski relates that Chopin was at the zenith of
happiness. His good humour was irresistible. He imitated the most
famous pianists, and played his dreamy mazurkas in the manner
much in favour with Warsaw amateurs--i.e., strictly in time and
with the strongly-accented rhythm of common dance-tunes. And his
friends reminded him of the tricks which, as a boy, he had played
on his visits to the country, and how he took away his sisters'
kid gloves when he was going to an evening-party, and could not
buy himself new ones, promising to send them dozens as soon as he
had gained a good position in Paris. Count Wodzinski, too, bears
witness to Chopin's good humour while in the company of the
Wodzinskis. In the course of his account of the sojourn at
Marienbad, this writer speaks of Chopin's polichinades: "He
imitated then this or that famous artist, the playing of certain
pupils or compatriots, belabouring the keyboard with extravagant
gestures, a wild [echevele] and romantic manner, which he called
aller a la chasse aux pigeons."]

Unless Chopin was twice with the Wodzinskis in Dresden,
Karasowski must be mistaken. That Chopin sojourned for some time
at Dresden in 1835 is evidenced by Wieck's letter, quoted on p.
288, and by the above-mentioned waltz. The latter seems also to
confirm what Count Wodzinski says about the presence of the
Wodzinskis at Dresden in that year. On the other hand, we have no
such documents to prove the presence at Dresden in 1836 either of
Chopin or the Wodzinskis. According to Karasowski, the engagement
made at Marienbad remained in force till the middle of 1837, when
Chopin received at Paris the news that the lady withdrew from it.
[FOOTNOTE: In explanation of the breaking-off of this supposed
engagement, it has also been said that the latter was favoured by
the mother, but opposed by the father.] The same authority
informs us that before this catastrophe Chopin had thoughts of
settling with his future wife in the neighbourhood of Warsaw,
near his beloved parents and sisters. There he would cultivate
his art in retirement, and found schools for the people. How,
without a fortune of his own, and with a wife who, although
belonging to a fairly wealthy family, would not come into the
possession of her portion till after the death of her parents, he
could have realised these dreams, I am at a loss to conjecture.

[FOONOTE: To enable his readers to measure the social distance
that separated Chopin from his beloved one, Count Wodzinski
mentions among other details that her father possessed a domain
of about 50,000 acres (20,000 hectares). It is hardly necessary
to add that this large acreage, which we will suppose to be
correctly stated, is much less a measure of the possessor's
wealth than of his social rank.]

Chopin's letters, which testify so conclusively to the cordial
friendship existing between him and the Wodzinskis, unfortunately
contain nothing which throws light on his connection with the
young lady, although her name occurs in them several times. On
April 2, 1837, Chopin wrote to Madame Wodzinska as follows:--

I take advantage of Madame Nakwaska's permission and enclose
a few words. I expect news from Anthony's own hand, and shall
send you a letter even more full of details than the one
which contained Vincent's enclosure. I beg of you to keep
your mind easy about him. As yet all are in the town. I am
not in possession of any details, because the correspondents
only give accounts of themselves. My letter of the same date
must certainly be in Sluzewo; and, as far as is possible, it
will set your mind at rest with regard to this Spaniard who
must, must write me a few words. I am not going to use many
words in expressing the sorrow I felt on learning the news of
your mother's death--not for her sake whom I did not know,
but for your sake whom I do know. {This is a matter of
course!) I have to confess, Madam, that I have had an attack
like the one I had in Marienbad; I sit before Miss Maria's
book, and were I to sit a hundred years I should be unable to
write anything in it. For there are days when I am out of
sorts. To-day I would prefer being in Sluzewo to writing to
Sluzewo. Then would I tell you more than I have now written.
My respects to Mr. Wodzinski and my kind regards to Miss
Maria, Casimir, Theresa, and Felix.

The object of another letter, dated May 14, 1837, is likewise to
give news of Anthony Wodzinski, who was fighting in Spain. Miss
Maria is mentioned in the P.S. and urged to write a few words to
her brother.

After a careful weighing of the evidence before us, it appears to
me that--notwithstanding the novelistic tricking-out of Les trois
Romans de Frederic Chopin--we cannot but accept as the true
account the author's statement as to Chopin's proposal of
marriage and Miss Wodzinska's rejection at Marienbad in 1836. The
testimony of a relation with direct information from one of the
two chief actors in the drama deserves more credit than that of a
stranger with, at best, second-hand information; unless we prefer
to believe that the lady misrepresented the facts in order to
show herself to the world in a more dignified and amiable
character than that of a jilt. The letters can hardly be quoted
in support of the engagement, for the rejection would still admit
of the continuation of the old friendship, and their tone does
not indicate the greater intimacy of a closer relationship.

Subsequent to his stay at Marienbad Chopin again visited Leipzig.
But the promises which Mendelssohn and Chopin had so solemnly
made to each other in the preceding year had not been kept; the
latter did not go in the course of the winter to Leipzig, and if
he had gone, the former could not have performed a new symphony
of his in honour of the guest. Several passages in letters
written by Schumann in the early part of 1836 show, however, that
Chopin was not forgotten by his Leipzig friends, with whom he
seems to have been in correspondence. On March 8, 1836, Schumann
wrote to Moscheles:--

Mendelssohn sends you his hearty greetings. He has finished
his oratorio, and will conduct it himself at the Dusseldorf
Musical Festival. Perhaps I shall go there too, perhaps also
Chopin, to whom we shall write about it.

The first performance of Mendelssohn's St. Paul took place at
Dusseldorf on May 22, and was a great success. But neither
Schumann nor Chopin was there. The latter was, no doubt, already
planning his excursion to Marienbad, and could not allow himself
the luxury of two holidays within so short a time.

Here is another scrap from a letter of Schumann's, dated August
28, 1836, and addressed to his brother Edward and his sister-in-
law Theresa:--

I have just written to Chopin, who is said to be in
Marienbad, in order to learn whether he is really there. In
any case, I should visit you again in autumn. But if Chopin
answers my letter at once, I shall start sooner, and go to
Marienbad by way of Carlsbad. Theresa, what do you think! you
must come with me! Read first Chopin's answer, and then we
will fully discuss the rest.

Chopin either had left or was about to leave Marienbad when he
received Schumann's letter. Had he received it sooner, his answer
would not have been very encouraging. For in his circumstances he
could not but have felt even the most highly-esteemed confrere,
the most charming of companions, in the way.[FOOTNOTE:
Mendelscohn's sister, Rebecka Dirichlet, found him completely
absorbed in his Polish Countess. (See The Mendelssohn Family,
Vol. II, p. 15.)] But although the two musicians did not meet at
Marienbad, they saw each other at Leipzig. How much one of them
enjoyed the visit may be seen in the following extract from a
letter which Schumann wrote to Heinrich Dorn on September 14,
1836:--

The day before yesterday, just after I had received your
letter and was going to answer it, who should enter?--Chopin.
This was a great pleasure. We passed a very happy day
together, in honour of which I made yesterday a holiday...I
have a new ballade by Chopin. It appears to me his
genialischstes (not genialstes) work; and I told him that I
liked it best of all.

[FOOTNOTE: "Sein genialischstes (nicht genialstes) Werk." I
take Schumann to mean that the ballade in question (the one
in G minor) is Chopin's most spirited, most daring work, but
not his most genial--i.e., the one fullest of genius.
Schumann's remark, in a criticism of Op. 37, 38, and 42, that
this ballade is the "wildest and most original" of Chopin's
compositions, confirms my conjecture.]

After a long meditative pause he said with great emphasis: "I
am glad of that, it is the one which I too like best." He
played besides a number of new etudes, nocturnes, and
mazurkas--everything incomparable. You would like him very
much. But Clara [Wieck] is greater as a virtuoso, and gives
almost more meaning to his compositions than he himself.
Imagine the perfection, a mastery which seems to be quite
unconscious of itself!

Besides the announcement of September 16, 1836, that Chopin had
been a day in Leipzig, that he had brought with him among other
things new "heavenly" etudes, nocturnes, mazurkas, and a new
ballade, and that he played much and "very incomparably," there
occur in Schumann's writings in the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik
unmistakable reminiscences of this visit of the Polish musician.
Thus, for instance, in a review of dance-music, which appeared in
the following year, and to which he gave the fantastic form of a
"Report to Jeanquirit in Augsburg of the editor's last artistico-
historical ball," the writer relates a conversation he had with
his partner Beda:--

I turned the conversation adroitly on Chopin. Scarcely had
she heard the name than she for the first time fully looked
at me with her large, kindly eyes. "And you know him?" I
answered in the affirmative. "And you have heard him?" Her
form became more and more sublime. "And have heard him
speak?" And when I told her that it was a never-to-be-
forgotten picture to see him sitting at the piano like a
dreaming seer, and how in listening to his playing one seemed
to one's self like the dream he created, and how he had the
dreadful habit of passing, at the end of each piece, one
finger quickly over the whizzing keyboard, as if to get rid
of his dream by force, and how he had to take care of his
delicate health--she clung to me with ever-increasing
timorous delight, and wished to know more and more about him.

Very interesting is Schumann's description of how Chopin played
some etudes from his Op. 25; it is to be found in another
criticism of the same year (1837):--

As regards these etudes, I have the advantage of having heard
most of them played by Chopin himself, and, as Florestan
whispered in my ear at the time, "He plays them very much a
la Chopin." Imagine an AEolian harp that had all the scales,
and that these were jumbled together by the hand of an artist
into all sorts of fantastic ornaments, but in such a manner
that a deeper fundamental tone and a softly-singing higher
part were always audible, and you have an approximate idea of
his playing. No wonder that we have become fondest of those
pieces which we heard him play himself, and therefore we
shall mention first of all the first one in A flat, which is
rather a poem than an etude. It would be a mistake, however,
to suppose that he brought out every one of the little notes
with distinctness; it was more like a billowing of the A flat
major chord, swelled anew here and there by means of the
pedal; but through the harmonies were heard the sustained
tones of a wondrous melody, and only in the middle of it did
a tenor part once come into greater prominence amid the
chords along with that principal cantilena. After listening
to the study one feels as one does after a blissful vision,
seen in a dream, which, already half awake, one would fain
bring back. He soon came to the one in F minor, the second in
the book, likewise one which impresses one indelibly with his
originality; it is so charming, dreamy, and soft, somewhat
like the singing of a child in its sleep. Beautiful also,
although less new in character than in the figure, was the
following one in F major; here the object was more to exhibit
bravura, the most charming bravura, and we could not but
praise the master highly for it....But of what use are
descriptive words?

This time we cannot cite a letter of Mendelssohn's; he was
elsewhere similarly occupied as Chopin in Marienbad. After
falling in love with a Frankfort lady, Miss Jeanrenaud, he had
gone to Scheweningen to see whether his love would stand the test
of absence from the beloved object. It stood the test admirably,
and on September 9, a few days before Chopin's arrival in
Leipzig, Mendelssohn's engagement to the lady who became his wife
on March 28, 1837, took place.

But another person who has been mentioned in connection with
Chopin's first visit to Leipzig, Henrietta Voigt, [FOOTNOTE: The
editor of "Acht Briefe und ein Facsimile van Felix Mendelssohn-
Bartholdy" speaks of her as "the artistic wife of a Leipzig
merchant, whose house stood open to musicians living in and
passing through Leipzig."] has left us an account of the
impression made upon her. An entry in her diary on September 13,
1836, runs thus:--

Yesterday Chopin was here and played an hour on my piano--a
fantasia and new etude of his--interesting man and still more
interesting playing; he moved me strangely. The over-
excitement of his fantastic manner is imparted to the keen-
eared; it made me hold my breath. Wonderful is the ease with
which his velvet fingers glide, I might almost say fly, over
the keys. He has enraptured me--I cannot deny it--in a way
which hitherto had been unknown to me. What delighted me was
the childlike, natural manner which he showed in his
demeanour and in his playing.

After this short break of his journey at Leipzig, which he did
not leave without placing a wreath of flowers on the monument of
Prince Joseph Poniatowski, who in 1812 met here with an early
death, being drowned in the river Elster, Chopin proceeded on his
homeward journey, that is toward Paris, probably tarrying again
for a day or two at Heidelberg.

The non-artistic events of this period are of a more stirring
nature than the artistic ones. First in time and importance comes
Chopin's meeting with George Sand, which more than any other
event marks an epoch in the composer's life. But as this subject
has to be discussed fully and at some length we shall leave it
for another chapter, and conclude this with an account of some
other matters.

Mendelssohn, who arrived in London on August 24, 1837, wrote on
September 1 to Hiller:--

Chopin is said to have suddenly turned up here a fortnight
ago; but he visited nobody and made no acquaintances. He
played one evening most beautifully at Broadwood's, and then
hurried away again. I hear he is still suffering very much.

Chopin accompanied by Camille Pleyel and Stanislas Kozmian, the
elder, came to London on the 11th of July and stayed till the
22nd. Pleyel introduced him under the name of M. Fritz to his
friend James Broadwood, who invited them to dine with him at his
house in Bryanston Square. The incognito, however, could only be
preserved as long as Chopin kept his hands off the piano. When
after dinner he sat down to play, the ladies of the family
suspected, and, suspicion being aroused, soon extracted a
confession of the truth.

Moscheles in alluding in his diary to this visit to London adds
an item or two to its history:--

Chopin, who passed a few days in London, was the only one of
the foreign artists who visited nobody and also did not wish
to be visited, as every conversation aggravates his chest-
complaint. He went to some concerts and disappeared.

Particularly interesting are the reminiscences of the writer of
an enthusiastic review [Footnote: Probably J. W. Davison.]of some
of Chopin's nocturnes and a scherzo in the "Musical World" of
February 23, 1838:--

Were he [Chopin] not the most retiring and unambitious of all
living musicians, he would before this time have been
celebrated as the inventor of a new style, or school, of
pianoforte composition. During his short visit to the
metropolis last season, but few had the high gratification of
hearing his extemporaneous performance. Those who experienced
this will not readily lose its remembrance. He is, perhaps,
par eminence, the most delightful of pianists in the drawing-
room. The animation of his style is so subdued, its
tenderness so refined, its melancholy so gentle, its niceties
so studied and systematic, the tout-ensemble so perfect, and
evidently the result of an accurate judgment and most
finished taste, that when exhibited in the large concert-
room, or the thronged saloon, it fails to impress itself on
the mass. The "Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik" of September 8,
1837, brought the piece of news that Chopin was then at a
Bohemian watering-place. I doubt the correctness of this
statement; at any rate, no other information to that effect
has come to my knowledge, and the ascertained facts do not
favour the assumption of its truth.

Never robust, Chopin had yet hitherto been free from any serious
illness. Now, however, the time of his troubles begins. In a
letter, undated, but very probably written in the summer of 1837,
which he addressed to Anthony Wodzinski, who had been wounded in
Spain, where civil war was then raging, occur remarks
confirmatory of Mendelssohn's and Moscheles' statements:--

My dearest life! Wounded! Far from us--and I can send you
nothing....Your friends are thinking only of you. For mercy's
sake recover as soon as possible and return. The newspaper
accounts say that your legion is completely annihilated.
Don't enter the Spanish army....Remember that your blood may
serve a better purpose....Titus [Woyciechowski] wrote to ask
me if I could not meet him somewhere in Germany. During the
winter I was again ill with influenza. They wanted to send me
to Ems. Up to the present, however, I have no thought of
going, as I am unable to move. I write and prepare
manuscript. I think far more of you than you imagine, and
love you as much as ever.

F. C.

Believe me, you and Titus are enshrined in my memory.

On the margin, Chopin writes--

I may perhaps go for a few days to George Sand's, but keep
your mind easy, this will not interfere with the forwarding
of your money, for I shall leave instructions with Johnnie
[Matuszynski].

With regard to this and to the two preceding letters to members
of the Wodzinski family, I have yet to state that I found them in
M. A. Szulc's "Fryderyk Chopin."

CHAPTER XIX.

GEORGE SAND: HER EARLY LIFE (1804--1836); AND HER CHARACTER AS A
WOMAN, THINKER, AND LITERARY ARTIST.

It is now necessary that the reader should be made acquainted
with Madame Dudevant, better known by her literary name, George
Sand, whose coming on the scene has already been announced in the
preceding chapter. The character of this lady is so much a matter
of controversy, and a correct estimate of it so essential for the
right understanding of the important part she plays in the
remaining portion of Chopin's life, that this long chapter--an
intermezzo, a biography in a biography--will not be regarded as
out of place or too lengthy. If I begin far off, as it were
before the beginning, I do so because the pedigree has in this
case a peculiar significance.

The mother of George Sand's father was the daughter of the
Marschal de Saxe (Count Maurice of Saxony, natural son of August
the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, and the
Countess Maria Aurora von Konigsmark) and the dame de l'opera,
Mdlle. de Verrieres, whose real name was Madame de la Riviere,
nee Marie Rinteau. This daughter, Marie Aurore, married at the
age of fifteen Comte de Home, a natural son of Louis XV., who
died soon after; and fifteen years later she condescended to
accept the hand of M. Dupin de Francueil, receveur general, who,
although of an old and well-connected family, did not belong to
the high nobility. The curious may read about Mdlle. de Verrieres
in the "Memoires" of Marmontel, who was one of her many lovers,
and about M. Dupin, his father, mother-in-law, first wife &c., in
Rousseau's "Confessions," where, however, he is always called De
Francueil. Notwithstanding the disparity of age, the husband
being twice as old as his wife, the marriage of M. Dupin and the
Comtesse de Home proved to be a very happy one. They had one
child, a son, Maurice Francois Elisabeth Dupin. He entered the
army in 1798, and two years later, in the course of the Italian
campaign, became first lieutenant and then aide-de-camp to
General Dupont.

In Italy and about the same time Maurice Dupin saw and fell in
love with Sophie Victoire Antoinette Delaborde, the daughter of a
Paris bird-seller, who had been a supernumerary at some small
theatre, and whose youth, as George Sand delicately expresses it,
"had by the force of circumstances been exposed to the most
frightful hazards." Sacrificing all the advantages she was then
enjoying, she followed Maurice Dupin to France. From this liaison
sprang several children, all of whom, however, except one, died
very young. A month before the birth of her in whom our interest
centres, Maurice Dupin married Sophie Delaborde. The marriage was
a civil one and contracted without the knowledge of his mother,
who was opposed to this union less on account of Sophie's
plebeian origin than of her doubtful antecedents.

It was on July 5, 1804, that Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, who
under the name of George Sand became famous all the world over,
saw for the first time the light of day. The baby, which by a
stratagem was placed in the arms of her grandmother, mollified
the feelings of the old lady, whom the clandestine marriage had
put in a great rage, so effectually that she forgave her son,
received his wife, and tried to accommodate herself to the
irremediable. After the Spanish campaign, during which he acted
as aide-de-camp to Murat, Maurice Dupin and his family came to
Nohant, his mother's chateau in Berry. There little Aurora lost
her father when she was only four years old. Returning home one
evening from La Chatre, a neighbouring town, he was thrown off
his horse, and died almost instantly.

This was an event that seriously affected the future of the
child, for only the deceased could keep in check the antagonism
of two such dissimilar characters as those of Aurora's mother and
grandmother. The mother was "dark-complexioned, pale, ardent,
awkward and timid in fashionable society, but always ready to
explode when the storm was growling too strongly within"; her
temperament was that "of a Spaniard--jealous, passionate,
choleric, and weak, perverse and kindly at the same time." Abbe
Beaumont (a natural son of Mdlle. de Verrieres and the Prince de
Turenne, Duke de Bouillon, and consequently grand-uncle of
Aurora) said of her that she had a bad head but a good heart. She
was quite uneducated, but had good natural parts, sang
charmingly, and was clever with her hands. The grandmother, on
the other hand, was "light-complexioned, blonde, grave, calm, and
dignified in her manners, a veritable Saxon of noble race, with
an imposing demeanour full of ease and patronising goodness." She
had been an assiduous student of the eighteenth century
philosophers, and on the whole was a lady of considerable
culture. For about two years these two women managed to live
together, not, however, without a feeling of discord which was
not always successfully suppressed, and sometimes broke out into
open dissension. At last they came to an arrangement according to
which the child was to be left in the keeping of the grandmother,
who promised her daughter-in-law a yearly allowance which would
enable her to take up her abode in Paris. This arrangement had
the advantage for the younger Madame Dupin that she could
henceforth devote herself to the bringing-up of another daughter,
born before her acquaintance with Aurora's father.