Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician

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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.