Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician

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"Well! play yourself!" said Liszt, rising from his seat a
little irritated,

"With pleasure," said Chopin.

At that moment a moth extinguished the lamp. Chopin would not
have it relighted, and played in the dark. When he had
finished his delighted auditors overwhelmed him with
compliments, and Liszt said:

"Ah, my friend, you were right! The works of a genius like you
are sacred; it is a profanation to meddle with them. You are a
true poet, and I am only a mountebank."

Whereupon Chopin replied: "We have each our genre."

M. Rollinat then proceeds to tell his readers that Chopin,
believing he had eclipsed Liszt that evening, boasted of it, and
said: "How vexed he was!" It seems that the author felt that this
part of the story put a dangerously severe strain on the
credulity of his readers, for he thinks it necessary to assure
them that these were the ipsissima verba of Chopin. Well, the
words in question came to the ears of Liszt, and he resolved at
once to have his revenge.

Five days afterwards the friends were again assembled in the same
place and at the same time. Liszt asked Chopin to play, and had
all the lights put out and all the curtains drawn; but when
Chopin was going to the piano, Liszt whispered something in his
ear and sat down in his stead. He played the same composition
which Chopin had played on the previous occasion, and the
audience was again enchanted. At the end of the piece Liszt
struck a match and lighted the candles which stood on the piano.
Of course general stupefaction ensued.

"What do you say to it?" said Liszt to his rival.
"I say what everyone says; I too believed it was Chopin."
"You see," said the virtuoso rising, "that Liszt can be Chopin
when he likes; but could Chopin be Liszt?"

Instead of commenting on the improbability of a generous artist
thus cruelly taunting his sensitive rival, I shall simply say
that Liszt had not the slightest recollection of ever having
imitated Chopin's playing in a darkened room. There may be some
minute grains of truth mixed up with all this chaff of fancy--
Chopin's displeasure at the liberties Liszt took with his
compositions was no doubt one of them--but it is impossible to
separate them.

M. Rollinat relates also how in 184-, when Chopin, Liszt, the
Comtesse d'Agoult, Pauline Garcia, Eugene Delacroix, the actor
Bocage, and other celebrities were at Nohant, the piano was one
moonlit night carried out to the terrace; how Liszt played the
hunting chorus from Weber's Euryanthe, Chopin some bars from an
impromptu he was then composing; how Pauline Garcia sang Nel cor
piu non mi sento, and a niece of George Sand a popular air; how
the echo answered the musicians; and how after the music the
company, which included also a number of friends from the
neighbouring town, had punch and remained together till dawn. But
here again M. Rollinat's veracity is impugned on all sides.
Madame Viardot-Garcia declares that she was never at Nohant when
Liszt was there; and Liszt did not remember having played on the
terrace of the chateau. Moreover, seeing that the first
performance of the Prophete took place on April 16, 1849, is it
likely that Madame Pauline Garcia was studying her part before or
in 1846? And unless she did so she could not meet Chopin at
Nohant when she was studying it.

M. Rollinat is more trustworthy when he tells us that there was a
pretty theatre and quite an assortment of costumes at the
chateau; that the dramas and comedies played there were
improvised by the actors, only the subject and the division into
scenes being given; and that on two pianos, concealed by
curtains, one on the right and one on the left of the stage,
Chopin and Liszt improvised the musical part of the
entertainment. All this is, however, so much better and so much
more fully told by George Sand (in Dernieres Pages: Le Theatre
des Marionnettes de Nohant) that we will take our information
from her. It was in the long nights of a winter that she
conceived the plan of these private theatricals in imitation of
the comedia dell' arte--namely, of "pieces the improvised
dialogue of which followed a written sketch posted up behind the
scenes."

They resembled the charades which are acted in society and
which are more or less developed according to the ensemble and
the talent of the performers. We had begun with these. By
degrees the word of the charade disappeared and we played
first mad saynetes, then comedies of intrigues and adventures,
and finally dramas of incidents and emotions. The whole thing
began by pantomime, and this was of Chopin's invention; he
occupied the place at the piano and improvised, while the
young people gesticulated scenes and danced comic ballets. I
leave you to imagine whether these now wonderful, now charming
improvisations quickened the brains and made supple the legs
of our performers. He led them as he pleased and made them
pass, according to his fancy, from the droll to the severe,
from the burlesque to the solemn, from the graceful to the
passionate. We improvised costumes in order to play
successively several roles. As soon as the artist saw them
appear, he adapted his theme and his accent in a marvellous
manner to their respective characters. This went on for three
evenings, and then the master, setting out for Paris, left us
thoroughly stirred up, enthusiastic, and determined not to
suffer the spark which had electrified us to be lost.

To get away from the quicksands of Souvenirs--for George Sand's
pages, too, were written more than thirty years after the
occurrences she describes, and not published till 1877--I shall
make some extracts from the contemporaneous correspondence of
George Sand's great friend, the celebrated painter Eugene
Delacroix. [FOOTNOTE: Lettres de Eugene Delacroix (1815 a 1863)
recucillies et publiees par M. Philippe Burty. Paris, 1878.] The
reader cannot fail to feel at once the fresh breeze of reality
that issues from these letters, which contain vivid sketches full
of natural beauties and free from affectation and striving after
effect:--

Nohant, June 7, 1842.

...The place is very pleasant, and the hosts do their utmost
to please me. When we are not assembled to dine, breakfast,
play at billiards, or walk, we are in our rooms, reading, or
resting on our sofas. Now and then there come to you through
the window opening on the garden, whiffs of the music of
Chopin, who is working in his room; this mingles with the song
of the nightingales and the odour of the roses. You see that
so far I am not much to be pitied, and, nevertheless, work
must come to give the grain of salt to all this. This life is
too easy, I must purchase it with a little racking of my
brains; and like the huntsman who eats with more appetite when
he has got his skin torn by bushes, one must strive a little
after ideas in order to feel the charm of doing nothing.

Nohant, June 14, 1842.

...Although I am in every respect most agreeably
circumstanced, both as regards body and mind, for I am in much
better health, I have not been able to prevent myself from
thinking of work. How strange! this work is fatiguing, and yet
the species of activity it gives to the mind is necessary to
the body itself. In vain did I try to get up a passion for
billiards, in which I receive a lesson every day, in vain have
I good conversations on all the subjects that please me, music
that I seize on the wing and by whiffs, I have felt the need
of doing something. I have begun a Sainte-Anne for the parish,
and I have already set it agoing.

Nohant, June 22, 1842.

...Pen and ink certainly become more and more repugnant to me.
I have no more than you any event to record. I lead a monastic
life, and as monotonous as it well can be. No event varies the
course of it. We expected Balzac, who has not come, and I am
not sorry. He is a babbler who would have destroyed this
harmony of NONCHALANCE which I am enjoying thoroughly; at
intervals a little painting, billiards, and walking, that is
more than is necessary to fill up the days. There is not even
the distraction of neighbours and friends from the environs;
in this part of the country everyone remains at home and
occupies him self with his oxen and his land. One would become
a fossil here in a very short time.

I have interminable private interviews with Chopin, whom I
love much, and who is a man of a rare distinction; he is the
most true artist I have met. He is one of the few one can
admire and esteem. Madame Sand suffers frequently from violent
headaches and pains in her eyes, which she tries to master as
much as possible and with much strength of will, so as not to
weary us with what she suffers.

The greatest event of my stay has been a peasants' ball on the
lawn of the chateau with the best bagpipers of the place. The
people of this part of the country present a remarkable type
of gentleness and good nature; ugliness is rare here, though
beauty is not often seen, but there is not that kind of fever
which is observable in the peasants of the environs of Paris.
All the women have the appearance of those sweet faces one
sees only in the pictures of the old masters. They are all
Saint Annes.

Amidst the affectations, insincerities, and superficialities of
Chopin's social intercourse, Delacroix's friendship--we have
already seen that the musician reciprocated the painter's
sentiments--stands out like a green oasis in a barren desert.
When, on October 28, 1849, a few days after Chopin's death,
Delacroix sent a friend a ticket for the funeral service of the
deceased, he speaks of him as "my poor and dear Chopin." But the
sincerity of Delacroix's esteem and the tenderness of his love
for Chopin are most fully revealed in some lines of a letter
which he wrote on January 7, 1861, to Count Czymala [Grzymala]:--

When I have finished [the labours that took up all his time],
I shall let you know, and shall see you again, with the
pleasure I have always had, and with the feelings your kind
letter has reanimated in me. With whom shall I speak of the
incomparable genius whom heaven has envied the earth, and of
whom I dream often, being no longer able to see him in this
world nor to hear his divine harmonies.

If you see sometimes the charming Princess Marcelline
[Czartoryska], another object of my respect, place at her feet
the homage of a poor man who has not ceased to be full of the
memory of her kindnesses and of admiration for her talent,
another bond of union with the seraph whom we have lost and
who, at this hour, charms the celestial spheres.

The first three of the above extracts from Delacroix's letters
enable us to form a clear idea of what the everyday life at
Nohant was like, and after reading them we can easily imagine
that its monotony must have had a depressing effect on the
company-loving Chopin. But the drawback was counterbalanced by an
advantage. At Paris most of Chopin's time was occupied with
teaching and the pleasures of society, at Nohant he could devote
himself undisturbed and undistracted to composition. And there is
more than sufficient evidence to prove that in this respect
Chopin utilised well the quiet and leisure of his rural
retirement.

Few things excite the curiosity of those who have a taste for art
and literature so much as an artist's or poet's mode of creation.
With what interest, for instance, do we read Schindler's account
of how Beethoven composed his Missa Solemnis--of the master's
absolute detachment from the terrestrial world during the time he
was engaged on this work; of his singing, shouting, and stamping,
when he was in the act of giving birth to the fugue of the Credo!
But as regards musicians, we know, generally speaking, very
little on the subject; and had not George Sand left us her
reminiscences, I should not have much to tell the reader about
Chopin's mode of creation. From Gutmann I learned that his master
worked long before he put a composition to paper, but when it was
once in writing did not keep it long in his portfolio. The latter
part of this statement is contradicted by a remark of the better-
informed Fontana, who, in the preface to Chopin's posthumous
works, says that the composer, whether from caprice or
nonchalance, had the habit of keeping his manuscripts sometimes a
very long time in his portfolio before giving them to the public.
As George Sand observed the composer with an artist's eye and
interest, and had, of course, better opportunities than anybody
else to observe him, her remarks are particularly valuable. She
writes:--

His creation was spontaneous and miraculous. He found it
without seeking it, without foreseeing it. It came on his
piano suddenly, complete, sublime, or it sang in his head
during a walk, and he was impatient to play it to himself. But
then began the most heart-rending labour I ever saw. It was a
series of efforts, of irresolutions, and of frettings to seize
again certain details of the theme he had heard; what he had
conceived as a whole he analysed too much when wishing to
write it, and his regret at not finding it again, in his
opinion, clearly defined, threw him into a kind of despair. He
shut himself up in his room for whole days, weeping, walking,
breaking his pens, repeating and altering a bar a hundred
times, writing and effacing it as many times, and recommencing
the next day with a minute and desperate perseverance. He
spent six weeks over a single page to write it at last as he
had noted it down at the very first.

I had for a long time been able to make him consent to trust
to this first inspiration. But when he was no longer disposed
to believe me, he reproached me gently with having spoiled him
and with not being severe enough for him. I tried to amuse
him, to take him out for walks. Sometimes, taking away all my
brood in a country char a bancs, I dragged him away in spite
of himself from this agony. I took him to the banks of the
Creuse, and after being for two or three days lost amid
sunshine and rain in frightful roads, we arrived, cheerful and
famished, at some magnificently-situated place where he seemed
to revive. These fatigues knocked him up the first day, but he
slept. The last day he was quite revived, quite rejuvenated in
returning to Nohant, and he found the solution of his work
without too much effort; but it was not always possible to
prevail upon him to leave that piano which was much oftener
his torment than his joy, and by degrees he showed temper when
I disturbed him. I dared not insist. Chopin when angry was
alarming, and as, with me, he always restrained himself, he
seemed almost to choke and die.

A critic remarks in reference to this account that Chopin's mode
of creation does not show genius, but only passion. From which we
may conclude that he would not, like Carlyle, have defined genius
as the power of taking infinite pains. To be sure, the great
Scotchman's definition is inadequate, but nothing is more false
than the popular notion that the great authors throw off their
works with the pleasantest ease, that creation is an act of pure
enjoyment. Beethoven's sketch-books tell a different story; so do
also Balzac's proof-sheets and the manuscripts of Pope's version
of the Iliad and Odyssey in the British Museum. Dr. Johnson
speaking of Milton's MSS. observed truly: "Such reliques show how
excellence is acquired." Goethe in writing to Schiller asks him
to return certain books of "Wilhelm Meister" that he may go over
them A FEW TIMES before sending them to the press. And on re-
reading one of these books he cut out one third of its contents.
Moreover, if an author writes with ease, this is not necessarily
a proof that he labours little, for he may finish the work before
bringing it to paper. Mozart is a striking instance. He has
himself described his mode of composing--which was a process of
accumulation, agglutination, and crystallisation--in a letter to
a friend. The constitution of the mind determines the mode of
working. Some qualities favour, others obstruct the realisation
of a first conception. Among the former are acuteness and
quickness of vision, the power of grasping complex subjects, and
a good memory. But however varied the mode of creation may be, an
almost unvarying characteristic of the production of really
precious and lasting artwork is ungrudging painstaking, such as
we find described in William Hunt's "Talks about Art":--"If you
could see me dig and groan, rub it out and start again, hate
myself and feel dreadfully! The people who do things easily,
their things you look at easily, and give away easily." Lastly
and briefly, it is not the mode of working, but the result of
this working which demonstrates genius.

As Chopin disliked the pavilion in the Rue Pigalle, George Sand
moved with her household in 1842 to the quiet, aristocratic-
looking Cite (Court or Square) d'Orleans, where their friend
Madame Marliani arranged for them a vie de famille. To get to the
Cite d'Orleans one has to pass through two gateways--the first
leads from the Rue Taitbout (close to the Rue St. Lazare), into a
small out-court with the lodge of the principal concierge; the
second, into the court itself. In the centre is a grass plot with
four flower-beds and a fountain; and between this grass plot and
the footpath which runs along the houses extends a carriage
drive. As to the houses which form the square, they are well and
handsomely built, the block opposite the entrance making even
some architectural pretensions. Madame Sand's, Madame Marliani's,
and Chopin's houses, which bore respectively the numbers 5, 4,
and 3, were situated on the right side, the last-mentioned being
just in the first right-hand corner on entering from the out-
court. On account of the predilection shown for it by artists and
literary men as a place of abode, the Court d'Orldans has not
inaptly been called a little Athens. Alexander Dumas was one of
the many celebrities who lived there at one time or other; and
Chopin had for neighbours the famous singer Pauline Viardot-
Garcia, the distinguished pianoforte-professor Zimmermann, and
the sculptor Dantan, from whose famous gallery of caricatures, or
rather charges, the composer's portrait was not absent. Madame
Marliani, the friend of George Sand and Chopin, who has already
repeatedly been mentioned in this book, was the wife of Manuel
Marliani, Spanish Consul in Paris, author, [FOOTNOTE: Especially
notable among his political and historical publications in
Spanish and French is: "Histoire politique de l'Espagne moderne
suivie d'un apercu sur les finances." 2 vols. in 8vo (Paris,
1840).] politician, and subsequently senator. Lenz says that
Madame Marliani was a Spanish countess and a fine lady; and
George Sand describes her as good-natured and active, endowed
with a passionate head and maternal heart, but destined to be
unhappy because she wished to make the reality of life yield to
the ideal of her imagination and the exigences of her
sensibility.

Some excerpts from a letter written by George Sand on November
12, 1842, to her friend Charles Duvernet, and a passage from Ma
Vie will bring scene and actors vividly before us:--

We also cultivate billiards; I have a pretty little table,
which I hire for twenty francs a month, in my salon, and
thanks to kind friendships we approach Nohant life as much as
is possible in this melancholy Paris. What makes things
country-like also is that I live in the same square as the
family Marliani, Chopin in the next pavilion, so that without
leaving this large well-lighted and sanded Court d'Orleans, we
run in the evening from one to another like good provincial
neighbours. We have even contrived to have only one pot
[marmite], and eat all together at Madame Marliani's, which is
more economical and by far more lively than taking one's meals
at home. It is a kind of phalanstery which amuses us, and
where mutual liberty is much better guaranteed than in that of
the Fourierists...

Solange is at a boarding-school, and comes out every Saturday
to Monday morning. Maurice has resumed the studio con furia,
and I, I have resumed Consuelo like a dog that is being
whipped; for I have idled on account of my removal and the
fitting up of my apartments...

Kind regards and shakes of the hand from Viardot, Chopin, and
my children.

The passge [sic: passage] from Ma Vie, which contains some
repetitions along with a few additional touches, runs as follows:-
-

She [Madame Marliani] had fine apartments between the two we
[George Sand and Chopin] occupied. We had only a large planted
and sanded and always clean court to cross in order to meet,
sometimes, in her rooms, sometimes in mine, sometimes in
Chopin's when he was inclined to give us some music. We dined
with her at common expense. It was a very good association,
economical like all associations, and enabled one to see
society at Madame Marliani's, my friends more privately in my
apartments, and to take up my work at the hour when it suited
me to withdraw. Chopin rejoiced also at having a fine,
isolated salon where he could go to compose or to dream. But
he loved society, and made little use of his sanctuary except
to give lessons in it.

Although George Sand speaks only of a salon, Chopin's official
residence, as we may call it, consisted of several rooms. They
were elegantly furnished and always adorned with flowers--for he
loved le luxe and had the coquetterie des appartements.

[FOOTNOTE: When I visited in 1880 M. Kwiatkowski in Paris, he
showed me some Chopin relics: 1, a pastel drawing by Jules
Coignet (representing Les Pyramides d'Egypte), which hung always
above the composer's piano; 2, a little causeuse which Chopin
bought with his first Parisian savings; 3, an embroidered easy-
chair worked and presented to him by the Princess Czartoiyska;
and 4, an embroidered cushion worked and presented to him by
Madame de Rothschild. If we keep in mind Chopin's remarks about
his furniture and the papering of his rooms, and add to the above-
mentioned articles those which Karasowski mentions as having been
bought by Miss Stirling after the composer's death, left by her
to his mother, and destroyed by the Russians along with his
letters in 1861 when in possession of his sister Isabella
Barcinska--his portrait by Ary Scheffer, some Sevres porcelain
with the inscription "Offert par Louis Philippe a Frederic
Chopin," a fine inlaid box, a present from one of the Rothschild
family, carpets, table-cloths, easy-chairs, &c., worked by his
pupils--we can form some sort of idea of the internal
arrangements of the pianist-composer's rooms.]

Nevertheless, they exhibited none of the splendour which was to
be found in the houses of many of the celebrities then living in
Paris. "He observed," remarks Liszt, "on this point as well as in
the then so fashionable elegancies of walking-sticks, pins,
studs, and jewels, the instinctive line of the comme il faut
between the too much and the too little." But Chopin's letters
written from Nohant in 1839 to Fontana have afforded the reader
sufficient opportunities to make himself acquainted with the
master's fastidiousness and good taste in matters of furniture
and room decoration, above all, his horror of vulgar gaudiness.

Let us try to get some glimpses of Chopin in his new home.
Lindsay Sloper, who--owing, no doubt, to a great extent at least,
to the letter of recommendation from Moscheles which he brought
with him--had got permission from Chopin to come for a lesson as
often as he liked at eight o'clock in the morning, found the
master at that hour not in deshabille, but dressed with the
greatest care. Another early pupil, M. Mathias, always fell in
with the daily-attending barber. M. Mathias told me also of
Chopin's habit of leaning with his back against the mantel-piece
while he was chatting at the end of the lesson. It must have been
a pretty sight to see the master in this favourite attitude of
his, his coat buttoned up to the chin (this was his usual style),
the most elegant shoes on his small feet, faultless exquisiteness
characterising the whole of his attire, and his small eyes
sparkling with esprit and sometimes with malice.

Of all who came in contact with Chopin, however, no one made so
much of his opportunities as Lenz: some of his observations on
the pianist have already been quoted, those on the man and his
surroundings deserve likewise attention. [FOOTNOTE: W. von Lenz:
"Die Grossen Pianoforte-Virtuosen unserer Zeit."] Lenz came to
Paris in the summer or autumn of the year 1842; and as he wished
to study Chopin's mazurkas with the master himself, he awaited
impatiently his return from Nohant. At last, late in October,
Lenz heard from Liszt that Chopin had arrived in town; but Liszt
told him also that it was by no means an easy thing to get
lessons from Chopin, that indeed many had journeyed to Paris for
the purpose and failed even to get sight of him. To guard Lenz
against such a mishap, Liszt gave him a card with the words
"Laissez passer, Franz Liszt" on it, and advised him to call on
Chopin at two o'clock. The enthusiastic amateur was not slow in
availing himself of his artist friend's card and advice. But on
reaching his destination he was met in the anteroom by a male
servant--"an article of luxury in Paris, a rarissima avis in the
house of an artist," observes Lenz--who informed him that Chopin
was not in town. The visitor, however, was not to be put off in
this way, and insisted that the card should be taken in to
Chopin. Fortune favours the brave. A moment after the servant had
left the room the great artist made his appearance holding the
card in his hand: "a young man of middle height, slim, thin, with
a careworn, speaking face and the finest Parisian tournure."
Lenz does not hesitate to declare that he hardly ever met a
person so naturally elegant and winning. But here is what took
place at this interview.