Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician

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Although some of George Sand's friends were also Chopin's, there
can be no doubt that the society which gathered around her was on
the whole not congenial to him. Some remarks which Liszt makes
with regard to George Sand's salon at Nohant are even more
applicable to her salon in Paris.

An author's relations with the representatives of publicity
and his dramatic executants, actors and actresses, and with
those whom he treats with marked attention on account of their
merits or because they please him; the crossing of incidents,
the clash and rebound of the infatuations and disagreements
which result therefrom; were naturally hateful to him [to
Chopin]. For a long time he endeavoured to escape from them by
shutting his eyes, by making up his mind not to see anything.
There happened, however, such things, such catastrophes
[denouements], as, by shocking too much his delicacy,
offending too much his habits of the moral and social comme-il-
faut, ended in rendering his presence at Nohant impossible,
although he seemed at first to have felt more content [plus de
repif] there than elsewhere.

These are, of course, only mere surmises, but Liszt, although
often wrong as to incidents, is, thanks to his penetrative
genius, generally right as to essences. Indeed, if George Sand's
surroundings and Chopin's character and tastes are kept in view
nothing seems to be more probable than that his over-delicate
susceptibilities may have occasionally been shocked by
unrestrained vivacity, loud laughter, and perhaps even coarse
words; that his uncompromising idealism may have been disturbed
by the discordance of literary squabbles, intrigues, and business
transactions; that his peaceable, non-speculative, and non-
argumentative disposition may have been vexed and wearied by
discussions of political, social, religious, literary, and
artistic problems. Unless his own art was the subject, Chopin did
not take part in discussions. And Liszt tells us that Chopin not
only, like most artists, lacked a generalising mind [esprit
generalisateur], but showed hardly any inclination for
aesthetics, of which he had not even heard much. We may be sure
that to Chopin to whom discussions of any kind were distasteful,
those of a circle in which, as in that of George Sand, democratic
and socialistic, theistic and atheistic views prevailed, were
particularly so. For, notwithstanding his bourgeois birth, his
sympathies were with the aristocracy; and notwithstanding his
neglect of ritual observances, his attachment to the Church of
Rome remained unbroken. Chopin does not seem to have concealed
his dislike to George Sand's circle; if he did not give audible
expression to it, he made it sufficiently manifest by seeking
other company. That she was aware of the fact and displeased with
it, is evident from what she says of her lover's social habits in
Ma Vie. The following excerpt from that work is an important
biographical contribution; it is written not without bitterness,
but with hardly any exaggeration:--

He was a man of the world par excellence, not of the too
formal and too numerous world, but of the intimate world, of
the salons of twenty persons, of the hour when the crowd goes
away and the habitues crowd round the artist to wrest from him
by amiable importunity his purest inspiration. It was then
only that he exhibited all his genius and all his talent. It
was then also that after having plunged his audience into a
profound recueillement or into a painful sadness, for his
music sometimes discouraged one's soul terribly, especially
when he improvised, he would suddenly, as if to take away the
impression and remembrance of his sorrow from others and from
himself, turn stealthily to a glass, arrange his hair and his
cravat, and show himself suddenly transformed into a
phlegmatic Englishman, into an impertinent old man, into a
sentimental and ridiculous Englishwoman, into a sordid Jew.
The types were always sad, however comical they might be, but
perfectly conceived and so delicately rendered that one could
not grow weary of admiring them.

All these sublime, charming, or bizarre things that he knew
how to evolve out of himself made him the soul of select
society, and there was literally a contest for his company,
his noble character, his disinterestedness, his self-respect,
his proper pride, enemy of every vanity of bad taste and of
every insolent reclame, the security of intercourse with him,
and the exquisite delicacy of his manners, making him a friend
equally serious and agreeable.

To tear Chopin away from so many gdteries, to associate him
with a simple, uniform, and constantly studious life, him who
had been brought up on the knees of princesses, was to deprive
him of that which made him live, of a factitious life, it is
true, for, like a painted woman, he laid aside in the evening,
in returning to his home, his verve and his energy, to give
the night to fever and sleeplessness; but of a life which
would have been shorter and more animated than that of the
retirement and of the intimacy restricted to the uniform
circle of a single family. In Paris he visited several salons
every day, or he chose at least every evening a different one
as a milieu. He had thus by turns twenty or thirty salons to
intoxicate or to charm with his presence.

CHAPTER XXVII.

CHOPIN IN HIS SOCIAL RELATIONS: HIS PREDILECTION FOR THE
FASHIONABLE SALON SOCIETY (ACCOUNTS BY MADAME GIRARDIN AND
BERLIOZ); HIS NEGLECT OF THE SOCIETY OF ARTISTS (ARY SCHEFFER,
MARMONTEL, HELLER, SCHULHOFF, THE PARIS CORRESPONDENT OF THE
MUSICAL WORLD); APHORISMS BY LISZT ON CHOPIN IN HIS SOCIAL
ASPECT.--CHOPIN'S FRIENDSHIPS.--GEORGE SAND, LISZT, LENZ, HELLER,
MARMONTEL, AND HILLER ON HIS CHARACTER (IRRITABILITY, FITS OF
ANGER--SCENE WITH MEYERBEER--GAIETY AND RAILLERY, LOVE OF
SOCIETY, AND LITTLE TASTE FOR READING, PREDILECTION FOR THINGS
POLISH).--HIS POLISH, GERMAN, ENGLISH, AND RUSSIAN FRIENDS.--THE
PARTY MADE FAMOUS BY LISZT'S ACCOUNT.--HIS INTERCOURSE WITH
MUSICIANS (OSBORNE, BERLIOZ, BAILLOT, CHERUBINI, KALKBRENNER,
FONTANA, SOWINSKI, WOLFF, MEYERBEER, ALKAN, ETC.).--HIS
FRIENDSHIP WITH LISZT.--HIS DISLIKE TO LETTER-WRITING.

George Sand, although one of the cleverest of the literary
portrayers who have tried their hand at Chopin, cannot be
regarded as one of the most impartial; but it must be admitted
that in describing her deserted lover as un homme du monde par
excellence, non pas du monde trop officiel, trop nombreux, she
says what is confirmed by all who have known him, by his friends,
foes, and those that are neither. Aristocratic society, with
which he was acquainted from his earliest childhood, had always a
great charm for him. When at the beginning of 1833, a little more
than two years after his arrival in Paris, he informed his friend
Dziewanowski that he moved in the highest society--among
ambassadors, princes, and ministers--it is impossible not to see
that the fact gives him much satisfaction. Without going so far
as to say with a great contemporary of Chopin, Stephen Heller,
that the higher you go in society the greater is the ignorance
you find, I think that little if any good for either heart or
mind can come from intercourse with that section of the people
which proudly styles itself "society" (le monde). Many
individuals that belong to it possess, no doubt, true nobility,
wisdom, and learning, nay, even the majority may possess one or
the other or all of them in some degree, but these qualities are
so out of keeping with the prevailing frivolity that few have the
moral courage to show their better nature. If Chopin imagined
that he was fully understood as an artist by society, he was
sadly mistaken. Liszt and Heller certainly held that he was not
fully understood, and they did not merely surmise or speak from
hearsay, for neither of them was a stranger in that quarter,
although the latter avoided it as much as possible. What society
could and did appreciate in Chopin was his virtuosity, his
elegance, and his delicacy. It is not my intention to attempt an
enumeration of Chopin's aristocratic friends and acquaintances,
but in the dedications of his works the curious will find the
most important of them. There, then, we read the names of the
Princess Czartoryska, Countess Plater, Countess Potocka,
Princesse de Beauvau, Countess Appony, Countess Esterhazy, Comte
and Comtesse de Perthuis, Baroness Bronicka, Princess
Czernicheff, Princess Souzzo, Countess Mostowska, Countess
Czosnowska, Comtesse de Flahault, Baroness von Billing, Baron and
Baroness von Stockhausen, Countess von Lobau, Mdlle. de Noailles,
&c. And in addition to these we have representatives of the
aristocracy of wealth, Madame C. de Rothschild foremost amongst
them. Whether the banker Leo with whom and his family Chopin was
on very friendly terms may be mentioned in this connection, I do
not know. But we must remember that round many of the above names
cluster large families. The names of the sisters Countess Potocka
and Princesse de Beauvau call up at once that of their mother,
Countess Komar. Many of these here enumerated are repeatedly
mentioned in the course of this book, some will receive
particular attention in the next chapter. Now we will try to get
a glimpse of Chopin in society.

Madame de Girardin, after having described in one of her "Lettres
parisiennes" (March 7, 1847) [FOOTNOTE: The full title of the
work is: "Le Vicomte de Launay--Lettres parisiennes par Mdme.
Emile de Girardin." (Paris: Michel Levy freres.)] with what
success Mdlle. O'Meara accompanied by her master played his E
minor Concerto at a soiree of Madame de Courbonne, proceeds thus:-
-

Mdlle. Meara is a pupil of Chopin's. He was there, he was
present at the triumph of his pupil, the anxious audience
asked itself: "Shall we hear him?"

The fact is that it was for passionate admirers the torment of
Tantalus to see Chopin going about a whole evening in a salon
and not to hear him. The mistress of the house took pity on
us; she was indiscreet, and Chopin played, sang his most
delicious songs; we set to these joyous or sad airs the words
which came into our heads; we followed with our thoughts his
melodious caprices. There were some twenty of us, sincere
amateurs, true believers, and not a note was lost, not an
intention was misunderstood; it was not a concert, it was
intimate, serious music such as we love; he was not a virtuoso
who comes and plays the air agreed upon and then disappears;
he was a beautiful talent, monopolised, worried, tormented,
without consideration and scruples, whom one dared ask for the
most beloved airs, and who full of grace and charity repeated
to you the favourite phrase, in order that you might carry it
away correct and pure in your memory, and for a long time yet
feast on it in remembrance. Madame so-and-so said: "Please,
play this pretty nocturne dedicated to Mdlle. Stirling."--The
nocturne which I called the dangerous one.--He smiled, and
played the fatal nocturne. "I," said another lady, "should
like to hear once played by you this mazurka, so sad and so
charming." He smiled again, and played the delicious mazurka.
The most profoundly artful among the ladies sought expedients
to attain their end: "I am practising the grand sonata which
commences with this beautiful funeral march," and "I should
like to know the movement in which the finale ought to be
played." He smiled a little at the stratagem, and played the
finale, of the grand sonata, one of the most magnificent
pieces which he has composed.

Although Madame Girardin's language and opinions are fair
specimens of those prevalent in the beatified regions in which
Chopin delighted to move, we will not follow her rhapsodic eulogy
of his playing. That she cannot be ranked with the connoisseurs
is evident from her statement that the sonata BEGINS with the
funeral march, and that the FINALE is one of the most magnificent
creations of the composer. Notwithstanding Madame Girardin's
subsequent remark that Chopin's playing at Madame de Courbonne's
was quite an exception, her letter may mislead the reader into
the belief that the great pianist was easily induced to sit down
at the piano. A more correct idea may be formed of the real state
of matters from a passage in an article by Berlioz (Feuilleton du
Journal des Debats, October 27, 1849) in which the supremacy of
style over matter is a little less absolute than in the lady's
elegant chit-chat:--

A small circle of select auditors, whose real desire to hear
him was beyond doubt, could alone determine him to approach
the piano. What emotions he would then call forth! In what
ardent and melancholy reveries he loved to pour out his soul!
It was usually towards midnight that he gave himself up with
the greatest ABANDON, when the big butterflies of the salon
had left, when the political questions of the day had been
discussed at length, when all the scandal-mongers were at the
end of their anecdotes, when all the snares were laid, all the
perfidies consummated, when one was thoroughly tired of prose,
then, obedient to the mute petition of some beautiful,
intelligent eyes, he became a poet, and sang the Ossianic
loves of the heroes of his dreams, their chivalrous joys, and
the sorrows of the absent fatherland, his dear Poland always
ready to conquer and always defeated. But without these
conditions--the exacting of which for his playing all artists
must thank him for--it was useless to solicit him. The
curiosity excited by his fame seemed even to irritate him, and
he shunned as far as possible the nonsympathetic world when
chance had led him into it. I remember a cutting saying which
he let fly one evening at the master of a house where he had
dined. Scarcely had the company taken coffee when the host,
approaching Chopin, told him that his fellow-guests who had
never heard him hoped that he would be so good as to sit down
at the piano and play them some little thing [quelque petite
chose]. Chopin excused himself from the very first in a way
which left not the slightest doubt as to his inclination. But
when the other insisted, in an almost offensive manner, like a
man who knows the worth and the object of the dinner which he
has given, the artist cut the conversation short by saying
with a weak and broken voice and a fit of coughing: "Ah!
sir...I have...eaten so little!"

Chopin's predilection for the fashionable salon society led him
to neglect the society of artists. That he carried the odi
profanum vulgus, et arceo too far cannot for a moment be doubted.
For many of those who sought to have intercourse with him were
men of no less nobility of sentiment and striving than himself.
Chopin offended even Ary Scheffer, the great painter, who admired
him and loved him, by promising to spend an evening with him and
again and again disappointing him. Musicians, with a few
exceptions. Chopin seems always to have been careful to keep at a
distance, at least after the first years of his arrival in Paris.
This is regrettable especially in the case of the young men who
looked up to him with veneration and enthusiasm, and whose
feelings were cruelly hurt by the polite but unsympathetic
reception he gave them:--

We have had always a profound admiration for Chopin's talent
[writes M. Marmontel], and, let us add, a lively sympathy for
his person. No artist, the intimate disciples not excepted,
has more studied his compositions, and more caused them to be
played, and yet our relations with this great musician have
only been rare and transient. Chopin was surrounded, fawned
upon, closely watched by a small cenacle of enthusiastic
friends, who guarded him against importunate visitors and
admirers of the second order. It was difficult to get access
to him; and it was necessary, as he said himself to that other
great artist whose name is Stephen Heller, to try several
times before one succeeded in meeting him. These trials
["essais"] being no more to my taste than to Heller's, I could
not belong to that little congregation of faithful ones whose
cult verged on fanaticism.

As to Stephen Heller--who himself told me that he would have
liked to be more with Chopin, but was afraid of being regarded as
intrusive--Mr. Heller thinks that Chopin had an antipathy to him,
which considering the amiable and truly gentlemanly character of
this artist seems rather strange.

If the details of Karasowski's account of Chopin's and
Schulhoff's first meeting are correct, the Polish artist was in
his aloofness sometimes even deficient in that common civility
which good-breeding and consideration for the feelings of others
demand. Premising that Fetis in telling the story is less
circumstantial and lays the scene of the incident in the
pianoforte-saloon of Pleyel, I shall quote Karasowski's version,
as he may have had direct information from Schulhoff, who since
1855 has lived much of his time at Dresden, where Karasowski also
resides:--

Schulhoff came when quite a young man and as yet completely
unknown to Paris. There he learned that Chopin, who was then
already very ailing and difficult of access, was coming to the
pianoforte-manufactory of Mercier to inspect one of the newly-
invented transposing pianofortes. It was in the year 1844.
Schulhoff seized the opportunity to become personally
acquainted with the master, and made his appearance among the
small party which awaited Chopin. The latter came with an old
friend, a Russian Capellmeister [Soliva?]. Taking advantage of
a propitious moment, Schulhoff got himself introduced by one
of the ladies present. On the latter begging Chopin to allow
Schulhoff to play him something, the renowned master, who was
much bothered by dilettante tormentors, signified, somewhat
displeased, his consent by a slight nod of the head. Schulhoff
seated himself at the pianoforte, while Chopin, with his back
turned to him, was leaning against it. But already during the
short prelude he turned his head attentively towards Schulhoff
who now performed an Allegro brillant en forme de Senate (Op.
I), which he had lately composed. With growing interest Chopin
came nearer and nearer the keyboard and listened to the fine,
poetic playing of the young Bohemian; his pale features grew
animated, and by mien and gesture he showed to all who were
present his lively approbation. When Schulhoff had finished,
Chopin held out his hand to him with the words: "Vous etes un
vrai artiste, un collegue!" Some days after Schulhoff paid the
revered master a visit, and asked him to accept the dedication
of the composition he had played to him. Chopin thanked him in
a heart-winning manner, and said in the presence of several
ladies: "Je suis tres flatte de l'honneur que vous me faites."

The behaviour of Chopin during the latter part of this
transaction made, no doubt, amends for that of the earlier. But
the ungracious manner in which he granted the young musician
permission to play to him, and especially his turning his back to
Schulhoff when the latter began to play, are not excused by the
fact that he was often bothered by dilettante tormentors.

The Paris correspondent of the Musical World, writing immediately
after the death of the composer, describes the feeling which
existed among the musicians in the French capital, and also
suggests an explanation and excuse. In the number of the paper
bearing date November 10, 1849, we read as follows:--

Owing to his retired way of living and his habitual reserve,
Chopin had few friends in the profession; and, indeed, spoiled
from his original nature by the caprice of society, he was too
apt to treat his brother-artists with a supercilious hauteur,
which many, his equals, and a few, his superiors, were wont to
stigmatise as insulting. But from want of sympathy with the
man, they overlooked the fact that a pulmonary complaint,
which for years had been gradually wasting him to a shadow,
rendered him little fit for the enjoyments of society and the
relaxations of artistic conviviality. In short, Chopin, in
self-defence, was compelled to live in comparative seclusion,
but we wholly disbelieve that this isolation had its source in
unkindness or egotism. We are the more inclined to this
opinion by the fact that the intimate friends whom he
possessed in the profession (and some of them were pianists)
were as devotedly attached to him as the most romantic of his
aristocratic worshippers.

The reasoning does not seem to me quite conclusive. Would it not
have been possible to live in retirement without drawing upon
himself the accusation of supercilious hauteur? Moreover, as
Chopin was strong enough to frequent fashionable salons, he
cannot have been altogether unable to hold intercourse with his
brother-artists. And, lastly, who are the pianist friends that
were as devotedly attached to him as the most romantic of his
aristocratic worshippers? The fact that Chopin became
subsequently less social and more reticent than he had been in
his early Paris days, confined himself to a very limited number
of friends and families, and had relations of an intimate nature
with only a very few musicians, cannot, therefore, be
attributable to ill-health alone, although that too had, no
doubt, something to do with it, directly or indirectly. In short,
the allegation that Chopin was "spoiled by the caprice of
society," as the above-quoted correspondent puts it, is not only
probable, but even very likely. Fastidious by nature and
education, he became more so, partly in consequence of his
growing physical weakness, and still more through the influence
of the society with which, in the exercise of his profession and
otherwise, he was in constant contact. His pupils and many of his
other admirers, mostly of the female sex and the aristocratic
class, accustomed him to adulation and adoration to such an
extent as to make these to be regarded by him as necessaries of
life. Some excerpts from Liszt's book, which I shall quote here
in the form of aphorisms, will help to bring Chopin, in his
social aspect, clearly before the reader's eyes:--

As he did not confound his time, thought, and ways with those
of anyone, the society of women was often more convenient to
him in that it involved fewer subsequent relations.

He carried into society the uniformity of temper of people
whom no annoyance troubles because they expect no interest.

His conversation dwelt little on stirring subjects. He glided
over them; as he was not at all lavish of his time, the talk
was easily absorbed by the details of the day.

He loved the unimportant talk [les causeries sans portee] of
people whom he esteemed; he delighted in the childish
pleasures of young people. He passed readily whole evenings in
playing blind-man's-buff with young girls, in telling them
amusing or funny little stories, in making them laugh the mad
laughter of youth, which it gives even more pleasure to hear
than the singing of the warbler. [FOOTNOTE: This, I think,
must refer to the earlier years of Chopin's residence in
Paris.]

In his relations and conversations he seemed to take an
interest in what preoccupied the others; he took care not to
draw them out of the circle of their personality inorder to
lead them into his. If he gave up little of his time, he, to
make up for it, reserved to himself nothing of that which he
granted.

The presence of Chopin was, therefore, always heartily welcome
[fetee]. Not hoping to be understood [devine], disdaining to
speak of himself [de se raconter lui-meme], he occupied
himself so much with everything that was not himself that his
intimate personality remained aloof, unapproached and
unapproachable, under this polite and smooth [glissant]
surface where it was impossible to get a footing.

He pleased too much to make people reflect.

He hardly spoke either of love or of friendship.

He was not exacting like those whose rights and just demands
surpass by far what one would have to offer them. The most
intimate acquaintances did not penetrate to this sacred recess
where, withdrawn from all the rest of his life, dwelt the
secret motive power of his soul: a recess so concealed that
one scarcely suspected its existence.

Ready to give everything, he did not give himself.

The last dictum and part of the last but one were already quoted
by me in an earlier chapter, but for the sake of completeness,
and also because they form an excellent starting-point for the
following additional remarks on Chopin's friendships, I have
repeated them here. First of all, I venture to make the sweeping
assertion that Chopin had among his non-Polish friends none who
could be called intimate in the fullest sense of the word, none
to whom he unbosomed himself as he did to Woyciechowski and
Matuszynski, the friends of his youth, and Grzymala, a friend of
a later time. Long cessation of personal intercourse together
with the diverging development of their characters in totally
unlike conditions of life cannot but have diminished the intimacy
with the first named. [FOOTNOTE: Titus Woyciechowski continued to
live on his estate Poturzyn, in the kingdom of Poland.] With
Matuszyriski Chopin remained in close connection till this
friend's death. [FOOTNOTE: Karasowski says in the first volume of
his Polish biography of Chopin that Matuszynski died on April 20,
1842; and in the second that he died after Chopin's father, but
in the same year--that is, in 1844.] How he opened his whole
heart to Grzymala we shall see in a subsequent chapter. That his
friendship with Fontana was of a less intimate character becomes
at once apparent on comparing Chopin's letters to him with those
he wrote to the three other Polish friends. Of all his
connections with non-Poles there seems to be only one which
really deserves the name of friendship, and that is his
connection with Franchomme. Even here, however, he gave much less
than he received. Indeed, we may say--speaking generally, and not
only with a view to Franchomme--that Chopin was more loved than
loving. But he knew well how to conceal his deficiencies in this
respect under the blandness of his manners and the coaxing
affectionateness of his language. There is something really
tragic, and comic too, in the fact that every friend of Chopin's
thought that he had more of the composer's love and confidence
than any other friend. Thus, for instance, while Gutmann told me
that Franchomme was not so intimate with Chopin that the latter
would confide any secrets to him, Franchomme made to me a similar
statement with regard to Gutmann. And so we find every friend of
Chopin declaring that every other friend was not so much of a
friend as himself. Of Chopin's procedures in friendship much may
be learned from his letters; in them is to be seen something of
his insinuating, cajoling ways, of his endeavours to make the
person addressed believe himself a privileged favourite, and of
his habit of speaking not only ungenerously and unlovingly, but
even unjustly of other persons with whom he was apparently on
cordial terms. In fact, it is only too clear that Chopin spoke
differently before the faces and behind the backs of people. You
remember how in his letters to Fontana he abuses Camille Pleyel
in a manner irreconcilable with genuine love and esteem. Well, to
this same Camille Pleyel, of whom he thus falls foul when he
thinks himself in the slightest aggrieved, he addresses on one
occasion the following note. Mark the last sentence:--