Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician

F >> Frederick Niecks >> Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64

[FOOTNOTE: Except the letter of George Sand given on p. 75, and
the note of Chopin to George Sand which will be given a little
farther on, nothing, I think, of their correspondence has become
public. But even if their letters were forth-coming, it is more
likely than not that they would fail to clear up the mystery.
Here I ought, perhaps, to reproduce the somewhat improbable story
told in the World of December 14, 1887, by the Paris
correspondent who signs himself "Theoc." He writes as follows: "I
have heard that it was by saving her letters to Chopin that M.
Alexandre Dumas won the friendship of George Sand. The anecdote
runs thus: When Chopin died, his sister found amongst his papers
some two hundred letters of Madame Sand, which she took with her
to Poland. By chance this lady had some difficulties at the
frontier with the Russian custom-house officials; her trunks were
seized, and the box containing the letters was mislaid and lost.
A few years afterwards, one of the custom-house officials found
the letters and kept them, not knowing the name and the address
of the Polish lady who had lost them. M. Dumas discovered this
fact, and during a journey in Russia he explained to this
official how painful it would be if by some indiscretion these
letters of the illustrious novelist ever got into print. 'Let me
restore them to Madame Sand,' said M. Dumas. 'And my duty?' asked
the customs official. 'If anybody ever claims the letters,'
replied M. Dumas, 'I authorise you to say that I stole them.' On
this condition M. Dumas, then a young man, obtained the letters,
brought them back to Paris, and restored them to Madame Sand,
whose acquaintance he thus made. Madame Sand burnt all her
letters to Chopin, but she never forgot the service that M. Dumas
had rendered her."]

I have done my utmost to elucidate the tragic event which it is
impossible not to regard as one of the most momentous crises in
Chopin's life, and have succeeded in collecting besides the
material already known much that is new; but of what avail is
this for coming to a final decision if we find the depositions
hopelessly contradictory, and the witnesses more or less
untrustworthy--self-interest makes George Sand's evidence
suspicious, the instability of memory that of others. Under the
circumstances it seems to me safest to place before the reader
the depositions of the various witnesses--not, however, without
comment--and leave him to form his own conclusions. I shall begin
with the account which George Sand gives in her Ma Vie:--

After the last relapses of the invalid, his mind had become
extremely gloomy, and Maurice, who had hitherto tenderly loved
him, was suddenly wounded by him in an unexpected manner about
a trifling subject. They embraced each other the next moment,
but the grain of sand had fallen into the tranquil lake, and
little by little the pebbles fell there, one after
another...All this was borne; but at last, one day, Maurice,
tired of the pin-pricks, spoke of giving up the game. That
could not be, and should not be. Chopin would not stand my
legitimate and necessary intervention. He bowed his head and
said that I no longer loved him.

What blasphemy after these eight years of maternal devotion!
But the poor bruised heart was not conscious of its delirium.
I thought that some months passed at a distance and in silence
would heal the wound, and make his friendship again calm and
his memory equitable. But the revolution of February came, and
Paris became momentarily hateful to this mind incapable of
yielding to any commotion in the social form. Free to return
to Poland, or certain to be tolerated there, he had preferred
languishing ten [and some more] years far from his family,
whom he adored, to the pain of seeing his country transformed
and deformed [denature]. He had fled from tyranny, as now he
fled from liberty.

I saw him again for an instant in March, 1848. I pressed his
trembling and icy hand. I wished to speak to him, he slipped
away. Now it was my turn to say that he no longer loved me. I
spared him this infliction, and entrusted all to the hands of
Providence and the future.

I was not to see him again. There were bad hearts between us.
There were good ones too who were at a loss what to do. There
were frivolous ones who preferred not to meddle with such
delicate matters; Gutmann was not there.

I have been told that he had asked for me, regretted me, and
loved me filially up to the very end. It was thought fit to
conceal this from me till then. It was also thought fit to
conceal from him that I was ready to hasten to him.

Liszt's account is noteworthy because it gives us the opinion of
a man who knew the two principal actors in the drama intimately,
and had good opportunities to learn what contemporary society
thought about it. Direct knowledge of the facts, however, Liszt
had not, for he was no longer a friend either of the one or the
other of the two parties:--

These commencements, of which Madame de Stael spoke,
[FOOTNOTE: He alludes to her saying: En amour, il n'y a que
des commencemens.] had already for a long time been exhausted
between the Polish artist and the French poet. They had only
survived with the one by a violent effort of respect for the
ideal which he had gilded with its fatal brilliancy; with the
other by a false shame which sophisticated on the pretension
to preserve constancy in fidelity. The time came when this
factitious existence, which succeeded no longer in galvanising
fibres dried up under the eyes of the spiritualistic artist,
seemed to him to surpass what honour permitted him not to
perceive. No one knew what was the cause or the pretext of the
sudden rupture; one saw only that after a violent opposition
to the marriage of the daughter of the house, Chopin abruptly
left Nohant never to return again.

However unreliable Liszt's facts may be, the PHILOSOPHY of his
account shows real insight. Karasowski, on the other hand, has
neither facts nor insight. He speaks with a novelist's confidence
and freedom of characters whom he in no way knows, and about whom
he has nothing to tell but the vaguest and most doubtful of
second-hand hearsays:--

The depressed invalid became now to her a burden. At first her
at times sombre mien and her shorter visits in the sick-room
showed him that her sympathy for him was on the decrease;
Chopin felt this painfully, but he said nothing...\The
complaints of Madame Sand that the nursing of the invalid
exhausted her strength, complaints which she often gave
expression to in his presence, hurt him. He entreated her to
leave him alone, to take walks in the fresh air; he implored
her not to give up for his sake her amusements, but to
frequent the theatre, to give parties, &c.; he would be
contented in quietness and solitude if he only knew that she
was happy. At last, when the invalid still failed to think of
a separation from her, she chose a heroic means.

By this heroic means Karasowski understands the publication of
George Sand's novel Lucrezia Floriani (in 1847), concerning which
he says the story goes that "out of refined cruelty the proof-
sheets were handed to him [Chopin] with the request to correct
the misprints." Karasowski also reports as a "fact" that

the children of Madame Sand [who, by the way, were a man of
twenty-three and a woman of eighteen] said to him [Chopin],
pointing to the novel: "M. Chopin, do you know that you are
meant by the Prince Karol?"...In spite of all this the
invalid, and therefore less passionate, artist bore with the
most painful feeling the mortification caused him by the
novel...At the beginning of the year 1847 George Sand brought
about by a violent scene, the innocent cause of which was her
daughter, a complete rupture. To the unjust reproaches which
she made to him, he merely replied: "I shall immediately leave
your house, and wish henceforth no longer to be regarded by
you as living." These words were very welcome to her; she made
no objections, and the very same day the artist left for ever
the house of Madame Sand. But the excitement and the mental
distress connected with it threw him once more on the sick-
bed, and for a long time people seriously feared that he would
soon exchange it for a coffin.

George Sand's view of the Lucrezia Floriani incident must be
given in full. In Ma Vie she writes as follows:--

It has been pretended that in one of my romances I have
painted his [Chopin's] character with a great exactness of
analysis. People were mistaken, because they thought they
recognised some of his traits; and, proceeding by this system,
too convenient to be sure, Liszt himself, in a Life of Chopin,
a little exuberant as regards style, but nevertheless full of
very good things and very beautiful pages, has gone astray in
good faith. I have traced in Prince Karol the character of a
man determined in his nature, exclusive in his sentiments,
exclusive in his exigencies.

Chopin was not such. Nature does not design like art, however
realistic it may be. She has caprices, inconsequences,
probably not real, but very mysterious. Art only rectifies
these inconsequences because it is too limited to reproduce
them.

Chopin was a resume of these magnificent inconsequences which
God alone can allow Himself to create, and which have their
particular logic. He was modest on principle, gentle by habit,
but he was imperious by instinct and full of a legitimate
pride which was unconscious of itself. Hence sufferings which
he did not reason and which did not fix themselves on a
determined object.

Moreover, Prince Karol is not an artist. He is a dreamer, and
nothing more; having no genius, he has not the rights of
genius. He is, therefore, a personage more true than amiable,
and the portrait is so little that of a great artist that
Chopin, in reading the manuscript every day on my writing-
desk, had not the slightest inclination to deceive himself, he
who, nevertheless, was so suspicious.

And yet afterwards, by reaction, he imagined, I am told, that
this was the case. Enemies (I had such about him who call
themselves his friends; as if embittering a suffering heart
was not murder, enemies made him believe that this romance was
a revelation of his character. At that time his memory was, no
doubt, enfeebled: he had forgotten the book, why did he not
reread it!

This history is so little ours! It was the very reverse of it
There were between us neither the same raptures [enivrements]
nor the same sufferings. Our history had nothing of a romance;
its foundation was too simple and too serious for us ever to
have had occasion for a quarrel with each other, a propos of
each other.

The arguments advanced by George Sand are anything but
convincing; in fact, her defence is extremely weak. She does not
even tell us that she did not make use of Chopin as a model. That
she drew a caricature and not a portrait will hardly be accepted
as an excuse, nay, is sure to be regarded as the very head and
front of her offending. But George Sand had extraordinarily naive
notions on this subject, notions which are not likely to be
shared by many, at least not by many outside the fraternities of
novelists and dramatists. Having mentioned, in speaking of her
grand-uncle the Abbe de Beaumont, that she thought of him when
sketching the portrait of a certain canon in Consuelo, and that
she had very much exaggerated the resemblance to meet the
requirements of the romance, she remarks that portraits traced in
this way are no longer portraits, and that those who feel
offended on recognising themselves do an injustice both to the
author and themselves. "Caricature or idealisation," she writes,
"it is no longer the original model, and this model has little
judgment if it thinks it recognises itself, if it becomes angry
or vain on seeing what art or imagination has been able to make
of it." This is turning the tables with a vengeance; and if
impudence can silence the voice of truth and humanity, George
Sand has gained her case. In her account of the Lucrezia Floriani
incident George Sand proceeds as usual when she is attacked and
does not find it more convenient simply to declare that she will
not condescend to defend herself--namely, she envelops the whole
matter in a mist of beautiful words and sentiments out of which
issues--and this is the only clearly-distinguishable thing--her
own saintly self in celestial radiance. But notwithstanding all
her arguments and explanations there remains the fact that Liszt
and thousands of others, I one of them, read Lucrezia Floriani
and were not a moment in doubt that Chopin was the prototype of
Prince Karol. We will not charge George Sand with the atrocity of
writing the novel for the purpose of getting rid of Chopin; but
we cannot absolve her from the sin of being regardless of the
pain she would inflict on one who once was dear to her, and who
still loved her ardently. Even Miss Thomas, [FOOTNOTE: In George
Sand, a volume of the "Eminent Women Series."] who generally
takes George Sand at her own valuation, and in this case too
tries to excuse her, admits that in Lucrezia Floriani there was
enough of reality interwoven to make the world hasten to identify
or confound Chopin with Prince Karol, that Chopin, the most
sensitive of mortals, could not but be pained by the inferences
which would be drawn, that "perhaps if only as a genius he had
the right to be spared such an infliction," and that, therefore,
"one must wish it could have appeared in this light to Madame
Sand." This is a mild way of expressing disapproval of conduct
that shows, to say the least, an inhuman callousness to the
susceptibilities of a fellow-being. And to speak of the
irresistible prompting of genius in connection with one who had
her faculties so well under her control is downright mockery. It
would, however, be foolish to expect considerateness for others
in one who needlessly detailed and proclaimed to the world not
only the little foibles but also the drunkenness and consequent
idiocy and madness of a brother whose family was still living.
Her practice was, indeed, so much at variance with her profession
that it is preposterous rather to accept than to doubt her words.
George Sand was certainly not the self-sacrificing woman she
pretended to be; for her sacrifices never outlasted her
inclinations, they were, indeed, nothing else than an abandonment
to her desires. And these desires were the directors of her
reason, which, aided by an exuberant imagination, was never at a
loss to justify any act, be it ever so cruel and abject. In
short, the chief characteristic of George Sand's moral
constitution was her incapacity of regarding anything she did
otherwise than as right. What I have said is fully borne out by
her Ma Vie and the "Correspondance," which, of course, can be
more easily and safely examined than her deeds and spoken words.

And now we will continue our investigations of the causes and
circumstances of the rupture. First I shall quote some passages
from letters written by George Sand, between which will be
inserted a note from Chopin to her. If the reader does not see at
once what several of these quotations have to do with the matter
under discussion, he will do so before long.

Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Nohant, September 1, 1846:--

It is exceedingly kind of you to offer me shelter [un gîte].
We have still our apartments in the Square Saint-Lazare
[Square d'Orleans], and nothing would prevent us from going
there.

Chopin to Madame Sand; Tuesday 2 1/2 [Paris, December 15,
1846]

[FOOTNOTE: The date is that of the postmark. A German
translation of the French original (in the Imperial Public
Library at St. Petersburg) will be found in La Mara's
"Musikerbriefe."]:--

Mademoiselle de Rozieres has found the piece of cloth in
question (it was in the camail-carton of Mdlle. Augustine),
and I sent it at once last night to Borie, [Victor Borie a
publicist and friend of George Sand] who, as Peter was told,
does not yet leave to-day. Here we have a little sun and
Russian snow. I am glad of this weather for your sake, and
imagine you walking about a great deal. Did Dib dance in last
night's pantomime? May you and yours enjoy good health!

Your most devoted,

C.

For your dear children.

I am well; but I have not the courage to leave my fireside for
a moment.

Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Nohant, May 6, 1847:--

Solange marries in a fortnight Clesinger, the sculptor, a man
of great talent, who is making much money, and can give her
the brilliant existence which, I believe, is to her taste. He
is very violently in love with her, and he pleases her much.
She was this time as prompt and firm in her determination as
she was hitherto capricious and irresolute. Apparently she has
met with what she dreamt of. May God grant it!

As regards myself, the young man pleases me also much and
Maurice likewise. He is little civilised at first sight; but
he is full of sacred fire and for some time past, since I
noticed him making advances, I have been studying him without
having the appearance of doing so...He has other qualities
which compensate for all the defects he may have and ought to
have.

...Somebody told me of him all the ill that can be said of a
man [on making inquiries George Sand found that Clesinger was
a man "irreproachable in the best sense of the word"].

M. Dudevant, whom he has been to see, consents. We do not know
yet where the marriage will take place. Perhaps at Nerac,
[FOOTNOTE: Where M. Dudevant, her whilom husband, resided.] in
order to prevent M. Dudevant from falling asleep in the
eternal to-morrow to the province.

Madame Sand to Mazzini; Nohant, May 22, 1847:--

I have just married and, I believe, well married my daughter
to an artist of powerful inspiration and will. I had for her
but one ambition--namely, that she should love and be loved;
my wish is realised. The future is in the hand of God, but I
believe in the duration of this love and this union.

Madame Sand to Charles Poncy; Nohant, August 9, 1847:--

My good Maurice is always calm, occupied, and lively. He
sustains and consoles me. Solange is in Paris with her
husband; they are going to travel. Chopin is in Paris also;
his health has not yet permitted him to make the journey; but
he is better.

The following letter, of an earlier date than those from which my
last two excerpts are taken, is more directly concerned with
Chopin.

Madame Sand to Gutmann; Nohant, May 12, 1847:--

Thanks, my good Gutmann, thanks from the bottom of my heart
for the admirable care which you lavish on him [Chopin]. I
know well that it is for him, for yourself, and not for me,
that you act thus, but I do not the less feel the need of
thanking you. It is a great misfortune for me that this
happens at a moment like that in which I find myself. Truly,
this is too much anxiety at one time! I would have gone mad, I
believe, if I had learned the gravity of his illness before
hearing that the danger was past. He does not know that I know
of it, and on account, especially, of the embarras in which he
knows I find myself, he wishes it to be concealed from me. He
wrote to me yesterday as if nothing had taken place, and I
have answered him as if I suspected as yet nothing. Therefore,
do not tell him that I write to you, and that for twenty-four
hours I have suffered terribly. Grzymala writes about you very
kindly a propos of the tenderness with which you have taken my
place by the side of him, and you especially, so that I will
tell you that I know it, and that my heart will keep account
of it seriously and for ever...

Au revoir, then, soon, my dear child, and receive my maternal
benediction. May it bring you luck as I wish!

George Sand.

[FOOTNOTE: This letter, which is not contained in the
"Correspondance," was, as far as I know, first published in
"Die Gegenwart" (Berlin, July 12, 1879)]

If all that George Sand here says is bona fide, the letter proves
that the rupture had not yet taken place. Indeed, Gutmann was of
opinion that it did not take place till 1848, shortly before
Chopin's departure for England, that, in-fact, she, her daughter,
and son-in-law were present at the concert he gave on February
16, 1848. That this, however, was not the case is shown both by a
letter written by George Sand from Nohant on February 18, 1848,
and by another statement of Gutmann's, according to which one of
the causes of the rupture was the marriage of Solange with
Clesinger of which Chopin (foreseeing unhappiness which did not
fail to come, and led to separation) did not approve. Another
cause, he thought, was Chopin's disagreements with Maurice Sand.
There were hasty remarks and sharp retorts between lover and son,
and scenes in consequence. Gutmann is a very unsatisfactory
informant, everything he read and heard seemed to pass through
the retort of his imagination and reappear transformed as his own
experience.

A more reliable witness is Franchomme, who in a letter to me
summed up the information which he had given me on this subject
by word of mouth as follows:--

Strange to say [chose bizarre], Chopin had a horror of the
figure 7; he would not have taken lodgings in a house which
bore the number 7; he would not have set out on a journey on
the 7th or 17th, &c. It was in 1837 that he formed the liaison
with George Sand; it was in 1847 that the rupture took place;
it was on the 17th October that my dear friend said farewell
to us. The rupture between Chopin and Madame Sand came about
in this way. In June, 1847, Chopin was making ready to start
for Nohant when he received a letter from Madame Sand to the
effect that she had just turned out her daughter and son-in-
law, and that if he received them in his house all would be
over between them [i.e., between George Sand and Chopin]. I
was with Chopin at the time the letter arrived, and he said to
me, "They have only me, and should I close my door upon them?
No, I shall not do it!" and he did not do it, and yet he knew
that this creature whom he adored would not forgive it him.
Poor friend, how I have seen him suffer!

Of the quarrel at Nohant, Franchomme gave the following account:-
-There was staying at that time at Nohant a gentleman who treated
Madame Clesinger invariably with rudeness. One day as Clesinger
and his wife went downstairs the person in question passed
without taking off his hat. The sculptor stopped him, and said,
"Bid madam a good day"; and when the gentleman or churl, as the
case may be, refused, he gave him a box on the ear. George Sand,
who stood at the top of the stairs, saw it, came down, and gave
in her turn Clesinger a box on the ear. After this she turned her
son-in-law together with his wife out of her house, and wrote the
above-mentioned letter to Chopin.

Madame Rubio had also heard of the box on the ear which George
Sand gave Clesinger. According to this informant there were many
quarrels between mother and daughter, the former objecting to the
latter's frequent visits to Chopin, and using this as a pretext
to break with him. Gutmann said to me that Chopin was fond of
Solange, though not in love with her. But now we have again got
into the current of gossip, and the sooner we get out of it the
better.

Before I draw my conclusions from the evidence I have collected,
I must find room for some extracts from two letters, respectively
written on August 9, 1847, and December 14,1847, to Charles
Poncy. The contents of these extracts will to a great extent be a
mystery to the reader, a mystery to which I cannot furnish the
key. Was Solange the chief subject of George Sand's lamentations?
Had Chopin or her brother, or both, to do with this paroxysm of
despair?

After saying how she has been overwhelmed by a chain of chagrins,
how her purest intentions have had a fatal issue, how her best
actions have been blamed by men and punished by heaven as crimes,
she proceeds:--

And do you think I have reached the end? No, all I have told
you hitherto is nothing, and since my last letter I have
exhausted all the cup of life contains of tribulation. It is
even so bitter and unprecedented that I cannot speak of it, at
least I cannot write it. Even that would give me too much
pain. I will tell you something about it when I see you...I
hoped at least for the old age on which I was entering the
recompense of great sacrifices, of much work, fatigue, and a
whole life of devotion and abnegation. I asked for nothing but
to render happy the objects of my affection. Well, I have been
repaid with ingratitude, and evil has got the upper hand in a
soul which I wished to make the sanctuary and the hearth of
the beautiful and the good. At present I struggle against
myself in order not to let myself die. I wish to accomplish my
task unto the end. May God aid me! I believe in Him and
hope!...Augustine has suffered much, but she has had great
courage and a true feeling of her dignity; and her health,
thank God, has not suffered.