The Childhood of Chopin
On the first of October of that same year, Nicolas Chopin was made
professor of French at the Warsaw High School, and the whole family
moved to the capital. They were immediately absorbed into the urban
life and never returned to the country. Warsaw was indeed a fertile
soil where one quickly took root among its Italian palaces and its
wooden huts. Its swarming population mingled Asiatic pomp with the
filth of Esquimaux. Here were to be met the bearded Jew, the nun, the
young girl in a silken cloak, and the mustachioed Pole, in caftan, with
belt, sword, and high red boots.
M. Chopin bestirred himself to increase his income, because his family
had grown. After Louise and Frederick, Isabelle and then Emilie
were born. In 1812 he became professor at the School of Artillery
and Engineers and in 1815 obtained the same post in the Preparatory
Military Academy. Finally he turned his own home into a small
boarding-school for the children of the rich.
It is not difficult to imagine the surroundings, the manners, and
the customs among which Frederick grew up in this united and busy
household. A somewhat rigid modesty and the domestic virtues of the
family protected him from rough contacts with reality. It was thus,
said Liszt, that “his imagination took on the velvety texture of plants
which are never exposed to the dust of the highways.”
Here, then, was a child, very gentle, very pale, sprightly, with the
sensibilities of a little girl, and dominated by two passions: his
love for his mother and his love for the piano. He had been placed
before the keyboard at a very early age and had returned to it of his
own accord, drawn by the keys. Music drew tears and cries from him. It
became at once a necessary evil. He was also very fond of his sisters,
and chose four friends among his father’s pupils: Fontana, Titus
Woyciechowski, and the Wodzinski brothers.
To celebrate his eighth birthday, he played at the benefit of the poet,
Niemcewicz. He had been dressed in the English fashion, with a velvet
coat and a large turn-over collar. And when his mother, afterwards,
questioned him about his success, asking what the audience had liked
best, he replied with pride, “My collar.”
The Polish aristocracy, and even the Grand Duke Constantin himself, the
Governor of Warsaw, became interested in the child. He was commanded to
appear before this redoubtable prince—and played for him a march of his
own composition.
“Child,” asked the brother of the Tsar, “why do you always look
upwards?”
But is it not heavenward that poets look? Chopin was “neither an
intellectual prodigy nor a little thinking animal,” writes one of
his biographers, “but a simple, modest child who played the piano as
naturally as the birds sing....”
He had teachers. First Zywny, a venerable gentleman of over sixty, a
native of Bohemia, a violinist and a good teacher. He was absorbed in
the cult of Bach, a passion which he instilled in his pupil; and the
depth of such childish enthusiasms is well known. Then, in 1824, at the
time when Frederick was sent to college, his father replaced Zywny by
Elsner, a Silesian professor who taught him harmony and composition.
Without being a very famous musician, Elsner was something of a
personage, a composer of operas, symphonies, masses, and a Director
of the Conservatory. He had the virtue of never suppressing Chopin’s
personal gifts: “Let him alone,” he said. “If he leaves the main
road and the traditional methods, it is because he has his own ways,
and some day his work will show an originality that no one possesses
to-day. He follows a unique path because his gifts are unique.”
One can applaud this happy prophet. Elsner was a retiring man. He
lived in two cells in an old monastery in the rue des Jésuites. His
pupils saluted him on the right shoulder, according to the Polish
fashion, and he responded by a kiss on each cheek. In his annual report
to the Conservatory he writes: “Chopin, Frederick (3rd year pupil),
astonishing capability, musical genius.”
Chopin worked well at college also, and took prizes; in short, he was
a fluent and charming youth, and gay to the point of clownishness,
like many melancholics. His comrades adored him, above all because of
his talent for mimicry and imitation, which showed to what a point he
felt the grimaces of souls. He acted plays with his sisters, who wrote
comedies for the children. He edited a paper.
These minor events enamelled the surface of a life without scratches.
Three facts alone should be remarked. In May and June, 1825, in two
concerts at the Conservatory, Chopin played an _Allegro_ of Moschelès’
and improvised for the Emperor Alexander, who gave him a ring. During
the course of the same year, he published his _Premier Rondo in C
minor_ (op. 1), dedicated to Mme. Linde, the wife of the Head of the
school. Then, the next summer, he was invited to the Château d’Antonin
by Prince Radziwill.
Playing in public had already lost its novelty. On the other hand,
publishing his music was a new joy, which he tasted with naïve ardour.
And if the piece was neither very profound nor very scholarly, it had
at any rate his personal imprint. “A lady,” said Schumann somewhat
later in speaking of this little work, “would find it most delicate,
most charming....” Note how already they hasten the advent of the
ladies! Such is the first blossom of this chaste soul.
The stay at the Château d’Antonin, in the summer of 1826, revealed to
Chopin the pleasures that can come from material plenty and refinements
of the spirit, when these are linked together by skilled hands. This
was precisely what the young aristocrat needed to awaken his æsthetic
response. It is a luxury which the strong scorn; but a sensitive heart
would have difficulty in dispensing with a judicious distribution
of these amenities, ranging from perfect food to works of art, from
physical luxury to the subtleties of the mind, and subduing this heart,
despite itself, to the domination of the delicious. I myself should
think it very interesting to know all about the furnishings, the
pictures, the guests, the conversations to be seen and heard during
the summer of 1826 at Prince Radziwill’s. Unfortunately, these details
cannot be known with any degree of certainty. After all, it may be
sufficiently enlightening that Chopin called Antonin “a paradise” and
that he found the young princesses “divine.” But it is certain that
from that time on his nostalgia for that perfect harmony derived from
the union of fatherland, a sumptuous dwelling and radiant young beings,
shattered his transport into invincible regrets.