Happy Years, Working Years
“To-morrow,” he wrote to his family, “to-morrow I cross the seas.” He
crossed the Boulevards and encountered Prince Valentin Radziwill.
This Radziwill family seems to have had a special influence on the
life of Chopin. What beautiful analogies one could draw in comparing
this encounter with such another when some pope, king, lord or
_fermier-général_ changed in one instant the fortunes of an artist
apparently condemned to the miscarriage of his genius. It seems
that there are between art and opulence secret and unconscious
fructifications. François I never seems to us more inspired than in
paying the debts of Clément Marot or in welcoming Leonardo da Vinci
on the terrace of Amboise, nor Jules II more sympathetic than when
climbing the scaffoldings of Michelangelo. Never does Elizabeth
of England seem more intelligent than when she commissions _The
Merry Wives of Windsor_ from the pen of Shakespeare, and Fouquet,
Treasurer-General, is remembered only because he subsidized La
Fontaine. Had they dictated their biographies themselves, these great
princes would doubtless have made no mention of such trivial gestures.
In the same way, this Radziwill dreamed not of adding a meritorious
line to his life when, meeting on the Boulevards this pitiful
compatriot, he proposed to take him that very evening to see Baron de
Rothschild. It is, however, from that casual proposal that the glory of
Chopin dates.
Baron de Rothschild received the most exclusive society. Chopin was
asked to play and he acceded with good grace. In a moment he captured
the elegant world, and on the morrow was bombarded with invitations
and requests for lessons. The Maréchale Lannes, Princess de Vaudemont,
Count Apponyi, and Prince Adam Czartoryski made themselves his
protectors. The lessons he gave cost no less than twenty francs an
hour. He changed his lodgings twice and finally installed himself at
No. 5 Chaussée d’Antin. Everybody began to talk of this poet who, in
the evening, in the rare salons where he would consent to play, would
people the darkness with a conclave of fairies. He called it “telling
little musical stories.” They were tales of infinite variety, since
it was above all in improvising that he showed his boldness. The
incompleteness of his sketches opened the avenues of the imagination
wherein the spirit lost itself. Chopin possessed to a high degree
this power of suggestion, the artist’s most precious gift. He talked
to himself, did not finish, and left to his hearers the pleasure of
having clothed with notes for an instant forms and feelings which then
evaporated into nothingness. “Divine gambols,” said Berlioz on hearing
them. “A cloud of love, winter roses,” said Liszt. “By the wonderful
gate,” he added, “Chopin leads you into a world where everything is
a delightful miracle, a mad surprise, a miracle come true. But you
must be initiated to know how to cross the threshold.” And Frederick
confided once to his friend Franz:
“I am not at all the person to give concerts. The crowd intimidates
me; I feel asphyxiated by their breaths, paralysed by their curious
stares, mute before these strange faces. But you, you are destined for
it, because when you don’t win your public, you know how to knock them
dead.”
Chopin himself would not have had the strength. He only sought to
win them. Furthermore, was it really this that he wanted? The public
mattered so little to him. It was his own pain that he chanted and
enchanted. He did not like to express himself through others and, Bach,
Beethoven and Mozart apart, he interpreted none but himself.
For Chopin, as later for Wagner, the superfluous was the only
necessity. The money that was now coming in more or less abundantly,
was spent in poetic pleasures; a smart cabriolet, beautifully cut
clothes, white gloves, expensive suppers. He took great pains with the
furnishing of his apartment, putting in crystal lustres, carpets and
silver, and he insisted on being supplied with flowers in all seasons.
When his new women friends came—Countess Delphine Potoçka, Princess
Marceline Czartoryska, Mlle. O’Meara, Princess de Beauvau, the rule was
that they should bring a rose or orchids that the artist would put in a
vase and endlessly contemplate, like a Japanese enraptured by a unique
print.
Happy years, working years. Chopin composed a solid portion of his
work. In 1833 he published five _Mazurkas_, the _Trio_ for piano,
violin and violoncello, three _Nocturnes_, the twelve great _Etudes_
dedicated to Liszt, the _Concerto in E minor_, and in 1834 the _Grand
Fantasia_ on Polish airs, the _Krakoviak_ for piano and orchestra,
three more _Nocturnes_, the _Rondeau in E flat major_ dedicated to
Caroline Hartmann, four new _Mazurkas_, and the _Grand Waltz in E flat
major_. His works were played by the greatest of the virtuosi at many
concerts: Liszt, Moschelès, Field, Kalkbrenner and Clara Wieck. Liszt
said of him: “A sick-room talent,” and Auber: “All his life he slays
himself.” For Chopin, in spite of his success, was still suffering from
nostalgia, and one day when his friend and pupil Gutmann was playing
the third _Etude_, in E major, Chopin, who said he had never written
a lovelier melody, cried suddenly, “Oh, my country!” Truly, for this
young man of twenty-four, the mother country was always the strongest
passion. He gave a Dantesque sadness to this name of Poland, more
powerful on his heart than the call of a mistress. The hurt must have
been deep indeed for Orlowski, in writing to his people, to take note
of it as of a tubercular illness. “Chopin is well and vigorous,” he
says. “He turns all the women’s heads. The men are jealous. He is the
fashion. Doubtless we shall soon be wearing gloves _à la Chopin_. But
home-sickness is burning him up.” The fact was that Poland remained
the living spring, the reservoir whence he drew his dreams and his
sentiments, the only effective rhythm,—in sun, the dynamo of his
energies. Inspiration is chance caught on the wing. But art is not
found hidden like the dove in the magician’s hat. Perhaps it is only
perfect self-knowledge, the true perception of one’s own limitations,
and the modulations that life teaches to our youthful fine enthusiasms.
The Marquis de Custine wrote to Chopin: “When I listen to you I always
think myself alone with you, and even perhaps with greater than you! or
at least with all that is greatest in you.”
* * * * *
In the spring of ’34 Chopin and his friend Hiller went together to
the Festival of Music at Aix-la-Chapelle. There they encountered
Mendelssohn, who took a liking to the Pole and never tired of listening
to his playing. He called him the first among pianists, and always
reproached him, as well as Hiller, for the Parisian mania for a pose of
despair. “I look like a schoolmaster,” he said, “while they resemble
dandies and beaux.”
They returned by Düsseldorf and Cologne to Paris, where Chopin had the
pleasure of seeing and entertaining his friend Matuszinski, who had
just been made professor at the Ecole de Médecine. This was a period
of the greatest serenity, for to his quiet fame Chopin could add the
joy of daily companionship with one of his “brothers.” He exerted
himself, entertained guests, played in public more than he usually
did. On the 7th of December, at the Théâtre Italien, he appeared at a
concert organized by Berlioz in honour of Harriet Smithson, the Irish
actress he had just married. On Christmas Day, at the Salle Pleyel, he
played, with Liszt at the other piano, a duet by Liszt on a theme of
Mendelssohn. On the 15th of February, 1835, he took part in a concert
at the Salle Erard, and on April 4th he played for the benefit of
the Polish refugees. Berlioz wrote in the _Rénovateur_, “Chopin, as
a player and as a composer, is an artist apart. He has no point of
resemblance to any other musician I know. Unhappily, there is no one
but Chopin himself who can play his music and give it that original
turn, that impromptu that is one of its principal charms; his execution
is veined with a thousand nuances of movement of which he alone has the
secret, and which cannot be indicated... The detail in his mazurkas is
unbelievable; then he has found a way to make them doubly interesting
by playing them to the last degree of softness, with superlative
_piano_, the hammers touching the strings so lightly that one is
tempted to bend the ear over the instrument as one might at a concert
of sylphs and pixies.”
But the crowd always awards the palms to brilliance, and Chopin,
deciding that it had not given his _Concerto in E minor_ the reception
he expected, declared that he was neither understood nor made for
concerts, and made up his mind to abstain from appearing in public for
a long time.
Nevertheless, he played once more in public, on the 26th of April,
1835, at the Conservatory. This was the only time he ever appeared in
that famous hall. He played his _Polonaise brillante_, preceded by an
_Andante Spianato_.
He found compensation for these slight professional disappointments in
the friendship of the Italian Bellini, towards whom he was drawn by a
quick sympathy and whom he often saw. He was further distracted by an
interest in a celebrated beauty, Countess Delphine Potoçka.
She was twenty-five, of regal bearing, with a delicately chiselled
nose, a most passionate mouth, and the high, pensive forehead of the
true voluptuary. Her whole appearance suggested a slender and puissant
goddess, but whatever luxuriance she had was cooled by the severity of
her glance.
Miçkiewicz said that she was “the greatest of all sinners,” and
Krasinski apostrophized her in a poem in the manner of Mephistopheles:
“O stay, for thou art true beauty.” Frederick let himself float in the
sensual _rayonnement_ of this beautiful animal of love. For the first
time his head was turned. The sumptuous voice of Delphine enchanted
him. He accompanied her at the piano, strove to make her soul be born
again, to give it back its flower, and watched for possible beautiful
vibrations; but the soul was the servant of this imperial flesh.
Once or twice, however, she seemed to come out of her lethargy, to
spread herself on an admirable note that sprang from the depths of her
unconscious self, but immediately after, the shrieks, the laughter, the
exigencies of this ravishing hysteric extinguished these gleams. And
as the platonic love towards which Chopin wanted to direct her seemed
to Delphine both comic and impossible, she gave herself before he had
ever dreamed of asking her.
The adventure was of short duration. The Countess had a jealous
husband, who, by cutting off her allowance, obliged this prodigal lady
to make a prompt departure for Poland, whence she did not return till
later on. But she retained a lasting affection for Chopin. The only
lines from her to the artist that have been discovered furnish discreet
witness to the fact:
“I shall not annoy you with a long letter, but I do not want to remain
longer without news of your health and your plans for the future. I am
sad to think of you abandoned and alone... Here my time is passed in an
annoying fashion, and I hope not to have still more vexations. But I am
disgusted. Everyone for whom I have done anything has repaid me with
ingratitude. On the whole, life is one long dissonance. God bless you,
dear Chopin. Good-bye.”
“One long dissonance,” so had Liszt already spoken. There was in
these tormented bodies an invincible straining towards the suavest
harmonies. At least in these beings—male or female—in whom the feminine
predominates. But this is not the case with Chopin, whose musical
travail was always virile. He would have subscribed to the words of
Beethoven: “Emotion is good only for women; for man, music must draw
fire from his spirit.” And even more, perhaps, to those quoted by
Schumann from the German poet Johann-Paul Richter: “Love and friendship
pass through this earth veiled and with closed lips. No human being can
tell another how much he loves him; he knows only that he does love
him. The inner man has no language; he is mute.”