“If music be the food of love, play on”
Nietzsche, on a very dark day, wrote to a friend: “Isn’t it a work of
art: to hope?” In landing at Marseilles in the early spring of 1839,
Chopin and George Sand built a work of art, because they hoped, because
they were overflowing with that inexplicable enthusiasm that the most
banal things inspire at certain predestined hours. Anything sufficed:
an expected letter, a beautiful face, the shadow of a church on the
street, the reassuring words of a doctor, to convince them that this
was the dawn of a convalescence that would dry their almost rotted love
and ripen it, transmute it into a peaceful and lasting friendship.
Sometimes nothing more than a chance landscape is enough to change the
rhythm of souls.
At Majorca, one might wonder if the deserted monastery was not a sort
of Dantesque Purgatory from which Sand explored the Hells and the
invalid felt himself already rising towards Heaven. “This Chopin is an
angel,” George had written. “At Majorca, while he was sick unto death,
he wrote music that had the very smell of Paradise; but I am so used to
seeing him in Heaven that neither his life nor his death seems likely
to prove anything for him. He does not know himself on which planet he
exists.”
At Marseilles, a good town of grocers, perfumers, soap sellers, their
feet were once more on the earth. They settled at the Hôtel de Beauvau,
saw a physician, and decided to await the summer in the south. This
resolution was not carried out without a certain amount of boredom, but
boredom itself contributes to rest, which was so necessary after their
voyage of miscarried love. They had, besides, to shut themselves up
against the mistral and the pests that entered by all the doors. But
they lay hidden. Dr. Cauvières regularly sounded Chopin’s lungs, made
him wear cupping glasses, put him on a diet and pronounced him well
on the way to cicatrization. He could begin to play again, to walk,
to talk like anybody else, he whose voice for weeks had been nothing
more than a breath. He slept a great deal. He busied himself with the
publication of his works, wrote to Fontana on the subject of their
dedications, and discussed with him the price of his new compositions.
For he had to think of the future, about the Paris apartment he had
decided to re-rent: “Take Schlesinger the 500 francs you will receive
from Probst for the _Ballade_.” “Schlesinger is trying to cheat me,
but he makes enough out of me; be polite to him.” “Tell him I shall
sell the _Ballade_ for France and England for 800 francs and the
_Polonaises_ for Germany, England and France for 1,500.” He grew angry.
He stood out against the publishers and would cede nothing. “As for
money, you must make a clear contract and not hand over the manuscripts
except for cash....” “I should rather give my manuscripts as I did
before, for a low price, than stoop to these....” He returned to the
charge in April: “Keep everything till I come back since they are such
Jews. I have sold the _Preludes_ to Pleyel and have so far received
only 500 francs. He has the right to do as he pleases about them. As
for the _Ballade_ and the _Polonaises_, do not sell them either to
Schlesinger or to Probst... get them back... Enough. Enough for you
and for me. My health improves but I am angry.” “It is not my fault
if I seem like a toadstool that poisons you when you dig it up and
eat it. You know perfectly well that I have never been of any use to
anyone, not even myself. Meanwhile, they continue to regard me as not
tubercular. I drink neither coffee nor wine, only milk. I keep in the
warmth and look like a young lady.”
In March the famous singer Nourrit died at Naples and it was
rumoured that he had committed suicide. His body was brought to
Marseilles the following month, and a funeral service was arranged at
Notre-Dame-du-Mont. To honour the memory of a friend whom he had seen
so often at Liszt’s and had even entertained himself, Chopin agreed
to take the organ during the Elevation. Although the instrument was
squeaky and out of tune, he drew from it what music he could. He played
_The Stars_ of Schubert, which Nourrit had sung a short time before at
Marseilles: and, renouncing all theatricality, the artist played this
melody with the softest stops. George was in the organ stall with a
few friends, and her fine eyes filled with tears. The public did not
recognize the novelist in this little woman dressed in black.
In May, Chopin was strong enough to take a short trip to Genoa with his
mistress. It was a beautiful interlude. They visited the palaces, the
terraced gardens, the picture-galleries. Did she think of that journey
of almost four years earlier, when with Musset she first put foot on
this Italian soil? Genoa is perhaps the only town where their love was
not overcast. She has written that to see it again was a pleasure. I do
not know if the word is sincere but it does not ring true. Something
like a wrinkle of fatigue, however, can be seen in the statement which
she made, on her return, to Mme. Marliani: “I no longer like journeys,
or rather, _I am no longer in such condition that I am able to enjoy
them_.” One hopes, too, that Chopin knew nothing of that first Genoese
visit, because, for a distrustful heart, such a picture would have been
terrific.
On May 22nd, they left Marseilles and started for Nohant, where they
planned to spend the entire summer. After a week of jolting, they at
last reached the wide, well-cultivated district of Berry, “studded with
great round walnut trees” and cut by shady roads that George loved.
All at once, there was the modest village, the church with its tiled
roof, and, bordering the square, the château. A country château that
symbolized the double origin, royal and plebeian, of this woman of
thirty-five years whom all Europe regarded with admiration, and who
brought to the nest her _little one_, her new little one, a noble and
diaphanous young man who seemed to have dropped down like a sea-bird
into this ancient French country-side.
Dear woman, must we admire you for the period of rest you accorded
to this beautiful weary soul? We know that you were bad for him,
sometimes, because you were sound, ardent, and, in spite of everything,
curious about that inviolable mind, about those limbs without desire.
But we have seen too that you knew your rôle of guardian. “Of whom
shall I take care?” you cried, when your other invalid had left you
because he could no longer bear the sufferings with which you seasoned
your pleasure. Dear woman, nevertheless! You cannot be judged by any
common standards, you with your hot blood and your heart always so soon
feasted by the very strength of its own hungers. The enormous labour
you accomplished was but the result of your own energies. They burdened
you with work. They tired you out like a man. You never found those
horrible mental tasks too stupid, those tasks from which they feigned
to derive an elastic and libertarian moral, when you were really made
but for love and travail and the old human order. This is all rather
amusing, and sad as truth. But we must thank you for having in some
sort made Musset and broken that easy fop to healthy sorrows. We cannot
blame you, as others do, for having finished Chopin. You fought for
him a long time against his malady. If you bruised him further, it is
because even your friendship was costly. But always, it was your best
that you gave.
Now that we have seen you enter Nohant with this new prey to your
tenderness, let us say with Shakespeare: “If music be the food of love,
play on.”
* * * * *
Chopin never liked the country. Yet he enjoyed Nohant. The house was
comfortable. After Majorca and Marseilles, it was a joy to have a large
room, fine sheets, a well-ordered table, a few beautiful pieces of
furniture. Without being luxurious, the big house had a pleasant air.
There was a sense of ease. He was spoiled, petted. An old friend of
George’s, Dr. Papet, ran up at once to examine the invalid thoroughly.
He diagnosed a chronic affection of the larynx: he ordered plenty
of rest and a long stay in the country. Chopin submitted with no
difficulty to this programme, and adopted a perfectly regulated, wise
way of living. While George went back to the education of her children
and her job as a novelist, he corrected a new edition of Bach, finished
his _Sonata in B flat minor_, the second _Nocturne_ of op. 37 and four
_Mazurkas_ (op. 41). They dined out of doors, between five and six
o’clock. Then a few neighbours dropped in, the Fleurys, the Duteils,
Duvernet, Rollinat, and they talked and smoked. From the first, they
all treated Chopin with respectful sympathy. Hippolyte Chatiron,
George’s half-brother, who lived with his wife in the immediate
neighbourhood, a kind of squireen, good-natured and convivial, formed
a passionate friendship for him.
When they had gone Chopin played the piano in the twilight; then at
Solange’s and Maurice’s bedtime, he too went to bed and slept like a
child. As for George, she took up the Encyclopædia and prepared the
lessons for the next day. Truly a family life, such, exactly, as Chopin
understood best; such also as he needed during his working periods.
“I am composing here a _Sonata_ in B flat minor,” he wrote to Fontana,
“in which the _Funeral March_ you already have will be incorporated.
There is an _allegro_, then a _scherzo_ in E flat minor, the _March_,
and a short _finale_ of about three pages. After the _March_ the left
hand babbles along _unisono_ with the right. I have a new _Nocturne_
in G major to accompany the one in G minor, if you remember it. You
know I have four new _Mazurkas_: one from Palma in E minor, three from
here in B major, in A flat major, and C sharp minor. To me they seem
as pretty as the youngest children seem to parents who are growing
old. Otherwise, I am doing nothing; I am correcting a Paris edition of
Bach’s works. There are not only misprints, but, I believe, harmonic
errors committed by those who think they understand Bach. I am not
correcting them with the pretention of understanding him better than
they, but with the conviction that I can sometimes divine how the thing
ought to go.”
Every evening, during that hour of music that Chopin dedicated to
George alone, she listened and dreamed. She was a choice listener.
Without doubt, it was in those moments that these two souls, so
impenetrable to each other, understood each other best. She fully
realized that he was the extreme artist type; that it would never be
possible to make him accept any jot of reality; that his continued
dream was too far from the world, too little philosophic for her to be
able to follow into those unpeopled regions. But it was, nevertheless,
sweet to be the object of such a man’s preference. Cruel also, because
if Chopin kept usurious account of the least light given him, “he did
not take the trouble to hide his disappointment at the first darkness.”
His fantastic humour, his profound depressions, at once interested
and worried the amateur of emotions in George. But a kind of terror
gripped her heart at the thought of a new obligation she would assume
if Frederick were definitely to install himself with her. She was no
longer under the illusion of passion. She was afraid of having some
day to struggle against some other love that might conquer her and
prove the death of this frail being she had torn from himself. Then she
stiffened. One more duty in a life already so burdened, would this not
be precisely a defence against temptation—an even greater chance for
her to attain to that austerity towards which she felt herself drawn
by the old depths of religious enthusiasm of which she had never freed
herself? How should she settle the matter? She compromised by leaving
it for time to tell.
As for Chopin, this peaceful lot was too perfectly fitted to the
measure of his strength for him to dream of any change. He was
radiating all his gentleness, he was creating; such was his beautiful
present, his only possible future. While he improvised George opened
a scrapbook and wrote: “The genius of Chopin is the most profound and
pregnant of feeling and emotions that has ever existed. He makes a
single instrument speak the language of the infinite. He knows how to
gather into ten lines that even a child could play poems of immense
elevation, dramas of unequalled power. He never needs great material
means.... He needs neither saxophone nor bass horns to fill the soul
with terror; neither Cathedral organs nor the human voice to give
it faith and exultation. There must be great advances in taste and
artistic intelligence if his works are ever to become popular....
Chopin knows his strength and his weakness. His weakness lies in the
very excess of that strength, which he cannot control. His music is
full of delicate shades of feeling and of the unexpected. Sometimes,
rarely, it is bizarre, mysterious, and tormented. In spite of his
horror of the unintelligible, his overpowering emotions sometimes sweep
him unconsciously into regions known to him alone.”
* * * * *
Towards the end of the summer, they all decided to return to Paris.
Sand was persuaded that she could not manage to finish the education of
her children without assistance. Maurice was eager to learn drawing;
Solange was difficult, a little sullen, stubborn. George also had to
see her publisher, Buloz, the editor of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_.
Chopin wanted to get to his pupils again and resume their lessons, the
main source of his revenue. So they bombarded friends with letters,
asking them to find two apartments not too far from each other.
Grzymala, Arago and Fontana started a search. From Nohant, instructions
rained on the heads of the three friends.
Chopin asked them to choose a _dove-like_ wallpaper, glowing and
glossy, for his rooms. Something else for the vestibule, but still
_respectable_. If there was anything more beautiful, more fashionable,
they were not to hesitate to get it.
“I prefer something simple, modest, elegant, to the loud, common
colours the shopkeepers use. That is why I like pearl-grey, because
it is neither striking nor vulgar. Thank you for the servant’s room,
because it is really essential.”
For George, it was vital that the house should be quiet. There must
be three bedrooms, two next to each other, and one separated by
the drawing-room. Close to the third there must be a well-lighted
work-room. Drawing- and dining-room must be next each other. Two
servants’ rooms and a cellar. Inlaid floors in good condition if
possible. But most of all, quiet,—“no blacksmith in the neighbourhood.”
A decent staircase, windows facing south. “No young ladies, no smoke
or unpleasant odours.” Chopin even took the trouble to sketch the plan
of this imagined suite.
Soon they had good news. Chopin was to live at 5, rue Tronchet, while
George was to have two small pavilions in a garden at 16, rue Pigalle.
Nohant was in a state of joy, and Frederick, always so particular
about matters of elegance, now began to think of his clothes. He
wrote again to Fontana: “I forgot to ask you to order a hat for me
at Duport’s, rue de la Chausée d’Antin. He has my measure and knows
what I want. Show him this year’s shape, not too exaggerated, because
I don’t know how you are dressing now. Also, drop in on Dautremont,
my tailor, on the Boulevards, and tell him to make me a pair of grey
trousers. Will you choose a dark shade, for winter trousers, something
good, not striped, but plain and soft. You are English; so you know
what I ought to have. Dautremont will be glad to know that I am coming
back. I also need a black velvet waistcoat, but one with very little
ornament and not loud,—a plain waistcoat, but elegant. If he has no
very fine velvet, let him make a waistcoat of fine wool, but not too
open....” In recompense for all these errands: “... I shall keep
changing the second part of the _Polonaise_ for you till the end of my
life. Yesterday’s version may not please you either, though it put my
brain on the rack for eighty seconds. I have copied out my manuscripts
in good order. There are six with your _Polonaises_, not counting the
seventh, an impromptu, which may be worthless. I can’t judge of it,
myself, because it is too new. Titus advises me to compose an oratorio.
I have asked him in reply why he is building a sugar mill rather than a
Dominican monastery. As you are such a clever fellow, you can arrange
so that neither black thoughts nor suffocating cough shall bother me
in my new rooms. Arrange for me to be good. Erase, if you can, many
episodes of my past. And it would be no bad thing if I set myself a
task that will last me several years. Finally, you would oblige me by
growing much younger, or in finding a way of arranging for us to be not
yet born.
“Your old Frederick.”
Both Frederick and George settled in Paris in October of that year,
1839. But they were soon convinced that after a whole year of existence
together it would be difficult to live apart. Chopin still had need of
attentions, precautions. He gave up his lodging to Dr. Matuszinski, and
moved with his furniture to the lower floor of one of the two pavilions
in the rue Pigalle.
So these longed-for years of great and perfect work, unrolled
themselves in about the desired rhythm. During the morning, the
professors for Maurice and Solange succeeded one another. In Chopin’s
part of the house it was a procession of pupils. His lessons lasted at
least an hour, sometimes more. It often happened that the master would
play the pieces himself. On one occasion he played from memory to one
of his pupils fourteen _Preludes_ and _Fugues_ of Bach. And as the
young girl expressed her admiration for this _tour de force_, “One can
never forget them,” he said, smiling. “For a year I have not practised
a quarter of an hour at a time. I have no strength, no energy. I am
always waiting for a little health to take all that up again, but—I am
still waiting.” Such efforts exhausted him. He used to take a little
opium in a glass of water, and rub his temples with _eau-de-Cologne_.
“The final triumph,” he continued, “is simplicity. When you have
exhausted all the difficulties, and have played an immense quantity of
notes, simplicity emerges in all its charm, as the final seal of art.
Anyone who expects to achieve it at the outset will never succeed in so
doing; you cannot begin at the end.”
The afternoon was generally devoted to the personal work of the two
artists. In the evening they met at George’s, and dined together;
then someone or another of the intimates of the household came to see
them. The salon was _café au lait_ in colour, decorated with very fine
Chinese vases always filled with flowers in the Chopinesque mode.
The furniture was green; there was a sideboard of oak laden with
curiosities and, on the wall, the portrait of the hostess by Calamatta
and several canvases by Delacroix. The piano was bare, square, ebony.
Chopin almost always sat at it. At one side, George’s bedroom could
be seen, where two mattresses on the floor covered with a Persian rug
served as a bed.
Sand arose late, because she sat up most of the night. Chopin polished
and put the final touches to his works, the first versions of which had
in general come to him during the summer. His creation was entirely
spontaneous. It gushed forth during a walk, an hour of meditation, or
it might unfold sudden and complete, while he was sitting before his
piano. He played it to himself, sang it, took it up again, modified
its accents. Then began that immensely laborious quest of perfection,
which will always be, whatever people may say, the essential mandate
of the artist. “He locked himself in his room for whole days at a
time, weeping, walking up and down, shattering his pens, repeating or
changing a single bar a hundred times, writing it down only to rub
it out again, and beginning all over again the next day with minute
and despairing perseverance. He spent six weeks on one page, only to
write it finally as he had jotted it down in the first flush.” In
noting these things, George was exasperated with the genuine surprise
of facile creators who are not tortured by any yearning for finality.
But, like Giotto, who, when the Pope asked for a perfect example of his
knowledge, wanted to send only a true circle, so Chopin, having filled
one line with all the ornament of his thought, came back to exquisite
nudity, the final and sufficient symbol of the idea. So a poet works.
So he squeezes his universe into the smallest possible limits, makes
it as heavy as a crystal, but gleaming from a thousand facets. That
is what made that great blackener of paper, Sand, say that Chopin
could compress into a few bars “poems of immense elevation, dramas of
unequalled power.” Mozart alone, she thought, was superior to him,
because he had the calm of health, and so the fullness of life. But
who knows what happy accidents illness may bring to art? It is certain
that Chopin’s breathlessness, his nervousness, brought to his virile
inspiration those qualities of languor, those weary echoes by which he
touches us most finely.