Swan Song
For twenty years Chopin had been playing hide-and-seek with
revolutions. He had left Warsaw a few weeks before that of 1830. His
projected trip to Italy in the spring of 1831 had been put off because
of the insurrections at Bologna, Milan, Ancona, Rome. He had arrived
in Paris a year after the “Three Glorious Days,” but still he had
witnessed from his balcony on the Boulevard Poissonnière the last
squalls of the storm. Louis-Philippe was then King of France. Now he
was abdicating after a reign of little more than seventeen years, just
the length of Chopin’s stay at Paris. ’48 promised to be a bad year
for artists. Very bad for Chopin, with that gaping wound in his heart,
and the phthisis against which he no longer even struggled. He decided
to leave France for a time, and to undertake a tour in Great Britain
that Miss Stirling, a Scotch lady whom he greatly liked, proposed
to organize. She had been his pupil for four years. But his friends
advised him to give a last concert in Paris before leaving. He allowed
himself to be persuaded. This was at the beginning of February.
In eight days all the tickets were sold, three hundred seats at 20
francs in the Salons Pleyel. “I shall have all Parisian society,” he
wrote to his family. “The King, the Queen, the Duke of Orleans, the
Duke of Montpensier have each taken ten places, even though they are
in mourning and none of them can come. Subscriptions are coming in for
a second concert, which I shall probably not give because the first
one already bores me.” And he adds the next day: “My friends tell me
that I shall not have to bother about anything, only to sit down and
play... They are writing to my publisher from Brest and Nantes to
reserve places. Such enthusiasm astonishes me, and I must begin playing
to-day, if only for the sake of my conscience, because I play less than
I used to do. (Before his concerts Chopin always practised on Bach.) I
am going to play, as a curiosity, the Mozart trio with Franchomme and
Allard. There will be neither free programmes nor free tickets. The
room will be comfortably arranged, and can hold three hundred people.
Pleyel always jokes about my foolishness, and to encourage me for this
concert, he is going to have the stairs banked with flowers. I shall
be just as though I were at home, and my eyes will meet, so to speak,
none but familiar faces... I am giving a great many lessons. I am
overwhelmed with all sorts of work, yet, with all that, I do nothing...
If you leave I shall move, too, because I doubt if I could stomach
another summer such as the last in Paris. If God gives us health, we
shall see each other again, and we shall talk, and embrace each other.”
It is not only lassitude that this letter breathes; does one not read
beneath the weary smiles the certainty of an approaching end? This
gathering of friends, this atmosphere of flowers and wreaths, has about
it something funereal. We detect in the eagerness of this élite of
worldlings and of artists an anxiety, something like a presentiment of
the twilight of a whole peaceful and elegant epoch. Poet and King are
passing away. Society is hastening to catch the last perfume of the
ancient lilies of France, and of the young Polish rose. Sweeping closer
was the triumph of George Sand, of the philosophers with dandruff, and
of Barbès.
Frederick Chopin’s supreme concert took place on Wednesday, the 16th
of February, 1848, one week before the abdication of Louis-Philippe.
Everything about it was extraordinary. The room was decorated with
flowers and carpets. The list of the selected audience had been revised
by Chopin himself. The text of the programme had been steel-engraved in
English script, and printed on beautiful paper. It read:
Part One
_Trio_ of Mozart, for piano, violin and violoncello,
by MM. Chopin, Allard and Franchomme.
_Airs_ sung by Mlle. Antonia Molina di Mondi.
_Nocturne_ } composed and played by M. Chopin.
_Barcarolle_ }
_Air_ sung by Mlle. Antonia Molina di Mondi.
_Etude_ } composed and played by M. Chopin.
_Berceuse_ }
Part Two
_Scherzo_, _Adagio_ and _Finale_ of the _Sonata in
G Minor for piano and violoncello_, composed by M. Chopin and
played by the composer and M. Franchomme.
_Air nouveau_ from _Robert the Devil_, by Meyerbeer,
sung by M. Roger.
_Preludes_ }
_Mazurkas_ } composed and played by M. Chopin.
_Valses_ }
Accompanists: MM. Aulary and de Garaudé.
The _Barcarolle_ is that of 1846 (op. 60). The _Berceuse_ (op. 57)
dates from 1845. As for the _Nocturne_ and the _Etude_ that were
announced, one can only guess. The _Sonata for piano and violoncello_
is the last work he published. As to the _Preludes_ and the _Mazurkas_
we are again at a loss. But it is known that the Waltz chosen was that
which is called “The Waltz of the Little Dog” (op. 64, no. 1).
Chopin appeared. He was extremely weak, but erect. His face, though
pale, showed no change. Neither did his playing betray any exhaustion,
and they were sufficiently accustomed to the softness and surprises
of his touch not to wonder that he played _pianissimo_ the two
_forte_ passages at the end of his _Barcarolle_. One is glad to know
that for that evening he chose this lovely plaint, the story of a
lovers’ meeting in an Italian country-side. Thirds and sixths, always
distinct, turn this dialogue for two voices, for two souls, into a very
easily read commentary on his own story. “One dreams of a mysterious
apotheosis,” Maurice Ravel has said of this piece. Perhaps, indeed, it
is an inner climax, the glorification of his unexpressed tenderness.
The effort was so great that Chopin nearly fainted in the foyer when he
had finished. As for the enthusiasm of the public, it hardly needs to
be mentioned. “The sylph has kept faith,” said the _Gazette Musicale_,
a few days later, “and with what success, what enthusiasm! It is easier
to tell of the welcome he received, the transports he excited, than
to describe, to analyse, and to lay bare the secrets of an execution
that has no like in our earthly world. When we can command the pen that
traced the delicate marvels of Queen Mab, no bigger than the agate that
shines on the finger of an alderman... it will be as much as we can do
if we succeed in giving you an idea of a purely ideal talent into which
the material hardly enters. No one can interpret Chopin’s music, but
Chopin: all who were present on Wednesday are as convinced of that as
we are.”
Chopin arrived in London on the 20th of April, 1848, and settled in a
comfortable room in Dover Street with his three pianos: a Pleyel, an
Erard and a Broadwood. He did not arrive alone: England was invaded
by a swarm of artists fleeing the Continent, where revolutions were
breaking out on all sides. But Miss Stirling and her sister, Mrs.
Erskine, had thought of everything, and already society and the Press
were talking of Chopin’s visit.
At first, the change of air and of life seemed favourable to his
health. He breathed more easily and could make a few calls. He went
to the theatre, heard Jenny Lind sing, and the Philharmonic play,
but “their orchestra is like their roast beef, or their turtle soup:
energetic, serious, but nothing more.” His greatest trouble was the
lack of all rehearsals, and Chopin, before giving a concert, always
demanded rehearsals of the most detailed kind. For this reason he
decided not to appear in public. In addition, his spirits were low,
because of the bad political news from Poland. Furthermore, he learned
with pain of the complete misunderstandings of the Clésinger couple, of
a possible separation, and he thought at once of George. It was to be
hoped that this unhappy mother would have no new tears to shed!
Soon he was again overwhelmed with fatigue. He was obliged to be out
very late every evening, to give lessons all day long in order to pay
for his costly rooms, his servant, and his carriage. He began again to
spit blood. Still he was received with many attentions by diverse great
lords and ladies: the Duke of Westminster, the Duchesses of Somerset
and Sutherland, Lord Falmouth, Lady Gainsborough. Miss Stirling and her
sister, who adored him, wanted to drag him about to all their friends.
Finally, he played in two or three drawing-rooms for a fee of twenty
guineas, a fee that Mme. Rothschild advised him to reduce a little
“because at this season (June) it is necessary to make prices more
moderate.” The first evening took place at the Duchess of Sutherland’s,
at which were present the Queen, Prince Albert, the Prince of Prussia,
and more than eighty of the aristocracy, among them the old Duke of
Wellington. Stafford House, the ancient seat of the Sutherlands, struck
the artist with admiration He gave a marvelling description of it: “All
the royal palaces and old castles are splendid, but not decorated with
such taste and elegance as Stafford House. The stairs are celebrated
for their splendour, and it is a sight to see the Queen on these
staircases in a blaze of light, surrounded by all those diamonds,
ribbons, and garters, and descending with the most perfect elegance,
conversing, stopping on the different landings. In truth, it is
regrettable that a Paul Veronese could not have seen such a spectacle
and left one more masterpiece.”
Dear Chopin, he did not dream that in looking at such a picture we
should have hunted only for his poor bloodless face! What do this
ephemeral glitter and all these tinsel grandeurs mean to us beside
his little person, so wasted, but near to our hearts. We see the
magnificence of this gala evening merely for his sake, obscure actor
in a fête where nothing seems extraordinary to us save his feverish
glance. “I suffer from an idiotic home-sickness,” he wrote, “and in
spite of my absolute resignation, I am preoccupied, God knows why, with
what is to become of me.” He played at the Marquis of Douglas’s, at
Lady Gainsborough’s, at Lord Falmouth’s, in the midst of an affluence
of titled personages. “You know they live on grandeur. Why cite these
vain names again?” Yet he cites a great many. Among celebrities, he
was presented to Carlyle, to Bulwer, to Dickens, to Hogarth, a friend
of Walter Scott, who wrote a very beautiful article about him in the
_Daily News_. Among the “curiosities,” was Lady Byron. “We conversed
almost without understanding each other, she in English, I in French.
I can understand how she must have bored Byron.” Mr. Broadwood, the
piano manufacturer, was among the most attentive of his bourgeois
friends. Occasionally he had a visit from him in the mornings. Chopin
told him one day that he had slept badly. Coming in that evening, he
found on his bed a new spring mattress and pillows, provided by this
faithful protector.
These various recitals brought Chopin about five thousand francs, no
great sum, all told. But what did money matter? What could he do with
it? He had never been more sad. Not for a long while had he experienced
a real joy, he confided to Grzymala. “At bottom I am really past all
feeling. I vegetate, simply, and patiently await my end.”
On the 9th of August he left London for Scotland, where he went to
the house of his friends the Stirlings and their brother-in-law, Lord
Torphichen. The excellent Broadwood had reserved two places for him
in the train so that he might have more room, and had given him a Mr.
Wood, a music-seller, as a companion. He arrived in Edinburgh. His
apartment was reserved in the best hotel, where he rested a day and
a half. A tour of the city. A halt at a music shop where he heard
one of his _Mazurkas_ played by a blind pianist. He left again in an
English carriage, with a postilion, for Calder House, twelve miles
from Edinburgh. There Lord Torphichen received him in an old manor
surrounded by an immense park. There was nothing in sight but lawns,
trees, mountains and sky. “The walls of the castle are eight feet
thick. There are galleries on all sides and dark corridors hung with an
incalculable number of ancestral portraits of all colours and costumes,
some Scotch, others in armour, or again in panniers. There is nothing
lacking to satisfy the imagination. There is even a little Red Riding
Hood in the form of a ghost. But I have not yet seen her.” As for his
hosts, they were perfect, discreet and generous. “What splendid people
my Scots are!” wrote Chopin. “There is nothing I can desire that I do
not immediately receive. They even bring me the Paris papers every day.
I am well. I have peace and sleep, but I must leave in a week.”
These Stirlings of Keir were a very ancient family. They went back to
the fourteenth century, and had acquired wealth in the Indies. Jane
and her older sister, Mrs. Erskine, had known Chopin in Paris. They
were two noble women, older than Frederick, but the younger still
very beautiful. Ary Scheffer painted her several times, because she
represented to his eyes the ideal of beauty. It was said that she
wanted to marry Chopin. To those who spoke to him about it, “As well
marry her to Death,” he said.
Life was agreeable at Calder House; quiet mornings, drives in the
afternoon, and in the evening music. Chopin harmonized for the old lord
the Scotch airs that the latter hummed. A picture that does not lack
piquancy. But the poor swan was restless. He thought always of George,
of whom he had just received news through Solange. It was bad. As the
proclamations which had ignited Civil War, even in the provinces, were
attributed to her, she had been in bad odour in her Nohant world.
Taking refuge at Tours, “she is stuck in a sea of mud,” wrote Chopin
to his sister, “and she has dragged many others with her.” A filthy
lampoon was circulating about her, published by the father of that
same Augustine whom Chopin detested. This man complained that “she had
corrupted his daughter, whom she had made the mistress of Maurice, and
then married to the first comer... The father cites Mme. Sand’s own
letters. In one word, a most dirty sensation, in which all Paris is
interested to-day. It is an outrage on the part of the father, _but
it is the truth_. So much for the philanthropic deed she thought she
was doing, and against which I fought with all my strength when the
girl came into the house! She should have been left with her parents,
not put into the head of this young man, who will never marry except
for money. But he wanted to have a pretty cousin in the house. She
was dressed like Sol, and better groomed, because Maurice insisted on
it.... Solange saw the whole thing, which made them uncomfortable...
Hence, lies, shame, embarrassment, and the rest.”
All the rancours, all the bitternesses are seen coming to the surface
again. And immense regrets. “The English are so different from the
French, to whom I am attached as to my own people,” he wrote again
in this same letter to his family. “They weigh everything by the
pound sterling, and love art only because it is superfluous. They are
excellent people, but so original that I understand how one could
oneself become stiff here: one changes into a machine.”
He was obliged to leave Calder House to give several concerts.
Manchester at the end of August; Glasgow at the end of September;
Edinburgh at the beginning of October. And if everywhere he reaped
the same success, the same admiring surprise, a kind of tempered
enthusiasm, yet most of the criticisms noted that his playing was no
more than a kind of murmur. “Chopin seems about thirty years old,” said
the _Manchester Guardian_. (He was thirty-eight.) “He is very frail of
body, and in his walk. This impression vanishes when he seats himself
at the piano, in which he seems completely absorbed. Chopin’s music,
and the style of his playing, have the same dominant characteristics;
he has more refinement than vigour; he prefers a subtle elaboration
to a simple grasp of the composition; his touch is elegant and quick
without his striking the instrument with any joyful firmness. His
music and his playing are the perfection of chamber music... but they
need more inspiration, more frankness of design, and more power in the
execution to be felt in a large hall.”
These are the same discreet reproaches that were made in Vienna in
1828. But only his friends knew how ill he was, and how he now had to
be carried up the stairs. He remained _chic_, however, as refined in
his dress as a woman, exercised about his linen, his shoes, insisting
on their being irreproachable. His servant curled him every morning
with an iron. The imperious side of his nature revealed itself.
Everything weighed him down: attentions, even affection, became heavy
on his shoulders, like his greatcoat or even his cashmere shawl.
These are the irritations of a very sick man: “People kill me with
their useless solicitude. I feel alone, alone, alone, although I am
surrounded... I grow weaker every day. I can compose nothing, not
that the will is lacking, but rather the physical strength... My
Scots will not leave me in peace; they smother me with politeness and
out of politeness I will not reproach them.” These were his plaints
to Grzymala. He was carried to Stirling, to Keir, from one castle
to another, from a Lord to a Duke. Everywhere he found sumptuous
hospitality, excellent pianos, beautiful pictures, well-selected
libraries, hunting, horses, dogs; but wherever he is, he expires of
coughing and irritation. What was he to do after dinner when the
gentlemen settled down in the dining-room around their whisky and when,
not knowing their tongue, he was obliged “to watch them talk, and hear
them drink”? A renewal of home-sickness, of sickness for Nohant. While
they talked of their family trees, and, “as in the Gospel, cited names
and names that went back to the Lord Jesus,” Chopin drafted letters
to his friends. “If Solange settles in Russia,” he wrote to Mlle. de
Rozières, “with whom will she talk of France? With whom can she prattle
in the Berry _patois_? Does that seem of no importance to you? Well,
it is, nevertheless, a great consolation in a strange country to have
someone about you who, as soon as you see him, carries you back in
thought to your own country.”
He came back at last to London in the beginning of October, to go
straight to bed. Breathlessness, headaches, cold, bronchitis, all the
regular symptoms. His Scots followed him, cared for him, as did also
Princess Czartoryska, who constituted herself his sick-nurse. From that
time on, his one dream was to get back to France. As before, on his
return from Majorca, he charged Grzymala to find him a lodging near the
Boulevards between the rue de la Paix and the Madeleine. He needed also
a room for his valet. “Why I give you all this trouble, I don’t know,
for nothing gives me pleasure, but I’ve got to think of myself.” And
suddenly the old pain bursts forth without apparent rhyme or reason in
the very middle of these domestic affairs: “I have never cursed anyone,
but at this moment everything is so insupportable to me that it would
soothe me, it seems to me, if I could curse Lucrezia!...” Three lines
follow which he immediately effaced, and made indecipherable. Then
coming back to himself, or having once more swallowed what he could
never consent to express, he adds: “But they are suffering down there,
too, no doubt; they suffer so much the more in that they are growing
old in their anger. As for Solange, I shall eternally pity her.”
So the mystery of this soul remains. No one will ever clearly trace its
meetings of the extremes of love, scorn, and hate. The only certain
fact is that from the time of his break with George, the life both of
his body and of his spirit was finished for Chopin. It will be said
that was already condemned. Not more than at the return from Majorca.
And his father did not succumb to the same illness until he was
seventy-five years old. Chopin had deliberately given up a struggle in
which he had no further motive for the will to win. In fact, he says
as much: “And why should I come back? Why does God not kill me at once
instead of letting me die slowly of a fever of irresolution? And my
Scots torture me more than I can bear. Mrs. Erskine, who is a very good
Protestant, possibly wants to make a Protestant out of me, because she
is always bringing me the Bible, and talking to me of the soul, and
marking Psalms for me to read. She is religious and good, but she is
very much worried about my soul. She _saws_ away all the time at me,
telling me that the other world is better than this, and I know that by
heart. I reply by citations from Scripture and tell her that I know all
about it.”
This dying man dragged himself again from London to Edinburgh, to a
castle of the Duke of Hamilton, came back to London, gave a concert
for the benefit of the Poles, and made his will. Gutmann, his friend
and pupil, informed him that a rumour of his marriage was circulating
in Paris. Those unfortunate Scots, no doubt! “Friendship remains
friendship,” replied Chopin. “And even if I could fall in love with a
being who would love me as I should want to be loved, I still should
not marry, because I should have nothing to eat, nor anywhere to go. A
rich woman looks for a rich man, and if she loves a poor man, at least
he shouldn’t be an invalid!... No, I am not thinking of a wife; much
rather of my father’s house, of my mother, of my sisters... And my art,
where has that gone? And my heart, where have I squandered it? I can
scarcely still remember how they sing at home. All round me the world
is vanishing in an utterly strange manner—I am losing my way—I have no
strength at all... I am not complaining to you, but you question and I
reply: I am closer to the coffin than to the nuptial bed. My soul is at
peace. I am resigned.”
He left at last, at the beginning of the year 1849, to return to the
Square d’Orléans, and he sent his last instructions to Grzymala. Let
pine cones be bought for his fire. Let curtains and carpet be in place.
Also a Pleyel piano and a bouquet of violets in the salon, that the
room may be perfumed. “On my return, I want still to find a little
poetry when I pass from the salon to my room, where no doubt I shall be
in bed for a long time.”
With what joy he saw again his little apartment! Unhappily, Dr.
Molin, who alone had the secret of setting him on his legs again, had
died not long before. He consulted Dr. Roth, Dr. Louis, Dr. Simon, a
homeopath. They all prescribed the old inefficacious remedies: _l’eau
de gomme_, rest, precautions. Chopin shrugged his shoulders. He saw
death everywhere: Kalkbrenner was dead; Dr. Molin was dead; the son of
the painter Delaroche was dead; a servant of Franchomme’s was dead; the
singer Catalani (who had given him his first watch at the age of ten)
had just died also.
“On the other hand, Noailles is better,” said one of his Scots.
“Yes, but the King of Spain has died at Lisbon,” replied Chopin.
All his friends visited him: Prince Czartoryski and his wife,
Delphine Potoçka, Mme. de Rothschild, Legouvé, Jenny Lind, Delacroix,
Franchomme, Gutmann.
And then,—he had not a sou. Absent-minded and negligent, Chopin never
knew much about the state of his finances. Just then they were at zero,
for he could no longer give a single lesson. Franchomme served as
his banker, but he had to exercise his ingenuity, and invent stories
to explain the origin of the funds advanced by one or other of his
friends. If he had suspected this state of things, Chopin would have
flatly refused. The idea of such charity would have been insupportable
to him. In this connection there came about a curious happening. The
Stirling ladies, wishing to remove this worry, thought of sending
to his concierge the sum of 25,000 francs in a sealed and anonymous
envelope. Mme. Etienne received the envelope, slipped it behind the
glass of her clock, and forgot it. When Mrs. Erskine perceived that
Chopin had not received this money she made her confession to the
artist. He shouted aloud. “I must have told her a lot of truths,” he
told Grzymala, “as, for example, this: ‘that she would have to be the
Queen of England to make me accept such princely presents.’” Meanwhile,
as the money was not found, the postman who had delivered it to the
concierge consulted a fortune-teller. The latter requested, in order
to consult his oracles properly, a lock of Mme. Etienne’s hair. Chopin
obtained it by subterfuge, upon which the clairvoyant declared that
the envelope was under the clock glass. And in truth it was discovered
there intact. “Hein! What do you say to that? What do you think of this
fortune-teller? My head is in a whirl with wonder.”
As is the case with very nervous people, Chopin’s health was
capricious. There were ups and downs. With the return of spring he
could go out a little, in a carriage, but he could not leave it. His
publisher, Schlesinger, came to the edge of the pavement to talk
business to him. Delacroix often accompanied him. He consigned to his
_Journal_ notes that remain precious to us.
January 29th. “In the evening to see Chopin; I stayed with him till
ten o’clock. Dear man! We spoke of Mme. Sand, that woman of strange
destiny, made up of so many qualities and vices. It was apropos of her
_Mémoires_. He told me that it would be impossible for her to write
them. She has forgotten it all; she has flashes of feeling, and forgets
quickly.... I said that I predicted in advance an unhappy old age for
her. He did not think so.... Her conscience does not reproach her
for anything of all that for which her friends reproach her. She has
good health, which may easily last; only one thing would affect her
profoundly: the loss of Maurice or that he should turn out badly.
“As for Chopin, illness prevents him from interesting himself in
anything, and especially in work. I said to him that age and the
agitations of the times would not be long in chilling me, too. He
replied that he thought I had strength to resist. ‘You rejoice in your
talent,’ he said, ‘with a sort of security that is a rare privilege,
and is better than this feverish chase after fame.’”
March 30th. “Saw in the evening at Chopin’s the enchantress, Mme.
Potoçka. I had heard her twice, I have hardly ever seen anything more
perfect... Saw Mme. Kalerji. She played, but not very sympathetically;
on the other hand, she is really extremely lovely when she raises her
eyes in playing, like the Magdalens of Guido Reni or of Rubens.”
April 14th. “In the evening to Chopin’s: I found him very much
weakened, hardly breathing. After awhile my presence restored him. He
told me that his cruellest torment was boredom. I asked him if he had
not known in earlier times the insupportable emptiness that I still
sometimes feel. He said that he had always been able to find something
to do; an occupation, however unimportant, filled the moments, and kept
off those vapours. Grief was another matter.”
April 22nd. “After dinner to see Chopin, a man of exquisite heart,
and, I need not say, mind. He spoke to me of people we have known
together... He had dragged himself to the first performance of _The
Prophet_. His horror of this rhapsody!”
* * * * *
In May, Chopin burned his manuscripts. He tried to work up a method for
the piano, gave it up, burned it with the rest. Clearly the idea of the
imperfect, of the unfinished, was insupportable to his spirit.
The doctors having recommended a purer air, a quieter neighbourhood,
his friends rented an apartment in the rue de Chaillot, on the second
floor of a new house, and took him there. There was a beautiful view
over Paris. He stayed there motionless behind his window, speaking very
little. Towards the end of June he desired suddenly, and at any cost,
to see his own people again. He sent a letter summoning them which took
him two days to write.