contained in this same letter, that he and his fiancée are obliged to
make one hundred and sixty-three calls in Frankfort. This was written
before he had returned to his duties in Leipsic. Christmas again found
him with his betrothed and again writing to Fanny--this time about a
portrait of Cécile, which her family had given him. "They gave me a
portrait of her on Christmas, but it only stirred up afresh my wrath
against all bad artists. She looks like an ordinary young woman
flattered." (Rather a good bit of criticism.) "It really is too bad
that with such a sitter the fellow could not have shown a spark of
poetry." It is quite evident that Felix was much in love with his fair
fiancée.
He and Cécile were married in her father's former church in March,
1837. During their honeymoon Felix wrote to his friend, Eduard
Devrient, the famous actor, from the Bavarian highlands. A rare spirit
of peace and contentment breathes through the letter. "You know that I
am here with my wife, my dear Cécile, and that it is our wedding tour;
that we already are an old married couple of six weeks' standing.
There is so much to tell you that I know not how to make a beginning.
Picture it to yourself. I can only say that I am too happy, too glad;
and yet not at all beside myself, as I should have expected to be, but
calm and accustomed, as though it could not be otherwise. But you
should know my Cécile!" Evidently such a love as was here described
was not a mere sentimental flash in the pan. It was an affection
founded on reciprocal tastes and sympathies, the kind that usually
lasts. Cécile was refined and delicate, and beautiful. She was just
the woman to grace the home that a fastidious man like Mendelssohn
would want to establish.
The most insistent note to be observed in his correspondence from this
time on is that of a desire to remain within his own four walls. Fanny
had been advised to go to the seashore for her health, but had delayed
doing so because loath to leave her husband. "Think of me," writes
Felix, urging her to go, "who must in a few weeks, though we have not
been married four months yet, leave Cécile here and go to England by
myself--all, too, for the sake of a music festival. Gracious me! All
this is no joke. But possibly the death of the King of England will
intervene and put a stop to the whole project." The life of a king
meant little to Felix in the distressing prospect of being obliged to
leave his Cécile. Felix, the husband, was not as eager to travel as
Felix, the bachelor, had been.
There are various "appreciations" of Cécile. The least enthusiastic,
perhaps, is that of Hensel, Felix's brother-in-law. He says that she
was not a striking person in anyway, neither extraordinarily clever,
brilliantly witty, nor exceptionally accomplished. But to this
somewhat indefinite observation he adds that she exerted an influence
as soothing as that of the open sky, or running water. Indeed,
Hensel's first frigid reserve yielded to the opinion that Cécile's
gentleness and brightness made Felix's life one continued course of
happiness to the end. It was some time after the marriage before
Mendelssohn's sisters saw Cécile for the first time. The good they
heard of her made them the more impatient to meet her. "I tell you
candidly," the clever Fanny writes to her, "that by this time, when
anybody comes to talk to me about your beauty and your eyes, it makes
me quite cross. I have had enough of hearsay, and beautiful eyes were
not made to be heard." When at last Fanny did see Cécile, this fond
sister of Felix's, who naturally would be most critical, was
enthusiastic over her. "She is amiable, simple, fresh, happy and
even-tempered, and I consider Felix most fortunate. For though loving
him inexpressibly, she does not spoil him, but when he is moody, meets
him with a self-restraint which in due course of time will cure him of
his moodiness altogether. The effect of her presence is like that of a
fresh breeze, she is so light and bright and natural."
To my mind, however, Devrient has drawn the best word portrait of her.
After their first meeting he wrote: "How often we had pictured the kind
of woman that would be a true second half to Felix; and now the lovely,
gentle being was before us, whose glance and smile alone promised all
that we could desire for the happiness of our spoilt favorite." Later,
Devrient finished the picture: "Cécile was one of those sweet, womanly
natures whose gentle simplicity, whose mere presence, soothed and
pleased. She was slender, with strikingly beautiful and delicate
features; her hair was between brown and gold; but the transcendent
lustre of her great blue eyes, and the brilliant roses on her cheeks,
were sad harbingers of early death. She spoke little and never with
animation, and in a low, soft voice. Shakespeare's words, 'my gracious
silence,' applied to her, no less than to Cordelia."
[Illustration: The Mendelssohn Monument in Leipsig.]
Thus, while Cécile does not seem to have been an extraordinarily gifted
woman from an artistic or intellectual point of view, it is quite
evident that she possessed a refinement that must have appealed
forcibly to a man brought up in such genteel surroundings and as
sensitive as Mendelssohn. Such a woman must have been, after all,
better suited to his delicate genius than a wife of unusual gifts would
have been. For it is a helpmeet, not another genius, that a man of
genius really needs most. The woman who, without being prosy or
commonplace and without allowing herself to retrograde in looks or in
personal care, can run a household in a systematic, orderly fashion is
the greatest blessing that Providence can bestow upon genius.
Evidently Cécile was just such a woman. Her tact seems to have been as
delicate as her beauty. Without, perhaps, having directly inspired any
composition of her husband's, her gentleness, her simple grace,
doubtless left their mark on many bars of his music.
It seems doubly cruel that death should have cut Felix down when he had
enjoyed but ten happy years with his Cécile. Yet had his life been
long, the pang of separation would soon have come to him. Devrient had
not been mistaken when he spoke of "those sad harbingers of early
death;" and Cécile survived Felix scarcely five years.
Felix's death occurred at Leipsic in 1847. In September, while
listening to his own recently composed "Nacht Lied" he swooned away.
His system, weakened by overwork, succumbed, nervous prostration
followed, and on November 4 he died. Sudden death had carried off his
grandfather, father, mother and favorite sister; and he had a
presentiment that his end would come about in the same way. During the
dull half-sleep preceding death he spoke but once, and then to Cécile
in answer to her inquiry how he felt--"Tired, very tired."
Devrient tells how he went to the house of mutual friends in Dresden
for news of Mendelssohn's condition, when Clara Schumann came in, a
letter in her hand and weeping, and told them that Felix had died the
previous evening. Devrient hastened to Leipsic, and Cécile sent for
him. I cannot close this article more fittingly than with his
description of their meeting in the presence of the illustrious
dead--the cherished friend of one, the husband of the other.
"She received me with the tenderness of a sister, wept in silence, and
was calm and composed as ever. She thanked me for all the love and
devotion I had shown to her Felix, grieved for me that I should have to
mourn so faithful a friend, and spoke of the love with which Felix
always had regarded me. Long we spoke of him; it comforted her, and
she was loath for me to depart. She was most unpretentious in her
sorrow, gentle, and resigned to live for the care and education of her
children. She said God would help her, and surely her boys would have
the inheritance of some of their father's genius. There could not be a
more worthy memory of him than the well-balanced, strong and tender
heart of this mourning widow."
[1] The "-B" on the dressing-case stands for "-Bartholdy." When the
Mendelssohn family changed from Judaism to Protestantism, it added the
mother's family name.
Chopin and the Countess Delphine Potocka
"Her voice was destined to be the last which should vibrate upon the
musician's heart. Perhaps the sweetest sounds of earth accompanied the
parting soul until they blended in his ear with the first chords of the
angels' lyres."
It is thus Liszt describes the voice of Countess Delphine Potocka as it
vibrated through the room in which Chopin lay dying. Witnesses
disagree regarding details. One of the small company that gathered
about his bed says she sang but once, others that she sang twice; and
even these vary when they name the compositions. Yet however they may
differ on these minor points, they agree as to the main incident. That
the beautiful Delphine sang for the dying Chopin is not a mere pleasing
tradition; it is a fact. Her voice ravished the ear of the great
composer, whose life was ebbing away, and soothed his last hours.
"Therefore, then, has God so long delayed to call me to Him. He wanted
to vouchsafe me the joy of seeing you." These were the words Chopin
whispered when he opened his eyes and saw, beside his sister Louise,
the Countess Delphine Potocka, who had hurried from a distance as soon
as she was notified that his end was drawing near. She was one of
those rare and radiant souls who could bestow upon this delicate child
of genius her tenderest friendship, perhaps even her love, yet keep
herself unsullied and an object of adoration as much for her purity as
for her beauty. Because she was Chopin's friend, because she came to
him in his dying hours, because along paths unseen by those about them
her voice threaded its way to his very soul, no life of him is complete
without mention of her, and in the mind of the musical public her name
is irrevocably associated with his. Each succeeding biographer of the
great composer has sought to tell us a little more about her--yet
little is known of her even now beyond the fact that she was very
beautiful--and so eager have we been for a glimpse of her face that we
have accepted without reserve as an authentic presentment of her
features the famous portrait of a Countess Potocka who, I find, died
some seven or eight years before Delphine and Chopin met.
[Illustration: Frédéric Chopin (missing from book)]
But we have portraits of Delphine by Chopin himself, not drawn with
pencil or crayon, or painted with brush, but her face as his soul saw
it and transformed it into music. Listen to a great virtuoso play his
two concertos. Ask yourself which of the six movements is the most
beautiful. Surely your choice will fall on the slow movement of the
second--dedicated to the Countess Delphine Potocka, and one of the
composer's most tender and exquisite productions; or play over the
waltzes--the one over which for grace and poetic sentiment you will
linger longest will be the sixth, dedicated to the Countess Delphine
Potocka.
Liszt, who knew Chopin, tells us that the composer evinced a decided
preference for the _Adagio_ of the second concerto and liked to repeat
it frequently. He speaks of the _Adagio_, this musical portrait of
Delphine, as almost ideally perfect; now radiant with light, now full
of tender pathos; a happy vale of _Tempe_, a magnificent landscape
flooded with summer glow and lustre, yet forming a background for the
rehearsal of some dire scene of mortal anguish, a contrast sustained by
a fusion of tones, a softening of gloomy hues, which, while saddening
joy, soothes the bitterness of sorrow.
What a lifelike portrait Chopin drew in this "beautiful, deep-toned,
love-laden cantilena"! For was it not the incomparable Delphine who
was destined to "soothe the bitterness of sorrow" during his final
hours on earth?
But while hers was a soul strung with chords that vibrated to the
slightest breath of sorrow, she could be vivacious as well. She was a
child of Poland, that land of sorrow, but where sorrow, for very excess
of itself, sometimes reverts to joy. And so she had her brilliant
joyous moments. Chopin saw her in such moments, too, and, that the
recollection might not pass away, for all time fixed her picture in her
vivacious moods in the last movement, the _Allegro vivace_ of the
concerto, with what Niecks, one of the leading modern biographers of
the composer, calls its feminine softness and rounded contours, its
graceful, gyrating, dance-like motions, its sprightliness and
frolicsomeness. In the same way in the waltz, there is an obvious
mingling of the gay and the sad, the tender and the debonair. Chopin
thought he was writing a waltz. He really was writing "Delphine
Potocka." He, too, was from Poland, and that circumstance of itself
drew them to each other from the time when they first met in France.
One of Chopin's favorite musical amusements, when he was a guest at the
houses of his favorite friends, was to play on the piano musical
portraits of the company. At the salon of the Countess Komar,
Delphine's mother, he played one evening the portraits of the two
daughters of the house. When it came to Delphine's he gently drew her
light shawl from her shoulders, spread it over the keyboard, and then
played through it, his fingers, with every tone they produced, coming
in touch with the gossamer-like fabric, still warm and hallowed for him
from its contact with her.
It seems to have been about 1830 that Delphine first came into the
composer's life. In that year the Count and Countess Komar and their
three beautiful daughters arrived in Nice. Count Komar was business
manager for one of the Potockas. The girls made brilliant matches.
Marie became the Princess de Beauvau-Craon; Delphine became the
Countess Potocka, and Nathalie, the Marchioness Medici Spada. The last
named died a victim to her zeal as nurse during a cholera plague in
Rome.
Chopin was a man who attracted women. His delicate physique,--he died
of consumption,--his refined, poetic temperament, and his exquisite art
as a composer combined with his beautiful piano playing, so well suited
to the intimate circle of the drawing-room, to make his personality a
thoroughly fascinating one. Moreover, he was, besides an artist, a
gentleman, with the reserve yet charm of manner that characterizes the
man of breeding. In men women admire two extremes,--splendid physical
strength, or the delicacy that suggests a poetic soul. Chopin was a
creator of poetic music and a gentle virtuoso. His appearance
harmonized with his genius. He was one of his own nocturnes in which
you can feel a vague presentiment of untimely death.
He is described as a model son, an affectionate brother and a faithful
friend. His eyes were brown; his hair was chestnut, luxuriant and as
soft as silk. His complexion was of transparent delicacy; his voice
subdued and musical. He moved with grace. Born near Warsaw, in 1809,
he was brought up in his father's school with the sons of aristocrats.
He had the manners of an aristocrat, and was careful in his dress.
But despite his sensitive nature, he could resent undue familiarity or
rudeness, yet in a refined way all his own. Once when he was a guest
at dinner at a rich man's house in Paris, he was asked by the host to
play--a patent violation of etiquette toward a distinguished artist.
Chopin demurred. The host continued to press him, urging that Liszt
and Thalberg had played in his house after dinner.
"But," protested Chopin, "I have eaten so little!" and thus put an end
to the matter.
Some twenty or thirty of the best salons in Paris were open to him.
Among them were those of the Polish exiles, some of whom he had known
since their school-days at his father's. He was in the truest sense of
the word a friend of those who entertained him--in fact, one of them.
For a list of those among whom he moved socially read the dedications
on his music. They include wealthy women, like Mme. Nathaniel de
Rothschild, but also a long line of princesses and countesses. In the
salon of the Potocka he was intimately at home, and it was especially
there he drew his musical portraits at the piano. Delphine, his
brilliant countrywoman, vibrated with music herself. She possessed
"_une belle voix de soprano_," and sang "_d'après la méthode des
maîtres d'Italie_."
[Illustration: Countess Potocka. From the famous pastel in the Royal
Berlin Gallery. Artist unknown.]
In her salon were heard such singers as Rubini, Lablache, Tamburini,
Malibran, Grisi and Persiani. Yet it was her voice Chopin wished to
hear when he lay dying! Truly hers must have been a marvellous gift of
song! At her salon it was his delight to accompany her with his highly
poetical playing. From what is known of his delicate art as a pianist
it is possible to imagine how exquisitely his accompaniments must have
both sustained and mingled with that "_belle voix de soprano_." He had
a knack of improvising a melody to any poem that happened to take his
fancy, and thus he and Delphine would treat to an improvised song the
elite of the musical, artistic, literary and social world that gathered
in her salon. It is unfortunate that these improvisations were lightly
forgotten by the composer, for he has left us few songs. Delphine
"took as much trouble in giving choice musical entertainments as other
people did in giving choice dinners." Her salon must have been a
resort after the composer's own heart.
Liszt, who knew Delphine well during Chopin's lifetime, and from whose
letters, as yet untranslated into English, I have been able to unearth
a few references to her (the last in May, 1861, nearly twelve years
after Chopin died, and the last definite reference to her which I have
been able to discover), says that her indescribable and spirited grace
made her one of the most admired sovereigns of the society of Paris.
He speaks of her "ethereal beauty" and her "enchanting voice" which
enchained Chopin. Delphine was, in fact, "famous for her rare beauty
and fascinating singing."
No biography of Chopin contains so much as the scrap of a letter either
from him to her, or from her to him. That he should not have written
is hardly to be wondered at, considering that letter writing was most
repugnant to him. He would take a long walk in order to accept or
decline an invitation in person, rather than indite a brief note.
Moreover, in addition to this trait, he was so often in the salon of
the Countess Potocka that much correspondence with her was unnecessary.
I have, however, discovered two letters from her to the composer. One,
written in French, asks him to occupy a seat in her box at a Berlioz
concert. The other is in Polish and is quite long. It is undated, and
there is nothing to show from where it was written. Evidently,
however, she had heard that he was ailing, for she begs him to send her
a few words, _poste restante_, to Aix-la-Chapelle, letting her know how
he is. From this request it seems that she was away from Paris
(possibly in or near Poland), but expected to start for the French
capital soon and wished to be apprised of his condition at the earliest
moment. The anxious tone of the letter leads me to believe that it was
written during the last year of the composer's life, when the insidious
nature of the disease of which he was a victim had become apparent to
himself and his friends. . . . "I cannot," she writes, "wait so long
without news of your health and your plans for the future. Do not
attempt to write to me yourself, but ask Mme. Etienne, or that
excellent grandma, who dreams of chops, to let me know about your
strength, your chest, your breathing."
Delphine also was well aware of the unsatisfactory state of his
finances, for she writes that she would like to know something about
"that Jew; if he called and was able to be of service to you." What
follows is in a vein of sadness, showing that her own life was not
without its sorrows. "Here everything is sad and lonely, but my life
goes on in much the usual way; if only it will continue without further
bitter sorrows and trials, I shall be able to support it. For me the
world has no more happiness, no more joy. All those to whom I have
wished well ever have rewarded me with ingratitude or caused me other
_tribulations_." (The _italics_ are hers.) "After all, this existence
is nothing but a great discord." Then, with a "_que Dieu vous garde_,"
she bids him _au revoir_ till the beginning of October at the latest.
Note that it was in October, 1849, that Chopin took to his deathbed;
that in another passage of the letter she advised him to think of Nice
for the winter; and that it was from Nice she was summoned to his
bedside. It would seem as if she had received alarming advices
regarding his health; had hastened to Paris and then to the Riviera to
make arrangements for him to pass the winter there; and then, learning
that the worst was feared, had hurried back to solace his last hours.
Then came what is perhaps the most touching scene that has been handed
down to us from the lives of the great composers. When Delphine
entered what was soon to be the death chamber, Chopin's sister Louise
and a few of his most intimate friends were gathered there. She took
her place by Louise. When the dying man opened his eyes and saw her
standing at the foot of his bed, tall, slight, draped in white,
resembling a beautiful angel, and mingling her tears with those of his
sister, his lips moved, and those nearest him, bending over to catch
his words, heard him ask that she would sing.
Mastering her emotion by a strong effort of the will, she sang in a
voice of bell-like purity the canticle to the Virgin attributed to
Stradella,--sang it so devoutly, so ethereally, that the dying man,
"artist and lover of the beautiful to the very last," whispered in
ecstasy, "How exquisite! Again, again!"
Once more she sang--this time a psalm by Marcello. It was the haunted
hour of twilight. The dying day draped the scene in its mysterious
shadows. Those at the bedside had sunk noiselessly on their knees.
Over the mournful accompaniment of sobs floated the voice of Delphine
like a melody from heaven.
Chopin died on October 17, 1849, just as the bells of Paris were
tolling the hour of three in the morning. He was known to love
flowers, and in death he literally was covered with them. The funeral
was held from the Madeleine, where Mozart's "Requiem" was sung, the
solos being taken by Pauline Viardot-Garcia, Castellan and Lablache.
Meyerbeer is said to have conducted, but this has been contradicted.
He was, however, one of the pallbearers on the long way from the church
to Père la Chaise. When the remains were lowered into the grave, some
Polish earth, which Chopin had brought with him from Wola nineteen
years before and piously guarded, was scattered over the coffin. There
is nothing to show what part, save that of a mourner, Delphine Potocka
took in his funeral. But though it was the famous Viardot-Garcia whose
voice rang out in the Madeleine, it was hers that had sung him to his
eternal rest.
[Illustration: The death of Chopin. From the painting by Barrias.]
How long did Delphine survive Chopin? In 1853 Liszt met her at Baden,
postponing his intended departure for Carlsruhe a day in order to dine
with her. In May, 1861, he met her at dinner at the Rothschilds'.
When Chopin's pupil, Mikuli, was preparing his edition of the
composer's works, Delphine furnished him copies of several compositions
bearing expression marks and other directions in the hand of Chopin
himself. Mikuli dated his edition 1879. It would seem as if the
Countess still were living at or about that time.
Besides the aid she thus gave in the preparation of the Mikuli edition
of Chopin's works, there is other evidence that she treasured the
composer's memory. In 1857, when he had been dead eight years, there
was published a biographical dictionary of Polish and Slavonic
musicians, a book now very rare. Although the Potocka was only an
amateur, her name was included in the publication. Evidently the
biographies of living people were furnished by themselves. Chopin's
fame at that time did not approximate what it is now. Yet in the
second sentence of her biography Delphine records that she was "the
intimate friend of the illustrious Chopin."