Maybe I am all wrong about it, yet I can not help believing that the
spirit of man will live again somewhere in a better world than ours.
Fenelon says, "Justice demands another life in order to make good the
inequalities of this." Astronomers prophesy the existence of stars long
before they can see them. They know where they ought to be, and training
their telescopes in that direction they wait, knowing they will find.
Materially, no one can imagine anything more beautiful than this earth,
for the simple reason that we can not imagine anything we have not seen;
we may make new combinations, but the whole is all made up of parts of
things with which we are familiar. This great green earth out of which
we have sprung, of which we are a part, that supports our bodies, and to
which our bodies must return to repay the loan, is very, very beautiful.
But the spirit of man is not fully at home here; as we grow in soul and
intellect, we hear, and hear again, a voice which says, "Arise and get
thee hence, for this is not thy rest." And the greater and nobler and
more sublime the spirit, the more constant the discontent. Discontent
may come from various causes, so it will not do to assume that the
discontented are always the pure in heart, but it is a fact that the
wise and excellent have all known the meaning of world-weariness. The
more you study and appreciate this life, the more sure you are that this
is not all. You pillow your head upon Mother Earth, listen to her
heart-throb, and even as your spirit is filled with the love of her,
your gladness is half-pain and there comes to you a joy that hurts.
To look upon the most exalted forms of beauty, such as a sunset at sea,
the coming of a storm on the prairie, the shadowy silence of the desert,
or the sublime majesty of the mountains, begets a sense of sadness, an
increasing loneliness.
It is not enough to say that man encroaches on man so that we are really
deprived of our freedom, that civilization is caused by a bacillus, and
that from a natural condition we have gotten into a hurly-burly where
rivalry is rife--all this may be true, but beyond and outside of all
this there is no physical environment in way of plenty which earth can
supply, that will give the tired soul peace. They are the happiest who
have the least; and the fable of the stricken king and the shirtless
beggar contains the germ of truth. The wise hold all earthly ties very
lightly--they are stripping for eternity.
World-weariness is only a desire for a better spiritual condition. There
is more to be written on this subject of world-pain--to exhaust the
theme would require a book. And certain it is that I have no wish to
say the final word on any topic. The gentle reader has certain rights,
and among these is the privilege of summing up the case. But the fact
holds that world-pain is a form of desire. All desires are just, proper
and right; and their gratification is the means by which Nature supplies
us that which we need. Desire not only causes us to seek that which we
need, but is a form of attraction by which the good is brought to us,
just as the ameba creates a swirl in the waters that brings its food
within reach. Every desire in Nature has a fixed, definite purpose in
the Divine Economy, and every desire has its proper gratification. If we
desire the friendship of a certain person, it is because that person has
certain soul-qualities that we do not possess, and which complement our
own. Through desire do we come into possession of our own; by submitting
to its beckonings we add cubits to our stature; and we also give out to
others our own attributes, without becoming poorer, for soul is not
limited.
All Nature is a symbol of spirit, so I believe that somewhere there must
be a proper gratification for this mysterious nostalgia of the soul. The
Eternal Unities require a condition where men and women will live to
love, and not to sorrow; where the tyranny of things hated shall not
ever prevail, nor that for which the heart yearns turn to ashes at our
touch.
* * * * *
"I believe Stevie is not quite at home here--he'll not remain so very
long," said a woman to me in Eighteen Hundred Ninety-five. Five years
have gone by, and recently the cable flashed the news that Stephen Crane
was dead.
Dead at twenty-nine, with ten books to his credit, two of them good,
which is two good books more than most of us scribblers will ever write.
Yes, Stephen Crane wrote two things that are immortal. "The Red Badge of
Courage" is the strongest, most vivid work of imagination ever fished
from an ink-pot by an American.
"Men who write from the imagination are helpless when in presence of the
fact," said James Russell Lowell. In answer to which I'll point you "The
Open Boat," the sternest, creepiest bit of realism ever penned, and
Stevie was in the boat.
American critics honored Stephen Crane with more ridicule, abuse and
unkind comment than was bestowed on any other writer of his time.
Possibly the vagueness, and the loose, unsleeked quality of his work
invited the gibes, jeers, and the loud laughter that tokens the vacant
mind; yet as half-apology for the critics we might say that scathing
criticism never killed good work; and this is true, but it sometimes has
killed the man.
Stephen Crane never answered back, nor made explanation, but that he was
stung by the continued efforts of the press to laugh him down, I am very
sure.
The lack of appreciation at home caused him to shake the dust of
America from his feet and take up his abode across the sea, where his
genius was being recognized, and where strong men stretched out sinewy
hands of welcome, and words of appreciation were heard, instead of
silly, insulting parody. In passing, it is well to note that the five
strongest writers of America had their passports to greatness viséed in
England before they were granted recognition at home. I refer to Walt
Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson, Poe and Stephen Crane.
Stevie did not know he cared for approbation, but his constant refusal
to read what the newspapers said about him was proof that he did. He
boycotted the tribe of Romeike, because he knew that nine clippings out
of every ten would be unkind, and his sensitive soul shrank from the
pin-pricks.
Contemporary estimates are usually wrong, and Crane is only another of
the long list of men of genius to whom Fame brings a wreath and finds
her poet dead.
Stephen Crane was a reincarnation of Frederic Chopin. Both were small in
stature, slight, fair-haired, and of that sensitive, acute, receptive
temperament--capable of highest joy and keyed for exquisite pain.
Haunted with the prophetic vision of quick-coming death, and with the
hectic desire to get their work done, they often toiled the night away
and were surprised by the rays of the rising sun. Both were shrinking
yet proud, shy but bold, with a tenderness and a feminine longing for
love that earth could not requite. At times mad gaiety, that ill-masked
a breaking heart, took the reins, and the spirits of children just out
of school seemed to hold the road. At other times--and this was the
prevailing mood--the manner was one of placid, patient, calm and smooth,
unruffled hope; but back and behind all was a dynamo of energy, a
brooding melancholy of unrest, and the crouching world-sorrow that would
not down.
Chopin reached sublimity through sweet sounds; Crane attained the same
heights through the sense of sight and words that symboled color, shapes
and scenes. In each the distinguishing feature is the intense
imagination and active sympathy. Knowledge consists in a sense of
values--of distinguishing this from that, for truth lies in the mass.
The delicate nuances of Chopin's music have never been equaled by
another composer; every note is cryptic, every sound a symbol. And yet
it is dance-music, too, but still it tells its story of baffled hope and
stifled desire--the tragedy of Poland in sweet sounds.
Stephen Crane was an artist in his ability to convey the feeling by just
the right word, or a word misplaced, like a lady's dress in disarray, or
a hat askew. This daring quality marks everything he wrote. The
recognition that language is fluid, and at best only an expedient,
flavors all his work. He makes no fetish of a grammar--if grammar gets
in the way, so much the worse for the grammar. All is packed with color,
and charged with feeling, yet the work is usually quiet in quality and
modest in manner.
Art is born of heart, not head; and so it seems to me that the work of
these men whose names I have somewhat arbitrarily linked, will live.
Each sowed in sorrow and reaped in grief. They were tender, kind,
gentle, with a capacity for love that passes the love of woman. They
were each indifferent to the proprieties, very much as children are.
They lived in cloister-like retirement, hidden from the public gaze, or
wandered unnoticed and unknown. They founded no schools, delivered no
public addresses, and in their own day made small impress on the times.
Both were sublimely indifferent to what had been said and done--the term
precedent not being found within the covers of their bright lexicon of
words. In the nature of each was a goodly trace of peroxide of iron that
often manifested itself in the man's work.
The faults in each spring from an intense personality, uncolored by the
surroundings, and such faults in such men are virtues.
They belong to that elect few who have built for the centuries. The
influence of Chopin, beyond that of other composers, is alive today, and
moves unconsciously, but profoundly, every music-maker; the seemingly
careless style of Crane is really lapidaric, and is helping to file the
fetters from every writer who has ideas plus, and thoughts that burn.
Mother Nature in giving out energy gives each man about an equal
portion. But that ability to throw the weight with the blow, to
concentrate the soul in a sonnet, to focus force in a single effort, is
the possession of God's Chosen Few. Chopin put his affection, his
patriotism, his wrath, his hope, and his heroism into his music--as if
the song of all the forest birds could be secured, sealed and saved for
us!
* * * * *
The father of Chopin was a Frenchman who went up to Poland seeking gain
and adventure. He became a soldier under Kosciusko and arose to rank of
Captain. He found such favor with the nobility by his gracious ways that
he became a teacher of French in the family of Count Frederic Skarbek.
In the family group was a fair young dependent of nervous
temperament--slight, active, gentle and intelligent. She was descendent
from a line of aristocrats, but in a country where revolutions have been
known to begin and end before breakfast, titles stand for little.
Nicholas Chopin, ex-soldier, teacher of French and Deportment, married
this fine young girl, and they lived in one of Count Skarbek's
straw-thatched cottages at the little village of Zelazowa-Wola,
twenty-nine miles from Warsaw. Here it was that Frederic Chopin was
born, in Eighteen Hundred Nine--that memorable year when Destiny sent a
flight of great souls to the planet Earth.
The country was bleak and battle-scarred; it had been drained of its men
and treasure, and served as a dueling-ground and the place of skulls for
kings and such riffraff who have polluted this fair world with their
boastings of a divine power.
The struggle of Poland to free herself from the grip of the imperial
succubi has generated an atmosphere of ultramarine, so we view the
little land of patriots (and fanatics) through a mist of melancholy.
The history of Poland is written in blood and tears.
Go ask John Sobieski, who saw his father hanged by order of Ferdinand
Maximilian, and child though he was, realized that banishment was the
fate of himself and mother; and then ten years after, himself, stood
death-guard over this same Maximilian in Mexico, and told that tyrant
the story of his life, and shook hands with him, calling it quits, ere
the bandage was tied over the eyes of the ex-dictator and the sunlight
shut out forever.
Go ask John Sobieski!
The woes of Poland have produced strange men. Under such rule as she has
known relentless hate springs up in otherwise gracious hearts from the
scattered dragons' teeth; and in other natures, where there is not quite
so much of the motive temperament, a deep strain of sorrow and religious
melancholy finds expression. The exquisite sensibility, delicate
insight, proud reserve and brooding world-sorrow of Frederic Chopin were
the inheritance of mother to son. This mother's mind was saturated with
the wrongs her people had endured: she herself had suffered every
contumely, for where chance had caused fact to falter, imagination had
filled the void.
It is easy to say that Chopin's was an abnormal nature, and of course it
was, but when disease divides this world from another only by the
thinnest veil, the mind has been known to see things with a clearness
and vividness never before attained. With Chopin the strands of life
were often taut to the breaking-point, but ere they snapped, their
vibration gave forth to us some exquisite harmonies.
Curiously enough, this power to see and do is often the possession of
dying men. The life flares up in a flame before it goes out forever. The
passion of the consumptive Camille, as portrayed by Dumas, is
typical--no healthy woman ever loved with that same intense, eager and
almost vindictive desire. It was a race with Death.
Perfect health brings unconsciousness of body, and disease that almost
relieves the spirit of this weight of flesh produces the same results.
Again we have the Law of Antithesis.
That such a youth as Frederic Chopin should seek in music a surcease
from his world-sorrow is very natural. A stricken people turns to music;
it forms a necessary part of all religious observance, and the dirge of
mourners, the wail of the "keener," and the songs of the banshee evolve
naturally into being wherever the heart is sore oppressed. It was the
slave-songs that made slavery bearable; and in the long ago, exiles in
Babylon found a solemn joy by singing the songs of Zion. Chopin drank in
the songs of Poland with his mother's milk, and while yet a child began
to give them voice in his own way.
In the meantime his father's fortunes had mended a bit, and the family
had moved to Warsaw, where Nicholas Chopin was Professor of Languages at
the Lyceum. The title of the office fills the mouth in a very satisfying
way, but the emoluments attached hardly afforded such a gratification.
In Warsaw there was much misery, for the plunderer had worked
conscription and seizure to its furthest limit. Want and destitution
were on every hand, but still this brave people maintained their
University and clung to its traditions. The family of the Professor of
Languages consisted of himself, wife, three daughters and the son
Frederic. Their income for several years was not over fifteen dollars a
month, but still they managed to maintain an appearance of decency, and
by the help of the public library, the free museum and the open-air
concerts, they kept abreast of the times in literature, art and music.
There was absolute economy required, every particle of food was saved,
and when cast-off dresses were sent from the home of the Count it was a
godsend for the mother and girls, who measured and patched and pieced,
making garments for themselves, and for Frederic as well; so while their
raiment was not gaudy nor expressed in fancy, it served.
Chopin once said to George Sand, "I never can think of my mother without
her knitting-needles!" And George Sand has recorded, "Frederic never had
but one passion and that was his mother." Into all of her knitting this
mother's flying needles worked much love. The entire household was one
of mutual service, and gentle, trusting affection. The weekly letters of
Chopin to his mother from Paris, and the cold sweat on his forehead at
the thought of his parents knowing of his relationship with George Sand,
are credit-marks to his character. There is a sweet recompense in mutual
deprivation where trials and difficulties only serve to cement the
affections; and who shall say how much the wondrous blending of strength
and delicacy in the music of Chopin is due to the memory of those early
days of toil and trial, of strength and forbearance, of hope and love?
To be born into such a family is a great blessing. The value of the
environment is shown in that all three of the sisters became
distinguished in literature. Two of them married men of intellect,
wealth and worth, and through the collaboration of these sisters, books
were produced that did for the plain people of Poland what Harriet
Martineau's books on sociology did for the people of England. Frederic
played and practised at the Lyceum where his father taught, and the
ambition of his parents was that he should grow up and take the place of
Professor of Music in the Lyceum. Adalbert Zevyny, one of the leading
pianists in the city, became attracted to the boy and took him as a
pupil, without pay.
The teacher soon became a little boastful of his precocious pupil, and
when there came a public concert for the benefit of the poor, we find
reference made to Chopin thus, "A child not yet eight years of age
played, and connoisseurs say he promises to replace Mozart." In reality
the boy was nearer twelve than eight, but his size and looks suggested
to the management the idea of plagiarizing, in advance, our honored
countryman, Phineas T. Barnum. Hence the announcement on the programs.
But now the nobility of the neighborhood began to send carriages for the
fair-haired lad, so he could play for their invited guests. Then came
snug little honorariums that soon replaced his patched-up wardrobe for
something more fashionable.
Frederic took all the applause quite as a matter of course, and on one
occasion, after he had played divinely, he asked a proud lady this
question, "How do you like my new collar?"
He was to the manner born, and the gentle blood of his mother formed him
as a fit companion for aristocrats.
These occasional musicales at the houses of the great made money matters
easier, and Frederic began to take lessons from Joseph Elsner, who
taught him the science of composition, and introduced him into the
deeper mysteries of music-making. Elsner, it was, more than any other
man, who forced the truth upon Chopin that he must play to satisfy
himself, and in composition be his own most exacting critic. In other
words, Elsner developed and strengthened in Chopin the artistic
conscience--that impulse which causes an artist to scorn doing anything
save his best.
From little excursions to neighboring towns and country houses about
Warsaw, Chopin now ventured farther away from home, chaperoned by his
friend, Prince Radziwill. He visited Berlin, Venice, Prague, Heidelberg,
and mingled on an absolute equality with the nobility. If they had
titles, he had talents. And his talents often made their decorations
sing small.
His modesty was witching, and while in public concerts his playing was
not pronounced enough to capture the gallery, yet in small gatherings he
won all hearts, and the fact that he played his own compositions made
him an added object of enthusiasm to the elect. Chopin arrived in Paris
when he was twenty-two years of age. It was not his intention to remain
more than a few weeks, but Paris was to be his home for eighteen
years--and then Pere la Chaise.
* * * * *
A woman who beholds her thirtieth birthday in sight, and girlhood gone,
is approaching a climacteric in her career. Flaubert has named
twenty-nine as the eventful year in the life of woman, and thirty-three
for men. Every normal woman craves love and tenderness--these are her
God-given right. If they have not come to her by the time the bloom is
fading from her cheeks, there is danger of her reaching out and
clutching for them. The strongest instinct in young girls is
self-protection--they fight on the defensive. But at thirty, women have
been known to grow a trifle anxious, just as did the Sabine women who
dispatched a messenger to the Romans asking this question, "How soon
does the program begin?"
And thus are conditions reversed, for it is the youth of twenty or so
who seeks conquest with fiery soul. Alexander was only nineteen when he
sighed for more worlds to conquer. He didn't have to wait long before he
found that this one had conquered him. Youth considers itself immortal,
and its powers without limit, but as a man approaches thirty he grows
economical of his resources and parsimonious of his emotions. Men of
thirty, or so, are apt to be coy.
And so one might say that it is around thirty that for the first time
the man and the woman meet on an equality, without sham, shame or
pretense. Before that time the average woman abounds in affectation and
untruth; the man is absurdly aggressive and full of foolish flattery.
As to the question, "Should women propose?" the answer is, "Yes,
certainly, and they do when they are twenty-nine."
Aurora Dudevant saw her thirtieth birthday looming on the horizon of her
life. Nine years before she had been married to an ex-army-officer, who
dyed his whiskers purple. Aurora had been a dutiful wife, intent for the
first few years on filling her husband's heart and home with joy. She
had failed in this, and the proof of failure lay in that he much
preferred his dogs, guns and horses to her society. For days he would
absent himself on his hunting excursions, and at home he did not have
the tact to hide the fact that he was awfully bored.
Thackeray, once for all, has given us a picture of the heavy dragoon
with a soul for dogs--one to whom all music, save the bay of a
fox-hound, makes its appeal in vain. Aurore detested dogs for dogs'
sake, yet she rode horses astride with a daring that made her husband's
bloodshot eyes bulge in alarm. He didn't much care how fast and hard she
rode at the fences and over the ditches, but he was supposed to follow
her, and this he did not care to do. He had reached an age when a man is
mindful of the lime in his bones, and his 'cross-country riding was
mostly a matter of memory and imagination, and best done around the
convivial table.
Aurore was putting him to a test, that's all. She was proving to him
that she could meet him on his own preserve, give him choice of weapons,
and make him cry for mercy.
Her bent was literature, with music, science and art as side-lines. She
read Montaigne, Rochefoucald, Racine and Moliere, and a modern by the
name of Alfred de Musset, and quoted her authors at inconvenient times.
She flashed quotations and epigrams upon the doughty dragoon in a way he
could neither fend nor parry. At other times she was deeply religious
and tearfully penitent.
In fact, she was living on a skimped allowance of love, and had never
received the attention that a good woman deserves. Her chains were
galling her. She sighed for Paris--forty miles away--Paris and a career.
The epigrams were coming faster, shot in a sort of frenzy and fever. And
when she asked her liege for leave to go to Paris, he granted her
prayer, and agreed to give her ten dollars a week allowance.
She grabbed at the offer, and he bade her Godspeed and good riddance.
So leaving her two children behind, until such a time as she could
provide a home for them, with scanty luggage and light heart and purse,
she started away.
Other women have gone up to Paris from country towns, too, and the
chances are as one to ten thousand that the maelstrom will sweep them
into hades.
But Madame Dudevant was different--in two years she had won her way to
literary fame, and was commanding the jealous admiration of the best
writers of Paris. Her first work was a collaboration with Jules
Sandeau in a novel. Every woman who ever wrote well began by
collaborating with a man. Sandeau had formerly come from Nohant, and how
much he had to do with Madame Dudevant's breaking loose from her
homes-ties no one knows. Anyway, the second novel was written by the
Madame alone, and as a tribute to her friend the name "George Sand" was
placed upon the title-page as author. Jules Sandeau, all-'round
hack-writer and critic, was greatly pleased by the compliment of having
his name anglicized and printed on the title-page of "Indiana," but
later he was not so proud of it. George Sand soon proved herself to be a
bigger man than Sandeau.
She was not handsome, either in face or in form. She was inclined to be
stout--was rather short--and her complexion olive. But she lured with
her eyes--great sphinx-like eyes of hazel-brown--that looked men through
and through. Liszt has told us that "she had eyes like a cow," which is
not so bad as Thomas Carlyle's remark that George Eliot had a face like
a horse. George Sand was silent when other women talked, and her look
told in a half-proud, half-sad way that she knew all they knew, and all
she herself knew beside.
Without going into the issue as to what George Sand was not, let us
frankly admit that pain, deprivation, misunderstanding and maternity had
taught her many things not found in books, and that she looked at Fate
out of her wide-open eyes with a gaze that did not blink. She was wise
beyond the lot of women. I was just going to say she was a genius, but I
remember the remark of the De Goncourts to the effect that, "There are
no women of genius--women of genius are men." Possibly the point could
be covered by saying George Sand had a man's head and a woman's heart.
Women did not like her, yet what other woman was ever so honored by
woman as was George Sand in those two matchless sonnets addressed to her
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning?
The amazing energy of George Sand, her finely flowing sentences--all
charged with daring satire and insight into the heart of things--made
her work sought by readers and publishers. Her pen brought her all the
money she needed; and she had secured a divorce from "That Man," and now
had her two children with her in Paris. That she could do her literary
work and still attend to her manifold social duties must ever mark her
as a phenomenon. She was no mere adventuress. That she was systematic,
orderly and abstemious in her habits must go without saying, otherwise
her vitality would not have held out and allowed her to attend the
funerals of nearly all her retainers.
In throwing overboard the Grub Street Sandeau for Franz Liszt, Madame
Dudevant certainly showed discrimination; but in retaining the name of
"Sand," she paid a delicate compliment to the man who first introduced
her to the world of art. Liszt was too strong a man to remain long
captive--he refused to supply the doglike and abject devotion which
Aurore always demanded. Then came Michael de Bourges the learned
counsel, Calmatto the mezzotinter, Delacroix the artist, De Musset the
poet, and Chopin the musician.
It was in the year Eighteen Hundred Thirty-nine, that Chopin and Sand
first met at a parlor musicale, where Chopin was taken by Liszt, half
against his will, simply because George Sand was to be there.
Chopin did not want to meet her.
All Paris had rung with the story of how she and De Musset had gone
together to Venice, and then in less than a year had quarreled and
separated. Both made good copy of the "poetic interval," as George Sand
called it. Chopin was not a stickler for conventionalities, but George
Sand's history, for him, proved her to be coarse and devoid of all the
finer feeling that we prize in women.
Chopin had no fear of her--not he--only he did not care to add to his
circle of acquaintances one so lacking in inward grace and delicacy.
He played at the musicale--it was all very informal--and George Sand
pushed her way up through the throng that stood about the piano and
looked at the handsome boy as he played--she looked at him with her big,
hazel, cow eyes, steadfastly, yearningly, and he glancing up, saw the
eyes were filled with tears.
When the playing ceased, she still stood looking at the great musician,
and then she leaned over the piano and whispered, "Your playing makes me
live over again every pain that has ever wrung my heart; and every joy,
too, that I have ever known is mine again."
* * * * *
After their first meeting, when Chopin played at a musicale, George Sand
was apt to be there too--they often came together. She was five years
older than he, and looked fifteen, for his slight figure and delicate,
boyish face gave him the appearance of youth unto the very last. In
letters to Madame Mariana, George Sand often refers to Chopin as "My
Little One," and when some one spoke of him as "The Chopinetto," the
name seemed to stick.
That she was the man in the partnership is very evident. He really
needed some one to look after him, provide mustard-plasters and run for
the camphor and hot-water bottle. He was the one who did the weeping and
pouting, and had the "nerves" and made the scenes; while she, on such
occasions, would viciously roll a cigarette, swear under her breath,
console and pooh-pooh.
Liszt has told us how, on one occasion, she had gone out at night for a
storm-walk, and Chopin, being too ill, or disinclined to go, remained at
home. Upon her return she found him in a conniption, he having composed
a prelude to ward off an attack of cold feet, and was now ready to
scream through fear that something had happened to her. As she entered
the door he arose, staggered and fell before her in a fainting fit.
A whole literature has grown up around the relations of Chopin and
George Sand, and the lady in the case has, herself, set forth her brief
with painstaking detail in her "Histoire de Ma Vie." With De Musset,
George Sand had to reckon on dealing with a writing man, and his
accounts of "The Little White Blackbird" had taught her caution.
Thereafter she abjured the litterateurs, excepting when in her old age
she allowed Gustave Flaubert to come within her sacred circle--but her
friendship with Flaubert was placidly platonic, as all the world knows.
And so were her relations with Chopin, provided we accept her version as
gospel fact.
George Sand lacked the frankness of Rousseau; but I think we should be
willing to accept the lady's statements, for she was present and really
the only one in possession of the facts, excepting, of course, Chopin,
and he was not a writer. He could express himself only at the keyboard,
and the piano is no graphophone, for which let us all be duly thankful.
So we are without Chopin's side of the story. We, however, have some
vigorous writing by a man by the name of Hadow.
Mr. Hadow enters the lists panoplied with facts, and declares that the
friendship was strictly platonic, being on the woman's side of a purely
maternal order. Chopin was sick and friendless, and Madame Dudevant,
knowing his worth to the art world, succored him--nursing him as a
Sister of Charity might, sacrificing herself, and even risking her
reputation in order to restore him to life and health.
And this view of the case I am quite willing to accept. Mr. Hadow is no
joker, like that man who has recently written an appreciation of
Xantippe, showing that the wife of Socrates was one of the most patient
women who ever lived, and only at times resorted to heroic means in
order to drive her husband out into the world of thought. She willingly
sacrificed her own good name that another might have literary life.
Hadow has gotten all the facts together and then dispassionately drawn
his conclusions; and these conclusions are eminently complimentary to
all parties concerned.
It was only a few months after Chopin met George Sand that he was
attacked with a peculiar hacking cough. His friends were sure it was
consumption, and a leading physician gave it as his opinion that if the
patient spent the approaching Winter in Paris, it would be death in
March.
The facts being brought to the notice of George Sand, she had but one
thought--to save the life of this young man. He was too ill to decide
what was best to do, and was never able by temperament to take the
initiative, anyway, so this strong and capable woman, forgetful of self
and her own interests, made all the arrangements and took him to the
Isle of Majorca in the Mediterranean Sea. There she cared for him alone
as she might for a babe, for six long, weary months. They lived in the
cells of an old monastery at Valdemosa, away up on the mountainside
overlooking the sea. Here where the roses bloomed the whole year
through, surrounded by groves of orange-trees, shut in by vines and
flowers, with no society save that of the sacristan and an aged woman
servant, she nursed the death-stricken man back to life and hope.
To better encourage him she sent for and surprised him with his piano,
which had to be carried up the mountain on the backs of mules. In the
quiet cloisters she cared for him with motherly tenderness, and there he
learned again to awake the slumbering echoes with divine music. Several
of his best pieces were composed at Majorca during his convalescence,
where the soft semi-tropical breeze laved his cheek, the birds warbled
him their sweetest carols, and away down below, the sea, mother of all,
sang her ceaseless lullaby. When they returned to France the following
Spring, M. Dudevant had accommodatingly vacated the family residence at
Nohant in favor of his wife. It was here she took the convalescent
Chopin. He was charmed with the rambling old house, its walled-in
gardens with their arbors of clustering grapes, and the green meadows
stretching down to the water's edge, where the little river ran its way
to the ocean.
Back of the house was a great forest of mighty trees, beneath whose
thick shade the sun's rays never entered, and a half-mile away arose the
spire of the village church. There were no neighbors, save a cheery old
priest, and the simple villagers who made respectful obeisance as they
passed. Here it was that Matthew Arnold came to pay his tribute to
genius, also Liszt and the fair Countess d'Agoult, Delacroix, Renan,
Lamennais, Lamartine, and so many others of the great and excellent.
Chopin was enchanted with the place, and refused to go back to Paris.
Madame Dudevant insisted, and explained to him that she took him to
Majorca to spend the Winter, but she had no intention or thought of
caring for him longer than the few months that might be required to
restore him to health. But he cried and clung to her with such
half-childish fright that she had not the heart to send him away.
The summer months passed and the leaves began to turn scarlet and gold,
and he only consented to return to Paris on her agreeing to go with him.
So they returned together, and had rooms not so very far apart.
He went back sturdily to his music-teaching, with an occasional
musicale, yet gave but one public concert in the space of ten years.
The exquisite quality of Chopin's playing appealed only to the sacred
few, but his piano scores were slowly finding sale, through the
advertisement they received by being played by Liszt, Tausig and others.
Yet the critics almost uniformly condemned his work as bizarre and
erratic.
Each Summer he spent at lovely Nohant, and there found the rest and
quiet which got nerves back to the norm and allowed him to go on with
his work. So passed the years away. Of this we are very sure--no taint
exists on the record of Chopin excepting possibly his relationship with
George Sand. That he endeavored to win her full heart's love, for the
purpose of honorable marriage, Mr. Hadow is fully convinced. But when
his suit failed, after an eight years' courtship, and the lover was
discarded, he ceased to work. His heart was broken; he lingered on for
two years, and then death claimed him at the early age of forty years.
* * * * *
There is a tendency to judge a work of art by its size. Thus the
sculptor who does a "heroic figure" is the man who looms large to the
average visitor at the art-gallery.
Chopin wrote no lengthy symphonies, oratorios or operas. His music is
poetry set to exquisite sounds. Poetry is an ecstasy of the spirit, and
ecstasies in their very nature are not sustained moods.
The poetic mood is transient. A composition by Chopin is a soul-ecstasy,
like unto the singing of a lark.
No other man but Chopin should have been allowed to set the songs of
Shelley to music. With such names as Shelley, Keats, Poe and Crane must
Chopin's name be linked.
In Chopin's music there is much loose texture; there are wide-meshed
chords, daring leaps and abrupt arpeggios. These have often been pointed
out as faults, but such harmonious discords are now properly valued, and
we see that Chopin's lapses all had meaning and purpose, in that they
impart a feeling--making their appeal to souls that have suffered--souls
that know.
More of Chopin's music is sold in America every year than was sold
altogether during the lifetime of the composer. His name and fame grow
with each year. Everywhere--wherever a piano is played--on concert
platform, in studio or private parlor, there you will find the work of
Frederic Chopin. That such a widespread distribution must have a potent
and powerful effect upon the race goes without argument, although the
furthest limit of that influence no man can mark. It is registered with
Infinity alone. And thus does that modest, mild and gentle revolutionist
Frederic Chopin live again in minds made better.
[Illustration: SCHUMANN]