CHOPIN'S VISITS TO NOHANT IN 1837 AND 1838.--HIS ILL HEALTH.--HE DECIDES
TO GO WITH MADAME SAND AND HER CHILDREN TO MAJORCA.--MADAME SAND'S
ACCOUNT OF THIS MATTER AND WHAT OTHERS THOUGHT ABOUT IT.--CHOPIN AND HIS
FELLOW--TRAVELLERS MEET AT PERPIGNAN IN THE BEGINNING OF NOVEMBER, 1838,
AND PROCEED BY PORT-VENDRES AND BARCELONA TO PALMA.--THEIR LIFE AND
EXPERIENCES IN THE TOWN, AT THE VILLA SON-VENT, AND AT THE MONASTERY OF
VALDEMOSA, AS DESCRIBED IN CHOPIN'S AND GEORGE SAND'S LETTERS, AND THE
LATTER'S "MA VIE" AND "UN HIVER A MAJORQUE."--THE PRELUDES.--RETURN TO
FRANCE BY BARCELONA AND MARSEILLES IN THE END OF FEBRUARY, 1839.
In a letter written in 1837, and quoted on p. 313 of Vol. I., Chopin
said: "I may perhaps go for a few days to George Sand's." How heartily
she invited him through their common friends Liszt and the Comtesse
d'Agoult, we saw in the preceding chapter. We may safely assume, I
think, that Chopin went to Nohant in the summer of 1837, and may be sure
that he did so in the summer of 1838, although with regard to neither
visit reliable information of any kind is discoverable. Karasowski, it
is true, quotes four letters of Chopin to Fontana as written from Nohant
in 1838, but internal evidence shows that they must have been written
three years later.
We know from Mendelssohn's and Moscheles' allusions to Chopin's visit
to London that he was at that time ailing. He himself wrote in the same
year (1837) to Anthony Wodzinski that during the winter he had been
again ill with influenza, and that the doctors had wanted to send him
to Ems. As time went on the state of his health seems to have got worse,
and this led to his going to Majorca in the winter of 1838-1839. The
circumstance that he had the company of Madame Sand on this occasion has
given rise to much discussion. According to Liszt, Chopin was forced by
the alarming state of his health to go to the south in order to avoid
the severities of the Paris winter; and Madame Sand, who always watched
sympathetically over her friends, would not let him depart alone, but
resolved to accompany him. Karasowski, on the other hand, maintains that
it was not Madame Sand who was induced to accompany Chopin, but that
Madame Sand induced Chopin to accompany her. Neither of these statements
tallies with Madame Sand's own account. She tells us that when in
1838 her son Maurice, who had been in the custody of his father, was
definitively entrusted to her care, she resolved to take him to a milder
climate, hoping thus to prevent a return of the rheumatism from which he
had suffered so much in the preceding year. Besides, she wished to live
for some time in a quiet place where she could make her children work,
and could work herself, undisturbed by the claims of society.
As I was making my plans and preparations for departure [she
goes on to say], Chopin, whom I saw every day and whose genius
and character I tenderly loved, said to me that if he were in
Maurice's place he would soon recover. I believed it, and I
was mistaken. I did not put him in the place of Maurice on the
journey, but beside Maurice. His friends had for long urged
him to go and spend some time in the south of Europe. People
believed that he was consumptive. Gaubert examined him and
declared to me that he was not. "You will save him, in fact,"
he said to me, "if you give him air, exercise, and rest."
Others, knowing well that Chopin would never make up his mind
to leave the society and life of Paris without being carried
off by a person whom he loved and who was devoted to him,
urged me strongly not to oppose the desire he showed so a
propos and in a quite unhoped-for way.
As time showed, I was wrong in yielding to their hopes and my
own solicitude. It was indeed enough to go abroad alone with
two children, one already ill, the other full of exuberant
health and spirits, without taking upon myself also a terrible
anxiety and a physician's responsibility.
But Chopin was just then in a state of health that reassured
everybody. With the exception of Grzymala, who saw more
clearly how matters stood, we were all hopeful. I nevertheless
begged Chopin to consider well his moral strength, because for
several years he had never contemplated without dread the idea
of leaving Paris, his physician, his acquaintances, his room
even, and his piano. He was a man of imperious habits, and
every change, however small it might be, was a terrible event
in his life.
Seeing that Liszt--who was at the time in Italy--and Karasowski speak
only from hearsay, we cannot do better than accept George Sand's
account, which contains nothing improbable. In connection with this
migration to the south, I must, however, not omit to mention certain
statements of Adolph Gutmann, one of Chopin's pupils. Here is the
substance of what Gutmann told me. Chopin was anxious to go to Majorca,
but for some time was kept in suspense by the scantiness of his funds.
This threatening obstacle, however, disappeared when his friend the
pianoforte-maker and publisher, Camille Pleyel, paid him 2,000 francs
for the copyright of the Preludes, Op. 28. Chopin remarked of this
transaction to Gutmann, or in his hearing: "I sold the Preludes to
Pleyel because he liked them [parcequ'il les aimait]." And Pleyel
exclaimed on one occasion: "These are my Preludes [Ce sont mes
Preludes]." Gutmann thought that Pleyel, who was indebted to Chopin for
playing on his instruments and recommending them, wished to assist his
friend in a delicate way with some money, and therefore pretended to
be greatly taken with these compositions and bent upon possessing them.
This, however, cannot be quite correct; for from Chopin's letters, which
I shall quote I presently, it appears that he had indeed promised
Pleyel the Preludes, but before his departure received from him only
500 francs, the remaining 1,500 being paid months afterwards, on the
delivery of the manuscript. These letters show, on the other hand,
that when Chopin was in Majorca he owed to Leo 1,000 francs, which
very likely he borrowed from him to defray part of the expenses of his
sojourn in the south.
[FOOTNOTE: August Leo, a Paris banker, "the friend and patron of many
artists," as he is called by Moscheles, who was related to him through
his wife Charlotte Embden, of Hamburg. The name of Leo occurs often in
the letters and conversations of musicians, especially German musicians,
who visited Paris or lived there in the second quarter of this century.
Leo kept house together with his brother-in-law Valentin. (See Vol. I.,
p. 254.)]
Chopin kept his intention of going with Madame Sand to Majorca secret
from all but a privileged few. According to Franchomme, he did not
speak of it even to his friends. There seem to have been only three
exceptions--Fontana, Matuszynski, and Grzymala, and in his letters to
the first he repeatedly entreats his friend not to talk about him. Nor
does he seem to have been much more communicative after his return, for
none of Chopin's acquaintances whom I questioned was able to tell me
whether the composer looked back on this migration with satisfaction or
with regret; still less did they remember any remark made by him that
would throw a more searching light on this period of his life.
Until recently the only sources of information bearing on Chopin's stay
in Majorca were George Sand's "Un Hiver a Majorque" and "Histoire de ma
Vie." But now we have also Chopin's letters to Fontana (in the Polish
edition of Karasowski's "Chopin") and George Sand's "Correspondance,"
which supplement and correct the two publications of the novelist.
Remembering the latter's tendency to idealise everything, and her
disinclination to descend to the prose of her subject, I shall make
the letters the backbone of my narrative, and for the rest select my
material cautiously.
Telling Chopin that she would stay some days at Perpignan if he were not
there on her arrival, but would proceed without him if he failed to make
his appearance within a certain time, Madame Sand set out with her two
children and a maid in the month of November, 1838, for the south of
France, and, travelling for travelling's sake, visited Lyons, Avignon,
Vaucluse, Nimes, and other places. The distinguished financier and
well-known Spanish statesman Mendizabal, their friend, who was going to
Madrid, was to accompany Chopin to the Spanish frontier. Madame Sand was
not long left in doubt as to whether Chopin would realise his reve de
voyage or not, for he put in his appearance at Perpignan the very next
day after her arrival there. Madame Sand to Madame Marliani, [FOOTNOTE:
The wife of the Spanish politician and author, Manuel Marliani. We
shall hear more of her farther on.] November, 1838:-- Chopin arrived at
Perpignan last night, fresh as a rose, and rosy as a turnip; moreover,
in good health, having stood his four nights of the mail-coach heroically.
As to ourselves, we travelled slowly, quietly, and surrounded at all
stations by our friends, who overwhelmed us with kindness.
As the weather was fine and the sea calm Chopin did not suffer much on
the passage from Port-Vendres to Barcelona. At the latter town the party
halted for a while-spending some busy days within its walls, and making
an excursion into the country-and then took ship for Palma, the capital
of Majorca and the Balearic Isles generally. Again the voyagers were
favoured by the elements.
The night was warm and dark, illumined only by an
extraordinary phosphorescence in the wake of the ship;
everybody was asleep on board except the steersman, who, in
order to keep himself awake, sang all night, but in a voice so
soft and so subdued that one might have thought that he feared
to awake the men of the watch, or that he himself was half
asleep. We did not weary of listening to him, for his singing
was of the strangest kind. He observed a rhythm and
modulations totally different from those we are accustomed to,
and seemed to allow his voice to go at random, like the smoke
of the vessel carried away and swayed by the breeze. It was a
reverie rather than a song, a kind of careless divagation of
the voice, with which the mind had little to do, but which
kept time with the swaying of the ship, the faint sound of the
dead water, and resembled a vague improvisation, restrained,
nevertheless, by sweet and monotonous forms.
When night had passed into day, the steep coasts of Majorca, dentelees
au soleil du matin par les aloes et les palmiers, came in sight, and
soon after El Mallorquin landed its passengers at Palma. Madame Sand had
left Paris a fortnight before in extremely cold weather, and here she
found in the first half of November summer heat. The newcomers
derived much pleasure from their rambles through the town, which has
a strongly-pronounced character of its own and is rich in fine and
interesting buildings, among which are most prominent the magnificent
Cathedral, the elegant Exchange (la lonja), the stately Town-Hall,
and the picturesque Royal Palace (palacio real). Indeed, in Majorca
everything is picturesque,
from the hut of the peasant, who in his most insignificant
buildings has preserved the tradition of the Arabic style, to
the infant clothed in rags and triumphant in his "malproprete
grandiose," as Heine said a propos of the market-women of
Verona. The character of the landscape, whose vegetation is
richer than that of Africa is in general, has quite as much
breadth, calm, and simplicity. It is green Switzerland under
the sky of Calabria, with the solemnity and silence of the
East.
But picturesqueness alone does not make man's happiness, and Palma seems
to have afforded little else. If we may believe Madame Sand, there was
not a single hotel in the town, and the only accommodation her party
could get consisted of two small rooms, unfurnished rather than
furnished, in some wretched place where travellers are happy to find "a
folding-bed, a straw-bottomed chair, and, as regards food, pepper and
garlic a discretion." Still, however great their discomfort and disgust
might be, they had to do their utmost to hide their feelings; for, if
they had made faces on discovering vermin in their beds and scorpions in
their soup, they would certainly have hurt the susceptibilities of
the natives, and would probably have exposed themselves to unpleasant
consequences. No inhabitable apartments were to be had in the town
itself, but in its neighbourhood a villa chanced to be vacant, and this
our party rented at once.
Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Palma, November 14, 1838:--
I am leaving the town, and shall establish myself in the
country: I have a pretty furnished house, with a garden and a
magnificent view, for fifty francs per month. Besides, two
leagues from there I have a cell, that is to say, three rooms
and a garden full of oranges and lemons, for thirty-five
francs PER YEAR, in the large monastery of Valdemosa.
The furniture of the villa was indeed of the most primitive kind, and
the walls were only whitewashed, but the house was otherwise convenient,
well ventilated--in fact, too well ventilated--and above all beautifully
situated at the foot of rounded, fertile mountains, in the bosom of a
rich valley which was terminated by the yellow walls of Palma, the mass
of the cathedral, and the sparkling sea on the horizon.
Chopin to Fontana; Palma, November 15, 1838:--
[FOOTNOTE: Julius Fontana, born at Warsaw in 1810, studied music (at
the Warsaw Conservatoire under Elsner) as an amateur and law for his
profession; joined in 1830 the Polish insurrectionary army; left his
country after the failure of the insurrection; taught the piano in
London; played in 1835 several times with success in Paris; resided
there for some years; went in 1841 to Havannah; on account of the
climate, removed to New York; gave there concerts with Sivori; and
returned to Paris in 1850. This at least is the account we get of him
in Sowinski's "Les Musiciens polonais et slaves." Mr. A. J. Hipkins, who
became acquainted with Fontana during a stay which the latter made in
London in 1856 (May and early part of June), described him to me as "an
honourable and gentlemanly man." From the same informant I learned that
Fontana married a lady who had an income for life, and that by this
marriage he was enabled to retire from the active exercise of his
profession. Later on he became very deaf, and this great trouble was
followed by a still greater one, the death of his wife. Thus left deaf
and poor, he despaired, and, putting a pistol to one of his ears, blew
out his brains. According to Karasowski he died at Paris in 1870. The
compositions he published (dances, fantasias, studies, &c.) are of no
importance. He is said to have published also two books, one on Polish
orthography in 1866 and one on popular astronomy in 1869. The above and
all the following letters of Chopin to Fontana are in the possession
of Madame Johanna Lilpop, of Warsaw, and are here translated from
Karasowski's Polish edition of his biography of Chopin. Many of the
letters are undated, and the dates suggested by Karasowski generally
wrong. There are, moreover, two letters which are given as if dated
by Chopin; but as the contents point to Nohant and 1841 rather than to
Majorca and 1838 and 1839, I shall place them in Chapter XXIV., where
also my reasons for doing so will be more particularly stated. A third
letter, supposed by Karasowski to be written at Valdemosa in February, I
hold to be written at Marseilles in April. It will be found in the next
chapter.]
My dear friend,--I am at Palma, among palms, cedars, cactuses,
aloes, and olive, orange, lemon, fig, and pomegranate trees,
&c., which the Jardin des Plantes possesses only thanks to its
stoves. The sky is like a turquoise, the sea is like lazuli,
and the mountains are like emeralds. The air? The air is just
as in heaven. During the day there is sunshine, and
consequently it is warm--everybody wears summer clothes.
During the night guitars and songs are heard everywhere and at
all hours. Enormous balconies with vines overhead, Moorish
walls...The town, like everything here, looks towards
Africa...In one word, a charming life!
Dear Julius, go to Pleyel--the piano has not yet arrived--and
ask him by what route they have sent it.
The Preludes you shall have soon.
I shall probably take up my quarters in a delightful monastery
in one of the most beautiful sites in the world: sea,
mountains, palm trees, cemetery, church of the Knights of the
Cross, ruins of mosques, thousand-year-old olive trees!...Ah,
my dear friend, I am now enjoying life a little more; I am
near what is most beautiful--I am a better man.
Letters from my parents and whatever you have to send me give
to Grzymala; he knows the safest address.
Embrace Johnnie. [FOOTNOTE: The Johnnie so frequently
mentioned in the letters to Fontana is John Matuszynski.] How
soon he would recover here!
Tell Schlesinger that before long he will receive MS. To
acquaintances speak little of me. Should anybody ask, say that
I shall be back in spring. The mail goes once a week; I write
through the French Consulate here.
Send the enclosed letter as it is to my parents; leave it at
the postoffice yourself.
Yours,
CHOPIN.
George Sand relates in "Un Hiver a Majorque" that the first days which
her party passed at the Son-Vent (House of the Wind)--this was the name
of the villa they had rented--were pretty well taken up with promenading
and pleasant lounging, to which the delicious climate and novel scenery
invited. But this paradisaic condition was suddenly changed as if by
magic when at the end of two or three weeks the wet season began and the
Son-Vent became uninhabitable.
The walls of it were so thin that the lime with which our
rooms were plastered swelled like a sponge. For my part I
never suffered so much from cold, although it was in reality
not very cold; but for us, who are accustomed to warm
ourselves in winter, this house without a chimney was like a
mantle of ice on our shoulders, and I felt paralysed. Chopin,
delicate as he was and subject to violent irritation of the
larynx, soon felt the effects of the damp.
We could not accustom ourselves to the stifling odour of the
brasiers, and our invalid began to ail and to cough.
From this moment we became an object of dread and horror to
the population. We were accused and convicted of pulmonary
phthisis, which is equivalent to the plague in the prejudices
regarding contagion entertained by Spanish physicians. A rich
doctor, who for the moderate remuneration of forty-five francs
deigned to come and pay us a visit, declared, nevertheless,
that there was nothing the matter, and prescribed nothing.
Another physician came obligingly to our assistance; but the
pharmacy at Palma was in such a miserable state that we could
only procure detestable drugs. Moreover, the illness was to be
aggravated by causes which no science and no devotion could
efficiently battle against.
One morning, when we were given up to serious fears on account
of the duration of these rains and these sufferings which were
bound up together, we received a letter from the fierce Gomez
[the landlord], who declared, in the Spanish style, that we
held a person who held a disease which carried contagion into
his house, and threatened prematurely the life of his family;
in consequence of which he requested us to leave his palace
with the shortest delay possible.
This did not cause us much regret, for we could no longer stay
there without fear of being drowned in our rooms; but our
invalid was not in a condition to be moved without danger,
especially by such means of transport as are available in
Majorca, and in the weather then obtaining. And then the
difficulty was to know where to go, for the rumour of our
phthisis had spread instantaneously, and we could no longer
hope to find a shelter anywhere, not even at a very high price
for a night. We knew that the obliging persons who offeredto
take us in were themselves not free from prejudices, and that,
moreover, we should draw upon them, in going near them, the
reprobation which weighed upon us. Without the hospitality of
the French consul, who did wonders in order to gather us all
under his roof, we were threatened with the prospect of
camping in some cavern like veritable Bohemians.
Another miracle came to pass, and we found an asylum for the
winter. At the Carthusian monastery of Valdemosa there was a
Spanish refugee, who had hidden himself there for I don't know
what political reason. Visiting the monastery, we were struck
with the gentility of his manners, the melancholy beauty of
his wife, and the rustic and yet comfortable furniture of
their cell. The poesy of this monastery had turned my head. It
happened that the mysterious couple wished to leave the
country precipitately, and--that they were as delighted to
dispose to us of their furniture and cell as we were to
acquire them. For the moderate sum of a thousand francs we had
then a complete establishment, but such a one as we could have
procured in France for 300 francs, so rare, costly, and
difficult to get are the most necessary things in Majorca.
The outcasts decamped speedily from the Son-Vent. But before Senor Gomez
had done with his tenants, he made them pay for the whitewashing and the
replastering of the whole house, which he held to have been infected by
Chopin.
And now let us turn once more from George Sand's poetical inventions,
distortions, and exaggerations, to the comparative sobriety and
trustworthiness of letters.
Chopin to Fontana; Palma, December 3, 1838:--
I cannot send you the MSS. as they are not yet finished.
During the last two weeks I have been as ill as a dog, in
spite of eighteen degrees of heat, [FOOTNOTE: That is,
eighteen degrees Centigrade, which are equal to about sixty-
four degrees Fahrenheit.] and of roses, and orange, palm, and
fig trees in blossom. I caught a severe cold. Three doctors,
the most renowned in the island, were called in for
consultation. One smelt what I spat, the second knocked whence
I spat, the third sounded and listened when I spat. The first
said that I would die, the second that I was dying, the third
that I had died already; and in the meantime I live as I was
living. I cannot forgive Johnnie that in the case of bronchite
aigue, which he could always notice in me, he gave me no
advice. I had a narrow escape from their bleedings,
cataplasms, and such like operations. Thanks to Providence, I
am now myself again. My illness has nevertheless a pernicious
effect on the Preludes, which you will receive God knows when.
In a few days I shall live in the most beautiful part of the
world. Sea, mountains... whatever you wish. We are to have our
quarters in an old, vast, abandoned and ruined monastery of
Carthusians whom Mend [FOOTNOTE: Mendizabal] drove away as it
were for me. Near Palma--nothing more wonderful: cloisters,
most poetic cemeteries. In short, I feel that there it will be
well with me. Only the piano has not yet come! I wrote to
Pleyel. Ask there and tell him that on the day after my
arrival here I was taken very ill, and that I am well again.
On the whole, speak little about me and my manuscripts. Write
to me. As yet I have not received a letter from you.
Tell Leo that I have not as yet sent the Preludes to the
Albrechts, but that I still love them sincerely, and shall
write to them shortly.
Post the enclosed letter to my parents yourself, and write as
soon as possible.
My love to Johnnie. Do not tell anyone that I was ill, they
would only gossip about it.
[FOOTNOTE: to Madame Dubois I owe the information that Albrecht, an
attache to the Saxon legation (a post which gave him a good standing in
society) and at the same time a wine-merchant (with offices in the Place
Vendome--his specialty being "vins de Bordeaux"), was one of Chopin's
"fanatic friends." In the letters there are allusions to two Albrechts,
father and son; the foregoing information refers to the son, who, I
think, is the T. Albrecht to whom the Premier Scherzo, Chopin's Op. 20,
is dedicated.]
Chopin to Fontana; Palma, December 14, 1838:--
As yet not a word from you, and this is my third or fourth
letter. Did you prepay? Perhaps my parents did not write.
Maybe some misfortune has befallen them. Or are you so lazy?
But no, you are not lazy, you are so obliging. No doubt you
sent my two letters to my people (both from Palma). And you
must have written to me, only the post of this place, which is
the most irregular in the world, has not yet delivered your
letters.
Only to-day I was informed that on the ist of December my
piano was embarked at Marseilles on a merchant vessel. The
letter took fourteen days to come from that town. Thus there
is some hope that the piano may pass the winter in the port,
as here nobody stirs when it rains. The idea of my getting it
just at my departure pleases me, for in addition to the 500
francs for freight and duty which I must pay, I shall have the
pleasure of packing it and sending it back. Meanwhile my
manuscripts are sleeping, whereas I cannot sleep, but cough,
and am covered with plasters, waiting anxiously for spring or
something else.
To-morrow I start for this delightful monastery of Valdemosa.
I shall live, muse, and write in the cell of some old monk who
may have had more fire in his heart than I, and was obliged to
hide and smother it, not being able to make use of it.
I think that shortly I shall be able to send you my Preludes
and my Ballade. Go and see Leo; do not mention that I am ill,
he would fear for his 1,000 francs.
Give my kind remembrances to Johnnie and Pleyel.
Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Palma, December 14, 1838:--
...What is really beautiful here is the country, the sky, the
mountains, the good health of Maurice, and the radoucissement of
Solange. The good Chopin is not in equally brilliant health. He
misses his piano very much. We received news of it to-day. It has
left Marseilles, and we shall perhaps have it in a fortnight. Mon
Dieu, how hard, difficult, and miserable the physical life is
here! It is beyond what one can imagine.
By a stroke of fortune I have found for sale a clean suite of
furniture, charming for this country, but which a French
peasant would not have. Unheard-of trouble was required to get
a stove, wood, linen, and who knows what else. Though for a
month I have believed myself established, I am always on the
eve of being so. Here a cart takes five hours to go three
leagues; judge of the rest. They require two months to
manufacture a pair of tongs. There is no exaggeration in what
I say. Guess about this country all I do not tell you. For my
part I do not mind it, but I have suffered a little from it in
the fear of seeing my children suffer much from it.
Happily, my ambulance is doing well. To-morrow we depart for
the Carthusian monastery of Valdemosa, the most poetic
residence on earth. We shall pass there the winter, which has
hardly begun and will soon end. This is the sole happiness of
this country. I have never in my life met with a nature so
delicious as that of Majorca.
...The people of this country are generally very gracious, very
obliging; but all this in words...
I shall write to Leroux from the monastery at leisure. If you
knew what I have to do! I have almost to cook. Here, another
amenity, one cannot get served. The domestic is a brute:
bigoted, lazy, and gluttonous; a veritable son of a monk (I
think that all are that). It requires ten to do the work which
your brave Mary does. Happily, the maid whom I have brought
with me from Paris is very devoted, and resigns herself to do
heavy work; but she is not strong, and I must help her.
Besides, everything is dear, and proper nourishment is
difficult to get when the stomach cannot stand either rancid
oil or pig's grease. I begin to get accustomed to it; but
Chopin is ill every time that we do not prepare his food
ourselves. In short, our expedition here is, in many respects,
a frightful fiasco.
On December 15, 1838, then, the Sand party took possession of their
quarters in the monastery of Valdemosa, and thence the next letters are
dated.
Chopin to Fontana; "Palma, December 28, 1838, or rather Valdemosa, a few
miles distant from Palma":--
Between rocks and the sea, in a great abandoned Carthusian
monastery, in one of the cells with doors bigger than the
gates in Paris, you may imagine me with my hair uncurled,
without white gloves, pale as usual. The cell is in the shape
of a coffin, high, and full of dust on the vault. The window
small, before the window orange, palm, and cypress trees.
Opposite the window, under a Moorish filigree rosette, stands
my bed. By its side an old square thing like a table for
writing, scarcely serviceable; on it a leaden candlestick (a
great luxury) with a little tallow-candle, Works of Bach, my
jottings, and old scrawls that are not mine, this is all I
possess. Quietness... one may shout and nobody will hear... in
short, I am writing to you from a strange place.
Your letter of the 9th of December I received the day before
yesterday; as on account of the holidays the express mail does
not leave till next week, I write to you in no great hurry. It
will be a Russian month before you get the bill of exchange
which I send you.
Sublime nature is a fine thing, but one should have nothing to
do with men--nor with roads and posts. Many a time I came here
from Palma, always with the same driver and always by another
road. Streams of water make roads, violent rains destroy them;
to-day it is impossible to pass, for what was a road is
ploughed; next day only mules can pass where you were driving
yesterday. And what carriages here! That is the reason,
Julius, why you do not see a single Englishman, not even an
English consul.
Leo is a Jew, a rogue! I was at his house the day before my
departure, and I told him not to send me anything here. I
cannot send you the Preludes, they are not yet finished. At
present I am better and shall push on the work. I shall write
and thank him in a way that will make him wince.
But Schlesinger is a still worse dog to put my Waltzes
[FOOTNOTE: "Trois Valses brillantes," Op. 34.] in the Album,
and to sell them to Probst [FOOTNOTE: Heinrich Albert Probst
founded in 1823 a music-shop and publishing-house at Leipzig.
In 1831 Fr. Kistner entered the business (Probst-Kistner),
which under his name has existed from 1836 down to this day.
In the Chopin letters we meet Probst in the character of
Breitkopf and Hartel's agent.] when I gave him them because he
begged them for his father in Berlin. [FOOTNOTE: Adolf Martin
Schlesinger, a music-publisher like his son Maurice Adolph of
Paris, so frequently mentioned in these letters.] All this
irritates me. I am only sorry for you; but in one month at the
latest you will be clear of Leo and my landlord. With the
money which you receive on the bill of exchange, do what is
necessary. And my servant, what is he doing? Give the portier
twenty francs as a New Year's present.
I do not remember whether I left any debts of importance. At
all events, as I promised you, we shall be clear in a month at
the latest.
To-day the moon is wonderful, I never saw it more beautiful.
By the way, you write that you sent me a letter from my
people. I neither saw nor heard of one, and I am longing so
much for one! Did you prepay when you sent them the letter?
Your letter, the only one I have hitherto received, was very
badly addressed. Here nature is benevolent, but the people are
thievish. They never see any strangers, and therefore do not
know what to ask of them. For instance, an orange they will
give you for nothing, but ask a fabulous sum for a coat-
button.
Under this sky you are penetrated with a kind of poetical
feeling which everything seems to exhale. Eagles alarmed by no
one soar every day majestically over our heads.
For God's sake write, always prepay, and to Palma add always
Valdemosa.
I love Johnnie, and I think it is a pity that he did not
altogether qualify himself as director of the children of some
benevolent institution in some Nuremberg or Bamberg. Get him
to write to me, were it only a few words.
I enclose you a letter to my people...I think it is already
the third or fourth that I send you for my parents.
My love to Albrecht, but speak very little about me.
Chopin to Fontana; Valdemosa, January 12, 1839:--
I send you the Preludes, make a copy of them, you and Wolf;
[FOOTNOTE: Edouard Wolff] I think there are no mistakes. You
will give the transcript to Probst, but my manuscript to
Pleyel. When you get the money from Probst, for whom I enclose
a receipt, you will take it at once to Leo. I do not write and
thank him just now, for I have no time. Out of the money which
Pleyel will give you, that is 1,500 francs, you will pay the
rent of my rooms till the New Year, 450 francs and you will
give notice of my giving them up if you have a chance to get
others from April. If not it will be necessary to keep them
for a quarter longer. The rest of the amount, or 1,000 francs,
you will return from me to Nougi. Where he lives you will
learn from Johnnie, but don't tell the latter of the money,
for he might attack Nougi, and I do not wish that anyone but
you and I should know of it. Should you succeed in finding
rooms, you could send one part of the furniture to Johnnie and
another to Grzymala. You will tell Pleyel to send letters
through you.
I sent you before the New Year a bill of exchange for Wessel;
tell Pleyel that I have settled with Wessel.
[FOOTNOTE: The music-publisher Christian Rudolph Wessel, of
Bremen, who came to London in 1825. Up to 1838 he had Stodart,
and from 1839 to 1845 Stapleton, as partner. He retired in
1860, Messrs. Edwin Ashdown and Henry Parry being his
successors. Since the retirement of Mr. Parry, in 1882, Mr.
Ashdown is the sole proprietor. Mr. Ashdown, whom I have to
thank for the latter part of this note, informs me that Wessel
died in 1885.]
In a few weeks you will receive a Ballade, a Polonaise, and a
Scherzo.
Until now I have not yet received any letters from my parents.
I embrace you.
Sometimes I have Arabian balls, African sun, and always before
my eyes the Mediterranean Sea.
I do not know when I shall be back, perhaps as late as May,
perhaps even later.
Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Valdemosa, January 15, 1839:--
...We inhabit the Carthusian monastery of Valdemosa, a really
sublime place, which I have hardly the time to admire, so many
occupations have I with my children, their lessons, and my work.
There are rains here of which one has elsewhere no idea: it is
a frightful deluge! The air is on account of it so relaxing,
so soft, that one cannot drag one's self along; one is really
ill. Happily, Maurice is in admirable health; his constitution
is only afraid of frost, a thing unknown here. But the little
Chopin [FOOTNOTE: Madame Marliani seems to have been in the
habit of calling Chopin "le petit." In another letter to her
(April 28, 1839) George Sand writes of Chopin as votre petit.
This reminds one of Mendelssohn's Chopinetto.] is very
depressed and always coughs much. For his sake I await with
impatience the return of fine weather, which will not be long
in coming. His piano has at last arrived at Palma; but it is
in the clutches of the custom-house officers, who demand from
five to six hundred francs duty, and show themselves
intractable.
...I am plunged with Maurice in Thucydides and company; with
Solange in the indirect object and the agreement of the
participle. Chopin plays on a poor Majorcan piano which reminds
me of that of Bouffe in "Pauvre Jacques." I pass my nights
generally in scrawling. When I raise my nose, it is to see
through the sky-light of my cell the moon which shines in the
midst of the rain on the orange trees, and I think no more of it
than she.
Madame Sand to M. A. M. Duteil; Valdemosa, January 20, 1839:--
...This [the slowness and irregularity of the post] is not the
only inconvenience of the country. There are innumerable ones,
and yet this is the most beautiful country. The climate is
delicious. At the time I am writing, Maurice is gardening in his
shirt-sleeves, and Solange, seated under an orange tree loaded
with fruit, studies her lesson with a grave air. We have bushes
covered with roses, and spring is coming in. Our winter lasted
six weeks, not cold, but rainy to a degree to frighten us. It is
a deluge! The rain uproots the mountains; all the waters of the
mountain rush into the plain; the roads become torrents. We found
ourselves caught in them, Maurice and I. We had been at Palma in
superb weather. When we returned in the evening, there were no
fields, no roads, but only trees to indicate approximately the
way which we had to go. I was really very frightened, especially
as the horse refused to proceed, and we were obliged to traverse
the mountain on foot in the night, with torrents across our legs.
Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Valdemosa, February 22, 1839:--
...You see me at my Carthusian monastery, still sedentary, and
occupied during the day with my children, at night with my work.
In the midst of all this, the warbling of Chopin, who goes his
usual pretty way, and whom the walls of the cell are much
astonished to hear.
The only remarkable event since my last letter is the arrival
of the so much-expected piano. After a fortnight of
applications and waiting we have been able to get it out of
the custom-house by paying three hundred francs of duty.
Pretty country this! After all, it has been disembarked
without accident, and the vaults of the monastery are
delighted with it. And all this is not profaned by the
admiration of fools-we do not see a cat.
Our retreat in the mountains, three leagues from the town, has
freed us from the politeness of idlers.
Nevertheless, we have had one visitor, and a visitor from
Paris!--namely, M. Dembowski, an Italian Pole whom Chopin
knew, and who calls himself a cousin of Marliani--I don't know
in what degree.
...The fact is, that we are very much pleased with the freedom
which this gives us, because we have work to do; but we
understand very well that these poetic intervals which one
introduces into one's life are only times of transition and rest
allowed to the mind before it resumes the exercise of the
emotions. I mean this in the purely intellectual sense; for, as
regards the life of the heart, it cannot cease for a moment...
This brings us to the end of the known letters written by Chopin and
Madame Sand from Majorca. And now let us see what we can find in George
Sand's books to complete the picture of the life of her and her party
at Valdemosa, of which the letters give only more or less disconnected
indications. I shall use the materials at my disposal freely and
cautiously, quoting some passages in full, regrouping and summing-up
others, and keeping always in mind--which the reader should likewise
do--the authoress's tendency to emphasise, colour, and embellish, for
the sake of literary and moral effect.
Not to extend this chapter too much, I refer the curious to George
Sand's "Un Hiver a Majorque" for a description of the "admirable,
grandiose, and wild nature" in the midst of which the "poetic abode" of
her and her party was situated--of the grandly and beautifully-varied
surface of the earth, the luxuriant southern vegetation, and the
marvellous phenomena of light and air; of the sea stretching out on two
sides and meeting the horizon; of the surrounding formidable peaks, and
the more distant round-swelling hills; of the eagles descending in the
pursuit of their prey down to the orange trees of the monastery gardens;
of the avenue of cypresses serpentining from the top of the mountain to
the bottom of the gorge; of the torrents covered with myrtles; in short,
of the immense ensemble, the infinite details, which overwhelm the
imagination and outvie the poet's and painter's dreams. Here it will be
advisable to confine ourselves to the investigation of a more limited
sphere, to inspect rather narrow interiors than vast landscapes.
As the reader has gathered from the preceding letters, there was no
longer a monastic community at Valdemosa. The monks had been dispersed
some time before, and the monastery had become the property of the
state. During the hot summer months it was in great part occupied by
small burghers from Palma who came in quest of fresh air. The only
permanent inhabitants of the monastery, and the only fellow-tenants of
George Sand's party, were two men and one woman, called by the novelist
respectively the Apothecary, the Sacristan, and Maria Antonia.
The first, a remnant of the dispersed community, sold mallows and
couch-grass, the only specifics he had; the second was the person in
whose keeping were the keys of the monastery; and the third was a
kind of housekeeper who, for the love of God and out of neighbourly
friendship, offered her help to new-comers, and, if it was accepted, did
not fail to levy heavy contributions.
The monastery was a complex of strongly-constructed, buildings without
any architectural beauty, and such was, its circumference and mass of
stones that it would have been easy to house an army corps. Besides the
dwelling of the superior, the cells of the lay-brothers, the lodgings
for visitors, the stables, and other structures, there were three
cloisters, each consisting of twelve cells and twelve chapels. The most
ancient of these cloisters, which is also the smallest, dates from the
15th century.
It presents a charming coup d'oeil. The court which it
encloses with its broken-down walls is the ancient cemetery of
the monks. No inscription distinguishes these tombs...The
graves are scarcely indicated by the swellings of the turf.
In the cells were stored up the remains of all sorts of fine old
furniture and sculpture, but these could only be seen through the
chinks, for the cells were carefully locked, and the sacristan would not
open them to anyone. The second cloister, although of more recent date,
was likewise in a dilapidated state, which, however, gave it character.
In stormy weather it was not at all safe to pass through it on account
of the falling fragments of walls and vaults.
I never heard the wind sound so like mournful voices and utter
such despairing howls as in these empty and sonorous
galleries. The noise of the torrents, the swift motion of the
clouds, the grand, monotonous sound of the sea, interrupted by
the whistling of the storm and the plaintive cries of sea-
birds which passed, quite terrified and bewildered, in the
squalls; then thick fogs which fell suddenly like a shroud and
which, penetrating into the cloisters through the broken
arcades, rendered us invisible, and made the little lamp we
carried to guide us appear like a will-o'-the-wisp wandering
under the galleries; and a thousand other details of this
monastic life which crowd all at once into my memory: all
combined made indeed this monastery the most romantic abode in
the world.
I was not sorry to see for once fully and in reality what I
had seen only in a dream, or in the fashionable ballads, and
in the nuns' scene in Robert le Diable at the Opera. Even
fantastic apparitions were not wanting to us. [FOOTNOTE: "Un
Hiver a Majorque," pp. 116 and 117.]
In the same book from which the above passage is extracted we find
also a minute description of the new cloister; the chapels, variously
ornamented, covered with gilding, decorated with rude paintings and
horrible statues of saints in coloured wood, paved in the Arabic style
with enamelled faience laid out in various mosaic designs, and provided
with a fountain or marble conch; the pretty church, unfortunately
without an organ, but with wainscot, confessionals, and doors of
most excellent workmanship, a floor of finely-painted faience, and a
remarkable statue in painted wood of St. Bruno; the little meadow in the
centre of the cloister, symmetrically planted with box-trees, &c., &c.
George Sand's party occupied one of the spacious, well-ventilated,
and well-lighted cells in this part of the monastery. I shall let her
describe it herself.
The three rooms of which it was composed were spacious,
elegantly vaulted, and ventilated at the back by open
rosettes, all different and very prettily designed. These
three rooms were separated from the cloister by a dark passage
at the end of which was a strong door of oak. The wall was
three feet thick. The middle room was destined for reading,
prayer, and meditation; all its furniture consisted of a large
chair with a praying-desk and a back, from six to eight feet
high, let into and fixed in the wall. The room to the right of
this was the friar's bed-room; at the farther end of it was
situated the alcove, very low, and paved above with flags like
a tomb. The room to the left was the workshop, the refectory,
the store-room of the recluse. A press at the far end of the
room had a wooden compartment with a window opening on the
cloister, through which his provisions were passed in. His
kitchen consisted of two little stoves placed outside, but
not, as was the strict rule, in the open air; a vault, opening
on the garden, protected the culinary labours of the monk from
the rain, and allowed him to give himself up to this
occupation a little more than the founder would have wished.
Moreover, a fire-place introduced into this third room
indicated many other relaxations, although the science of the
architect had not gone so far as to make this fire-place
serviceable.
Running along the back of the rooms, on a level with the
rosettes, was a long channel, narrow and dark, intended for
the ventilation of the cell, and above was a loft in which the
maize, onions, beans, and other simple winter provisions were
kept. On the south the three rooms opened on a flower garden,
exactly the size of the cell itself, which was separated from
the neighbouring gardens by walls ten feet high, and was
supported by a strongly-built terrace above a little orange
grove which occupied this ledge of the mountain. The lower
ledge was covered with a beautiful arbour of vines, the third
with almond and palm trees, and so on to the bottom of the
little valley, which, as I have said, was an immense garden.
The flower garden of each cell had all along its right side a
reservoir, made of freestone, from three to four feet in width
and the same in depth, receiving through conduits placed in
the balustrade of the terrace the waters of the mountain, and
distributing them in the flower garden by means of a stone
cross, which divided it into four equal squares.
As to this flower garden, planted with pomegranate, lemon, and
orange trees, surrounded by raised walks made of bricks which,
like the reservoir, were shaded by perfumed arbours, it was
like a pretty salon of flowers and verdure, where the monk
could walk dry-footed on wet days.
Even without being told, we should have known that the artists who
had now become inmates of the monastery were charmed with their
surroundings. Moreover, George Sand did her utmost to make life within
doors comfortable. When the furniture bought from the Spanish refugee
had been supplemented by further purchases, they were, considering the
circumstances, not at all badly off in this respect. The tables and
straw-bottomed chairs were indeed no better than those one finds in the
cottages of peasants; the sofa of white wood with cushions of mattress
cloth stuffed with wool could only ironically be called "voluptuous";
and the large yellow leather trunks, whatever their ornamental
properties might be, must have made but poor substitutes for wardrobes.
The folding-beds, on the other hand, proved irreproachable; the
mattresses, though not very soft, were new and clean, and the padded
and quilted chintz coverlets left nothing to be desired. Nor does
this enumeration exhaust the comforts and adornments of which the
establishment could boast. Feathers, a rare article in Majorca, had been
got from a French lady to make pillows for Chopin; Valenciennes matting
and long-fleeced sheep skins covered the dusty floor; a large tartan
shawl did duty as an alcove curtain; a stove of somewhat eccentric
habits, and consisting simply of an iron cylinder with a pipe that
passed through the window, had been manufactured for them at Palma; a
charming clay vase surrounded with a garland of ivy displayed its beauty
on the top of the stove; a beautiful large Gothic carved oak chair with
a small chest convenient as a book-case had, with the consent of the
sacristan, been brought from the monks' chapel; and last, but not least,
there was, as we have already read in the letters, a piano, in the
first weeks only a miserable Majorcan instrument, which, however, in
the second half of January, after much waiting, was replaced by one of
Pleyel's excellent cottage pianos.
[FOOTNOTE: By the way, among the many important and unimportant doubtful
points which Chopin's and George Sand's letters settle, is also that of
the amount of duty paid for the piano. The sum originally asked by the
Palma custom-house officers seems to have been from 500 to 600 francs,
and this demand was after a fortnight's negotiations reduced to 300
francs. That the imaginative novelist did not long remember the exact
particulars of this transaction need not surprise us. In Un Hiver a
Majorque she states tha the original demand was 700 francs, and the sum
ultimately paid about 400 francs.]
These various items collectively and in conjunction with the rooms in
which they were gathered together form a tout-ensemble picturesque and
homely withal. As regards the supply of provisions, the situation of
our Carthusians was decidedly less brilliant. Indeed, the water and the
juicy raisins, Malaga potatoes, fried Valencia pumpkins, &c., which
they had for dessert, were the only things that gave them unmixed
satisfaction. With anything but pleasure they made the discovery that
the chief ingredient of Majorcan cookery, an ingredient appearing in all
imaginable and unimaginable guises and disguises, was pork. Fowl was all
skin and bones, fish dry and tasteless, sugar of so bad a quality that
it made them sick, and butter could not be procured at all. Indeed,
they found it difficult to get anything of any kind. On account of
their non-attendance at church they were disliked by the villagers of
Valdemosa, who sold their produce to such heretics only at twice or
thrice the usual price. Still, thanks to the good offices of the French
consul's cook, they might have done fairly well had not wet weather been
against them. But, alas, their eagerly-awaited provisions often arrived
spoiled with rain, oftener still they did not arrive at all. Many a time
they had to eat bread as hard as ship-biscuits, and content themselves
with real Carthusian dinners. The wine was good and cheap, but,
unfortunately, it had the objectionable quality of being heady.
These discomforts and wants were not painfully felt by George Sand and
her children, nay, they gave, for a time at least, a new zest to life.
It was otherwise with Chopin. "With his feeling for details and the
wants of a refined well-being, he naturally took an intense dislike to
Majorca after a few days of illness." We have already seen what a bad
effect the wet weather and the damp of Son-Vent had on Chopin's health.
But, according to George Sand, [FOOTNOTE: "Un Hiver a Marjorque," pp.
161-168. I suspect that she mixes up matters in a very unhistorical
manner; I have, however, no means of checking her statements, her and
her companion's letters being insufficient for the purpose. Chopin
certainly was not likely to tell his friend the worst about his health.]
it was not till later, although still in the early days of their sojourn
in Majorca, that his disease declared itself in a really alarming
manner. The cause of this change for the worse was over-fatigue incurred
on an excursion which he made with his friends to a hermitage three
miles [FOOTNOTE: George Sand does not say what kind of miles] distant
from Valdemosa; the length and badness of the road alone would have been
more than enough to exhaust his fund of strength, but in addition to
these hardships they had, on returning, to encounter a violent wind
which threw them down repeatedly. Bronchitis, from which he had
previously suffered, was now followed by a nervous excitement that
produced several symptoms of laryngeal phthisis. [FOOTNOTE: In the
Histoire de ma Vie George Sand Bays: "From the beginning of winter,
which set in all at once with a diluvian rain, Chopin showed, suddenly
also, all the symptoms of pulmonary affection."] The physician, judging
of the disease by the symptoms that presented themselves at the time of
his visits, mistook its real nature, and prescribed bleeding, milk diet,
&c. Chopin felt instinctively that all this would be injurious to him,
that bleeding would even be fatal. George Sand, who was an experienced
nurse, and whose opportunities for observing were less limited than
those of the physician, had the same presentiment. After a long and
anxious struggle she decided to disregard the strongly-urged advice of
the physician and to obey the voice that said to her, even in her sleep:
"Bleeding will kill him; but if you save him from it, he will not die,"
She was persuaded that this voice was the voice of Providence, and that
by obeying it she saved her friend's life. What Chopin stood most in
need of in his weakness and languor was a strengthening diet, and that,
unfortunately, was impossible to procure:--
What would I not have given to have had some beef-tea and a
glass of Bordeaux wine to offer to our invalid every day! The
Majorcan food, and especially the manner in which it was
prepared when we were not there with eye and hand, caused him
an invincible disgust. Shall I tell you how well founded this
disgust was? One day when a lean chicken was put on the table
we saw jumping on its steaming back enormous Mattres Floh,
[FOOTNOTE: Anglice "fleas."] of which Hoffmann would have made
as many evil spirits, but which he certainly would not have
eaten in gravy. My children laughed so heartily that they
nearly fell under the table.
Chopin's most ardent wish was to get away from Majorca and back to
France. But for some time he was too weak to travel, and when he had got
a little stronger, contrary winds prevented the steamer from leaving
the port. The following words of George Sand depict vividly our poor
Carthusian friends' situation in all its gloom:--
As the winter advanced, sadness more and more paralysed my
efforts at gaiety and cheerfulness. The state of our invalid
grew always worse; the wind wailed in the ravines, the rain
beat against our windows, the voice of the thunder penetrated
through our thick walls and mingled its mournful sounds with
the laughter and sports of the children. The eagles and
vultures, emboldened by the fog, came to devour our poor
sparrows, even on the pomegranate tree which shaded my window.
The raging sea kept the ships in the harbours; we felt
ourselves prisoners, far from all enlightened help and from
all efficacious sympathy. Death seemed to hover over our heads
to seize one of us, and we were alone in contending with him
for his prey.
If George Sand's serenity and gaiety succumbed to these influences,
we may easily imagine how much more they oppressed Chopin, of whom she
tells us that--
The mournful cry of the famished eagle and the gloomy
desolation of the yew trees covered with snow saddened him
much longer and more keenly than the perfume of the orange
trees, the gracefulness of the vines, and the Moorish song of
the labourers gladdened him.
The above-quoted letters have already given us some hints of how the
prisoners of Valdemosa passed their time. In the morning there
were first the day's provisions to be procured and the rooms to be
tidied--which latter business could not be entrusted to Maria Antonia
without the sacrifice of their night's rest. [FOOTNOTE: George Sand's
share of the household work was not so great as she wished to make the
readers of Un Hiver a Majorque believe, for it consisted, as we gather
from her letters, only in giving a helping hand to her maid, who had
undertaken to cook and clean up, but found that her strength fell short
of the requirements.] Then George Sand would teach her children for
some hours. These lessons over, the young ones ran about and amused
themselves for the rest of the day, while their mother sat down to
her literary studies and labours. In the evening they either strolled
together through the moonlit cloisters or read in their cell, half of
the night being generally devoted by the novelist to writing. George
Sand says in the "Histoire de ma Vie" that she wrote a good deal and
read beautiful philosophical and historical works when she was not
nursing her friend. The latter, however, took up much of her time, and
prevented her from getting out much, for he did not like to be left
alone, nor, indeed, could he safely be left long alone. Sometimes
she and her children would set out on an expedition of discovery, and
satisfy their curiosity and pleasantly while away an hour or two in
examining the various parts of the vast aggregation of buildings; or the
whole party would sit round the stove and laugh over the rehearsal of
the morning's transactions with the villagers. Once they witnessed even
a ball in this sanctuary. It was on Shrove-Tuesday, after dark, that
their attention was roused by a strange, crackling noise. On going to
the door of their cell they could see nothing, but they heard the noise
approaching. After a little there appeared at the opposite end of the
cloister a faint glimmer of white light, then the red glare of torches,
and at last a crew the sight of which made their flesh creep and their
hair stand on end--he-devils with birds' heads, horses' tails, and
tinsel of all colours; she-devils or abducted shepherdesses in white
and pink dresses; and at the head of them Lucifer himself, horned and,
except the blood-red face, all black. The strange noise, however, turned
out to be the rattling of castanets, and the terrible-looking figures a
merry company of rich farmers and well-to-do villagers who were going to
have a dance in Maria Antonia's cell. The orchestra, which consisted
of a large and a small guitar, a kind of high-pitched violin, and from
three to four pairs of castanets, began to play indigenous jotas and
fandangos which, George Sand tells us, resemble those of Spain, but have
an even bolder form and more original rhythm. The critical spectators
thought that the dancing of the Majorcans was not any gayer than their
singing, which was not gay at all, and that their boleros had "la
gravite des ancetres, et point de ces graces profanes qu'on admire en
Andalousie." Much of the music of these islanders was rather interesting
than pleasing to their visitors. The clicking of the castanets with
which they accompany their festal processions, and which, unlike the
broken and measured rhythm of the Spaniards, consists of a continuous
roll like that of a drum "battant aux champs," is from time to time
suddenly interrupted in order to sing in unison a coplita on a phrase
which always recommences but never finishes. George Sand shares the
opinion of M. Tastu that the principal Majorcan rhythms and favourite
fioriture are Arabic in type and origin.
Of quite another nature was the music that might be heard in those
winter months in one of the cells of the monastery of Valdemosa. "With
what poesy did his music fill this sanctuary, even in the midst of his
most grievous troubles!" exclaims George Sand. I like to picture
to myself the vaulted cell, in which Pleyel's piano sounded so
magnificently, illumined by a lamp, the rich traceries of the Gothic
chair shadowed on the wall, George Sand absorbed in her studies, her
children at play, and Chopin pouring out his soul in music.
It would be a mistake to think that those months which the friends
spent in Majorca were for them a time of unintermittent or even
largely-predominating wretchedness. Indeed, George Sand herself admits
that, in spite of the wildness of the country and the pilfering habits
of the people, their existence might have been an agreeable one in
this romantic solitude had it not been for the sad spectacle of her
companion's sufferings and certain days of serious anxiety about his
life. And now I must quote a. long but very important passage from the
"Histoire de ma Vie":--
The poor great artist was a detestable patient. What I had
feared, but unfortunately not enough, happened. He became
completely demoralised. Bearing pain courageously enough, he
could not overcome the disquietude of his imagination. The
monastery was for him full of terrors and phantoms, even when
he was well. He did not say so, and I had to guess it. On
returning from my nocturnal explorations in the ruins with my
children, I found him at ten o'clock at night before his
piano, his face pale, his eyes wild, and his hair almost
standing on end. It was some moments before he could
recognise us.
He then made an attempt to laugh, and played to us sublime
things he had just composed, or rather, to be more accurate,
terrible or heartrending ideas which had taken possession of
him, as it were without his knowledge, in that hour of
solitude, sadness, and terror.
It was there that he composed the most beautiful of those
short pages he modestly entitled "Preludes." They are
masterpieces. Several present to the mind visions of deceased
monks and the sounds of the funeral chants which beset his
imagination; others are melancholy and sweet--they occurred
to him in the hours of sunshine and of health, with the noise
of the children's laughter under the window, the distant
sound of guitars, the warbling of the birds among the humid
foliage, and the sight of the pale little full-blown roses on
the snow.
Others again are of a mournful sadness, and, while charming
the ear, rend the heart. There is one of them which occurred
to him on a dismal rainy evening which produces a terrible
mental depression. We had left him well that day, Maurice and
I, and had gone to Palma to buy things we required for our
encampment. The rain had come on, the torrents had
overflowed, we had travelled three leagues in six hours to
return in the midst of the inundation, and we arrived in the
dead of night, without boots, abandoned by our driver, having
passed through unheard-of dangers. We made haste,
anticipating the anxiety of our invalid. It had been indeed
great, but it had become as it were congealed into a kind of
calm despair, and he played his wonderful prelude weeping. On
seeing us enter he rose, uttering a great cry, then he said
to us, with a wild look and in a strange tone: "Ah! I knew
well that you were dead!"
When he had come to himself again, and saw the state in which
we were, he was ill at the retrospective spectacle of our
dangers; but he confessed to me afterwards that while waiting
for our return he had seen all this in a dream and that, no
longer distinguishing this dream from reality, he had grown
calm and been almost lulled to sleep while playing the piano,
believing that he was dead himself. He saw himself drowned in
a lake; heavy and ice-cold drops of water fell at regular
intervals upon his breast, and when I drew his attention to
those drops of water which were actually falling at regular
intervals upon the roof, he denied having heard them. He was
even vexed at what I translated by the term imitative
harmony. He protested with all his might, and he was right,
against the puerility of these imitations for the ear. His
genius was full of mysterious harmonies of nature, translated
by sublime equivalents into his musical thought, and not by a
servile repetition of external sounds. His composition of
this evening was indeed full of the drops of rain which
resounded on the sonorous tiles of the monastery, but they
were transformed in his imagination and his music into tears
falling from heaven on his heart.
Although George Sand cannot be acquitted of the charge of exaggerating
the weak points in her lover's character, what she says about his being
a detestable patient seems to have a good foundation in fact. Gutmann,
who nursed him often, told me that his master was very irritable and
difficult to manage in sickness. On the other hand, Gutmann contradicted
George Sand's remarks about the Preludes, saying that Chopin composed
them before starting on his journey. When I mentioned to him that
Fontana had made a statement irreconcilable with his, and suggested
that Chopin might have composed some of the Preludes in Majorca, Gutmann
maintained firmly that every one of them was composed previously, and
that he himself had copied them. Now with Chopin's letters to Fontana
before us we must come to the conclusion that Gutmann was either under
a false impression or confirmed a rash statement by a bold assertion,
unless we prefer to assume that Chopin's labours on the Preludes
in Majorca were confined to selecting, [FOOTNOTE: Internal evidence
suggests that the Preludes consist (to a great extent at least) of
pickings from the composer's portfolios, of pieces, sketches, and
memoranda written at various times and kept to be utilised when occasion
might offer.] filing, and polishing. My opinion--which not only has
probability but also the low opus number (28) and the letters in its
favour--is that most of the Preludes, if not all, were finished or
sketched before Chopin went to the south, and that a few, if any, were
composed and the whole revised at Palma and Valdemosa. Chopin cannot
have composed many in Majorca, because a few days after his arrival
there he wrote: from Palma (Nov. 15, 1838) to Fontana that he would send
the Preludes soon; and it was only his illness that prevented him from
doing so. There is one statement in George Sand's above-quoted narrative
which it is difficult to reconcile with other statements in "Un Hiver
a Majorque" and in her and Chopin's letters. In the just-mentioned book
(p. 177) she says that the journey in question was made for the purpose
of rescuing the piano from the hands of the custom-house officers; and
in a letter of January 15, 1839, to her friend Madame Marliani (quoted
on p. 31), which does not contain a word about adventures on a stormy
night, [They are first mentioned in the letter of January 20, 1839,
quoted on p. 32.] she writes that the piano is still in the clutches of
the custom-house officers. From this, I think, we may conclude that it
must have taken place after January 15. But, then, how could Chopin have
composed on that occasion a Prelude included in a work the manuscript
of which he sent away on the lath? Still, this does not quite settle the
question. Is it not possible that Chopin may have afterwards substituted
the new Prelude for one of those already forwarded to France? To this
our answer must be that it is possible, but that the letters do not give
any support to such an assumption. Another and stronger objection would
be the uncertainty as to the correctness of the date of the letter.
Seeing that so many of Chopin's letters have been published with wrong
dates, why not also that of January 12? Unfortunately, we cannot in
this case prove or disprove the point by internal evidence. There is,
however, one factor we must be especially careful not to forget in our
calculations--namely, George Sand's habitual unconscientious inaccuracy;
but the nature of her narrative will indeed be a sufficient warning to
the reader, for nobody can read it without at once perceiving that it is
not a plain, unvarnished recital of facts.
It would be interesting to know which were the compositions that Chopin
produced at Valdemosa. As to the Prelude particularly referred to by
George Sand, it is generally and reasonably believed to be No. 6 (in B
minor). [FOOTNOTE: Liszt, who tells the story differently, brings in
the F sharp minor Prelude. (See Liszt's Chopin, new edition, pp. 273 and
274.)] The only compositions besides the Preludes which Chopin mentions
in his letters from Majorca are the Ballade, Op, 38, the Scherzo,
Op. 39, and the two Polonaises, Op. 40. The peevish, fretful, and
fiercely-scornful Scherzo and the despairingly-melancholy second
Polonaise (in C minor) are quite in keeping with the moods one imagines
the composer to have been in at the time. Nor is there anything
discrepant in the Ballade. But if the sadly-ailing composer really
created, and not merely elaborated and finished, in Majorca the
superlatively-healthy, vigorously-martial, brilliantly-chivalrous
Polonaise in A major, we have here a remarkable instance of the mind's
ascendency over the body, of its independence of it. This piece,
however, may have been conceived under happier circumstances, just as
the gloomy Sonata, Op. 35 (the one in B flat minor, with the funeral
march), and the two Nocturnes, Op. 37--the one (in G minor)
plaintive, longing, and prayerful; the other (in G major) sunny and
perfume-laden--may have had their origin in the days of Chopin's sojourn
in the Balearic island. A letter of Chopin's, written from Nohant in the
summer of 1839, leaves, as regards the Nocturnes, scarcely room for such
a conjecture. On the other hand, we learn from the same letter that he
composed at Palma the sad, yearning Mazurka in E minor (No. 2 of Op.
41).
As soon as fair weather set in and the steamer resumed its weekly
courses to Barcelona, George Sand and her party hastened to leave the
island. The delightful prospects of spring could not detain them.
Our invalid (she says) did not seem to be in a state to stand
the passage, but he seemed equally incapable of enduring
another week in Majorca. The situation was frightful; there
were days when I lost hope and courage. To console us, Maria
Antonia and her village gossips repeated to us in chorus the
most edifying discourses on the future life. "This consumptive
person," they said, "is going to hell, first because he is
consumptive, secondly, because he does not confess. If he is
in this condition when he dies, we shall not bury him in
consecrated ground, and as nobody will be willing to give him
a grave, his friends will have to manage matters as well as
they can. It remains to be seen how they will get out of the
difficulty; as for me, I will have Inothing to do with it,--
Nor I--Nor I: and Amen!"
In fact, Valdemosa, which at first was enchanting to them, lost
afterwards much of its poesy in their eyes. George Sand, as we have
seen, said that their sojourn was I in many respects a frightful fiasco;
it was so certainly as far as Chopin was concerned, for he arrived with
a cough and left the place spitting blood.
The passage from Palma to Barcelona was not so pleasant as that from
Barcelona to Palma had been. Chopin suffered much from sleeplessness,
which was caused by the noise and bad smell of the most favoured class
of passengers on board the Mallorquin--i.e., pigs. "The captain showed
us no other attention than that of begging us not to let the invalid
lie down on the best bed of the cabin, because according to Spanish
prejudice every illness is contagious; and as our man thought already of
burning the couch on which the invalid reposed, he wished it should be
the worst." [FOOTNOTE: "Un Hiver a Majorque," pp. 24--25.]
On arriving at Barcelona George Sand wrote from the Mallorquin and sent
by boat a note to M. Belves, the officer in command at the station, who
at once came in his cutter to take her and her party to the Meleagre,
where they were well received by the officers, doctor, and all the crew.
It seemed to them as if they had left the Polynesian savages and were
once more in civilised society. When they shook hands with the French
consul they could contain themselves no longer, but jumped for joy and
cried "Vive La France!"
A fortnight after their leaving Palma the Phenicien landed them at
Marseilles. The treatment Chopin received from the French captain of
this steamer differed widely from that he had met with at the hands
of the captain of the Mallorquin; for fearing that the invalid was not
quite comfortable in a common berth, he gave him his own bed. [FOOTNOTE:
"Un Hiver a Majorque," p. 183.]
An extract from a letter written by George Sand from Marseilles on March
8, 1839, to her friend Francois Rollinat, which contains interesting
details concerning Chopin in the last scenes of the Majorca intermezzo,
may fitly conclude this chapter.
Chopin got worse and worse, and in spite of all offers of
service which were made to us in the Spanish manner, we should
not have found a hospitable house in all the island. At last
we resolved to depart at any price, although Chopin had not
the strength to drag himself along. We asked only one--a first
and a last service--a carriage to convey him to Palma, where
we wished to embark. This service was refused to us, although
our FRIENDS had all equipages and fortunes to correspond. We
were obliged to travel three leagues on the worst roads in a
birlocho [FOOTNOTE: A cabriolet. In a Spainish Dictionary I
find a birlocho defined as a vehicle open in front, with two
seats, and two or four wheels. A more detailed description is
to be found on p. 101 of George Sand's "Un Hiver a
Marjorque."] that is to say, a brouette.
On arriving at Palma, Chopin had a frightful spitting of
blood; we embarked the following day on the only steamboat of
the island, which serves to transport pigs to Barcelona. There
is no other way of leaving this cursed country. We were in
company of 100 pigs, whose continual cries and foul odour left
our patient no rest and no respirable air. He arrived at
Barcelona still spitting basins full of blood, and crawling
along like a ghost. There, happily, our misfortunes were
mitigated! The French consul and the commandant of the French
maritime station received us with a hospitality and grace
which one does not know in Spain. We were brought on board a
fine brig of war, the doctor of which, an honest and worthy
man, came at once to the assistance of the invalid, and
stopped the hemorrhage of the lung within twenty-four hours.
From that moment he got better and better. The consul had us
driven in his carriage to an hotel. Chopin rested there a
week, at the end of which the same vessel which had conveyed
us to Spain brought us back to France. When we left the hotel
at Barcelona the landlord wished to make us pay for the bed in
which Chopin had slept, under the pretext that it had been
infected, and that the police regulations obliged him to burn
it.