RUPTURE OF THE SAND-CHOPIN CONNECTION.--HER OWN, LISZT'S, AND
KARASOWSKI'S ACCOUNTS.-THE LUCREZIA FLORIANI INCIDENT.--FURTHER
INVESTIGATION OF THE CAUSES OF THE RUPTURE BY THE LIGHT OF LETTERS AND
THE INFORMATION OF GUTMANN, FRANCHOMME, AND MADAME RUBIO.--SUMMING-UP OF
THE EVIDENCE.--CHOPIN'S COMPOSITIONS IN 1847.--GIVES A CONCERT, HIS
LAST IN PARIS (1848): WHAT AND HOW HE PLAYED; THE CHARACTER OF THE
AUDIENCE.--GEORGE SAND AND CHOPIN MEET ONCE MORE.--THE FEBRUARY
REVOLUTION; CHOPIN MAKES UP HIS MIND TO VISIT ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.
WE now come to the catastrophe of Chopin's life, the rupture of his
connection with George Sand. Although there is no lack of narratives in
which the causes, circumstances, and time of this rupture are set forth
with absolute positiveness, it is nevertheless an undeniable fact that
we are not at the present moment, nor, all things well considered,
shall be even in the most distant future, in a position to speak on this
subject otherwise than conjecturally.
[FOOTNOTE: Except the letter of George Sand given on p. 75, and the
note of Chopin to George Sand which will be given a little farther on,
nothing, I think, of their correspondence has become public. But even
if their letters were forth-coming, it is more likely than not that they
would fail to clear up the mystery. Here I ought, perhaps, to reproduce
the somewhat improbable story told in the World of December 14, 1887, by
the Paris correspondent who signs himself "Theoc." He writes as follows:
"I have heard that it was by saving her letters to Chopin that M.
Alexandre Dumas won the friendship of George Sand. The anecdote runs
thus: When Chopin died, his sister found amongst his papers some two
hundred letters of Madame Sand, which she took with her to Poland. By
chance this lady had some difficulties at the frontier with the Russian
custom-house officials; her trunks were seized, and the box containing
the letters was mislaid and lost. A few years afterwards, one of the
custom-house officials found the letters and kept them, not knowing
the name and the address of the Polish lady who had lost them. M. Dumas
discovered this fact, and during a journey in Russia he explained to
this official how painful it would be if by some indiscretion these
letters of the illustrious novelist ever got into print. 'Let me restore
them to Madame Sand,' said M. Dumas. 'And my duty?' asked the customs
official. 'If anybody ever claims the letters,' replied M. Dumas, 'I
authorise you to say that I stole them.' On this condition M. Dumas,
then a young man, obtained the letters, brought them back to Paris, and
restored them to Madame Sand, whose acquaintance he thus made. Madame
Sand burnt all her letters to Chopin, but she never forgot the service
that M. Dumas had rendered her."]
I have done my utmost to elucidate the tragic event which it is
impossible not to regard as one of the most momentous crises in Chopin's
life, and have succeeded in collecting besides the material already
known much that is new; but of what avail is this for coming to a final
decision if we find the depositions hopelessly contradictory, and the
witnesses more or less untrustworthy--self-interest makes George Sand's
evidence suspicious, the instability of memory that of others. Under
the circumstances it seems to me safest to place before the reader the
depositions of the various witnesses--not, however, without comment--and
leave him to form his own conclusions. I shall begin with the account
which George Sand gives in her Ma Vie:--
After the last relapses of the invalid, his mind had become
extremely gloomy, and Maurice, who had hitherto tenderly loved
him, was suddenly wounded by him in an unexpected manner about
a trifling subject. They embraced each other the next moment,
but the grain of sand had fallen into the tranquil lake, and
little by little the pebbles fell there, one after
another...All this was borne; but at last, one day, Maurice,
tired of the pin-pricks, spoke of giving up the game. That
could not be, and should not be. Chopin would not stand my
legitimate and necessary intervention. He bowed his head and
said that I no longer loved him.
What blasphemy after these eight years of maternal devotion!
But the poor bruised heart was not conscious of its delirium.
I thought that some months passed at a distance and in silence
would heal the wound, and make his friendship again calm and
his memory equitable. But the revolution of February came, and
Paris became momentarily hateful to this mind incapable of
yielding to any commotion in the social form. Free to return
to Poland, or certain to be tolerated there, he had preferred
languishing ten [and some more] years far from his family,
whom he adored, to the pain of seeing his country transformed
and deformed [denature]. He had fled from tyranny, as now he
fled from liberty.
I saw him again for an instant in March, 1848. I pressed his
trembling and icy hand. I wished to speak to him, he slipped
away. Now it was my turn to say that he no longer loved me. I
spared him this infliction, and entrusted all to the hands of
Providence and the future.
I was not to see him again. There were bad hearts between us.
There were good ones too who were at a loss what to do. There
were frivolous ones who preferred not to meddle with such
delicate matters; Gutmann was not there.
I have been told that he had asked for me, regretted me, and
loved me filially up to the very end. It was thought fit to
conceal this from me till then. It was also thought fit to
conceal from him that I was ready to hasten to him.
Liszt's account is noteworthy because it gives us the opinion of a man
who knew the two principal actors in the drama intimately, and had
good opportunities to learn what contemporary society thought about it.
Direct knowledge of the facts, however, Liszt had not, for he was no
longer a friend either of the one or the other of the two parties:--
These commencements, of which Madame de Stael spoke,
[FOOTNOTE: He alludes to her saying: En amour, il n'y a que
des commencemens.] had already for a long time been exhausted
between the Polish artist and the French poet. They had only
survived with the one by a violent effort of respect for the
ideal which he had gilded with its fatal brilliancy; with the
other by a false shame which sophisticated on the pretension
to preserve constancy in fidelity. The time came when this
factitious existence, which succeeded no longer in galvanising
fibres dried up under the eyes of the spiritualistic artist,
seemed to him to surpass what honour permitted him not to
perceive. No one knew what was the cause or the pretext of the
sudden rupture; one saw only that after a violent opposition
to the marriage of the daughter of the house, Chopin abruptly
left Nohant never to return again.
However unreliable Liszt's facts may be, the PHILOSOPHY of his account
shows real insight. Karasowski, on the other hand, has neither facts
nor insight. He speaks with a novelist's confidence and freedom of
characters whom he in no way knows, and about whom he has nothing to
tell but the vaguest and most doubtful of second-hand hearsays:--
The depressed invalid became now to her a burden. At first her
at times sombre mien and her shorter visits in the sick-room
showed him that her sympathy for him was on the decrease;
Chopin felt this painfully, but he said nothing...\The
complaints of Madame Sand that the nursing of the invalid
exhausted her strength, complaints which she often gave
expression to in his presence, hurt him. He entreated her to
leave him alone, to take walks in the fresh air; he implored
her not to give up for his sake her amusements, but to
frequent the theatre, to give parties, &c.; he would be
contented in quietness and solitude if he only knew that she
was happy. At last, when the invalid still failed to think of
a separation from her, she chose a heroic means.
By this heroic means Karasowski understands the publication of George
Sand's novel Lucrezia Floriani (in 1847), concerning which he says the
story goes that "out of refined cruelty the proof-sheets were handed to
him [Chopin] with the request to correct the misprints." Karasowski also
reports as a "fact" that
the children of Madame Sand [who, by the way, were a man of
twenty-three and a woman of eighteen] said to him [Chopin],
pointing to the novel: "M. Chopin, do you know that you are
meant by the Prince Karol?"...In spite of all this the
invalid, and therefore less passionate, artist bore with the
most painful feeling the mortification caused him by the
novel...At the beginning of the year 1847 George Sand brought
about by a violent scene, the innocent cause of which was her
daughter, a complete rupture. To the unjust reproaches which
she made to him, he merely replied: "I shall immediately leave
your house, and wish henceforth no longer to be regarded by
you as living." These words were very welcome to her; she made
no objections, and the very same day the artist left for ever
the house of Madame Sand. But the excitement and the mental
distress connected with it threw him once more on the sick-
bed, and for a long time people seriously feared that he would
soon exchange it for a coffin.
George Sand's view of the Lucrezia Floriani incident must be given in
full. In Ma Vie she writes as follows:--
It has been pretended that in one of my romances I have
painted his [Chopin's] character with a great exactness of
analysis. People were mistaken, because they thought they
recognised some of his traits; and, proceeding by this system,
too convenient to be sure, Liszt himself, in a Life of Chopin,
a little exuberant as regards style, but nevertheless full of
very good things and very beautiful pages, has gone astray in
good faith. I have traced in Prince Karol the character of a
man determined in his nature, exclusive in his sentiments,
exclusive in his exigencies.
Chopin was not such. Nature does not design like art, however
realistic it may be. She has caprices, inconsequences,
probably not real, but very mysterious. Art only rectifies
these inconsequences because it is too limited to reproduce
them.
Chopin was a resume of these magnificent inconsequences which
God alone can allow Himself to create, and which have their
particular logic. He was modest on principle, gentle by habit,
but he was imperious by instinct and full of a legitimate
pride which was unconscious of itself. Hence sufferings which
he did not reason and which did not fix themselves on a
determined object.
Moreover, Prince Karol is not an artist. He is a dreamer, and
nothing more; having no genius, he has not the rights of
genius. He is, therefore, a personage more true than amiable,
and the portrait is so little that of a great artist that
Chopin, in reading the manuscript every day on my writing-
desk, had not the slightest inclination to deceive himself, he
who, nevertheless, was so suspicious.
And yet afterwards, by reaction, he imagined, I am told, that
this was the case. Enemies, I had such about him who call
themselves his friends; as if embittering a suffering heart
was not murder, enemies made him believe that this romance was
a revelation of his character. At that time his memory was, no
doubt, enfeebled: he had forgotten the book, why did he not
reread it!
This history is so little ours! It was the very reverse of it
There were between us neither the same raptures [enivrements]
nor the same sufferings. Our history had nothing of a romance;
its foundation was too simple and too serious for us ever to
have had occasion for a quarrel with each other, a propos of
each other.
The arguments advanced by George Sand are anything but convincing; in
fact, her defence is extremely weak. She does not even tell us that she
did not make use of Chopin as a model. That she drew a caricature and
not a portrait will hardly be accepted as an excuse, nay, is sure to be
regarded as the very head and front of her offending. But George Sand
had extraordinarily naive notions on this subject, notions which are
not likely to be shared by many, at least not by many outside the
fraternities of novelists and dramatists. Having mentioned, in speaking
of her grand-uncle the Abbe de Beaumont, that she thought of him when
sketching the portrait of a certain canon in Consuelo, and that she had
very much exaggerated the resemblance to meet the requirements of the
romance, she remarks that portraits traced in this way are no longer
portraits, and that those who feel offended on recognising themselves
do an injustice both to the author and themselves. "Caricature or
idealisation," she writes, "it is no longer the original model, and
this model has little judgment if it thinks it recognises itself, if it
becomes angry or vain on seeing what art or imagination has been able
to make of it." This is turning the tables with a vengeance; and if
impudence can silence the voice of truth and humanity, George Sand has
gained her case. In her account of the Lucrezia Floriani incident George
Sand proceeds as usual when she is attacked and does not find it more
convenient simply to declare that she will not condescend to defend
herself--namely, she envelops the whole matter in a mist of beautiful
words and sentiments out of which issues--and this is the only
clearly-distinguishable thing--her own saintly self in celestial
radiance. But notwithstanding all her arguments and explanations there
remains the fact that Liszt and thousands of others, I one of them, read
Lucrezia Floriani and were not a moment in doubt that Chopin was the
prototype of Prince Karol. We will not charge George Sand with the
atrocity of writing the novel for the purpose of getting rid of Chopin;
but we cannot absolve her from the sin of being regardless of the pain
she would inflict on one who once was dear to her, and who still loved
her ardently. Even Miss Thomas, [FOOTNOTE: In George Sand, a volume of
the "Eminent Women Series."] who generally takes George Sand at her
own valuation, and in this case too tries to excuse her, admits that
in Lucrezia Floriani there was enough of reality interwoven to make
the world hasten to identify or confound Chopin with Prince Karol, that
Chopin, the most sensitive of mortals, could not but be pained by the
inferences which would be drawn, that "perhaps if only as a genius he
had the right to be spared such an infliction," and that, therefore,
"one must wish it could have appeared in this light to Madame Sand."
This is a mild way of expressing disapproval of conduct that shows,
to say the least, an inhuman callousness to the susceptibilities of a
fellow-being. And to speak of the irresistible prompting of genius in
connection with one who had her faculties so well under her control
is downright mockery. It would, however, be foolish to expect
considerateness for others in one who needlessly detailed and proclaimed
to the world not only the little foibles but also the drunkenness
and consequent idiocy and madness of a brother whose family was
still living. Her practice was, indeed, so much at variance with her
profession that it is preposterous rather to accept than to doubt her
words. George Sand was certainly not the self-sacrificing woman she
pretended to be; for her sacrifices never outlasted her inclinations,
they were, indeed, nothing else than an abandonment to her desires.
And these desires were the directors of her reason, which, aided by an
exuberant imagination, was never at a loss to justify any act, be it
ever so cruel and abject. In short, the chief characteristic of George
Sand's moral constitution was her incapacity of regarding anything she
did otherwise than as right. What I have said is fully borne out by her
Ma Vie and the "Correspondance," which, of course, can be more easily
and safely examined than her deeds and spoken words.
And now we will continue our investigations of the causes and
circumstances of the rupture. First I shall quote some passages from
letters written by George Sand, between which will be inserted a note
from Chopin to her. If the reader does not see at once what several of
these quotations have to do with the matter under discussion, he will do
so before long.
Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Nohant, September 1, 1846:--
It is exceedingly kind of you to offer me shelter [un gite].
We have still our apartments in the Square Saint-Lazare
[Square d'Orleans], and nothing would prevent us from going
there.
Chopin to Madame Sand; Tuesday 2 1/2 [Paris, December 15,
1846]
[FOOTNOTE: The date is that of the postmark. A German
translation of the French original (in the Imperial Public
Library at St. Petersburg) will be found in La Mara's
"Musikerbriefe."]:--
Mademoiselle de Rozieres has found the piece of cloth in
question (it was in the camail-carton of Mdlle. Augustine),
and I sent it at once last night to Borie, [Victor Borie a
publicist and friend of George Sand] who, as Peter was told,
does not yet leave to-day. Here we have a little sun and
Russian snow. I am glad of this weather for your sake, and
imagine you walking about a great deal. Did Dib dance in last
night's pantomime? May you and yours enjoy good health!
Your most devoted,
C.
For your dear children.
I am well; but I have not the courage to leave my fireside for
a moment.
Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Nohant, May 6, 1847:--
Solange marries in a fortnight Clesinger, the sculptor, a man
of great talent, who is making much money, and can give her
the brilliant existence which, I believe, is to her taste. He
is very violently in love with her, and he pleases her much.
She was this time as prompt and firm in her determination as
she was hitherto capricious and irresolute. Apparently she has
met with what she dreamt of. May God grant it!
As regards myself, the young man pleases me also much and
Maurice likewise. He is little civilised at first sight; but
he is full of sacred fire and for some time past, since I
noticed him making advances, I have been studying him without
having the appearance of doing so...He has other qualities
which compensate for all the defects he may have and ought to
have.
...Somebody told me of him all the ill that can be said of a man
[on making inquiries George Sand found that Clesinger was a man
"irreproachable in the best sense of the word"].
M. Dudevant, whom he has been to see, consents. We do not know
yet where the marriage will take place. Perhaps at Nerac,
[FOOTNOTE: Where M. Dudevant, her whilom husband, resided.] in
order to prevent M. Dudevant from falling asleep in the
eternal to-morrow to the province.
Madame Sand to Mazzini; Nohant, May 22, 1847:--
I have just married and, I believe, well married my daughter
to an artist of powerful inspiration and will. I had for her
but one ambition--namely, that she should love and be loved;
my wish is realised. The future is in the hand of God, but I
believe in the duration of this love and this union.
Madame Sand to Charles Poncy; Nohant, August 9, 1847:--
My good Maurice is always calm, occupied, and lively. He
sustains and consoles me. Solange is in Paris with her
husband; they are going to travel. Chopin is in Paris also;
his health has not yet permitted him to make the journey; but
he is better.
The following letter, of an earlier date than those from which my last
two excerpts are taken, is more directly concerned with Chopin.
Madame Sand to Gutmann; Nohant, May 12, 1847:--
Thanks, my good Gutmann, thanks from the bottom of my heart
for the admirable care which you lavish on him [Chopin]. I
know well that it is for him, for yourself, and not for me,
that you act thus, but I do not the less feel the need of
thanking you. It is a great misfortune for me that this
happens at a moment like that in which I find myself. Truly,
this is too much anxiety at one time! I would have gone mad, I
believe, if I had learned the gravity of his illness before
hearing that the danger was past. He does not know that I know
of it, and on account, especially, of the embarras in which he
knows I find myself, he wishes it to be concealed from me. He
wrote to me yesterday as if nothing had taken place, and I
have answered him as if I suspected as yet nothing. Therefore,
do not tell him that I write to you, and that for twenty-four
hours I have suffered terribly. Grzymala writes about you very
kindly a propos of the tenderness with which you have taken my
place by the side of him, and you especially, so that I will
tell you that I know it, and that my heart will keep account
of it seriously and for ever...
Au revoir, then, soon, my dear child, and receive my maternal
benediction. May it bring you luck as I wish!
George Sand.
[FOOTNOTE: This letter, which is not contained in the
"Correspondance," was, as far as I know, first published in
"Die Gegenwart" (Berlin, July 12, 1879)]
If all that George Sand here says is bona fide, the letter proves that
the rupture had not yet taken place. Indeed, Gutmann was of opinion that
it did not take place till 1848, shortly before Chopin's departure for
England, that, in-fact, she, her daughter, and son-in-law were present
at the concert he gave on February 16, 1848. That this, however, was not
the case is shown both by a letter written by George Sand from Nohant on
February 18, 1848, and by another statement of Gutmann's, according to
which one of the causes of the rupture was the marriage of Solange with
Clesinger of which Chopin (foreseeing unhappiness which did not fail to
come, and led to separation) did not approve. Another cause, he thought,
was Chopin's disagreements with Maurice Sand. There were hasty remarks
and sharp retorts between lover and son, and scenes in consequence.
Gutmann is a very unsatisfactory informant, everything he read and
heard seemed to pass through the retort of his imagination and reappear
transformed as his own experience.
A more reliable witness is Franchomme, who in a letter to me summed up
the information which he had given me on this subject by word of mouth
as follows:--
Strange to say [chose bizarre], Chopin had a horror of the
figure 7; he would not have taken lodgings in a house which
bore the number 7; he would not have set out on a journey on
the 7th or 17th, &c. It was in 1837 that he formed the liaison
with George Sand; it was in 1847 that the rupture took place;
it was on the 17th October that my dear friend said farewell
to us. The rupture between Chopin and Madame Sand came about
in this way. In June, 1847, Chopin was making ready to start
for Nohant when he received a letter from Madame Sand to the
effect that she had just turned out her daughter and son-in-
law, and that if he received them in his house all would be
over between them [i.e., between George Sand and Chopin]. I
was with Chopin at the time the letter arrived, and he said to
me, "They have only me, and should I close my door upon them?
No, I shall not do it!" and he did not do it, and yet he knew
that this creature whom he adored would not forgive it him.
Poor friend, how I have seen him suffer!
Of the quarrel at Nohant, Franchomme gave the following account:--There
was staying at that time at Nohant a gentleman who treated Madame
Clesinger invariably with rudeness. One day as Clesinger and his wife
went downstairs the person in question passed without taking off his
hat. The sculptor stopped him, and said, "Bid madam a good day"; and
when the gentleman or churl, as the case may be, refused, he gave him a
box on the ear. George Sand, who stood at the top of the stairs, saw it,
came down, and gave in her turn Clesinger a box on the ear. After this
she turned her son-in-law together with his wife out of her house, and
wrote the above-mentioned letter to Chopin.
Madame Rubio had also heard of the box on the ear which George Sand gave
Clesinger. According to this informant there were many quarrels between
mother and daughter, the former objecting to the latter's frequent
visits to Chopin, and using this as a pretext to break with him. Gutmann
said to me that Chopin was fond of Solange, though not in love with her.
But now we have again got into the current of gossip, and the sooner we
get out of it the better.
Before I draw my conclusions from the evidence I have collected, I must
find room for some extracts from two letters, respectively written on
August 9, 1847, and December 14,1847, to Charles Poncy. The contents
of these extracts will to a great extent be a mystery to the reader, a
mystery to which I cannot furnish the key. Was Solange the chief subject
of George Sand's lamentations? Had Chopin or her brother, or both, to do
with this paroxysm of despair?
After saying how she has been overwhelmed by a chain of chagrins, how
her purest intentions have had a fatal issue, how her best actions have
been blamed by men and punished by heaven as crimes, she proceeds:--
And do you think I have reached the end? No, all I have told
you hitherto is nothing, and since my last letter I have
exhausted all the cup of life contains of tribulation. It is
even so bitter and unprecedented that I cannot speak of it, at
least I cannot write it. Even that would give me too much
pain. I will tell you something about it when I see you...I
hoped at least for the old age on which I was entering the
recompense of great sacrifices, of much work, fatigue, and a
whole life of devotion and abnegation. I asked for nothing but
to render happy the objects of my affection. Well, I have been
repaid with ingratitude, and evil has got the upper hand in a
soul which I wished to make the sanctuary and the hearth of
the beautiful and the good. At present I struggle against
myself in order not to let myself die. I wish to accomplish my
task unto the end. May God aid me! I believe in Him and
hope!...Augustine has suffered much, but she has had great
courage and a true feeling of her dignity; and her health,
thank God, has not suffered.
[FOOTNOTE: Augustine Brault was according to the editor of the
Correspondance a cousin of George Sand's; George Sand herself
calls her in Ma Vie her parent, and tells us in a vague way
how her connection with this young lady gave occasion to
scandalous libels.]
The next quotation is from the letter dated Nohant, December 14, 1847.
Desirez is the wife of Charles Poncy, to whom the letter is addressed.
You have understood, Desirez and you, you whose soul is
delicate because it is ardent, that I passed through the
gravest and most painful phase of my life. I nearly succumbed,
although I had foreseen it for a long time. But you know one
is not always under the pressure of a sinister foresight,
however evident it may be. There are days, weeks, entire
months even, when one lives on illusions, and when one
flatters one's self one is turning aside the blow which
threatens one. At last, the most probable misfortune always
surprises us disarmed and unprepared. In addition to this
development of the unhappy germ, which was going on unnoticed,
there have arisen several very bitter and altogether
unexpected accessory circumstances. The result is that I am
broken in soul and body with chagrin. I believe that this
chagrin is incurable; for the better I succeed in freeing
myself from it for some hours, the more sombre and poignant
does it re-enter into me in the following hours...I have
undertaken a lengthy work [un ouvrage de longue haleine]
entitled Histoire de ma Vie...However, I shall not reveal the
whole of my life...It will be, moreover, a pretty good piece
of business, which will put me on my feet again, and will
relieve me of a part of my anxieties with regard to the future
of Solange, which is rather compromised.
We have, then, the choice of two explanations of the rupture: George
Sand's, that it was caused by the disagreement of Chopin and her son;
and Franchomme's, that it was brought about by Chopin's disregard of
George Sand's injunction not to receive her daughter and son-in-law.
I prefer the latter version, which is reconcilable with George Sand's
letters, confirmed by the testimony of several of Chopin's friends, and
given by an honest, simple-minded man who may be trusted to have told a
plain unvarnished tale.
[FOOTNOTE: The contradictions are merely apparent, and disappear if we
consider that George Sand cannot have had any inclination to give to
Gutmann and Poncy an explanation of the real state of matters. Moreover,
when she wrote to the former the rupture had, according to Franchomme,
not yet taken place.]
But whatever reason may have been alleged to justify, whatever
circumstance may have been the ostensible cause of the rupture, in
reality it was only a pretext. On this point all agree--Franchomme,
Gutmann, Kwiatkowski, Madame Rubio, Liszt, &c. George Sand was tired of
Chopin, and as he did not leave her voluntarily, the separation had to
be forced upon him. Gutmann thought there was no rupture at all. George
Sand went to Nohant without Chopin, ceased to write to him, and thus
the connection came to an end. Of course, Chopin ought to have left
her before she had recourse to the "heroic means" of kicking him,
metaphorically speaking, out of doors. But the strength of his passion
for this woman made him weak. If a tithe of what is rumoured about
George Sand's amorous escapades is true, a lover who stayed with her for
eight years must have found his capacity of overlooking and forgiving
severely tested. We hear on all sides of the infidelities she permitted
herself. A Polish friend of Chopin's informed me that one day when he
was about to enter the composer's, room to pay him a visit, the married
Berrichon female servant of George Sand came out of it; and Chopin, who
was lying ill in bed, told him afterwards that she had been complaining
of her mistress and husband. Gutmann, who said that Chopin knew of
George Sand's occasional infidelities, pretended to have heard him say
when she had left him behind in Paris: "I would overlook all if only she
would allow me to stay with her at Nohant." I regard these and such like
stories, especially the last one, with suspicion (is it probable that
the reticent artist was communicative on so delicate a subject, and with
Gutmann, his pupil and a much younger man?), but they cannot be ignored,
as they are characteristic of how Chopin's friends viewed his position.
And yet, tormented as he must have been in the days of possession,
crushed as he was by the loss, tempted as he subsequently often felt to
curse her and her deceitfulness, he loved and missed George Sand to the
very end--even the day before his death he said to Franchomme that she
had told him he would die in no other arms but hers (que je ne mourrais
que dans ses bras).
If George Sand had represented her separation from Chopin as a matter of
convenience, she would have got more sympathy and been able to make out
a better case.
The friendship of Chopin [she writes in Ma Vie] has never been
for me a refuge in sadness. He had quite enough troubles of
his own to bear. Mine would have overwhelmed him; moreover, he
knew them only vaguely and did not understand them at all. He
would have appreciated them from a point of view very
different from mine.
Besides Chopin's illnesses became more frequent, his strength diminished
from day to day, and care and attendance were consequently more than
ever needful. That he was a "detestable patient" has already been said.
The world takes it for granted that the wife or paramour of a man of
genius is in duty bound to sacrifice herself for him. But how does the
matter stand when there is genius on both sides, and self-sacrifice
of either party entails loss to the world? By the way, is it not very
selfish and hypocritical of this world which generally does so little
for men of genius to demand that women shall entirely, self-denyingly
devote themselves to their gifted lovers? Well, both George Sand and
Chopin had to do work worth doing, and if one of them was hampered by
the other in doing it, the dissolution of the union was justified. But
perhaps this was not the reason of the separation. At any rate, George
Sand does not advance such a plea. Still, it would have been unfair not
to discuss this possible point of view.
The passage from the letter of George Sand dated September 1, 1846,
which I quoted earlier in this chapter, justifies us, I think, in
assuming that, although she was still keeping on her apartments in the
Square d'Orleans, the phalanstery had ceased to exist. The apartments
she gave up probably sometime in 1847; at any rate, she passed the
winter of 1847-8, for the most part at least, at Nohant; and when after
the outbreak of the revolution of 1848 she came to Paris (between the
9th and 14th of March), she put up at a hotel garni. Chopin continued
to live in his old quarters in the Square d'Orldans, and, according to
Gutmann, was after the cessation of his connection with George Sand in
the habit of dining either with him (Gutmann) or Grzymala, that is to
say, in their company.
It is much to be regretted that no letters are forthcoming to tell us of
Chopin's feelings and doings at this time. I can place before the reader
no more than one note, the satisfactory nature of which makes up to some
extent for its brevity. It is addressed to Franchomme; dated Friday,
October 1, 1847; and contains only these few words:--
Dear friend,--I thank you for your good heart, but I am very
RICH this evening. Yours with all my heart.
In this year--i.e., 1847--appeared the three last works which Chopin
published, although among his posthumous compositions there are two of
a later date. The Trois Mazurkas, Op. 63 (dedicated to the Comtesse L.
Czosnowska), and the Trois Valses, Op. 64 (dedicated respectively to
Madame la Comtesse Potocka, Madame la Baronne de Rothschild, and Madame
la Baronne Bronicka), appeared in September, and the Sonata for piano
and violoncello, Op. 65 (dedicated to Franchomme), in October. Now I
will say of these compositions only that the mazurkas and waltzes are
not inferior to his previous works of this kind, and that the sonata is
one of his most strenuous efforts in the larger forms. Mr. Charles Halle
remembers going one evening in 1847 with Stephen Heller to Chopin,
who had invited some friends to let them hear this sonata which he had
lately finished. On arriving at his house they found him rather unwell;
he went about the room bent like a half-opened penknife. The visitors
proposed to leave him and to postpone the performance, but Chopin would
not hear of it. He said he would try. Having once begun, he soon became
straight again, warming as he proceeded. As will be seen from some
remarks of Madame Dubois's, which I shall quote farther on, the sonata
did not make an altogether favourable impression on the auditors.
The name of Madame Dubois reminds me of the soiree immortalised by a
letter of Madame Girardin (see the one of March 7, 1847, in Vol. IV.
of Le Vicomte de Launay), and already several times alluded to by me in
preceding chapters. At this soiree Chopin not only performed several of
his pieces, but also accompanied on a second piano his E minor Concerto
which was played by his pupil, the youthful and beautiful Mdlle. Camille
O'Meara. But the musical event par excellence of the period of Chopin's
life with which we are concerned in this chapter is his concert, the
last he gave in Paris, on February 16, 1848. Before I proceed with my
account of it, I must quote a note, enclosing tickets for this concert,
which Chopin wrote at this time to Franchomme. It runs thus: "The best
places en evidence for Madame D., but not for her cook." Madame D. was
Madame Paul Delaroche, the wife of the great painter, and a friend of
Franchomme's.
But here is a copy of the original programme:--
FIRST PART.
Trio by Mozart, for piano, violin, and violoncello,
performed by MM. Chopin, Alard, and Franchomme.
Aria, sung by Mdlle. Antonia Molina di Mondi.
Nocturne, |
|--composed and performed by M. Chopin.
Barcarole, |
Air, sung by Mdlle. Antonia Molina di Mondi.
Etude, |
|--composed and performed by M. Chopin.
Berceuse, |
SECOND PART.
Scherzo, Adagio, and Finale of the Sonata in G minor, for
piano and violoncello, composed by M. Chopin, and performed
by the author and M. Franchomme.
Air nouveau from Robert le Diable, composed by M. Meyerbeer,
sung by M. Roger.
Preludes, |
|
Mazurkas, |--composed and performed by M. Chopin.
|
Valse, |
Accompanists:--MM. Aulary and de Garaude.
The report of "M. S." in the Gazette musicale of February 20, 1848,
transports us at once into the midst of the exquisite, perfume-laden
atmosphere of Pleyel's rooms on February 16:--
A concert by the Ariel of pianists is a thing too rare to be
given, like other concerts, by opening both wings of the doors
to whomsoever wishes to enter. For this one a list had been
drawn up: everyone inscribed thereon his name: but everyone
was not sure of obtaining the precious ticket: patronage was
required to be admitted into the holy of holies, to obtain the
favour of depositing one's offering, and yet this offering
amounted to a louis; but who has not a louis to spare whep
Chopin may be heard?
The outcome of all this naturally was that the fine flower of
the aristocracy of the most distinguished women, the most
elegant toilettes, filled on Wednesday Pleyel's rooms. There
was also the aristocracy of artists and amateurs, happy to
seize in his flight this musical sylph who had promised to let
himself once more and for a few hours be approached, seen, and
heard.
The sylph kept his word, and with what success, what
enthusiasm! It is easier to tell you of the reception he got,
the transport he excited, than to describe, analyse, divulge,
the mysteries of an execution which was nothing analogous in
our terrestrial regions. If we had in our power the pen which
traced the delicate marvels of Queen Mab, not bigger than an
agate that glitters on the finger of an alderman, of her liny
chariot, of her diaphanous team, only then should we succeed
in giving an idea of a purely ideal talent into which matter
enters hardly at all. Only Chopin can make Chopin understood:
all those who were present at the seance of Wednesday are
convinced of this as well as we.
The programme announced first a trio of Mozart, which Chopin,
Alard, and Franchomme executed in such a manner that one
despairs of ever hearing it again so well performed. Then
Chopin played studies, preludes, mazurkas, waltzes; he
performed afterwards his beautiful sonata with Franchomme. Do
not ask us how all these masterpieces small and great were
rendered. We said at first we would not attempt to reproduce
these thousands and thousands of nuances of an exceptional
genius having in his service an organisation of the same kind.
We shall only say that the charm did not cease to act a single
instant on the audience, and that it still lasted after the
concert was ended.
Let us add that Roger, our brilliant tenor, sang with his most
expressive voice the beautiful prayer intercalated in Robert
le Diable by the author himself at the debut of Mario at the
Opera; that Mdlle. Antonia de Mendi [a niece of Pauline
Viardot's; see the spelling of her name in the programme], the
young and beautiful singer, carried off her share of bravos by
her talent full of hope and promise.
There is a talk of a second concert which Chopin is to give on
the 10th of March, and already more than 600 names are put
down on the new list. In this there is nothing astonishing;
Chopin owed us this recompense, and he well deserves this
eagerness.
As this report, although it enables us to realise the atmosphere, is
otherwise lacking in substance, we must try to get further information
elsewhere. Happily, there is plenty at our disposal.
Before playing the violoncello sonata in public [wrote Madame
Dubois to me], Chopin had tried it before some artists and
intimate friends; the first movement, the masterpiece, was not
understood. It appeared to the hearers obscure, involved by
too many ideas, in short, it had no success. At the last
moment Chopin dared not play the whole sonata before so
worldly and elegant an audience, but confined himself to the
Scherzo, Adagio, and Finale. I shall never forget the manner
in which he executed the Barcarole, that adorable composition;
the Waltz in D flat (la valse au petit chien) was encored
amidst the acclamations of the public. A grande dame who was
present at this concert wished to know Chopin's secret of
making the scales so flowing on the piano [faire les gammes si
coulees stir le piano]. The expression is good, and this
limpidity has never been equalled.
Stephen Heller's remark to me, that Chopin became in his last years
so weak that his playing was sometimes hardly audible, I have already
related in a preceding chapter. There I have also mentioned what Mr.
Charles Halle' told me--namely, that in the latter part of his life
Chopin often played forte passages piano and even pianissimo, that,
for instance, at the concert we are speaking of he played the two forte
passages towards the end of the Barcarole pianissimo and with all
sorts of dynamic finesses. Mr. Otto Goldschmidt, who was present at the
concert on February 16, 1848, gave some interesting recollections of
it, after the reading of a paper on the subject of Chopin, by Mr. G.
A. Osborne, at one of the meetings of the Musical Association (see
Proceedings, of the Musical Association for the year 1879-80):--
He [Chopin] was extremely weak, but still his playing--by
reason of that remarkable quality which he possessed of
gradation in touch--betrayed none of the impress of weakness
which some attributed to piano playing or softness of touch;
and he possessed in a greater degree than any pianoforte-
player he [Mr. Goldschmidt] had ever heard, the faculty of
passing upwards from piano through all gradations of tone...It
was extremely difficult to obtain admission, for Chopin, who
had been truly described as a most sensitive man--which seemed
to be pre-eminently a quality of artistic organisations--not
only had a list submitted to him of those who ought to be
admitted, but he sifted that list, and made a selection from
the selected list; he was, therefore, surrounded by none but
friends and admirers. The room was beautifully decorated with
flowers of all kinds, and he could truly say that even now, at
the distance of thirty years, he had the most vivid
recollection of the concert...The audience was so enraptured
with his [Chopin's] playing that he was called forward again
and again.
In connection with what Mr. Goldschmidt and the writer in the Gazette
musicale say about the difficulty of admission and a sifted list, I have
to record, and I shall do no more than record, Franchomme's denial.
"I really believe," he said to me, "that this is a mere fiction. I saw
Chopin every day; how, then, could I remain ignorant of it?"
To complete my account of Chopin's last concert in Paris, I have yet
to add some scraps of information derived from Un nid d'autographes, by
Oscar Comettant, who was present at it, and, moreover, reported on it
in Le Siecle. The memory of the event was brought back to him when
on looking over autographs in the possession of Auguste Wolff, the
successor of Camille Pleyel, he found a ticket for the above described
concert. As the concert so was also the ticket unlike that of any other
artist. "Les lettres d'ecriture anglaise etaient gravees au burin et
imprimees en taille-douce sur de beau papier mi-carton glace, d'un carre
long elegant et distingue." It bore the following words and figures:--
SOIREE DE M. CHOPIN,
DANS L'UN DES SALONS DE MM. PLEYEL ET CIE.,
20, Rue Rochechouart,
Le mercredi 16 fevrier 1848 a 8 heures 1/2.
Rang....Prix 20 francs....Place reservee.
M. Comettant, in contradiction to what has been said by others about
Chopin's physical condition, states that when the latter came on the
platform, he walked upright and without feebleness; his face, though
pale, did not seem greatly altered; and he played as he had always
played. But M. Comettant was told that Chopin, having spent at the
concert all his moral and physical energy, afterwards nearly fainted in
the artists' room.
In March Chopin and George Sand saw each other once more. We will rest
satisfied with the latter's laconic account of the meeting already
quoted: "Je serrai sa main tremblante et glacee. Je voulu lui parler,
il s'echappa." Karasowski's account of this last meeting is in the
feuilleton style and a worthy pendant to that of the first meeting:--
A month before his departure [he writes], in the last days of
March, Chopin was invited by a lady to whose hospitable house
he had in former times often gone. Some moments he hesitated
whether he should accept this invitation, for he had of late
years less frequented the salons; at last--as if impelled by
an inner voice--he accepted. An hour before he entered the
house of Madame H...
And then follow wonderful conversations, sighs, blushes, tears, a lady
hiding behind an ivy screen, and afterwards advancing with a gliding
step, and whispering with a look full of repentance: "Frederick!" Alas,
this was not the way George Sand met her dismissed lovers. Moreover,
let it be remembered she was at this time not a girl in her teens, but a
woman of nearly forty-four.
The outbreak of the revolution on February 22, 1848, upset the
arrangements for the second concert, which was to take place on the
10th of March, and, along with the desire to seek forgetfulness of the
grievous loss he had sustained in a change of scene, decided him at
last to accept the pressing and unwearied invitations of his Scotch and
English friends to visit Great Britain. On April 2 the Gazette musicale
announced that Chopin would shortly betake himself to London and pass
the season there. And before many weeks had passed he set out upon his
journey. But the history of his doings in the capital and in other parts
of the United Kingdom shall be related in another chapter.