CHOPIN IN HIS SOCIAL RELATIONS: HIS PREDILECTION FOR THE
FASHIONABLE SALON SOCIETY (ACCOUNTS BY MADAME GIRARDIN AND
BERLIOZ); HIS NEGLECT OF THE SOCIETY OF ARTISTS (ARY SCHEFFER,
MARMONTEL, HELLER, SCHULHOFF, THE PARIS CORRESPONDENT OF THE
MUSICAL WORLD); APHORISMS BY LISZT ON CHOPIN IN HIS SOCIAL
ASPECT.--CHOPIN'S FRIENDSHIPS.--GEORGE SAND, LISZT, LENZ, HELLER,
MARMONTEL, AND HILLER ON HIS CHARACTER (IRRITABILITY, FITS OF
ANGER--SCENE WITH MEYERBEER--GAIETY AND RAILLERY, LOVE OF
SOCIETY, AND LITTLE TASTE FOR READING, PREDILECTION FOR THINGS
POLISH).--HIS POLISH, GERMAN, ENGLISH, AND RUSSIAN FRIENDS.--THE
PARTY MADE FAMOUS BY LISZT'S ACCOUNT.--HIS INTERCOURSE WITH
MUSICIANS (OSBORNE, BERLIOZ, BAILLOT, CHERUBINI, KALKBRENNER,
FONTANA, SOWINSKI, WOLFF, MEYERBEER, ALKAN, ETC.).--HIS
FRIENDSHIP WITH LISZT.--HIS DISLIKE TO LETTER-WRITING.
George Sand, although one of the cleverest of the literary
portrayers who have tried their hand at Chopin, cannot be
regarded as one of the most impartial; but it must be admitted
that in describing her deserted lover as un homme du monde par
excellence, non pas du monde trop officiel, trop nombreux, she
says what is confirmed by all who have known him, by his friends,
foes, and those that are neither. Aristocratic society, with
which he was acquainted from his earliest childhood, had always a
great charm for him. When at the beginning of 1833, a little more
than two years after his arrival in Paris, he informed his friend
Dziewanowski that he moved in the highest society--among
ambassadors, princes, and ministers--it is impossible not to see
that the fact gives him much satisfaction. Without going so far
as to say with a great contemporary of Chopin, Stephen Heller,
that the higher you go in society the greater is the ignorance
you find, I think that little if any good for either heart or
mind can come from intercourse with that section of the people
which proudly styles itself "society" (le monde). Many
individuals that belong to it possess, no doubt, true nobility,
wisdom, and learning, nay, even the majority may possess one or
the other or all of them in some degree, but these qualities are
so out of keeping with the prevailing frivolity that few have the
moral courage to show their better nature. If Chopin imagined
that he was fully understood as an artist by society, he was
sadly mistaken. Liszt and Heller certainly held that he was not
fully understood, and they did not merely surmise or speak from
hearsay, for neither of them was a stranger in that quarter,
although the latter avoided it as much as possible. What society
could and did appreciate in Chopin was his virtuosity, his
elegance, and his delicacy. It is not my intention to attempt an
enumeration of Chopin's aristocratic friends and acquaintances,
but in the dedications of his works the curious will find the
most important of them. There, then, we read the names of the
Princess Czartoryska, Countess Plater, Countess Potocka,
Princesse de Beauvau, Countess Appony, Countess Esterhazy, Comte
and Comtesse de Perthuis, Baroness Bronicka, Princess
Czernicheff, Princess Souzzo, Countess Mostowska, Countess
Czosnowska, Comtesse de Flahault, Baroness von Billing, Baron and
Baroness von Stockhausen, Countess von Lobau, Mdlle. de Noailles,
&c. And in addition to these we have representatives of the
aristocracy of wealth, Madame C. de Rothschild foremost amongst
them. Whether the banker Leo with whom and his family Chopin was
on very friendly terms may be mentioned in this connection, I do
not know. But we must remember that round many of the above names
cluster large families. The names of the sisters Countess Potocka
and Princesse de Beauvau call up at once that of their mother,
Countess Komar. Many of these here enumerated are repeatedly
mentioned in the course of this book, some will receive
particular attention in the next chapter. Now we will try to get
a glimpse of Chopin in society.
Madame de Girardin, after having described in one of her "Lettres
parisiennes" (March 7, 1847) [FOOTNOTE: The full title of the
work is: "Le Vicomte de Launay--Lettres parisiennes par Mdme.
Emile de Girardin." (Paris: Michel Levy freres.)] with what
success Mdlle. O'Meara accompanied by her master played his E
minor Concerto at a soiree of Madame de Courbonne, proceeds thus:-
-
Mdlle. Meara is a pupil of Chopin's. He was there, he was
present at the triumph of his pupil, the anxious audience
asked itself: "Shall we hear him?"
The fact is that it was for passionate admirers the torment of
Tantalus to see Chopin going about a whole evening in a salon
and not to hear him. The mistress of the house took pity on
us; she was indiscreet, and Chopin played, sang his most
delicious songs; we set to these joyous or sad airs the words
which came into our heads; we followed with our thoughts his
melodious caprices. There were some twenty of us, sincere
amateurs, true believers, and not a note was lost, not an
intention was misunderstood; it was not a concert, it was
intimate, serious music such as we love; he was not a virtuoso
who comes and plays the air agreed upon and then disappears;
he was a beautiful talent, monopolised, worried, tormented,
without consideration and scruples, whom one dared ask for the
most beloved airs, and who full of grace and charity repeated
to you the favourite phrase, in order that you might carry it
away correct and pure in your memory, and for a long time yet
feast on it in remembrance. Madame so-and-so said: "Please,
play this pretty nocturne dedicated to Mdlle. Stirling."--The
nocturne which I called the dangerous one.--He smiled, and
played the fatal nocturne. "I," said another lady, "should
like to hear once played by you this mazurka, so sad and so
charming." He smiled again, and played the delicious mazurka.
The most profoundly artful among the ladies sought expedients
to attain their end: "I am practising the grand sonata which
commences with this beautiful funeral march," and "I should
like to know the movement in which the finale ought to be
played." He smiled a little at the stratagem, and played the
finale, of the grand sonata, one of the most magnificent
pieces which he has composed.
Although Madame Girardin's language and opinions are fair
specimens of those prevalent in the beatified regions in which
Chopin delighted to move, we will not follow her rhapsodic eulogy
of his playing. That she cannot be ranked with the connoisseurs
is evident from her statement that the sonata BEGINS with the
funeral march, and that the FINALE is one of the most magnificent
creations of the composer. Notwithstanding Madame Girardin's
subsequent remark that Chopin's playing at Madame de Courbonne's
was quite an exception, her letter may mislead the reader into
the belief that the great pianist was easily induced to sit down
at the piano. A more correct idea may be formed of the real state
of matters from a passage in an article by Berlioz (Feuilleton du
Journal des Debats, October 27, 1849) in which the supremacy of
style over matter is a little less absolute than in the lady's
elegant chit-chat:--
A small circle of select auditors, whose real desire to hear
him was beyond doubt, could alone determine him to approach
the piano. What emotions he would then call forth! In what
ardent and melancholy reveries he loved to pour out his soul!
It was usually towards midnight that he gave himself up with
the greatest ABANDON, when the big butterflies of the salon
had left, when the political questions of the day had been
discussed at length, when all the scandal-mongers were at the
end of their anecdotes, when all the snares were laid, all the
perfidies consummated, when one was thoroughly tired of prose,
then, obedient to the mute petition of some beautiful,
intelligent eyes, he became a poet, and sang the Ossianic
loves of the heroes of his dreams, their chivalrous joys, and
the sorrows of the absent fatherland, his dear Poland always
ready to conquer and always defeated. But without these
conditions--the exacting of which for his playing all artists
must thank him for--it was useless to solicit him. The
curiosity excited by his fame seemed even to irritate him, and
he shunned as far as possible the nonsympathetic world when
chance had led him into it. I remember a cutting saying which
he let fly one evening at the master of a house where he had
dined. Scarcely had the company taken coffee when the host,
approaching Chopin, told him that his fellow-guests who had
never heard him hoped that he would be so good as to sit down
at the piano and play them some little thing [quelque petite
chose]. Chopin excused himself from the very first in a way
which left not the slightest doubt as to his inclination. But
when the other insisted, in an almost offensive manner, like a
man who knows the worth and the object of the dinner which he
has given, the artist cut the conversation short by saying
with a weak and broken voice and a fit of coughing: "Ah!
sir...I have...eaten so little!"
Chopin's predilection for the fashionable salon society led him
to neglect the society of artists. That he carried the odi
profanum vulgus, et arceo too far cannot for a moment be doubted.
For many of those who sought to have intercourse with him were
men of no less nobility of sentiment and striving than himself.
Chopin offended even Ary Scheffer, the great painter, who admired
him and loved him, by promising to spend an evening with him and
again and again disappointing him. Musicians, with a few
exceptions. Chopin seems always to have been careful to keep at a
distance, at least after the first years of his arrival in Paris.
This is regrettable especially in the case of the young men who
looked up to him with veneration and enthusiasm, and whose
feelings were cruelly hurt by the polite but unsympathetic
reception he gave them:--
We have had always a profound admiration for Chopin's talent
[writes M. Marmontel], and, let us add, a lively sympathy for
his person. No artist, the intimate disciples not excepted,
has more studied his compositions, and more caused them to be
played, and yet our relations with this great musician have
only been rare and transient. Chopin was surrounded, fawned
upon, closely watched by a small cenacle of enthusiastic
friends, who guarded him against importunate visitors and
admirers of the second order. It was difficult to get access
to him; and it was necessary, as he said himself to that other
great artist whose name is Stephen Heller, to try several
times before one succeeded in meeting him. These trials
["essais"] being no more to my taste than to Heller's, I could
not belong to that little congregation of faithful ones whose
cult verged on fanaticism.
As to Stephen Heller--who himself told me that he would have
liked to be more with Chopin, but was afraid of being regarded as
intrusive--Mr. Heller thinks that Chopin had an antipathy to him,
which considering the amiable and truly gentlemanly character of
this artist seems rather strange.
If the details of Karasowski's account of Chopin's and
Schulhoff's first meeting are correct, the Polish artist was in
his aloofness sometimes even deficient in that common civility
which good-breeding and consideration for the feelings of others
demand. Premising that Fetis in telling the story is less
circumstantial and lays the scene of the incident in the
pianoforte-saloon of Pleyel, I shall quote Karasowski's version,
as he may have had direct information from Schulhoff, who since
1855 has lived much of his time at Dresden, where Karasowski also
resides:--
Schulhoff came when quite a young man and as yet completely
unknown to Paris. There he learned that Chopin, who was then
already very ailing and difficult of access, was coming to the
pianoforte-manufactory of Mercier to inspect one of the newly-
invented transposing pianofortes. It was in the year 1844.
Schulhoff seized the opportunity to become personally
acquainted with the master, and made his appearance among the
small party which awaited Chopin. The latter came with an old
friend, a Russian Capellmeister [Soliva?]. Taking advantage of
a propitious moment, Schulhoff got himself introduced by one
of the ladies present. On the latter begging Chopin to allow
Schulhoff to play him something, the renowned master, who was
much bothered by dilettante tormentors, signified, somewhat
displeased, his consent by a slight nod of the head. Schulhoff
seated himself at the pianoforte, while Chopin, with his back
turned to him, was leaning against it. But already during the
short prelude he turned his head attentively towards Schulhoff
who now performed an Allegro brillant en forme de Senate (Op.
I), which he had lately composed. With growing interest Chopin
came nearer and nearer the keyboard and listened to the fine,
poetic playing of the young Bohemian; his pale features grew
animated, and by mien and gesture he showed to all who were
present his lively approbation. When Schulhoff had finished,
Chopin held out his hand to him with the words: "Vous etes un
vrai artiste, un collegue!" Some days after Schulhoff paid the
revered master a visit, and asked him to accept the dedication
of the composition he had played to him. Chopin thanked him in
a heart-winning manner, and said in the presence of several
ladies: "Je suis tres flatte de l'honneur que vous me faites."
The behaviour of Chopin during the latter part of this
transaction made, no doubt, amends for that of the earlier. But
the ungracious manner in which he granted the young musician
permission to play to him, and especially his turning his back to
Schulhoff when the latter began to play, are not excused by the
fact that he was often bothered by dilettante tormentors.
The Paris correspondent of the Musical World, writing immediately
after the death of the composer, describes the feeling which
existed among the musicians in the French capital, and also
suggests an explanation and excuse. In the number of the paper
bearing date November 10, 1849, we read as follows:--
Owing to his retired way of living and his habitual reserve,
Chopin had few friends in the profession; and, indeed, spoiled
from his original nature by the caprice of society, he was too
apt to treat his brother-artists with a supercilious hauteur,
which many, his equals, and a few, his superiors, were wont to
stigmatise as insulting. But from want of sympathy with the
man, they overlooked the fact that a pulmonary complaint,
which for years had been gradually wasting him to a shadow,
rendered him little fit for the enjoyments of society and the
relaxations of artistic conviviality. In short, Chopin, in
self-defence, was compelled to live in comparative seclusion,
but we wholly disbelieve that this isolation had its source in
unkindness or egotism. We are the more inclined to this
opinion by the fact that the intimate friends whom he
possessed in the profession (and some of them were pianists)
were as devotedly attached to him as the most romantic of his
aristocratic worshippers.
The reasoning does not seem to me quite conclusive. Would it not
have been possible to live in retirement without drawing upon
himself the accusation of supercilious hauteur? Moreover, as
Chopin was strong enough to frequent fashionable salons, he
cannot have been altogether unable to hold intercourse with his
brother-artists. And, lastly, who are the pianist friends that
were as devotedly attached to him as the most romantic of his
aristocratic worshippers? The fact that Chopin became
subsequently less social and more reticent than he had been in
his early Paris days, confined himself to a very limited number
of friends and families, and had relations of an intimate nature
with only a very few musicians, cannot, therefore, be
attributable to ill-health alone, although that too had, no
doubt, something to do with it, directly or indirectly. In short,
the allegation that Chopin was "spoiled by the caprice of
society," as the above-quoted correspondent puts it, is not only
probable, but even very likely. Fastidious by nature and
education, he became more so, partly in consequence of his
growing physical weakness, and still more through the influence
of the society with which, in the exercise of his profession and
otherwise, he was in constant contact. His pupils and many of his
other admirers, mostly of the female sex and the aristocratic
class, accustomed him to adulation and adoration to such an
extent as to make these to be regarded by him as necessaries of
life. Some excerpts from Liszt's book, which I shall quote here
in the form of aphorisms, will help to bring Chopin, in his
social aspect, clearly before the reader's eyes:--
As he did not confound his time, thought, and ways with those
of anyone, the society of women was often more convenient to
him in that it involved fewer subsequent relations.
He carried into society the uniformity of temper of people
whom no annoyance troubles because they expect no interest.
His conversation dwelt little on stirring subjects. He glided
over them; as he was not at all lavish of his time, the talk
was easily absorbed by the details of the day.
He loved the unimportant talk [les causeries sans portee] of
people whom he esteemed; he delighted in the childish
pleasures of young people. He passed readily whole evenings in
playing blind-man's-buff with young girls, in telling them
amusing or funny little stories, in making them laugh the mad
laughter of youth, which it gives even more pleasure to hear
than the singing of the warbler. [FOOTNOTE: This, I think,
must refer to the earlier years of Chopin's residence in
Paris.]
In his relations and conversations he seemed to take an
interest in what preoccupied the others; he took care not to
draw them out of the circle of their personality inorder to
lead them into his. If he gave up little of his time, he, to
make up for it, reserved to himself nothing of that which he
granted.
The presence of Chopin was, therefore, always heartily welcome
[fetee]. Not hoping to be understood [devine], disdaining to
speak of himself [de se raconter lui-meme], he occupied
himself so much with everything that was not himself that his
intimate personality remained aloof, unapproached and
unapproachable, under this polite and smooth [glissant]
surface where it was impossible to get a footing.
He pleased too much to make people reflect.
He hardly spoke either of love or of friendship.
He was not exacting like those whose rights and just demands
surpass by far what one would have to offer them. The most
intimate acquaintances did not penetrate to this sacred recess
where, withdrawn from all the rest of his life, dwelt the
secret motive power of his soul: a recess so concealed that
one scarcely suspected its existence.
Ready to give everything, he did not give himself.
The last dictum and part of the last but one were already quoted
by me in an earlier chapter, but for the sake of completeness,
and also because they form an excellent starting-point for the
following additional remarks on Chopin's friendships, I have
repeated them here. First of all, I venture to make the sweeping
assertion that Chopin had among his non-Polish friends none who
could be called intimate in the fullest sense of the word, none
to whom he unbosomed himself as he did to Woyciechowski and
Matuszynski, the friends of his youth, and Grzymala, a friend of
a later time. Long cessation of personal intercourse together
with the diverging development of their characters in totally
unlike conditions of life cannot but have diminished the intimacy
with the first named. [FOOTNOTE: Titus Woyciechowski continued to
live on his estate Poturzyn, in the kingdom of Poland.] With
Matuszyriski Chopin remained in close connection till this
friend's death. [FOOTNOTE: Karasowski says in the first volume of
his Polish biography of Chopin that Matuszynski died on April 20,
1842; and in the second that he died after Chopin's father, but
in the same year--that is, in 1844.] How he opened his whole
heart to Grzymala we shall see in a subsequent chapter. That his
friendship with Fontana was of a less intimate character becomes
at once apparent on comparing Chopin's letters to him with those
he wrote to the three other Polish friends. Of all his
connections with non-Poles there seems to be only one which
really deserves the name of friendship, and that is his
connection with Franchomme. Even here, however, he gave much less
than he received. Indeed, we may say--speaking generally, and not
only with a view to Franchomme--that Chopin was more loved than
loving. But he knew well how to conceal his deficiencies in this
respect under the blandness of his manners and the coaxing
affectionateness of his language. There is something really
tragic, and comic too, in the fact that every friend of Chopin's
thought that he had more of the composer's love and confidence
than any other friend. Thus, for instance, while Gutmann told me
that Franchomme was not so intimate with Chopin that the latter
would confide any secrets to him, Franchomme made to me a similar
statement with regard to Gutmann. And so we find every friend of
Chopin declaring that every other friend was not so much of a
friend as himself. Of Chopin's procedures in friendship much may
be learned from his letters; in them is to be seen something of
his insinuating, cajoling ways, of his endeavours to make the
person addressed believe himself a privileged favourite, and of
his habit of speaking not only ungenerously and unlovingly, but
even unjustly of other persons with whom he was apparently on
cordial terms. In fact, it is only too clear that Chopin spoke
differently before the faces and behind the backs of people. You
remember how in his letters to Fontana he abuses Camille Pleyel
in a manner irreconcilable with genuine love and esteem. Well, to
this same Camille Pleyel, of whom he thus falls foul when he
thinks himself in the slightest aggrieved, he addresses on one
occasion the following note. Mark the last sentence:--
Dearest friend [Cherissime],--Here is what Onslow has written
to me. I wished to call on you and tell you, but I feel very
feeble and am going to lie down. I love you always more, if
this is possible [je vous aime toujours plus si c'est
possible].
CHOPIN.
[FOOTNOTE: To the above, unfortunately undated, note, which
was published for the first time in the Menestrel of February
15, 1885, and reprinted in "Un nid d'autographes," lettres
incites recueillies et annotees par Oscar Comettant (Paris: E.
Dentu), is appended the following P.S.:--"Do not forget,
please, friend Herbeault. Till to-morrow, then; I expect you
both."
La Mara's Musikerbriefe (Leipzig: Breitkopf and Hartel)
contains likewise a friendly letter of Chopin to Camille
Pleyel. It runs thus:
"Dearest friend,--I received the other day your piano, and
give you my best thanks. It arrived in good tune, and is
exactly at concert-pitch. As yet I have not played much on it,
for the weather is at present so fine that I am almost always
in the open air. I wish you as pleasant weather for your
holidays. Write me a few words (if you find that you have not
sufficiently exercised your pen in the course of the day). May
you all remain well--and lay me at the feet of your mother and
sister.--Your devoted, "F. CHOPIN."
The date given by La Mara is "Monday [May 20, 1842], Nohant,
near La Chatre, Indre." This, however, cannot be right, for
the 20th of May in 1842 was a Friday.]
And, again, how atrociously he reviles in the same letters the
banker Leo, who lends him money, often takes charge of his
manuscripts, procures payment for them, and in whose house he has
been for years a frequent visitor. Mr. Ch. Halle informed me that
Chopin was on particularly good terms with the Leos. From
Moscheles' diary we learn that the writer made Chopin's
acquaintance at the banker's house. Stephen Heller told me that
he met Chopin several times at Leo's, and that the Polish
composer visited there often, and continued to go there when he
had given up going to many other houses. And from the same
informant I learned also that Madame Leo as well as her husband
took a kindly interest in Chopin, showing this, for instance, by
providing him with linen. And yet Leo, this man who does him all
sorts of services, and whose smiling guest he is before and
after, is spoken of by Chopin as if he were the most "despicable
wretch imaginable"; and this for no other reason than that
everything has not been done exactly as he wished it to be done.
Unless we assume these revilings to be no more than explosions of
momentary ill-humour, we must find Chopin convicted of duplicity
and ingratitude. In the letters to Fontana there are also certain
remarks about Matuszynski which I do not like. Nor can they be
wholly explained away by saying that they are in part fun and in
part indirect flattery of his correspondent. It would rather seem
that Chopin's undoubtedly real love for Matuszynski was not
unmixed with a certain kind of contempt. And here I must tell the
reader that while Poles have so high an opinion of their nation
in comparison with other nations, and of their countrymen with
other countrymen, they have generally a very mean opinion of each
other. Indeed, I never met with a Pole who did not look down with
a self-satisfied smile of pity on any of his fellow-countrymen,
even on his best friend. It seems that their feeling of
individual superiority is as great as that of their national
superiority. Liszt's observations (see Vol. I., p. 259) and those
of other writers (Polish as well as non-Polish) confirm mine,
which else might rightly be supposed to be based on too limited
an experience. To return to Matuszynski, he may have been too
ready to advise and censure his friend, and not practical enough
to be actively helpful. After reading the letters addressed to
them one comes to the conclusion that Fontana's and Franchomme's
serviceableness and readiness to serve went for something in his
appreciation of them as friends. At any rate, he did not hesitate
to exploiter them most unconscionably. Taking a general view of
the letters written by him during the last twelve years of his
life, one is struck by the absence of generous judgments and the
extreme rareness of sympathetic sentiments concerning third
persons. As this was not the case in his earlier letters, ill-
health and disappointments suggest themselves naturally as causes
of these faults of character and temper. To these principal
causes have, however, to be added his nationality, his originally
delicate constitution, and his cultivation of salon manners and
tastes. His extreme sensitiveness, fastidiousness, and
irritability may be easily understood to derive from one or the
other of these conditions.
George Sand's Ma Vie throws a good deal of light on Chopin's
character; let us collect a few rays from it:--
He [Chopin] was modest on principle and gentle [doux] by
habit, but he was imperious by instinct, and full of a
legitimate pride that did not know itself.
He was certainly not made to live long in this world, this
extreme type of an artist. He was devoured by the dream of an
ideal which no practical philosophic or compassionate
tolerance combated. He would never compound with human nature.
He accepted nothing of reality. This was his vice and his
virtue, his grandeur and his misery. Implacable to the least
blemish, he had an immense enthusiasm for the least light, his
excited imagination doing its utmost to see in it a sun.
He was the same in friendship [as in love], becoming
enthusiastic at first sight, getting disgusted, and correcting
himself [se reprenant] incessantly, living on infatuations
full of charms for those who were the object of them, and on
secret discontents which poisoned his dearest affections.
Chopin accorded to me, I may say honoured me with, a kind of
friendship which was an exception in his life. He was always
the same to me.
The friendship of Chopin was never a refuge for me in sadness.
He had enough of his own ills to bear.
We never addressed a reproach to each other, except once,
which, alas! was the first and the last time.
But if Chopin was with me devotion, kind attention, grace,
obligingness, and deference in person, he had not for all that
abjured the asperities of his character towards those who were
about me. With them the inequality of his soul, in turn
generous and fantastic, gave itself full course, passing
always from infatuation to aversion, and vice versa.
Chopin when angry was alarming, and as, with me, he always
restrained himself, he seemed almost to choke and die.
The following extracts from Liszt's book partly corroborate,
partly supplement, the foregoing evidence:--
His imagination was ardent, his feelings rose to violence,--
his physical organisation was feeble and sickly! Who can sound
the sufferings proceeding from this contrast? They must have
been poignant, but he never let them be seen.
The delicacy of his constitution and of his heart, in imposing
upon him the feminine martyrdom of for ever unavowed tortures,
gave to his destiny some of the traits of feminine destinies.
He did not exercise a decisive influence on any existence. His
passion never encroached upon any of his desires; he neither
pressed close nor bore down [n'a etreint ni masse] any mind by
the domination of his own.
However rarely, there were nevertheless instances when we
surprised him profoundly moved. We have seen him turn pale
[palir et blemir] to such a degree as to assume green and
cadaverous tints. But in his intensest emotions he remained
concentrated. He was then, as usually, chary of words about
what he felt; a minute's reflection [recueillement] always hid
the secret of his first impression...This constant control
over the violence of his character reminded one of the
melancholy superiority of certain women who seek their
strength in reticence and isolation, knowing the uselessness
of the explosions of their anger, and having a too jealous
care of the mystery of their passion to betray it
gratuitously.
Chopin, however, did not always control his temper. Heller
remembers seeing him more than once in a passion, and hearing him
speak very harshly to Nowakowski. The following story, which Lenz
relates in "Die grossen Pianoforte-Virtuosen unserer Zeit," is
also to the point.
On one occasion Meyerbeer, whom I had not yet seen, entered
Chopin's room when I was getting a lesson. Meyerbeer was not
announced, he was king. I was playing the Mazurka in C (Op.
33), printed on one page which contains so many hundreds--I
called it the epitaph of the idea [Grabschrift des Begriffs],
so full of distress and sadness is the composition, the
wearied flight of an eagle.
Meyerbeer had taken a seat, Chopin made me go on.
"This is two-four time," said Meyerbeer. Chopin denied this,
made me repeat the piece, and beat time aloud with the pencil
on the piano--his eyes were glowing.
"Two crotchets," repeated Meyerbeer, calmly.
Only once I saw Chopin angry, it was at this moment. It was
beautiful to see how a light red coloured his pale cheeks.
"These are three crotchets," he said with a loud voice, he who
spoke always so low
"Give it me," replied Meyerbeer, "for a ballet in my opera
("L'Africaine," at that time kept a secret), I shall show it
you then."
"These are three crotchets," Chopin almost shouted, and played
it himself. He played the mazurka several times, counted
aloud, stamped time with his foot, was beside himself. But all
was of no use, Meyerbeer insisted on TWO crotchets. They
parted very angrily. I found it anything but agreeable to have
been a witness of this angry scene. Chopin disappeared into
his cabinet without taking leave of me. The whole thing lasted
but a few minutes.
Exhibitions of temper like this were no doubt rare, indeed,
hardly ever occurred except in his intercourse with familiars
and, more especially, fellow-countrymen--sometimes also with
pupils. In passing I may remark that Chopin's Polish vocabulary
was much less choice than his French one. As a rule, Chopin's
manners were very refined and aristocratic, Mr. Halle thinks they
were too much so. For this refinement resulted in a uniform
amiability which left you quite in the dark as to the real nature
of the man. Many people who made advances to Chopin found like M.
Marmontel--I have this from his own mouth--that he had a
temperament sauvage and was difficult to get at. And all who came
near him learned soon from experience that, as Liszt told Lenz,
he was ombrageux. But while Chopin would treat outsiders with a
chilly politeness, he charmed those who were admitted into his
circle both by amiability and wit. "Usually," says Liszt, "he was
lively, his caustic mind unearthed quickly the ridiculous far
below the surface where it strikes all eyes." And again, "the
playfulness of Chopin attacked only the superior keys of the
mind, fond of witticism as he was, recoiling from vulgar
joviality, gross laughter, common merriment, as from those
animals more abject than venomous, the sight of which causes the
most nauseous aversion to certain sensitive and delicate
natures." Liszt calls Chopin "a fine connoisseur in raillery and
an ingenious mocker." The testimony of other acquaintances of
Chopin and that of his letters does not allow us to accept as
holding good generally Mr. Halle's experience, who, mentioning
also the Polish artist's wit, said to me that he never heard him
utter a sarcasm or use a cutting expression.
Fondness of society is a characteristic trait in Chopin's mental
constitution. Indeed, Hiller told me that his friend could not be
without company. For reading, on the other hand, he did not much
care. Alkan related to me that Chopin did not even read George
Sand's works--which is difficult to believe--and that Pierre
Leroux, who liked Chopin and always brought him his books, might
have found them any time afterwards uncut on the pianist's table,
which is not so difficult to believe, as philosophy and Chopin
are contraries. According to what I learned from Hiller, Chopin
took an interest in literature but read very little. To Heller it
seemed that Chopin had no taste for literature, indeed, he made
on him the impression of an uneducated man. Heller, I must tell
the reader parenthetically, was both a great reader and an
earnest thinker, over whom good books had even the power of
making him neglect and forget mistress Musica without regret and
with little compunction. But to return to Chopin. Franchomme
excused his friend by saying that teaching and the claims of
society left him no time for reading. But if Chopin neglected
French literature--not to speak of other ancient and modern
literatures--he paid some attention to that of his native
country; at any rate, new publications of Polish books were
generally to be found on his table. The reader will also remember
that Chopin, in his letters to Fontana, alludes twice to books of
poetry--one by Mickiewicz which was sent him to Majorca, the
other by Witwicki which he had lost sight of.
Indeed, anything Polish had an especial charm and value for
Chopin. Absence from his native country so far from diminishing
increased his love for it. The words with which he is reported to
have received the pianist Mortier de Fontaine, who came to Paris
in 1833 and called on him with letters of introduction, are
characteristic in this respect: "It is enough that you have
breathed the air of Warsaw to find a friend and adviser in me."
There is, no doubt, some exaggeration in Liszt's statement that
whoever came to Chopin from Poland, whether with or without
letters of introduction, was sure of a hearty welcome, of being
received with open arms. On the other hand, we may fully believe
the same authority when he says that Chopin often accorded to
persons of his own country what he would not accord to anyone
else--namely, the right of disturbing his habits; that he would
sacrifice his time, money, and comfort to people who were perhaps
unknown to him the day before, showing them the sights of the
capital, having them to dine with him, and taking them in the
evening to some theatre. We have already seen that his most
intimate friends were Poles, and this was so in the aristocratic
as well as in the conventionally less-elevated circles. However
pleasant his relations with the Rothschilds may have been--
indeed, Franchomme told me that his friend loved the house of
Rothschild and that this house loved him, and that more
especially Madame Nathaniel Rothschild preserved a touching
remembrance of him [FOOTNOTE: Chopin dedicated to Madame la
Baronne C. Rothschild the Waltz, Op. 64, No. 2 (Parisian
Edition), and the Ballade, Op. 52.]--they can have been but of
small significance in comparison with the almost passionate
attachment he had to Prince Alexander Czartoryski and his wife
the Princess Marcelline. And if we were to compare his friendship
for any non-Polish gentleman or lady with that which he felt for
the Countess Delphine Potocka, to whom he dedicated two of his
happiest inspirations in two very different genres (the F minor
Concerto, Op. 21, and the D flat major Waltz, Op. 64, No. I), the
result would be again in favour of his compatriot.
There were, indeed, some who thought that he felt more than
friendship for this lady; this, however, he energetically denied.
[FOOTNOTE: Of this lady Kwiatkowski said that she took as much
trouble and pride in giving choice musical entertainments as
other people did in giving choice dinners. In Sowinski's
Musiciens polonais we read that she had a beautiful soprano voice
and occupied the first place among the amateur ladies of Paris.
"A great friend of the illustrious Chopin, she gave formerly
splendid concerts at her house with the old company of the
Italians, which one shall see no more in Paris. To cite the names
of Rubini, Lablache, Tamburini, Malibran, Grisi, Persiani, is to
give the highest idea of Italian singing. The Countess Potocka
sang herself according to the method of the Italian masters."]
But although Chopin was more devoted and more happy in his Polish
friendships, he had beloved as well as loving friends of all
nationalities--Germans, English, and even Russians. That as a
good Pole he hated the Russians as a nation may be taken for
granted. Of his feelings and opinions with regard to his English
friends and the English in general, information will be
forthcoming in a subsequent chapter. The Germans Chopin disliked
thoroughly, partly, no doubt, from political reasons, partly
perhaps on account of their inelegance and social awkwardness.
Still, of this nation were some of his best friends, among them
Hiller, Gutmann, Albrecht, and the Hanoverian ambassador Baron
von Stockhausen.
[FOOTNOTE: Gutmann, in speaking to me of his master's dislike,
positively ascribed it to the second of the above causes. In
connection with this we must, however, not forget that the
Germans of to-day differ from the Germans of fifty years ago as
much socially as politically. Nor have the social characters of
their neighbours, the French and the English, remained the same.]
Liszt has given a glowing description of an improvised soiree at
Chopin's lodgings in the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin--that is, in
the years before the winter in Majorca. At this soiree, we are
told, were present Liszt himself, Heine, Meyerbeer, Nourrit,
Hiller, Delacroix, Niemcewicz, Mickiewicz, George Sand, and the
Comtesse d'Agoult. Of course, this is a poetic licence: these men
and women cannot have been at one and the same time in Chopin's
salon. Indeed, Hiller informed me that he knew nothing of this
party, and that, moreover, as long as he was in Paris (up to
1836) there were hardly ever more numerous gatherings at his
friend's lodgings than of two or three. Liszt's group, however,
brings vividly before us one section of Chopin's social
surroundings: it shows us what a poetic atmosphere he was
breathing, amidst what a galaxy of celebrities he was moving. A
glimpse of the real life our artist lived in the early Paris
years this extravagant effort of a luxuriant imagination does not
afford. Such glimpses we got in his letters to Hiller and
Franchomme, where we also met with many friends and acquaintances
with less high-sounding names, some of whom Chopin subsequently
lost by removal or death. In addition to the friends who were
then mentioned, I may name here the Polish poet Stephen Witwicki,
the friend of his youth as well as of his manhood, to whom in
1842 he dedicated his Op. 41, three mazurkas, and several of
whose poems he set to music; and the Polish painter Kwiatkowski,
an acquaintance of a later time, who drew and painted many
portraits of the composer, and more than one of whose pictures
was inspired by compositions of his friend. I have not been able
to ascertain what Chopin's sentiments were with regard to
Kwiatkowski, but the latter must have been a frequent visitor,
for after relating to me that the composer was fond of playing in
the dusk, he remarked that he heard him play thus almost all his
works immediately after they were composed.
As we have seen in the chapters treating of Chopin's first years
in Paris, there was then a goodly sprinkling of musicians among
his associates--I use the word "associates" advisedly, for many
of them could not truly be called friends. When he was once
firmly settled, artistically and socially, not a few of these
early acquaintances lapsed. How much this was due to the force of
circumstances, how much to the choice of Chopin, is difficult to
determine. But we may be sure that his distaste to the
Bohemianism, the free and easy style that obtains among a
considerable portion of the artistic tribe, had at least as much
to do with the result as pressure of engagements. Of the
musicians of whom we heard so much in the first years after his
coming to Paris, he remained in close connection only with one-
namely, with Franchomme. Osborne soon disappeared from his
circle. Chopin's intercourse with Berlioz was in after years so
rare that some of their common friends did not even know of its
existence. The loosening of this connection was probably brought
about by the departure of Hiller in 1836 and the quarrel with
Liszt some time after, which broke two links between the
sensitive Pole and the fiery Frenchman. The ageing Baillot and
Cherubini died in 1842. Kalkbrenner died but a short time before
Chopin, but the sympathy existing between them was not strong
enough to prevent their drifting apart. Other artists to whom the
new-comer had paid due homage may have been neglected, forgotten,
or lost sight of when success was attained and the blandishments
of the salons were lavished upon him. Strange to say, with all
his love for what belonged to and came from Poland, he kept
compatriot musicians at a distance. Fontana was an exception, but
him he cherished, no doubt, as a friend of his youth in spite of
his profession, or, if as a musician at all, chiefly because of
his handiness as a copyist. For Sowinski, who was already settled
in Paris when Chopin arrived there, and who assisted him at his
first concert, he did not care. Consequently they had afterwards
less and less intercourse, which, indeed, in the end may have
ceased altogether. An undated letter given by Count Wodziriski in
"Les trois Romans de Frederic Chopin," no doubt originally
written in Polish, brings the master's feelings towards his
compatriot, and also his irritability, most vividly before the
reader.
Here he is! He has just come in to see me--a tall strong
individual who wears moustaches; he sits down at the piano and
improvises, without knowing exactly what. He knocks, strikes,
and crosses his hands, without reason; he demolishes in five
minutes a poor helpless key; he has enormous fingers, made
rather to handle reins and whip somewhere on the confines of
Ukraine. Here you have the portrait of S...who has no other
merit than that of having small moustaches and a good heart.
If I ever thought of imagining what stupidity and charlatanism
in art are, I have now the clearest perception of them. I run
through my room with my ears reddening; I have a mad desire to
throw the door wide open; but one has to spare him, to show
one's self almost affectionate. No, you cannot imagine what it
is: here one sees only his neckties; one does him the honour
of taking him seriously....There remains, therefore, nothing
but to bear him. What exasperates me is his collection of
little songs, compositions in the most vulgar style, without
the least knowledge of the most elementary rules of harmony
and poetry, concluding with quadrille ritornelli, and which he
calls Recueil de Chants Polonais. You know how I wished to
understand, and how I have in part succeeded in understanding,
our national music. Therefore you will judge what pleasure I
experience when, laying hold of a motive of mine here and
there, without taking account of the fact that all the beauty
of a melody depends on the accompaniment, he reproduces it
with the taste of a frequenter of suburban taverns
(guinguettes) and public-houses (cabarets). And one cannot say
anything to him, for he comprehends nothing beyond what he has
taken from you.
Edouard Wolff came to Paris in 1835, provided with a letter of
introduction from Chopin's master Zywny; [FOOTNOTE: See Vol. I.,
p. 31.] but, notwithstanding this favourable opening of their
acquaintanceship, he was only for some time on visiting terms
with his more distinguished compatriot. Wolff himself told me
that Chopin would never hear one of his compositions. From any
other informant I would not have accepted this statement as
probable, still less as true. [FOOTNOTE: Wolff dedicated in 1841
his Grand Allegro de Concert pour piano still, Op. 59, a son ami
Chopin; but the latter never repaid him the compliment.] These
remarks about Wolff remind me of another piece of information I
got from this pianist-composer a few months before his death--
namely, that Chopin hated all Jews, Meyerbeer and Halevy among
the rest. What Pole does not hate the Jews? That Chopin was not
enamoured of them we have seen in his letters. But that he hated
Meyerbeer is a more than doubtful statement. Franchomme said to
me that Meyerbeer was not a great friend of Chopin's; but that
the latter, though he did not like his music, liked him as a man.
If Lenz reports accurately, Meyerbeer's feelings towards Chopin
were, no doubt, warmer than Chopin's towards Meyerbeer. When
after the scene about the rhythm of a mazurka Chopin had left the
room, Lenz introduced himself to Meyerbeer as a friend of the
Counts Wielhorski, of St. Petersburg. On coming to the door,
where a coupe was waiting, the composer offered to drive him
home, and when they were seated said:--
I had not seen Chopin for a long time, I love him very much. I
know no pianist like him, no composer for the piano like him.
The piano lives on nuances and on cantilena; it is an
instrument of intimacy [ein Intimitalsinstrument], I also was
once a pianist, and there was a time when I trained myself to
be a virtuoso. Visit me when you come to Berlin. Are we not
now comrades? When one has met at the house of so great a man,
it was for life.
Kwiatkowski told me a pretty story which se non vero is certainly
ben trovato. When on one occasion Meyerbeer had fallen out with
his wife, he sat down to the piano and played a nocturne or some
other composition which Chopin had sent him. And such was the
effect of the music on his helpmate that she came and kissed him.
Thereupon Meyerbeer wrote Chopin a note telling him of what had
taken place, and asking him to come and see their conjugal
happiness. Among the few musicians with whom Chopin had in later
years friendly relations stands out prominently, both by his
genius and the preference shown him, the pianist and composer
Alkan aine (Charles Henri Valentine), who, however, was not so
intimate with the Polish composer as Franchomme, nor on such easy
terms of companionship as Hiller and Liszt had been. The
originality of the man and artist, his high aims and unselfish
striving, may well have attracted Chopin; but as an important
point in Alkan's favour must be reckoned the fact that he was
also a friend of George Sand's. Indeed, some of the limitations
of Chopin's intercourse were, no doubt, made on her account.
Kwiatkowski told me that George Sand hated Chopin's Polish
friends, and that some of them were consequently not admitted at
all and others only reluctantly. Now suppose that she disliked
also some of the non-Polish friends, musicians as well as others,
would not her influence act in the same way as in the case of the
Poles?
But now I must say a few words about Chopin and Liszt's
friendship, and how it came to an end. This connection of the
great pianists has been the subject of much of that sentimental
talk of which writers on music and of musical biography are so
fond. This, however, which so often has been represented as an
ideal friendship, was really no friendship at all, but merely
comradeship. Both admired each other sincerely as musicians. If
Chopin did not care much for Liszt's compositions, he had the
highest opinion of him as a pianist. We have seen in the letter
of June 20, 1833, addressed to Hiller and conjointly written by
Chopin and Liszt, how delighted Chopin was with Liszt's manner of
playing his studies, and how he wished to be able to rob him of
it. He said on one occasion to his pupil Mdlle. Kologrivof
[FOOTNOTE: Afterwards Madame Rubio.]: "I like my music when Liszt
plays it." No doubt, it was Liszt's book with its
transcendentally-poetic treatment which induced the false notion
now current. Yet whoever keeps his eyes open can read between the
lines what the real state of matters was. The covert sneers at
and the openly-expressed compassion for his comrade's whims,
weaknesses, and deficiencies, tell a tale. Of Chopin's sentiments
with regard to Liszt we have more than sufficient evidence. Mr.
Halle, who arrived in Paris at the end of 1840, was strongly
recommended to the banker Mallet. This gentleman, to give him an
opportunity to make the acquaintance of the Polish pianist,
invited both to dinner. On this occasion Mr. Halle asked Chopin
about Liszt, but the reticent answer he got was indicative rather
of dislike than of anything else. When in 1842 Lenz took lessons
from Chopin, the latter defined his relations with Liszt thus:
"We are friends, we were comrades." What he meant by the first
half of the statement was, no doubt: "Now we meet only on terms
of polite acquaintanceship." When the comradeship came to an end
I do not know, but I think I do know how it came to an end. When
I asked Liszt about the cause of the termination of their
friendship, he said: "Our lady-loves had quarrelled, and as good
cavaliers we were in duty bound to side with them." [FOOTNOTE:
Liszt's words in describing to me his subsequent relation with
Chopin were similar to those of Chopin to Lenz. He said: "There
was a cessation of intimacy, but no enmity. I left Paris soon
after, and never saw him again."] This, however, was merely a way
to get rid of an inconvenient question. Franchomme explained the
mystery to me, and his explanation was confirmed by what I
learned from Madame Rubio. The circumstances are of too delicate
a nature to be set forth in detail. But the long and short of the
affair is that Liszt, accompanied by another person, invaded
Chopin's lodgings during his absence, and made himself quite at
home there. The discovery of traces of the use to which his rooms
had been put justly enraged Chopin. One day, I do not know how
long after the occurrence, Liszt asked Madame Rubio to tell her
master that he hoped the past would be forgotten and the young
man's trick (Junggesellenstuck) wiped out. Chopin then said that
he could not forget, and was much better as he was; and further,
that Liszt was not open enough, having always secrets and
intrigues, and had written in some newspapers feuilleton notices
unfavourable to him. This last accusation reminds one at once of
the remark he made when he heard that Liszt intended to write an
account of one of his concerts for the Gazette musicale. I have
quoted the words already, but may repeat them here: "Il me
donnera un petit royaume dans son empire" (He will give me a
little kingdom in his empire). In this, as in most sayings of
Chopin regarding Liszt, irritation against the latter is
distinctly noticeable. The cause of this irritation may be
manifold, but Liszt's great success as a concert-player and his
own failure in this respect [FOOTNOTE: I speak here only of his
inability to impress large audiences, to move great masses.] have
certainly something to do with it. Liszt, who thought so
likewise, says somewhere in his book that Chopin knew how to
forgive nobly. Whether this was so or not, I do not venture to
decide. But I am sure if he forgave, he never forgot. An offence
remained for ever rankling in his heart and mind.
From Chopin's friends to his pupils is but one step, and not even
that, for a great many of his pupils were also his friends;
indeed, among them were some of those who were nearest to his
heart, and not a few in whose society he took a particular
delight. Before I speak, however, of his teaching, I must say a
few words about a subject which equally relates to our artist's
friends and pupils, and to them rather than to any other class of
people with whom he had any dealings.
One of his [Chopin's] oddities [writes Liszt] consisted in
abstaining from every exchange of letters, from every sending
of notes; one could have believed that he had made a vow never
to address letters to strangers. It was a curious thing to see
him have recourse to all kinds of expedients to escape from
the necessity of tracing a few lines. Many times he preferred
traversing Paris from one end to the other in order to decline
a dinner or give some slight information, to saving himself
the trouble by means of a little sheet of paper. His
handwriting remained almost unknown to most of his friends. It
is said that he sometimes deviated from this habit in favour
of his fair compatriots settled at Paris, of whom some are in
possession of charming autographs of his, all written in
Polish. This breach of what one might have taken as a rule may
be explained by the pleasure he took in speaking his language,
which he employed in preference, and whose most expressive
idioms he delighted in translating to others. Like the Slaves
generally, he mastered the French language very well;
moreover, owing to his French origin, it had been taught him
with particular care. But he accommodated himself badly to it,
reproaching it with having little sonority and being of a cold
genius.
[FOOTNOTE: Notwithstanding his French origin, Chopin spoke
French with a foreign accent, some say even with a strong
foreign accent. Of his manner of writing French I spoke when
quoting his letters to Franchomme (see Vol. I., p. 258).]
Liszt's account of Chopin's bizarrerie is in the main correct,
although we have, of course, to make some deduction for
exaggeration. In fact, Gutmann told me that his master sometimes
began a letter twenty times, and finally flung down the pen and
said: "I'll go and tell her [or "him," as the case might be]
myself."