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 gîte].
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.