So much the published letters clearly show. Many of them are dated from Nohant. But in themselves the letters are dull enough. Chopin composed with the keyboard of a piano; with ink and paper he could do little. Probably his love letters were wooden productions, and George Sand, we know, was a fastidious critic in that matter. She had received and written so many! But any rate, Chopin did not write whining recriminations like Mussel. His real view of her we shall never know-and, if you like, you may say it is no business of ours. She once uttered a truth about that (though not apropos of Chopin), "There are so many things between two lovers of which they alone can be the judges."
Chopin gave his last concert in Paris, February 16, 1848, at Pleyel's. He was ill but played beautifully. Oscar Commettant said he fainted in the artist's room. Sand and Chopin met but once again. She took his hand, which was "trembling and cold," but he escaped without saying a word. He permitted himself in a letter to Grzymala from London dated November 17-18, 1848, to speak of Sand. "I have never cursed any one, but now I am so weary of life that I am near cursing Lucrezia. But she suffers too, and suffers more because she grows older in wickedness. What a pity about Soli! Alas! everything goes wrong with the world!" I wonder what Mr. Hadow thinks of this reference to Sand!
"Soli" is Solange Sand, who was forced to leave her husband because of ill-treatment. As her mother once boxed Clesinger's ears at Nohant, she followed the example. In trying to settle the affair Sand quarrelled hopelessly with her daughter. That energetic descendant of "emancipated woman" formed a partnership, literary of course, with the Marquis Alfieri, the nephew of the Italian poet. Her salon was as much in vogue as her mother's, but her tastes were inclined to politics, revolutionary politics preferred. She had for associates Gambetta, Jules Ferry, Floquet, Taine, Herve, Weiss, the critic of the "Debats," Henri Fouquier and many others. She had the "curved Hebraic nose of her mother and hair coal-black." She died in her chateau at Montgivray and was buried March 20, 1899, at Nohant where, as my informant says, "her mother died of over-much cigarette smoking." She was a clever woman and wrote a book "Masks and Buffoons." Maurice Sand died in 1883. He was the son of his mother, who was gathered to her heterogeneous ancestors June 8, 1876.
In literature George Sand is a feminine pendant to Jean Jacques Rousseau, full of ill-digested, troubled, fermenting, social, political, philosophical and religious speculations and theories. She wrote picturesque French, smooth, flowing and full of color. The sketches of nature, of country life, have positive value, but where has vanished her gallery of Byronic passion-pursued women? Where are the Lelias, the Indianas, the Rudolstadts? She had not, as Mr. Henry James points out, a faculty for characterization. As Flaubert wrote her: "In spite of your great Sphinx eyes you have always seen the world as through a golden mist." She dealt in vague, vast figures, and so her Prince Karol in "Lucrezia Floriana," unquestionably intended for Chopin, is a burlesque-little wonder he was angered when the precious children asked him "Cher M. Chopin, have you read 'Lucrezia'? Mamma has put you in it." Of all persons Sand was pre-elected to give to the world a true, a sympathetic picture of her friend. She understood him, but she had not the power of putting him between the coversof a book. If Flaubert, or better still, Pierre Loti, could have known Chopin so intimately we should possess a memoir in which every vibration of emotion would be recorded, every shade noted, and all pinned with the precise adjective, the phrase exquisite.
III. ENGLAND, SCOTLAND AND PERE LA CHAISE.
Table of Contents The remaining years of Chopin's life were lonely. His father died in 1844 of chest and heart complaint, his sister Emilia died of consumption-ill-omens these!-and shortly after, John Matuszynski died. Titus Woyciechowski was in far-off Poland on his estates and Chopin had but Grzymala and Fontana to confide in; they being Polish he preferred them, although he was diplomatic enough not to let others see this. Both Franchomme and Gutmann whispered to Niecks at different times that each was the particular soul, the alter ego, of Chopin. He appeared to give himself to his friends but it was usually surface affection. He had coaxing, coquettish ways, playful ways that cost him nothing when in good spirits. So he was "more loved than loving." This is another trait of the man, which, allied with his fastidiousness and spiritual brusquerie, made him difficult to decipher. The loss of Sand completed his misery and we find him in poor health when he arrived in London, for the second and last time, April 21, 1848.
Mr. A. J. Hipkins is the chief authority on the details of Chopin's visit to England. To this amiable gentleman and learned writer on pianos, Franz Hueffer, Joseph Bennett and Niecks are indebted for the most of their facts. From them the curious may learn all there is to learn. The story is not especially noteworthy, being in the main a record of ill-health, complainings, lamentations and not one signal artistic success.
War was declared upon Chopin by a part of the musical world. The criticism was compounded of pure malice and stupidity. Chopin was angered but little for he was too sick to care now. He went to an evening party but missed the Macready dinner where he was to have met Thackeray, Berlioz, Mrs. Procter and Sir Julius Benedict. With Benedict he played a Mozart duet at the Duchess of Sutherland's. Whether he played at court the Queen can tell; Niecks cannot. He met Jenny Lind-Goldschmidt and liked her exceedingly-as did all who had the honor of knowing her. She sided with him, woman-like, in the Sand affair-echoes of which had floated across the channel-and visited him in Paris in 1849. Chopin gave two matinees at the houses of Adelaide Kemble and Lord Falmouth-June 23 and July 7. They were very recherche, so it appears. Viardot-Garcia sang. The composer's face and frame were wasted by illness and Mr. Solomon spoke of his "long attenuated fingers." He made money and that was useful to him, for doctors' bills and living had taken up his savings. There was talk of his settling in London, but the climate, not to speak of the unmusical atmosphere, would have been fatal to him. Wagner succumbed to both, sturdy fighter that he was.
Chopin left for Scotland in August and stopped at the house of his pupil, Miss Stirling. Her name is familiar to Chopin students, for the two nocturnes, opus 55, are dedicated to her. He was nearly killed with kindness but continually bemoaned his existence. At the house of Dr. Lyschinski, a Pole, he lodged in Edinburgh and was so weak that he had to be carried up and down stairs. To the doctor's good wife he replied in answer to the question "George Sand is your particular friend?" "Not even George Sand." And is he to be blamed for evading tiresome reminders of the past? He confessed that his excessive thinness had caused Sand to address him as "My Dear Corpse." Charming, is it not? Miss Stirling was doubtless in love with him and Princess Czartoryska followed him to Scotland to see if his health was better. So he was not altogether deserted by the women-indeed he could not live without their little flatteries and agreeable attentions. It is safe to say that a woman was always within call of Chopin.
He played at Manchester on the 28th of August, but his friend Mr. Osborne, who was present, says "his playing was too delicate to create enthusiasm and I felt truly sorry for him." On his return to Scotland he stayed with Mr. and Mrs. Salis Schwabe.
Mr. J. Cuthbert Hadden wrote several years ago in the Glasgow "Herald" of Chopin's visit to Scotland in 1848. The tone-poet was in the poorest health, but with characteristic tenacity played at concerts and paid visits to his admirers. Mr. Hadden found the following notice in the back files of the Glasgow "Courier":
Monsieur Chopin has the honour to announce that his matinee musicale will take place on Wednesday, the 27th September, in the Merchant Hall, Glasgow. To commence at half-past two o'clock. Tickets, limited in number, half-a-guinea each, and full particulars to be had from Mr. Muir Wood, 42, Buchanan street.
He continues:
The net profits of this concert are said to have been exactly L60-a ridiculously low sum when we compare it with the earnings of later day virtuosi; nay, still more ridiculously low when we recall the circumstance that for two concerts in Glasgow sixteen years before this Paganini had L 1,400. Muir Wood, who has since died, said: "I was then a comparative stranger in Glasgow, but I was told that so many private carriages had never been seen at any concert in the town. In fact, it was the county people who turned out, with a few of the elite of Glasgow society. Being a morning concert, the citizens were busy otherwise, and half a guinea was considered too high a sum for their wives and daughters."
The late Dr. James Hedderwick, of Glasgow, tells in his reminiscences that on entering the hall he found it about one-third full. It was obvious that a number of the audience were personal friends of Chopin. Dr. Hedderwick recognized the composer at once as "a little, fragile-looking man, in pale gray suit, including frock coat of identical tint and texture, moving about among the company, conversing with different groups, and occasionally consulting his watch," which seemed to be "no bigger than an agate stone on the forefinger of an alderman." Whiskerless, beardless, fair of hair, and pale and thin of face, his...
