Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician Part 41

"Ah, my friend, you were right! The works of a genius like you are sacred; it is a profanation to meddle with them. You are a true poet, and I am only a mountebank."

Whereupon Chopin replied: "We have each our genre."

M. Rollinat then proceeds to tell his readers that Chopin, believing he had eclipsed Liszt that evening, boasted of it, and said: "How vexed he was!" It seems that the author felt that this part of the story put a dangerously severe strain on the credulity of his readers, for he thinks it necessary to a.s.sure them that these were the ipsissima verba of Chopin. Well, the words in question came to the ears of Liszt, and he resolved at once to have his revenge.

Five days afterwards the friends were again a.s.sembled in the same place and at the same time. Liszt asked Chopin to play, and had all the lights put out and all the curtains drawn; but when Chopin was going to the piano, Liszt whispered something in his ear and sat down in his stead.

He played the same composition which Chopin had played on the previous occasion, and the audience was again enchanted. At the end of the piece Liszt struck a match and lighted the candles which stood on the piano.

Of course general stupefaction ensued.

"What do you say to it?" said Liszt to his rival.

"I say what everyone says; I too believed it was Chopin."

"You see," said the virtuoso rising, "that Liszt can be Chopin when he likes; but could Chopin be Liszt?"

Instead of commenting on the improbability of a generous artist thus cruelly taunting his sensitive rival, I shall simply say that Liszt had not the slightest recollection of ever having imitated Chopin's playing in a darkened room. There may be some minute grains of truth mixed up with all this chaff of fancy--Chopin's displeasure at the liberties Liszt took with his compositions was no doubt one of them--but it is impossible to separate them.

M. Rollinat relates also how in 184-, when Chopin, Liszt, the Comtesse d'Agoult, Pauline Garcia, Eugene Delacroix, the actor Bocage, and other celebrities were at Nohant, the piano was one moonlit night carried out to the terrace; how Liszt played the hunting chorus from Weber's Euryanthe, Chopin some bars from an impromptu he was then composing; how Pauline Garcia sang Nel cor piu non mi sento, and a niece of George Sand a popular air; how the echo answered the musicians; and how after the music the company, which included also a number of friends from the neighbouring town, had punch and remained together till dawn. But here again M. Rollinat's veracity is impugned on all sides. Madame Viardot-Garcia declares that she was never at Nohant when Liszt was there; and Liszt did not remember having played on the terrace of the chateau. Moreover, seeing that the first performance of the Prophete took place on April 16, 1849, is it likely that Madame Pauline Garcia was studying her part before or in 1846? And unless she did so she could not meet Chopin at Nohant when she was studying it.

M. Rollinat is more trustworthy when he tells us that there was a pretty theatre and quite an a.s.sortment of costumes at the chateau; that the dramas and comedies played there were improvised by the actors, only the subject and the division into scenes being given; and that on two pianos, concealed by curtains, one on the right and one on the left of the stage, Chopin and Liszt improvised the musical part of the entertainment. All this is, however, so much better and so much more fully told by George Sand (in Dernieres Pages: Le Theatre des Marionnettes de Nohant) that we will take our information from her. It was in the long nights of a winter that she conceived the plan of these private theatricals in imitation of the comedia dell' arte--namely, of "pieces the improvised dialogue of which followed a written sketch posted up behind the scenes."

They resembled the charades which are acted in society and which are more or less developed according to the ensemble and the talent of the performers. We had begun with these. By degrees the word of the charade disappeared and we played first mad saynetes, then comedies of intrigues and adventures, and finally dramas of incidents and emotions. The whole thing began by pantomime, and this was of Chopin's invention; he occupied the place at the piano and improvised, while the young people gesticulated scenes and danced comic ballets. I leave you to imagine whether these now wonderful, now charming improvisations quickened the brains and made supple the legs of our performers. He led them as he pleased and made them pa.s.s, according to his fancy, from the droll to the severe, from the burlesque to the solemn, from the graceful to the pa.s.sionate. We improvised costumes in order to play successively several roles. As soon as the artist saw them appear, he adapted his theme and his accent in a marvellous manner to their respective characters. This went on for three evenings, and then the master, setting out for Paris, left us thoroughly stirred up, enthusiastic, and determined not to suffer the spark which had electrified us to be lost.

To get away from the quicksands of Souvenirs--for George Sand's pages, too, were written more than thirty years after the occurrences she describes, and not published till 1877--I shall make some extracts from the contemporaneous correspondence of George Sand's great friend, the celebrated painter Eugene Delacroix. [FOOTNOTE: Lettres de Eugene Delacroix (1815 a 1863) recucillies et publiees par M. Philippe Burty.

Paris, 1878.] The reader cannot fail to feel at once the fresh breeze of reality that issues from these letters, which contain vivid sketches full of natural beauties and free from affectation and striving after effect:--

Nohant, June 7, 1842.

...The place is very pleasant, and the hosts do their utmost to please me. When we are not a.s.sembled to dine, breakfast, play at billiards, or walk, we are in our rooms, reading, or resting on our sofas. Now and then there come to you through the window opening on the garden, whiffs of the music of Chopin, who is working in his room; this mingles with the song of the nightingales and the odour of the roses. You see that so far I am not much to be pitied, and, nevertheless, work must come to give the grain of salt to all this. This life is too easy, I must purchase it with a little racking of my brains; and like the huntsman who eats with more appet.i.te when he has got his skin torn by bushes, one must strive a little after ideas in order to feel the charm of doing nothing.

Nohant, June 14, 1842.

...Although I am in every respect most agreeably circ.u.mstanced, both as regards body and mind, for I am in much better health, I have not been able to prevent myself from thinking of work. How strange! this work is fatiguing, and yet the species of activity it gives to the mind is necessary to the body itself. In vain did I try to get up a pa.s.sion for billiards, in which I receive a lesson every day, in vain have I good conversations on all the subjects that please me, music that I seize on the wing and by whiffs, I have felt the need of doing something. I have begun a Sainte-Anne for the parish, and I have already set it agoing.

Nohant, June 22, 1842.

...Pen and ink certainly become more and more repugnant to me. I have no more than you any event to record. I lead a monastic life, and as monotonous as it well can be. No event varies the course of it. We expected Balzac, who has not come, and I am not sorry. He is a babbler who would have destroyed this harmony of NONCHALANCE which I am enjoying thoroughly; at intervals a little painting, billiards, and walking, that is more than is necessary to fill up the days. There is not even the distraction of neighbours and friends from the environs; in this part of the country everyone remains at home and occupies him self with his oxen and his land. One would become a fossil here in a very short time.

I have interminable private interviews with Chopin, whom I love much, and who is a man of a rare distinction; he is the most true artist I have met. He is one of the few one can admire and esteem. Madame Sand suffers frequently from violent headaches and pains in her eyes, which she tries to master as much as possible and with much strength of will, so as not to weary us with what she suffers.

The greatest event of my stay has been a peasants' ball on the lawn of the chateau with the best bagpipers of the place. The people of this part of the country present a remarkable type of gentleness and good nature; ugliness is rare here, though beauty is not often seen, but there is not that kind of fever which is observable in the peasants of the environs of Paris.

All the women have the appearance of those sweet faces one sees only in the pictures of the old masters. They are all Saint Annes.

Amidst the affectations, insincerities, and superficialities of Chopin's social intercourse, Delacroix's friendship--we have already seen that the musician reciprocated the painter's sentiments--stands out like a green oasis in a barren desert. When, on October 28, 1849, a few days after Chopin's death, Delacroix sent a friend a ticket for the funeral service of the deceased, he speaks of him as "my poor and dear Chopin."

But the sincerity of Delacroix's esteem and the tenderness of his love for Chopin are most fully revealed in some lines of a letter which he wrote on January 7, 1861, to Count Czymala [Grzymala]:--

When I have finished [the labours that took up all his time], I shall let you know, and shall see you again, with the pleasure I have always had, and with the feelings your kind letter has reanimated in me. With whom shall I speak of the incomparable genius whom heaven has envied the earth, and of whom I dream often, being no longer able to see him in this world nor to hear his divine harmonies.

If you see sometimes the charming Princess Marcelline [Czartoryska], another object of my respect, place at her feet the homage of a poor man who has not ceased to be full of the memory of her kindnesses and of admiration for her talent, another bond of union with the seraph whom we have lost and who, at this hour, charms the celestial spheres.

The first three of the above extracts from Delacroix's letters enable us to form a clear idea of what the everyday life at Nohant was like, and after reading them we can easily imagine that its monotony must have had a depressing effect on the company-loving Chopin. But the drawback was counterbalanced by an advantage. At Paris most of Chopin's time was occupied with teaching and the pleasures of society, at Nohant he could devote himself undisturbed and undistracted to composition. And there is more than sufficient evidence to prove that in this respect Chopin utilised well the quiet and leisure of his rural retirement.

Few things excite the curiosity of those who have a taste for art and literature so much as an artist's or poet's mode of creation. With what interest, for instance, do we read Schindler's account of how Beethoven composed his Missa Solemnis--of the master's absolute detachment from the terrestrial world during the time he was engaged on this work; of his singing, shouting, and stamping, when he was in the act of giving birth to the fugue of the Credo! But as regards musicians, we know, generally speaking, very little on the subject; and had not George Sand left us her reminiscences, I should not have much to tell the reader about Chopin's mode of creation. From Gutmann I learned that his master worked long before he put a composition to paper, but when it was once in writing did not keep it long in his portfolio. The latter part of this statement is contradicted by a remark of the better-informed Fontana, who, in the preface to Chopin's posthumous works, says that the composer, whether from caprice or nonchalance, had the habit of keeping his ma.n.u.scripts sometimes a very long time in his portfolio before giving them to the public. As George Sand observed the composer with an artist's eye and interest, and had, of course, better opportunities than anybody else to observe him, her remarks are particularly valuable. She writes:--

His creation was spontaneous and miraculous. He found it without seeking it, without foreseeing it. It came on his piano suddenly, complete, sublime, or it sang in his head during a walk, and he was impatient to play it to himself. But then began the most heart-rending labour I ever saw. It was a series of efforts, of irresolutions, and of frettings to seize again certain details of the theme he had heard; what he had conceived as a whole he a.n.a.lysed too much when wishing to write it, and his regret at not finding it again, in his opinion, clearly defined, threw him into a kind of despair. He shut himself up in his room for whole days, weeping, walking, breaking his pens, repeating and altering a bar a hundred times, writing and effacing it as many times, and recommencing the next day with a minute and desperate perseverance. He spent six weeks over a single page to write it at last as he had noted it down at the very first.

I had for a long time been able to make him consent to trust to this first inspiration. But when he was no longer disposed to believe me, he reproached me gently with having spoiled him and with not being severe enough for him. I tried to amuse him, to take him out for walks. Sometimes, taking away all my brood in a country char a bancs, I dragged him away in spite of himself from this agony. I took him to the banks of the Creuse, and after being for two or three days lost amid sunshine and rain in frightful roads, we arrived, cheerful and famished, at some magnificently-situated place where he seemed to revive. These fatigues knocked him up the first day, but he slept. The last day he was quite revived, quite rejuvenated in returning to Nohant, and he found the solution of his work without too much effort; but it was not always possible to prevail upon him to leave that piano which was much oftener his torment than his joy, and by degrees he showed temper when I disturbed him. I dared not insist. Chopin when angry was alarming, and as, with me, he always restrained himself, he seemed almost to choke and die.

A critic remarks in reference to this account that Chopin's mode of creation does not show genius, but only pa.s.sion. From which we may conclude that he would not, like Carlyle, have defined genius as the power of taking infinite pains. To be sure, the great Scotchman's definition is inadequate, but nothing is more false than the popular notion that the great authors throw off their works with the pleasantest ease, that creation is an act of pure enjoyment. Beethoven's sketch-books tell a different story; so do also Balzac's proof-sheets and the ma.n.u.scripts of Pope's version of the Iliad and Odyssey in the British Museum. Dr. Johnson speaking of Milton's MSS. observed truly: "Such reliques show how excellence is acquired." Goethe in writing to Schiller asks him to return certain books of "Wilhelm Meister" that he may go over them A FEW TIMES before sending them to the press. And on re-reading one of these books he cut out one third of its contents.

Moreover, if an author writes with ease, this is not necessarily a proof that he labours little, for he may finish the work before bringing it to paper. Mozart is a striking instance. He has himself described his mode of composing--which was a process of acc.u.mulation, agglutination, and crystallisation--in a letter to a friend. The const.i.tution of the mind determines the mode of working. Some qualities favour, others obstruct the realisation of a first conception. Among the former are acuteness and quickness of vision, the power of grasping complex subjects, and a good memory. But however varied the mode of creation may be, an almost unvarying characteristic of the production of really precious and lasting artwork is ungrudging painstaking, such as we find described in William Hunt's "Talks about Art":--"If you could see me dig and groan, rub it out and start again, hate myself and feel dreadfully! The people who do things easily, their things you look at easily, and give away easily." Lastly and briefly, it is not the mode of working, but the result of this working which demonstrates genius.

As Chopin disliked the pavilion in the Rue Pigalle, George Sand moved with her household in 1842 to the quiet, aristocratic-looking Cite (Court or Square) d'Orleans, where their friend Madame Marliani arranged for them a vie de famille. To get to the Cite d'Orleans one has to pa.s.s through two gateways--the first leads from the Rue Taitbout (close to the Rue St. Lazare), into a small out-court with the lodge of the princ.i.p.al concierge; the second, into the court itself. In the centre is a gra.s.s plot with four flower-beds and a fountain; and between this gra.s.s plot and the footpath which runs along the houses extends a carriage drive. As to the houses which form the square, they are well and handsomely built, the block opposite the entrance making even some architectural pretensions. Madame Sand's, Madame Marliani's, and Chopin's houses, which bore respectively the numbers 5, 4, and 3, were situated on the right side, the last-mentioned being just in the first right-hand corner on entering from the out-court. On account of the predilection shown for it by artists and literary men as a place of abode, the Court d'Orldans has not inaptly been called a little Athens.

Alexander Dumas was one of the many celebrities who lived there at one time or other; and Chopin had for neighbours the famous singer Pauline Viardot-Garcia, the distinguished pianoforte-professor Zimmermann, and the sculptor Dantan, from whose famous gallery of caricatures, or rather charges, the composer's portrait was not absent. Madame Marliani, the friend of George Sand and Chopin, who has already repeatedly been mentioned in this book, was the wife of Manuel Marliani, Spanish Consul in Paris, author, [FOOTNOTE: Especially notable among his political and historical publications in Spanish and French is: "Histoire politique de l'Espagne moderne suivie d'un apercu sur les finances." 2 vols. in 8vo (Paris, 1840).] politician, and subsequently senator. Lenz says that Madame Marliani was a Spanish countess and a fine lady; and George Sand describes her as good-natured and active, endowed with a pa.s.sionate head and maternal heart, but destined to be unhappy because she wished to make the reality of life yield to the ideal of her imagination and the exigences of her sensibility.

Some excerpts from a letter written by George Sand on November 12, 1842, to her friend Charles Duvernet, and a pa.s.sage from Ma Vie will bring scene and actors vividly before us:--

We also cultivate billiards; I have a pretty little table, which I hire for twenty francs a month, in my salon, and thanks to kind friendships we approach Nohant life as much as is possible in this melancholy Paris. What makes things country-like also is that I live in the same square as the family Marliani, Chopin in the next pavilion, so that without leaving this large well-lighted and sanded Court d'Orleans, we run in the evening from one to another like good provincial neighbours. We have even contrived to have only one pot [marmite], and eat all together at Madame Marliani's, which is more economical and by far more lively than taking one's meals at home. It is a kind of phalanstery which amuses us, and where mutual liberty is much better guaranteed than in that of the Fourierists...

Solange is at a boarding-school, and comes out every Sat.u.r.day to Monday morning. Maurice has resumed the studio con furia, and I, I have resumed Consuelo like a dog that is being whipped; for I have idled on account of my removal and the fitting up of my apartments...

Kind regards and shakes of the hand from Viardot, Chopin, and my children.

The pa.s.sge [sic: pa.s.sage] from Ma Vie, which contains some repet.i.tions along with a few additional touches, runs as follows:-- She [Madame Marliani] had fine apartments between the two we [George Sand and Chopin] occupied. We had only a large planted and sanded and always clean court to cross in order to meet, sometimes, in her rooms, sometimes in mine, sometimes in Chopin's when he was inclined to give us some music. We dined with her at common expense. It was a very good a.s.sociation, economical like all a.s.sociations, and enabled one to see society at Madame Marliani's, my friends more privately in my apartments, and to take up my work at the hour when it suited me to withdraw.

Chopin rejoiced also at having a fine, isolated salon where he could go to compose or to dream. But he loved society, and made little use of his sanctuary except to give lessons in it.

Although George Sand speaks only of a salon, Chopin's official residence, as we may call it, consisted of several rooms. They were elegantly furnished and always adorned with flowers--for he loved le luxe and had the coquetterie des appartements.

[FOOTNOTE: When I visited in 1880 M. Kwiatkowski in Paris, he showed me some Chopin relics: 1, a pastel drawing by Jules Coignet (representing Les Pyramides d'Egypte), which hung always above the composer's piano; 2, a little causeuse which Chopin bought with his first Parisian savings; 3, an embroidered easy-chair worked and presented to him by the Princess Czartoiyska; and 4, an embroidered cushion worked and presented to him by Madame de Rothschild. If we keep in mind Chopin's remarks about his furniture and the papering of his rooms, and add to the above-mentioned articles those which Karasowski mentions as having been bought by Miss Stirling after the composer's death, left by her to his mother, and destroyed by the Russians along with his letters in 1861 when in possession of his sister Isabella Barcinska--his portrait by Ary Scheffer, some Sevres porcelain with the inscription "Offert par Louis Philippe a Frederic Chopin," a fine inlaid box, a present from one of the Rothschild family, carpets, table-cloths, easy-chairs, &c., worked by his pupils--we can form some sort of idea of the internal arrangements of the pianist-composer's rooms.]

Nevertheless, they exhibited none of the splendour which was to be found in the houses of many of the celebrities then living in Paris.

"He observed," remarks Liszt, "on this point as well as in the then so fashionable elegancies of walking-sticks, pins, studs, and jewels, the instinctive line of the comme il faut between the too much and the too little." But Chopin's letters written from Nohant in 1839 to Fontana have afforded the reader sufficient opportunities to make himself acquainted with the master's fastidiousness and good taste in matters of furniture and room decoration, above all, his horror of vulgar gaudiness.

Let us try to get some glimpses of Chopin in his new home. Lindsay Sloper, who--owing, no doubt, to a great extent at least, to the letter of recommendation from Moscheles which he brought with him--had got permission from Chopin to come for a lesson as often as he liked at eight o'clock in the morning, found the master at that hour not in deshabille, but dressed with the greatest care. Another early pupil, M.

Mathias, always fell in with the daily-attending barber. M. Mathias told me also of Chopin's habit of leaning with his back against the mantel-piece while he was chatting at the end of the lesson. It must have been a pretty sight to see the master in this favourite att.i.tude of his, his coat b.u.t.toned up to the chin (this was his usual style), the most elegant shoes on his small feet, faultless exquisiteness characterising the whole of his attire, and his small eyes sparkling with esprit and sometimes with malice.

Of all who came in contact with Chopin, however, no one made so much of his opportunities as Lenz: some of his observations on the pianist have already been quoted, those on the man and his surroundings deserve likewise attention. [FOOTNOTE: W. von Lenz: "Die Grossen Pianoforte-Virtuosen unserer Zeit."] Lenz came to Paris in the summer or autumn of the year 1842; and as he wished to study Chopin's mazurkas with the master himself, he awaited impatiently his return from Nohant.

At last, late in October, Lenz heard from Liszt that Chopin had arrived in town; but Liszt told him also that it was by no means an easy thing to get lessons from Chopin, that indeed many had journeyed to Paris for the purpose and failed even to get sight of him. To guard Lenz against such a mishap, Liszt gave him a card with the words "Laissez pa.s.ser, Franz Liszt" on it, and advised him to call on Chopin at two o'clock.

The enthusiastic amateur was not slow in availing himself of his artist friend's card and advice. But on reaching his destination he was met in the anteroom by a male servant--"an article of luxury in Paris, a rarissima avis in the house of an artist," observes Lenz--who informed him that Chopin was not in town. The visitor, however, was not to be put off in this way, and insisted that the card should be taken in to Chopin. Fortune favours the brave. A moment after the servant had left the room the great artist made his appearance holding the card in his hand: "a young man of middle height, slim, thin, with a careworn, speaking face and the finest Parisian tournure." Lenz does not hesitate to declare that he hardly ever met a person so naturally elegant and winning. But here is what took place at this interview.

Chopin did not press me to sit down [says Lenz], I stood as before a reigning sovereign. "What do you wish? a pupil of Liszt's, an artist?" "A friend of Liszt's. I wish to have the happiness of making, under your guidance, acquaintance with your mazurkas, which I regard as a literature. Some of them I have already studied with Liszt." I felt I had been imprudent, but it was too late. "Indeed!" replied Chopin, with a drawl, but in the politest tone, "what do you want me for then? Please play to me what you have played with Liszt, I have still a few minutes at my disposal"--he drew from his fob an elegant, small watch--"I was on the point of going out, I had told my servant to admit n.o.body, pardon me!"

Lenz sat down at the piano, tried the gue of it--an expression at which Chopin, who was leaning languidly on the piano and looking with his intelligent eyes straight in his visitor's face, smiled--and then struck up the Mazurka in B flat major. When he came to a pa.s.sage in which Liszt had taught him to introduce a volata through two octaves, Chopin whispered blandly:--

"This TRAIT is not your own; am I right? HE has shown it you-- he must meddle with everything; well! he may do it, he plays before THOUSANDS, I rarely before ONE. Well, this will do, I will give you lessons, but only twice a week, I never give more, it is difficult for me to find three-quarters of an hour." He again looked at his watch. "What do you read then?

With what do you occupy yourself generally?" This was a question for which I was well prepared. "George Sand and Jean Jacques I prefer to all other writers," said I quickly. He smiled, he was most beautiful at that moment. "Liszt has told you this. I see, you are initiated, so much the better. Only be punctual, with me things go by the clock, my house is a pigeon-house (pigeonnier). I see already we shall become more intimate, a recommendation from Liszt is worth something, you are the first pupil whom he has recommended to me; we are friends, we were comrades."

Lenz had, of course, too imaginative a turn of mind to leave facts in their native nakedness, but this tendency of his is too apparent to need pointing out. What betrays him is the wonderful family likeness of his portraits, a kind of vapid esprit, not distantly related to silliness, with which the limner endows his unfortunate sitters, Chopin as well as Liszt and Tausig. Indeed, the portraits compared with the originals are like Dresden china figures compared with Greek statuary. It seems to me also very improbable that so perfect a gentleman as Chopin was should subject a stranger to an examination as to his reading and general occupation. These questions have very much the appearance of having been invented by the narrator for the sake of the answers. However, notwithstanding the many unmistakable embellishments, Lenz's account was worth quoting, for after all it is not without a basis of fact and truth. The following reminiscences of the lively Russian councillor, although not wanting in exaggerations, are less open to objections:--