Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician Part 47

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. .h.i.therto capricious and irresolute. Apparently she has met with what she dreamt of. May G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 ingrat.i.tude, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.sed through the gravest and most painful phase of my life. I nearly succ.u.mbed, 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 circ.u.mstances. 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]

ent.i.tled 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 circ.u.mstance 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 pa.s.sion for this woman made him weak. If a t.i.the 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 pa.s.sage from the letter of George Sand dated September 1, 1846, which I quoted earlier in this chapter, justifies us, I think, in a.s.suming 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 pa.s.sed 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.