Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician Part 57

Dear friend,--I am very sorry that you were not well at Le Mans. Now, however, you are in Touraine, whose sky will have been more favourable to you. I am less well rather than better. MM. Cruveille, Louis, and Blache have had a consultation, and have come to the conclusion that I ought not to travel, but only to take lodgings in the south and remain at Paris. After much seeking, very dear apartments, combining all the desired conditions, have been found in the Place Vendome, No. 12. Albrecht has now his offices there. Meara [FOOTNOTE: This is a very common French equivalent for O'Meara.] has been of great help to me in the search for the apartments. In short, I shall see you all next winter--well housed; my sister remains with me, unless she is urgently required in her own country. I love you, and that is all I can tell you, for I am overcome with sleep and weakness. My sister rejoices at the idea of seeing Madame Franchomme again, and I also do so most sincerely. This shall be as G.o.d wills. Kindest regards to M. and Madame Forest. How much I should like to be some days with you! Is Madame de Lauvergeat also at the sea- side? Do not forget to remember me to her, as well as to M. de Lauvergeat. Embrace your little ones. Write me a line. Yours ever. My sister embraces Madame Franchomme.

After a stay of less than six weeks Chopin removed from the Rue Chaillot to the apartments in No. 12, Place Vendome, which M. Albrecht and Dr.

O'Meara had succeeded in finding for him. About this time Moscheles came to Paris. Of course he did not fail to inquire after his brother-artist and call at his house. What Moscheles heard and thought may be gathered from the following entry in his diary:-"Unfortunately, we heard of Chopin's critical condition, made ourselves inquiries, and found all the sad news confirmed. Since he has been laid up thus, his sister has been with him. Now the days of the poor fellow are numbered, his sufferings great. Sad lot!" Yes, Chopin's condition had become so hopeless that his relations had been communicated with, and his sister, Louisa Jedrzejewicz, [FOOTNOTE: The same sister who visited him in 1844, pa.s.sed on that occasion also some time at Nohant, and subsequently is mentioned in a letter of Chopin's to Franchomme.] accompanied by her husband and daughter, had lost no time in coming from Poland to Paris. For the comfort of her presence he was, no doubt, thankful. But he missed and deplored very much during his last illness the absence of his old, trusted physician, Dr. Molin, who had died shortly after the composer's return from England.

The accounts of Chopin's last days--even if we confine ourselves to those given by eye-witnesses--are a mesh of contradictions which it is impossible to wholly disentangle. I shall do my best, but perhaps the most I can hope for is to avoid making confusion worse confounded.

In the first days of October Chopin was already in such a condition that unsupported he could not sit upright. His sister and Gutmann did not leave him for a minute, Chopin holding a hand of the latter almost constantly in one of his. By the 15th of October the voice of the patient had lost its sonority. It was on this day that took place the episode which has so often and variously been described. The Countess Delphine Potocka, between whom and Chopin existed a warm friendship, and who then happened to be at Nice, was no sooner informed of her friend's fatal illness than she hastened to Paris.

When the coming of this dear friend was announced to Chopin [relates M. Gavard], he exclaimed: "Therefore, then, has G.o.d delayed so long to call me to Him; He wished to vouchsafe me yet the pleasure of seeing you." Scarcely had she stepped up to him when he expressed the wish that she should let him hear once more the voice which he loved so much. When the priest who prayed beside the bed had granted the request of the dying man, the piano was moved from the adjoining room, and the unhappy Countess, mastering her sorrow and suppressing tier sobs, had to force herself to sing beside the bed where her friend was exhaling his life. I, for my part, heard nothing; I do not know what she sang. This scene, this contrast, this excess of grief had over-powered my-sensibility; I remember only the moment when the death-rattle of the departing one interrupted the Countess in the middle of the second piece.

The instrument was quickly removed, and beside the bed remained only the priest who said the prayers for the dying, and the kneeling friends around him.

However, the end was not yet come, indeed, was not to come till two days after. M. Gavard, in saying that he did not hear what the Countess Potocka sang, acts wisely, for those who pretended to have heard it contradict each other outright. Liszt and Karasowski, who follows him, say that the Countess sang the Hymn to the Virgin by Stradella, and a Psalm by Marcello; on the other hand, Gutmann most positively a.s.serted that she sang a Psalm by Marcello and an air by Pergolesi; whereas Franchomme insisted on her having sung an air from Bellini's Beatrice di Tenda, and that only once, and nothing else. As Liszt was not himself present, and does not give the authority for his statement, we may set it, and with it Karasowski's, aside; but the two other statements, made as they were by two musicians who were ear witnesses, leave us in distressing perplexity with regard to what really took place, for between them we cannot choose. Chopin, says M. Gavard, looked forward to his death with serenity.

Some days after his removal to the Place Vendome, Chopin, sitting upright and leaning on the arm of a friend, remained silent for a long time and seemed lost in deep meditation.

Suddenly he broke the silence with the words: "Now my death- struggle begins" [Maintenant j'entre en agonie]. The physician, who was feeling his pulse, wished to comfort him with some commonplace words of hope. But Chopin rejoined with a superiority which admitted of no reply: "G.o.d shows man a rare favour when He reveals to him the moment of the approach of death; this grace He shows me. Do not disturb me."

M. Gavard relates also that on the 16th October Chopin twice called his friends that were gathered in his apartments around him. "For everyone he had a touching word; I, for my part, shall never forget the tender words he spoke to me." Calling to his side the Princess Czartoryska and Mdlle. Gavard, [FOOTNOTE: A sister of M. Charles Gavard, the pupil to whom Chopin dedicated his Berceuse.] he said to them: "You will play together, you will think of me, and I shall listen to you." And calling to his side Franchomme, he said to the Princess: "I recommend Franchomme to you, you will play Mozart together, and I shall listen to you."

[FOOTNOTE: The words are usually reported to have been "Vous jouerez du Mozart en memoire de moi."] "And," added Franchomme when he told me this, "the Princess has always been a good friend to me."

And George Sand? Chopin, as I have already mentioned, said two days before his death to Franchomme: "She had said to me that I would die in no arms but hers" [Elle n'avait dit que je ne mourrais que dans ses bras]. Well, did she not come and fulfil her promise, or, at least, take leave of her friend of many years? Here, again, all is contradiction. M.

Gavard writes:--

Among the persons who called and were not admitted was a certain Madame M., who came in the name of George Sand--who was then much occupied with the impending representation of one of her dramas--to inquire after Chopin's state of health.

None of us thought it proper to disturb the last moments of the master by the announcement of this somewhat late remembrance.

Gutmann, on the other hand, related that George Sand came to the landing of the staircase and asked him if she might see Chopin; but that he advised her strongly against it, as it was likely to excite the patient too much. Gutmann, however, seems to have been by no means sure about this part of his recollections, for on two occasions he told me that it was Madame Clesinger (George Sand's daughter, Solange) who asked if it was advisable for her mother to come. Madame Clesinger, I may say in pa.s.sing, was one of those in loving attendance on Chopin, and, as Franchomme told me, present, like himself, when the pianist-composer breathed his last. From the above we gather, at least, that it is very uncertain whether Chopin's desire to see George Sand was frustrated by her heartlessness or the well-meaning interference of his friends.

During this illness of Chopin a great many of his friends and acquaintances, in fact, too many, pressed forward, ready to be of use, anxious to learn what was pa.s.sing. Happily for the dying man's comfort, most of them were not allowed to enter the room in which he lay.

In the back room [writes M. Gavard] lay the poor sufferer, tormented by fits of breathlessness, and only sitting in bed resting in the arms of a friend could he procure air for his oppressed lungs. It was Gutmann, the strongest among us, who knew best how to manage the patient, and who mostly thus supported him. At the head of his bed sat the Princess Marcelline Czartoryska: she never left him, guessing his most secret wishes, nursing him like a sister of mercy with a serene countenance, which did not betray her deep sorrow.

Other friends gave a helping hand or relieved her, everyone according to his power; but most of them stayed in the two adjoining rooms. Everyone had a.s.sumed a part; everyone helped as much as he could: one ran to the doctors, to the apothecary; another introduced the persons asked for; a third shut the door on the intruders. To be sure, many who had anything but free entrance came, and called to take leave of him just as if he were about to start on a journey. This anteroom of the dying man, where every one of us hopelessly waited and watched, was like a guard-house or a camp.

M. Gavard probably exaggerates the services of the Princess Czartoryska, but certainly forgets those of the composer's sister. Liszt, no doubt, comes nearer the truth when he says that among those who a.s.sembled in the salon adjoining Chopin's bedroom, and in turn came to him and watched his gestures and looks when he had lost his speech, the Princess Marcelline Czartoryska was the most a.s.siduous.

She pa.s.sed every day a couple of hours with the dying man. She left him at the last only after having prayed for a long time beside him who had just then fled from this world of illusions and sorrows....

After a bad night Chopin felt somewhat better on the morning of the 16th. By several authorities we are informed that on this day, the day after the Potocka episode, the artist received the sacrament which a Polish priest gave him in the presence of many friends. Chopin got worse again in the evening. While the priest was reading the prayers for the dying, he rested silently and with his eyes closed upon Gutmann's shoulder; but at the end of the prayers he opened his eyes wide and said with a loud voice: "Amen."

The Polish priest above mentioned was the Abbe Alexander Jelowicki.

Liszt relates that in the absence of the Polish priest who was formerly Chopin's confessor, the Abbe called on his countryman when he heard of his condition, although they had not been on good terms for years. Three times he was sent away by those about Chopin without seeing him. But when he had succeeded in informing Chopin of his wish to see him, the artist received him without delay. After that the Abbe became a daily visitor. One day Chopin told him that he had not confessed for many years, he would do so now. When the confession was over and the last word of the absolution spoken, Chopin embraced his confessor with both arms a la polonaise, and exclaimed: "Thanks! Thanks! Thanks to you I shall not die like a pig." That is what Liszt tells us he had from Abbe Jelowicki's own lips. In the account which the latter has himself given of how Chopin was induced by him to receive the sacrament, induced only after much hesitation, he writes:--

Then I experienced an inexpressible joy mixed with an indescribable anguish. How should I receive this precious soul so as to give it to G.o.d? I fell on my knees, and cried to G.o.d with all the energy of my faith: "You alone receive it, O my G.o.d!" And I held out to Chopin the image of the crucified Saviour, pressing it firmly in his two hands without saying a word. Then fell from his eyes big tears. "Do you believe?" I asked him.--"I believe."--"Do you believe as your mother taught you?"--"As my mother taught me." And, his eyes fixed on the image of his Saviour, he confessed while shedding torrents of tears. Then he received the viatic.u.m and the extreme unction which he asked for himself. After a moment he desired that the sacristan should be given twenty times more than was usually given to him. When I told him that this would be far too much, he replied: "No, no, this is not too much, for what I have received is priceless." From this moment, by G.o.d's grace, or rather under the hand of G.o.d Himself, he became quite another, and one might almost say he became a saint. On the same day began the death-struggle, which lasted four days and four nights. His patience and resignation to the will of G.o.d did not abandon him up to the last minute....

When Chopin's last moments approached he took "nervous cramps" (this was Gutmann's expression in speaking of the matter), and the only thing which seemed to soothe him was Gutmann's clasping his wrists and ankles firmly. Quite near the end Chopin was induced to drink some wine or water by Gutmann, who supported him in his arms while holding the gla.s.s to his lips. Chopin drank, and, sinking back, said "Cher ami!" and died.

Gutmann preserved the gla.s.s with the marks of Chopin's lips on it till the end of his life.

[FOOTNOTE: In B. Stavenow's sketch already more than once alluded to by me, we read that Chopin, after having wetted his lips with the water brought him by Gutmann, raised the latter's hand, kissed it, and with the words "Cher ami!" breathed his last in the arms of his pupil, whose sorrow was so great that Count Gryzmala was obliged to lead him out of the room. Liszt's account is slightly different. "Who is near me?" asked Chopin, with a scarcely audible voice. He bent his head to kiss the hand of Gutmann who supported him, giving up his soul in this last proof of friendship and grat.i.tude. He died as he had lived, loving.]

M. Gavard describes the closing hours of Chopin's life as follows:--

The whole evening of the 16th pa.s.sed in litanies; we gave the responses, but Chopin remained silent. Only from his difficult breathing could one perceive that he was still alive. That evening two doctors examined him. One of them, Dr. Cruveille, took a candle, and, holding it before Chopin's face, which had become quite black from suffocation, remarked to us that the senses had already ceased to act. But when he asked Chopin whether he suffered, we heard, still quite distinctly, the answer "No longer" [Plus]. This was the last word I heard from his lips. He died painlessly between three and four in the morning [of October 17, 1849]. When I saw him some hours afterwards, the calm of death had given again to his countenance the grand character which we find in the mould taken the same day [by Clesinger], and still more in the simple pencil sketch which was drawn by the hand of a friend, M. Kwiatkowski. This picture of Chopin is the one I like best.

Liszt, too, reports that Chopin's face resumed an unwonted youth, purity, and calm; that his youthful beauty so long eclipsed by suffering reappeared. Common as the phenomenon is, there can be nothing more significant, more impressive, more awful, than this throwing-off in death of the marks of care, hardship, vice, and disease--the corruption of earthly life; than this return to the innocence, serenity, and loveliness of a first and better nature; than this foreshadowing of a higher and more perfect existence. Chopin's love of flowers was not forgotten by those who had cherished and admired him now when his soul and body were parted. "The bed on which he lay," relates Liszt, "the whole room, disappeared under their varied colours; he seemed to repose in a garden." It was a Polish custom, which is not quite obsolete even now, for the dying to choose for themselves the garments in which they wished to be dressed before being laid in the coffin (indeed, some people had their last habiliments prepared long before the approach of their end); and the pious, more especially of the female s.e.x, affected conventual vestments, men generally preferring their official attire.

That Chopin chose for his grave-clothes his dress-suit, his official attire, in which he presented himself to his audiences in concert-hall and salon, cannot but be regarded as characteristic of the man, and is perhaps more significant than appears at first sight. But I ought to have said, it would be if it were true that Chopin really expressed the wish. M. Kwiatkowski informed me that this was not so.

For some weeks after, from the 18th October onwards, the French press occupied itself a good deal with the deceased musician. There was not, I think, a single Paris paper of note which did not bring one or more long articles or short notes regretting the loss, describing the end, and estimating the man and artist. But the phenomenal ignorance, exuberance of imagination, and audacity of statement, manifested by almost every one of the writers of these articles and notes are sufficient to destroy one's faith in journalism completely and for ever. Among the offenders were men of great celebrity, chief among them Theophile Gautier (Feuilleton de la Presse, November 5, 1849) and Jules Janin (Feuilleton du Journal des Debuts, October 22, 1849), the latter's performance being absolutely appalling. Indeed, if we must adjudge to French journalists the palm for gracefulness and sprightliness, we cannot withhold it from them for unconscientiousness. Some of the inventions of journalism, I suspect, were subsequently accepted as facts, in some cases perhaps even a.s.similated as items of their experience, by the friends of the deceased, and finally found their way into AUTHENTIC biography. One of these myths is that Chopin expressed the wish that Mozart's Requiem should be performed at his funeral. Berlioz, one of the many journalists who wrote at the time to this effect, adds (Feuilleton du Journal des Debuts, October 27, 1849) that "His [Chopin's] worthy pupil received this wish with his last sigh." Unfortunately for Berlioz and this pretty story, Gutmann told me that Chopin did not express such a wish; and Franchomme made to me the same statement. I must, [I must, however, not omit to mention here that M. Charles Gavard says that Chopin drew up the programme of his funeral, and asked that on that occasion Mozart's Requiem should be performed.] Also the story about Chopin's wish to be buried beside Bellini is, according to the latter authority, a baseless invention. This is also the place to dispose of the question: What was done with Chopin's MSS.? The reader may know that the composer is said to have caused all his MSS. to be burnt. Now, this is not true. From Franchomme I learned that what actually took place was this. Pleyel asked Chopin what was to be done with the MSS. Chopin replied that they were to be distributed among his friends, that none were to be published, and that fragments were to be destroyed. Of the pianoforte school which Chopin is said to have had the intention to write, nothing but sc.r.a.ps, if anything, can have been found.

M. Gavard pere made the arrangements for the funeral, which, owing to the extensiveness of the preparations, did not take place till the 30th of October. Ready a.s.sistance was given by M. Daguerry, the curate of the Madeleine, where the funeral service was to be held; and thanks to him permission was received for the introduction of female singers into the church, without whom the performance of Mozart's Requiem would have been an impossibility.

Numerous equipages [says Eugene Guinot in the Feuilleton du Siecle of November 4] enc.u.mbered last Tuesday the large avenues of the Madeleine church, and the crowd besieged the doors of the Temple where one was admitted only on presenting a letter of invitation. Mourning draperies announced a funeral ceremony, and in seeing this external pomp, this concourse of carriages and liveried servants, and this privilege which permitted only the elect to enter the church, the curious congregated on the square asked: "Who is the great lord [grand seigneur] whom they are burying?" As if there were still grands seigneurs! Within, the gathering was brilliant; the elite of Parisian society, all the strangers of distinction which Paris possesses at this moment, were to be found there...

Many writers complain of the exclusiveness which seems to have presided at the sending out of invitations. M. Guinot remarks in reference to this point:

His testamentary executors [executrices] organised this solemnity magnificently. But, be it from premeditation or from forgetfulness, they completely neglected to invite to the ceremony most of the representatives of the musical world.

Members of the Inst.i.tute, celebrated artists, notable writers, tried in vain to elude the watch-word [consigne] and penetrate into the church, where the women were in a very great majority. Some had come from London, Vienna, and Berlin.

In continuation of my account of the funeral service I shall quote from a report in the Daily News of November 2, 1849:--

The coffin was under a catafalque which stood in the middle of the area. The semicircular s.p.a.ce behind the steps of the altar was screened by a drapery of black cloth, which being festooned towards the middle, gave a partial view of the vocal and instrumental orchestra, disposed not in the usual form of a gradual ascent from the front to the back, but only on the level of the floor....

The doors of the church were opened at eleven o'clock, and at noon (the time fixed for the commencement of the funeral service) the vast area was filled by an a.s.sembly of nearly three thousand persons, all of whom had received special invitations, as being ent.i.tled from rank, from station in the world of art and literature, or from friendship for the lamented deceased, to be present on so solemn and melancholy an occasion.

A trustworthy account of the whole ceremony, and especially a clear and full report of the musical part of the service, we find in a letter from the Paris correspondent of The Musical World (November 10, 1849).

I shall quote some portions of this letter, accompanying them with elucidatory and supplementary notes:--

The ceremony, which took place on Tuesday (the 30th ult.), at noon, in the church of the Madeleine, was one of the most imposing we ever remember to have witnessed. The great door of the church was hung with black curtains, with the initials of the deceased, "F. C.," emblazoned in silver. On our entry we found the vast area of the modern Parthenon entirely crowded.

Nave, aisles, galleries, &c., were alive with human beings who had come to see the last of Frederick Chopin. Many, perhaps, had never heard of him before....In the s.p.a.ce that separates the nave from the choir, a lofty mausoleum had been erected, hung with black and silver drapery, with the initials "F.C."

emblazoned on the pall. At noon the service began. The orchestra and chorus (both from the Conservatoire, with M.

Girard as conductor and the princ.i.p.al singers (Madame Viardot- Garcia, Madame Castellan, Signor Lablache, and M. Alexis Dupont)) were placed at the extreme end of the church, a black drapery concealing them from view.

[FOOTNOTE: This statement is confirmed by one in the Gazette musicals, where we read that the members of the Societe des Concerts "have made themselves the testamentary executors of this wish"--namely, to have Mozart's Requiem performed. Madame Audley, misled, I think, by a dubious phrase of Karasowski's, that has its origin in a by no means dubious phrase of Liszt's, says that Meyerbeer conducted (dirigeait l'ensemble).

Liszt speaks of the conducting of the funeral procession.]

When the service commenced the drapery was partially withdrawn and exposed the male executants to view, concealing the women, whose presence, being uncanonical, was being felt, not seen. A solemn march was then struck up by the band, during the performance of which the coffin containing the body of the deceased was slowly carried up the middle of the nave...As soon as the coffin was placed in the mausoleum, Mozart's Requiem was begun...The march that accompanied the body to the mausoleum was Chopin's own composition from his first pianoforte sonata, instrumented for the orchestra by M. Henri Reber.

[FOOTNOTE: Op. 35, the first of those then published, but in reality his second, Op. 4 being the first. Meyerbeer afterwards expressed to M. Charles Gavard his surprise that he had not been asked to do the deceased the homage of scoring the march.]

During the ceremony M. Lefebure-Wely, organist of the Madeleine, performed two of Chopin's preludes [FOOTNOTE: Nos.

4 and 6, in E and B minor] upon the organ...After the service M. Wely played a voluntary, introducing themes from Chopin's compositions, while the crowd dispersed with decorous gravity.

The coffin was then carried from the church, all along the Boulevards, to the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise-a distance of three miles at least--Meyerbeer and the other chief mourners, who held the cords, walking on foot, bareheaded.

[FOOTNOTE: Liszt writes that Meyerbeer and Prince Adam Czartoryski conducted the funeral procession, and that Prince Alexander Czartoryski, Delacroix, Franchomme, and Gutmann were the pall-bearers. Karasowski mentions the same gentlemen as pall-bearers; Madame Audley, on the other hand, names Meyerbeer instead of Gutmann. Lastly, Theophile Gautier reported in the Feuilleton de la Presse of November 5, 1849, that MM. Meyerbeer, Eugene Delacroix, Franchomme, and Pleyel held the cords of the pall. The Gazette musicale mentions Franchomme, Delacroix, Meyerbeer, and Czartoryski.]

A vast number of carriages followed...

[FOOTNOTE: "Un grand nombre de voitures de deuil et de voitures particulieres," we read in the Gazette musicals, "ont suivi jusqu'au cimetiere de l'Est, dit du Pere-Lachaise, le pompeux corbillard qui portait le corps du defunt. L'elite des artistes de Paris lui a servi de cortege. Plusieurs dames, ses eleves, en grand deuil, ont suivi le convoi, a pied, jusqu'au champ de repos, ou l'artiste eminent, convaincu, a eu pour oraisons funebres des regrets muets, profondement sentis, qui valent mieux que des discours dans lesquels perce toujours une vanite d'auteur ou d'orateur"]

At Pere-Lachaise, in one of the most secluded spots, near the tombs of Habeneck and Marie Milanollo, the coffin was deposited in a newly-made grave. The friends and admirers took a last look, ladies in deep mourning threw garlands and flowers upon the coffin, and then the gravedigger resumed his work...The ceremony was performed in silence.