Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Part 5

They belong to that elect few who have built for the centuries. The influence of Chopin, beyond that of other composers, is alive today, and moves unconsciously, but profoundly, every music-maker; the seemingly careless style of Crane is really lapidaric, and is helping to file the fetters from every writer who has ideas plus, and thoughts that burn.

Mother Nature in giving out energy gives each man about an equal portion. But that ability to throw the weight with the blow, to concentrate the soul in a sonnet, to focus force in a single effort, is the possession of G.o.d's Chosen Few. Chopin put his affection, his patriotism, his wrath, his hope, and his heroism into his music--as if the song of all the forest birds could be secured, sealed and saved for us!

The father of Chopin was a Frenchman who went up to Poland seeking gain and adventure. He became a soldier under Kosciusko and arose to rank of Captain. He found such favor with the n.o.bility by his gracious ways that he became a teacher of French in the family of Count Frederic Skarbek.

In the family group was a fair young dependent of nervous temperament--slight, active, gentle and intelligent. She was descendent from a line of aristocrats, but in a country where revolutions have been known to begin and end before breakfast, t.i.tles stand for little.

Nicholas Chopin, ex-soldier, teacher of French and Deportment, married this fine young girl, and they lived in one of Count Skarbek's straw-thatched cottages at the little village of Zelazowa-Wola, twenty-nine miles from Warsaw. Here it was that Frederic Chopin was born, in Eighteen Hundred Nine--that memorable year when Destiny sent a flight of great souls to the planet Earth.

The country was bleak and battle-scarred; it had been drained of its men and treasure, and served as a dueling-ground and the place of skulls for kings and such riffraff who have polluted this fair world with their boastings of a divine power.

The struggle of Poland to free herself from the grip of the imperial succubi has generated an atmosphere of ultramarine, so we view the little land of patriots (and fanatics) through a mist of melancholy.

The history of Poland is written in blood and tears.

Go ask John Sobieski, who saw his father hanged by order of Ferdinand Maximilian, and child though he was, realized that banishment was the fate of himself and mother; and then ten years after, himself, stood death-guard over this same Maximilian in Mexico, and told that tyrant the story of his life, and shook hands with him, calling it quits, ere the bandage was tied over the eyes of the ex-dictator and the sunlight shut out forever.

Go ask John Sobieski!

The woes of Poland have produced strange men. Under such rule as she has known relentless hate springs up in otherwise gracious hearts from the scattered dragons' teeth; and in other natures, where there is not quite so much of the motive temperament, a deep strain of sorrow and religious melancholy finds expression. The exquisite sensibility, delicate insight, proud reserve and brooding world-sorrow of Frederic Chopin were the inheritance of mother to son. This mother's mind was saturated with the wrongs her people had endured: she herself had suffered every contumely, for where chance had caused fact to falter, imagination had filled the void.

It is easy to say that Chopin's was an abnormal nature, and of course it was, but when disease divides this world from another only by the thinnest veil, the mind has been known to see things with a clearness and vividness never before attained. With Chopin the strands of life were often taut to the breaking-point, but ere they snapped, their vibration gave forth to us some exquisite harmonies.

Curiously enough, this power to see and do is often the possession of dying men. The life flares up in a flame before it goes out forever. The pa.s.sion of the consumptive Camille, as portrayed by Dumas, is typical--no healthy woman ever loved with that same intense, eager and almost vindictive desire. It was a race with Death.

Perfect health brings unconsciousness of body, and disease that almost relieves the spirit of this weight of flesh produces the same results.

Again we have the Law of Ant.i.thesis.

That such a youth as Frederic Chopin should seek in music a surcease from his world-sorrow is very natural. A stricken people turns to music; it forms a necessary part of all religious observance, and the dirge of mourners, the wail of the "keener," and the songs of the banshee evolve naturally into being wherever the heart is sore oppressed. It was the slave-songs that made slavery bearable; and in the long ago, exiles in Babylon found a solemn joy by singing the songs of Zion. Chopin drank in the songs of Poland with his mother's milk, and while yet a child began to give them voice in his own way.

In the meantime his father's fortunes had mended a bit, and the family had moved to Warsaw, where Nicholas Chopin was Professor of Languages at the Lyceum. The t.i.tle of the office fills the mouth in a very satisfying way, but the emoluments attached hardly afforded such a gratification.

In Warsaw there was much misery, for the plunderer had worked conscription and seizure to its furthest limit. Want and dest.i.tution were on every hand, but still this brave people maintained their University and clung to its traditions. The family of the Professor of Languages consisted of himself, wife, three daughters and the son Frederic. Their income for several years was not over fifteen dollars a month, but still they managed to maintain an appearance of decency, and by the help of the public library, the free museum and the open-air concerts, they kept abreast of the times in literature, art and music.

There was absolute economy required, every particle of food was saved, and when cast-off dresses were sent from the home of the Count it was a G.o.dsend for the mother and girls, who measured and patched and pieced, making garments for themselves, and for Frederic as well; so while their raiment was not gaudy nor expressed in fancy, it served.

Chopin once said to George Sand, "I never can think of my mother without her knitting-needles!" And George Sand has recorded, "Frederic never had but one pa.s.sion and that was his mother." Into all of her knitting this mother's flying needles worked much love. The entire household was one of mutual service, and gentle, trusting affection. The weekly letters of Chopin to his mother from Paris, and the cold sweat on his forehead at the thought of his parents knowing of his relationship with George Sand, are credit-marks to his character. There is a sweet recompense in mutual deprivation where trials and difficulties only serve to cement the affections; and who shall say how much the wondrous blending of strength and delicacy in the music of Chopin is due to the memory of those early days of toil and trial, of strength and forbearance, of hope and love?

To be born into such a family is a great blessing. The value of the environment is shown in that all three of the sisters became distinguished in literature. Two of them married men of intellect, wealth and worth, and through the collaboration of these sisters, books were produced that did for the plain people of Poland what Harriet Martineau's books on sociology did for the people of England. Frederic played and practised at the Lyceum where his father taught, and the ambition of his parents was that he should grow up and take the place of Professor of Music in the Lyceum. Adalbert Zevyny, one of the leading pianists in the city, became attracted to the boy and took him as a pupil, without pay.

The teacher soon became a little boastful of his precocious pupil, and when there came a public concert for the benefit of the poor, we find reference made to Chopin thus, "A child not yet eight years of age played, and connoisseurs say he promises to replace Mozart." In reality the boy was nearer twelve than eight, but his size and looks suggested to the management the idea of plagiarizing, in advance, our honored countryman, Phineas T. Barnum. Hence the announcement on the programs.

But now the n.o.bility of the neighborhood began to send carriages for the fair-haired lad, so he could play for their invited guests. Then came snug little honorariums that soon replaced his patched-up wardrobe for something more fashionable.

Frederic took all the applause quite as a matter of course, and on one occasion, after he had played divinely, he asked a proud lady this question, "How do you like my new collar?"

He was to the manner born, and the gentle blood of his mother formed him as a fit companion for aristocrats.

These occasional musicales at the houses of the great made money matters easier, and Frederic began to take lessons from Joseph Elsner, who taught him the science of composition, and introduced him into the deeper mysteries of music-making. Elsner, it was, more than any other man, who forced the truth upon Chopin that he must play to satisfy himself, and in composition be his own most exacting critic. In other words, Elsner developed and strengthened in Chopin the artistic conscience--that impulse which causes an artist to scorn doing anything save his best.

From little excursions to neighboring towns and country houses about Warsaw, Chopin now ventured farther away from home, chaperoned by his friend, Prince Radziwill. He visited Berlin, Venice, Prague, Heidelberg, and mingled on an absolute equality with the n.o.bility. If they had t.i.tles, he had talents. And his talents often made their decorations sing small.

His modesty was witching, and while in public concerts his playing was not p.r.o.nounced enough to capture the gallery, yet in small gatherings he won all hearts, and the fact that he played his own compositions made him an added object of enthusiasm to the elect. Chopin arrived in Paris when he was twenty-two years of age. It was not his intention to remain more than a few weeks, but Paris was to be his home for eighteen years--and then Pere la Chaise.

A woman who beholds her thirtieth birthday in sight, and girlhood gone, is approaching a climacteric in her career. Flaubert has named twenty-nine as the eventful year in the life of woman, and thirty-three for men. Every normal woman craves love and tenderness--these are her G.o.d-given right. If they have not come to her by the time the bloom is fading from her cheeks, there is danger of her reaching out and clutching for them. The strongest instinct in young girls is self-protection--they fight on the defensive. But at thirty, women have been known to grow a trifle anxious, just as did the Sabine women who dispatched a messenger to the Romans asking this question, "How soon does the program begin?"

And thus are conditions reversed, for it is the youth of twenty or so who seeks conquest with fiery soul. Alexander was only nineteen when he sighed for more worlds to conquer. He didn't have to wait long before he found that this one had conquered him. Youth considers itself immortal, and its powers without limit, but as a man approaches thirty he grows economical of his resources and parsimonious of his emotions. Men of thirty, or so, are apt to be coy.

And so one might say that it is around thirty that for the first time the man and the woman meet on an equality, without sham, shame or pretense. Before that time the average woman abounds in affectation and untruth; the man is absurdly aggressive and full of foolish flattery.

As to the question, "Should women propose?" the answer is, "Yes, certainly, and they do when they are twenty-nine."

Aurora Dudevant saw her thirtieth birthday looming on the horizon of her life. Nine years before she had been married to an ex-army-officer, who dyed his whiskers purple. Aurora had been a dutiful wife, intent for the first few years on filling her husband's heart and home with joy. She had failed in this, and the proof of failure lay in that he much preferred his dogs, guns and horses to her society. For days he would absent himself on his hunting excursions, and at home he did not have the tact to hide the fact that he was awfully bored.

Thackeray, once for all, has given us a picture of the heavy dragoon with a soul for dogs--one to whom all music, save the bay of a fox-hound, makes its appeal in vain. Aurore detested dogs for dogs'

sake, yet she rode horses astride with a daring that made her husband's bloodshot eyes bulge in alarm. He didn't much care how fast and hard she rode at the fences and over the ditches, but he was supposed to follow her, and this he did not care to do. He had reached an age when a man is mindful of the lime in his bones, and his 'cross-country riding was mostly a matter of memory and imagination, and best done around the convivial table.

Aurore was putting him to a test, that's all. She was proving to him that she could meet him on his own preserve, give him choice of weapons, and make him cry for mercy.

Her bent was literature, with music, science and art as side-lines. She read Montaigne, Rochefoucald, Racine and Moliere, and a modern by the name of Alfred de Musset, and quoted her authors at inconvenient times.

She flashed quotations and epigrams upon the doughty dragoon in a way he could neither fend nor parry. At other times she was deeply religious and tearfully penitent.

In fact, she was living on a skimped allowance of love, and had never received the attention that a good woman deserves. Her chains were galling her. She sighed for Paris--forty miles away--Paris and a career.

The epigrams were coming faster, shot in a sort of frenzy and fever. And when she asked her liege for leave to go to Paris, he granted her prayer, and agreed to give her ten dollars a week allowance.

She grabbed at the offer, and he bade her G.o.dspeed and good riddance.

So leaving her two children behind, until such a time as she could provide a home for them, with scanty luggage and light heart and purse, she started away.

Other women have gone up to Paris from country towns, too, and the chances are as one to ten thousand that the maelstrom will sweep them into hades.

But Madame Dudevant was different--in two years she had won her way to literary fame, and was commanding the jealous admiration of the best writers of Paris. Her first work was a collaboration with Jules Sandeau in a novel. Every woman who ever wrote well began by collaborating with a man. Sandeau had formerly come from Nohant, and how much he had to do with Madame Dudevant's breaking loose from her homes-ties no one knows. Anyway, the second novel was written by the Madame alone, and as a tribute to her friend the name "George Sand" was placed upon the t.i.tle-page as author. Jules Sandeau, all-'round hack-writer and critic, was greatly pleased by the compliment of having his name anglicized and printed on the t.i.tle-page of "Indiana," but later he was not so proud of it. George Sand soon proved herself to be a bigger man than Sandeau.

She was not handsome, either in face or in form. She was inclined to be stout--was rather short--and her complexion olive. But she lured with her eyes--great sphinx-like eyes of hazel-brown--that looked men through and through. Liszt has told us that "she had eyes like a cow," which is not so bad as Thomas Carlyle's remark that George Eliot had a face like a horse. George Sand was silent when other women talked, and her look told in a half-proud, half-sad way that she knew all they knew, and all she herself knew beside.

Without going into the issue as to what George Sand was not, let us frankly admit that pain, deprivation, misunderstanding and maternity had taught her many things not found in books, and that she looked at Fate out of her wide-open eyes with a gaze that did not blink. She was wise beyond the lot of women. I was just going to say she was a genius, but I remember the remark of the De Goncourts to the effect that, "There are no women of genius--women of genius are men." Possibly the point could be covered by saying George Sand had a man's head and a woman's heart.

Women did not like her, yet what other woman was ever so honored by woman as was George Sand in those two matchless sonnets addressed to her by Elizabeth Barrett Browning?

The amazing energy of George Sand, her finely flowing sentences--all charged with daring satire and insight into the heart of things--made her work sought by readers and publishers. Her pen brought her all the money she needed; and she had secured a divorce from "That Man," and now had her two children with her in Paris. That she could do her literary work and still attend to her manifold social duties must ever mark her as a phenomenon. She was no mere adventuress. That she was systematic, orderly and abstemious in her habits must go without saying, otherwise her vitality would not have held out and allowed her to attend the funerals of nearly all her retainers.

In throwing overboard the Grub Street Sandeau for Franz Liszt, Madame Dudevant certainly showed discrimination; but in retaining the name of "Sand," she paid a delicate compliment to the man who first introduced her to the world of art. Liszt was too strong a man to remain long captive--he refused to supply the doglike and abject devotion which Aurore always demanded. Then came Michael de Bourges the learned counsel, Calmatto the mezzotinter, Delacroix the artist, De Musset the poet, and Chopin the musician.

It was in the year Eighteen Hundred Thirty-nine, that Chopin and Sand first met at a parlor musicale, where Chopin was taken by Liszt, half against his will, simply because George Sand was to be there.

Chopin did not want to meet her.