Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician — Complete

by Frederick Niecks

...What is really beautiful here is the country, the sky, the
mountains, the good health of Maurice, and the radoucissement of
Solange. The good Chopin is not in equally brilliant health. He
misses his piano very much. We received news of it to-day. It has
left Marseilles, and we shall perhaps have it in a fortnight. Mon
Dieu, how hard, difficult, and miserable the physical life is
here! It is beyond what one can imagine.
By a stroke of fortune I have found for sale a clean suite of
furniture, charming for this country, but which a French
peasant would not have. Unheard-of trouble was required to get
a stove, wood, linen, and who knows what else. Though for a
month I have believed myself established, I am always on the
eve of being so. Here a cart takes five hours to go three
leagues; judge of the rest. They require two months to
manufacture a pair of tongs. There is no exaggeration in what
I say. Guess about this country all I do not tell you. For my
part I do not mind it, but I have suffered a little from it in
the fear of seeing my children suffer much from it.
Happily, my ambulance is doing well. To-morrow we depart for
the Carthusian monastery of Valdemosa, the most poetic
residence on earth. We shall pass there the winter, which has
hardly begun and will soon end. This is the sole happiness of
this country. I have never in my life met with a nature so
delicious as that of Majorca.

...The people of this country are generally very gracious, very obliging; but all this in words...

I shall write to Leroux from the monastery at leisure. If you
knew what I have to do! I have almost to cook. Here, another
amenity, one cannot get served. The domestic is a brute:
bigoted, lazy, and gluttonous; a veritable son of a monk (I
think that all are that). It requires ten to do the work which
your brave Mary does. Happily, the maid whom I have brought
with me from Paris is very devoted, and resigns herself to do
heavy work; but she is not strong, and I must help her.
Besides, everything is dear, and proper nourishment is
difficult to get when the stomach cannot stand either rancid
oil or pig's grease. I begin to get accustomed to it; but
Chopin is ill every time that we do not prepare his food
ourselves. In short, our expedition here is, in many respects,
a frightful fiasco.

On December 15, 1838, then, the Sand party took possession of their quarters in the monastery of Valdemosa, and thence the next letters are dated.

Chopin to Fontana; "Palma, December 28, 1838, or rather Valdemosa, a few miles distant from Palma":—

Between rocks and the sea, in a great abandoned Carthusian
monastery, in one of the cells with doors bigger than the
gates in Paris, you may imagine me with my hair uncurled,
without white gloves, pale as usual. The cell is in the shape
of a coffin, high, and full of dust on the vault. The window
small, before the window orange, palm, and cypress trees.
Opposite the window, under a Moorish filigree rosette, stands
my bed. By its side an old square thing like a table for
writing, scarcely serviceable; on it a leaden candlestick (a
great luxury) with a little tallow-candle, Works of Bach, my
jottings, and old scrawls that are not mine, this is all I
possess. Quietness... one may shout and nobody will hear... in
short, I am writing to you from a strange place.
Your letter of the 9th of December I received the day before
yesterday; as on account of the holidays the express mail does
not leave till next week, I write to you in no great hurry. It
will be a Russian month before you get the bill of exchange
which I send you.
Sublime nature is a fine thing, but one should have nothing to
do with men—nor with roads and posts. Many a time I came here
from Palma, always with the same driver and always by another
road. Streams of water make roads, violent rains destroy them;
to-day it is impossible to pass, for what was a road is
ploughed; next day only mules can pass where you were driving
yesterday. And what carriages here! That is the reason,
Julius, why you do not see a single Englishman, not even an
English consul.
Leo is a Jew, a rogue! I was at his house the day before my
departure, and I told him not to send me anything here. I
cannot send you the Preludes, they are not yet finished. At
present I am better and shall push on the work. I shall write
and thank him in a way that will make him wince.
But Schlesinger is a still worse dog to put my Waltzes
[FOOTNOTE: "Trois Valses brillantes," Op. 34.] in the Album,
and to sell them to Probst [FOOTNOTE: Heinrich Albert Probst
founded in 1823 a music-shop and publishing-house at Leipzig.
In 1831 Fr. Kistner entered the business (Probst-Kistner),
which under his name has existed from 1836 down to this day.
In the Chopin letters we meet Probst in the character of
Breitkopf and Hartel's agent.] when I gave him them because he
begged them for his father in Berlin. [FOOTNOTE: Adolf Martin
Schlesinger, a music-publisher like his son Maurice Adolph of
Paris, so frequently mentioned in these letters.] All this
irritates me. I am only sorry for you; but in one month at the
latest you will be clear of Leo and my landlord. With the
money which you receive on the bill of exchange, do what is
necessary. And my servant, what is he doing? Give the portier
twenty francs as a New Year's present.
I do not remember whether I left any debts of importance. At
all events, as I promised you, we shall be clear in a month at
the latest.
To-day the moon is wonderful, I never saw it more beautiful.
By the way, you write that you sent me a letter from my
people. I neither saw nor heard of one, and I am longing so
much for one! Did you prepay when you sent them the letter?
Your letter, the only one I have hitherto received, was very
badly addressed. Here nature is benevolent, but the people are
thievish. They never see any strangers, and therefore do not
know what to ask of them. For instance, an orange they will
give you for nothing, but ask a fabulous sum for a coat-
button.
Under this sky you are penetrated with a kind of poetical
feeling which everything seems to exhale. Eagles alarmed by no
one soar every day majestically over our heads.
For God's sake write, always prepay, and to Palma add always
Valdemosa.
I love Johnnie, and I think it is a pity that he did not
altogether qualify himself as director of the children of some
benevolent institution in some Nuremberg or Bamberg. Get him
to write to me, were it only a few words.
I enclose you a letter to my people...I think it is already
the third or fourth that I send you for my parents.
My love to Albrecht, but speak very little about me.

Chopin to Fontana; Valdemosa, January 12, 1839:—

I send you the Preludes, make a copy of them, you and Wolf;
[FOOTNOTE: Edouard Wolff] I think there are no mistakes. You
will give the transcript to Probst, but my manuscript to
Pleyel. When you get the money from Probst, for whom I enclose
a receipt, you will take it at once to Leo. I do not write and
thank him just now, for I have no time. Out of the money which
Pleyel will give you, that is 1,500 francs, you will pay the
rent of my rooms till the New Year, 450 francs and you will
give notice of my giving them up if you have a chance to get
others from April. If not it will be necessary to keep them
for a quarter longer. The rest of the amount, or 1,000 francs,
you will return from me to Nougi. Where he lives you will
learn from Johnnie, but don't tell the latter of the money,
for he might attack Nougi, and I do not wish that anyone but
you and I should know of it. Should you succeed in finding
rooms, you could send one part of the furniture to Johnnie and
another to Grzymala. You will tell Pleyel to send letters
through you.
I sent you before the New Year a bill of exchange for Wessel;
tell Pleyel that I have settled with Wessel.
[FOOTNOTE: The music-publisher Christian Rudolph Wessel, of
Bremen, who came to London in 1825. Up to 1838 he had Stodart,
and from 1839 to 1845 Stapleton, as partner. He retired in
1860, Messrs. Edwin Ashdown and Henry Parry being his
successors. Since the retirement of Mr. Parry, in 1882, Mr.
Ashdown is the sole proprietor. Mr. Ashdown, whom I have to
thank for the latter part of this note, informs me that Wessel
died in 1885.]
In a few weeks you will receive a Ballade, a Polonaise, and a
Scherzo.
Until now I have not yet received any letters from my parents.
I embrace you.
Sometimes I have Arabian balls, African sun, and always before
my eyes the Mediterranean Sea.
I do not know when I shall be back, perhaps as late as May,
perhaps even later.

Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Valdemosa, January 15, 1839:—

...We inhabit the Carthusian monastery of Valdemosa, a really
sublime place, which I have hardly the time to admire, so many
occupations have I with my children, their lessons, and my work.
There are rains here of which one has elsewhere no idea: it is
a frightful deluge! The air is on account of it so relaxing,
so soft, that one cannot drag one's self along; one is really
ill. Happily, Maurice is in admirable health; his constitution
is only afraid of frost, a thing unknown here. But the little
Chopin [FOOTNOTE: Madame Marliani seems to have been in the
habit of calling Chopin "le petit." In another letter to her
(April 28, 1839) George Sand writes of Chopin as votre petit.
This reminds one of Mendelssohn's Chopinetto.] is very
depressed and always coughs much. For his sake I await with
impatience the return of fine weather, which will not be long
in coming. His piano has at last arrived at Palma; but it is
in the clutches of the custom-house officers, who demand from
five to six hundred francs duty, and show themselves
intractable.
...I am plunged with Maurice in Thucydides and company; with
Solange in the indirect object and the agreement of the
participle. Chopin plays on a poor Majorcan piano which reminds
me of that of Bouffe in "Pauvre Jacques." I pass my nights
generally in scrawling. When I raise my nose, it is to see
through the sky-light of my cell the moon which shines in the
midst of the rain on the orange trees, and I think no more of it
than she.