Owing to his retired way of living and his habitual reserve,
Chopin had few friends in the profession; and, indeed, spoiled
from his original nature by the caprice of society, he was too
apt to treat his brother-artists with a supercilious hauteur,
which many, his equals, and a few, his superiors, were wont to
stigmatise as insulting. But from want of sympathy with the
man, they overlooked the fact that a pulmonary complaint,
which for years had been gradually wasting him to a shadow,
rendered him little fit for the enjoyments of society and the
relaxations of artistic conviviality. In short, Chopin, in
self-defence, was compelled to live in comparative seclusion,
but we wholly disbelieve that this isolation had its source in
unkindness or egotism. We are the more inclined to this
opinion by the fact that the intimate friends whom he
possessed in the profession (and some of them were pianists)
were as devotedly attached to him as the most romantic of his
aristocratic worshippers.
The reasoning does not seem to me quite conclusive. Would it not have been possible to live in retirement without drawing upon himself the accusation of supercilious hauteur? Moreover, as Chopin was strong enough to frequent fashionable salons, he cannot have been altogether unable to hold intercourse with his brother-artists. And, lastly, who are the pianist friends that were as devotedly attached to him as the most romantic of his aristocratic worshippers? The fact that Chopin became subsequently less social and more reticent than he had been in his early Paris days, confined himself to a very limited number of friends and families, and had relations of an intimate nature with only a very few musicians, cannot, therefore, be attributable to ill-health alone, although that too had, no doubt, something to do with it, directly or indirectly. In short, the allegation that Chopin was "spoiled by the caprice of society," as the above-quoted correspondent puts it, is not only probable, but even very likely. Fastidious by nature and education, he became more so, partly in consequence of his growing physical weakness, and still more through the influence of the society with which, in the exercise of his profession and otherwise, he was in constant contact. His pupils and many of his other admirers, mostly of the female sex and the aristocratic class, accustomed him to adulation and adoration to such an extent as to make these to be regarded by him as necessaries of life. Some excerpts from Liszt's book, which I shall quote here in the form of aphorisms, will help to bring Chopin, in his social aspect, clearly before the reader's eyes:—
As he did not confound his time, thought, and ways with those
of anyone, the society of women was often more convenient to
him in that it involved fewer subsequent relations.
He carried into society the uniformity of temper of people
whom no annoyance troubles because they expect no interest.
His conversation dwelt little on stirring subjects. He glided
over them; as he was not at all lavish of his time, the talk
was easily absorbed by the details of the day.
He loved the unimportant talk [les causeries sans portee] of
people whom he esteemed; he delighted in the childish
pleasures of young people. He passed readily whole evenings in
playing blind-man's-buff with young girls, in telling them
amusing or funny little stories, in making them laugh the mad
laughter of youth, which it gives even more pleasure to hear
than the singing of the warbler. [FOOTNOTE: This, I think,
must refer to the earlier years of Chopin's residence in
Paris.]
In his relations and conversations he seemed to take an
interest in what preoccupied the others; he took care not to
draw them out of the circle of their personality inorder to
lead them into his. If he gave up little of his time, he, to
make up for it, reserved to himself nothing of that which he
granted.
The presence of Chopin was, therefore, always heartily welcome
[fetee]. Not hoping to be understood [devine], disdaining to
speak of himself [de se raconter lui-meme], he occupied
himself so much with everything that was not himself that his
intimate personality remained aloof, unapproached and
unapproachable, under this polite and smooth [glissant]
surface where it was impossible to get a footing.
He pleased too much to make people reflect.
He hardly spoke either of love or of friendship.
He was not exacting like those whose rights and just demands
surpass by far what one would have to offer them. The most
intimate acquaintances did not penetrate to this sacred recess
where, withdrawn from all the rest of his life, dwelt the
secret motive power of his soul: a recess so concealed that
one scarcely suspected its existence.
Ready to give everything, he did not give himself.
The last dictum and part of the last but one were already quoted by me in an earlier chapter, but for the sake of completeness, and also because they form an excellent starting-point for the following additional remarks on Chopin's friendships, I have repeated them here. First of all, I venture to make the sweeping assertion that Chopin had among his non-Polish friends none who could be called intimate in the fullest sense of the word, none to whom he unbosomed himself as he did to Woyciechowski and Matuszynski, the friends of his youth, and Grzymala, a friend of a later time. Long cessation of personal intercourse together with the diverging development of their characters in totally unlike conditions of life cannot but have diminished the intimacy with the first named. [FOOTNOTE: Titus Woyciechowski continued to live on his estate Poturzyn, in the kingdom of Poland.] With Matuszyriski Chopin remained in close connection till this friend's death. [FOOTNOTE: Karasowski says in the first volume of his Polish biography of Chopin that Matuszynski died on April 20, 1842; and in the second that he died after Chopin's father, but in the same year—that is, in 1844.] How he opened his whole heart to Grzymala we shall see in a subsequent chapter. That his friendship with Fontana was of a less intimate character becomes at once apparent on comparing Chopin's letters to him with those he wrote to the three other Polish friends. Of all his connections with non-Poles there seems to be only one which really deserves the name of friendship, and that is his connection with Franchomme. Even here, however, he gave much less than he received. Indeed, we may say—speaking generally, and not only with a view to Franchomme—that Chopin was more loved than loving. But he knew well how to conceal his deficiencies in this respect under the blandness of his manners and the coaxing affectionateness of his language. There is something really tragic, and comic too, in the fact that every friend of Chopin's thought that he had more of the composer's love and confidence than any other friend. Thus, for instance, while Gutmann told me that Franchomme was not so intimate with Chopin that the latter would confide any secrets to him, Franchomme made to me a similar statement with regard to Gutmann. And so we find every friend of Chopin declaring that every other friend was not so much of a friend as himself. Of Chopin's procedures in friendship much may be learned from his letters; in them is to be seen something of his insinuating, cajoling ways, of his endeavours to make the person addressed believe himself a privileged favourite, and of his habit of speaking not only ungenerously and unlovingly, but even unjustly of other persons with whom he was apparently on cordial terms. In fact, it is only too clear that Chopin spoke differently before the faces and behind the backs of people. You remember how in his letters to Fontana he abuses Camille Pleyel in a manner irreconcilable with genuine love and esteem. Well, to this same Camille Pleyel, of whom he thus falls foul when he thinks himself in the slightest aggrieved, he addresses on one occasion the following note. Mark the last sentence:—
Dearest friend [Cherissime],—Here is what Onslow has written
to me. I wished to call on you and tell you, but I feel very
feeble and am going to lie down. I love you always more, if
this is possible [je vous aime toujours plus si c'est
possible].
CHOPIN.
[FOOTNOTE: To the above, unfortunately undated, note, which
was published for the first time in the Menestrel of February
15, 1885, and reprinted in "Un nid d'autographes," lettres
incites recueillies et annotees par Oscar Comettant (Paris: E.
Dentu), is appended the following P.S.:—"Do not forget,
please, friend Herbeault. Till to-morrow, then; I expect you
both."
La Mara's Musikerbriefe (Leipzig: Breitkopf and Hartel)
contains likewise a friendly letter of Chopin to Camille
Pleyel. It runs thus:
"Dearest friend,—I received the other day your piano, and
give you my best thanks. It arrived in good tune, and is
exactly at concert-pitch. As yet I have not played much on it,
for the weather is at present so fine that I am almost always
in the open air. I wish you as pleasant weather for your
holidays. Write me a few words (if you find that you have not
sufficiently exercised your pen in the course of the day). May
you all remain well—and lay me at the feet of your mother and
sister.—Your devoted, "F. CHOPIN."
The date given by La Mara is "Monday [May 20, 1842], Nohant,
near La Chatre, Indre." This, however, cannot be right, for
the 20th of May in 1842 was a Friday.]
And, again, how atrociously he reviles in the same letters the banker Leo, who lends him money, often takes charge of his manuscripts, procures payment for them, and in whose house he has been for years a frequent visitor. Mr. Ch. Halle informed me that Chopin was on particularly good terms with the Leos. From Moscheles' diary we learn that the writer made Chopin's acquaintance at the banker's house. Stephen Heller told me that he met Chopin several times at Leo's, and that the Polish composer visited there often, and continued to go there when he had given up going to many other houses. And from the same informant I learned also that Madame Leo as well as her husband took a kindly interest in Chopin, showing this, for instance, by providing him with linen. And yet Leo, this man who does him all sorts of services, and whose smiling guest he is before and after, is spoken of by Chopin as if he were the most "despicable wretch imaginable"; and this for no other reason than that everything has not been done exactly as he wished it to be done. Unless we assume these revilings to be no more than explosions of momentary ill-humour, we must find Chopin convicted of duplicity and ingratitude. In the letters to Fontana there are also certain remarks about Matuszynski which I do not like. Nor can they be wholly explained away by saying that they are in part fun and in part indirect flattery of his correspondent. It would rather seem that Chopin's undoubtedly real love for Matuszynski was not unmixed with a certain kind of contempt. And here I must tell the reader that while Poles have so high an opinion of their nation in comparison with other nations, and of their countrymen with other countrymen, they have generally a very mean opinion of each other. Indeed, I never met with a Pole who did not look down with a self-satisfied smile of pity on any of his fellow-countrymen, even on his best friend. It seems that their feeling of individual superiority is as great as that of their national superiority. Liszt's observations (see Vol. I., p. 259) and those of other writers (Polish as well as non-Polish) confirm mine, which else might rightly be supposed to be based on too limited an experience. To return to Matuszynski, he may have been too ready to advise and censure his friend, and not practical enough to be actively helpful. After reading the letters addressed to them one comes to the conclusion that Fontana's and Franchomme's serviceableness and readiness to serve went for something in his appreciation of them as friends. At any rate, he did not hesitate to exploiter them most unconscionably. Taking a general view of the letters written by him during the last twelve years of his life, one is struck by the absence of generous judgments and the extreme rareness of sympathetic sentiments concerning third persons. As this was not the case in his earlier letters, ill-health and disappointments suggest themselves naturally as causes of these faults of character and temper. To these principal causes have, however, to be added his nationality, his originally delicate constitution, and his cultivation of salon manners and tastes. His extreme sensitiveness, fastidiousness, and irritability may be easily understood to derive from one or the other of these conditions.
George Sand's Ma Vie throws a good deal of light on Chopin's character; let us collect a few rays from it:—
He [Chopin] was modest on principle and gentle [doux] by
habit, but he was imperious by instinct, and full of a
legitimate pride that did not know itself.
He was certainly not made to live long in this world, this
extreme type of an artist. He was devoured by the dream of an
ideal which no practical philosophic or compassionate
tolerance combated. He would never compound with human nature.
He accepted nothing of reality. This was his vice and his
virtue, his grandeur and his misery. Implacable to the least
blemish, he had an immense enthusiasm for the least light, his
excited imagination doing its utmost to see in it a sun.
He was the same in friendship [as in love], becoming
enthusiastic at first sight, getting disgusted, and correcting
himself [se reprenant] incessantly, living on infatuations
full of charms for those who were the object of them, and on
secret discontents which poisoned his dearest affections.
Chopin accorded to me, I may say honoured me with, a kind of
friendship which was an exception in his life. He was always
the same to me.
The friendship of Chopin was never a refuge for me in sadness.
He had enough of his own ills to bear.
We never addressed a reproach to each other, except once,
which, alas! was the first and the last time.
But if Chopin was with me devotion, kind attention, grace,
obligingness, and deference in person, he had not for all that
abjured the asperities of his character towards those who were
about me. With them the inequality of his soul, in turn
generous and fantastic, gave itself full course, passing
always from infatuation to aversion, and vice versa.
Chopin when angry was alarming, and as, with me, he always
restrained himself, he seemed almost to choke and die.
The following extracts from Liszt's book partly corroborate, partly supplement, the foregoing evidence:—
His imagination was ardent, his feelings rose to violence,—
his physical organisation was feeble and sickly! Who can sound
the sufferings proceeding from this contrast? They must have
been poignant, but he never let them be seen.
The delicacy of his constitution and of his heart, in imposing
upon him the feminine martyrdom of for ever unavowed tortures,
gave to his destiny some of the traits of feminine destinies.
He did not exercise a decisive influence on any existence. His
passion never encroached upon any of his desires; he neither
pressed close nor bore down [n'a etreint ni masse] any mind by
the domination of his own.
However rarely, there were nevertheless instances when we
surprised him profoundly moved. We have seen him turn pale
[palir et blemir] to such a degree as to assume green and
cadaverous tints. But in his intensest emotions he remained
concentrated. He was then, as usually, chary of words about
what he felt; a minute's reflection [recueillement] always hid
the secret of his first impression...This constant control
over the violence of his character reminded one of the
melancholy superiority of certain women who seek their
strength in reticence and isolation, knowing the uselessness
of the explosions of their anger, and having a too jealous
care of the mystery of their passion to betray it
gratuitously.