Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician — Complete

by Frederick Niecks

WE now come to the catastrophe of Chopin's life, the rupture of his connection with George Sand. Although there is no lack of narratives in which the causes, circumstances, and time of this rupture are set forth with absolute positiveness, it is nevertheless an undeniable fact that we are not at the present moment, nor, all things well considered, shall be even in the most distant future, in a position to speak on this subject otherwise than conjecturally.

[FOOTNOTE: Except the letter of George Sand given on p. 75, and the note of Chopin to George Sand which will be given a little farther on, nothing, I think, of their correspondence has become public. But even if their letters were forth-coming, it is more likely than not that they would fail to clear up the mystery. Here I ought, perhaps, to reproduce the somewhat improbable story told in the World of December 14, 1887, by the Paris correspondent who signs himself "Theoc." He writes as follows: "I have heard that it was by saving her letters to Chopin that M. Alexandre Dumas won the friendship of George Sand. The anecdote runs thus: When Chopin died, his sister found amongst his papers some two hundred letters of Madame Sand, which she took with her to Poland. By chance this lady had some difficulties at the frontier with the Russian custom-house officials; her trunks were seized, and the box containing the letters was mislaid and lost. A few years afterwards, one of the custom-house officials found the letters and kept them, not knowing the name and the address of the Polish lady who had lost them. M. Dumas discovered this fact, and during a journey in Russia he explained to this official how painful it would be if by some indiscretion these letters of the illustrious novelist ever got into print. 'Let me restore them to Madame Sand,' said M. Dumas. 'And my duty?' asked the customs official. 'If anybody ever claims the letters,' replied M. Dumas, 'I authorise you to say that I stole them.' On this condition M. Dumas, then a young man, obtained the letters, brought them back to Paris, and restored them to Madame Sand, whose acquaintance he thus made. Madame Sand burnt all her letters to Chopin, but she never forgot the service that M. Dumas had rendered her.">[

I have done my utmost to elucidate the tragic event which it is impossible not to regard as one of the most momentous crises in Chopin's life, and have succeeded in collecting besides the material already known much that is new; but of what avail is this for coming to a final decision if we find the depositions hopelessly contradictory, and the witnesses more or less untrustworthy—self-interest makes George Sand's evidence suspicious, the instability of memory that of others. Under the circumstances it seems to me safest to place before the reader the depositions of the various witnesses—not, however, without comment—and leave him to form his own conclusions. I shall begin with the account which George Sand gives in her Ma Vie:—

After the last relapses of the invalid, his mind had become
extremely gloomy, and Maurice, who had hitherto tenderly loved
him, was suddenly wounded by him in an unexpected manner about
a trifling subject. They embraced each other the next moment,
but the grain of sand had fallen into the tranquil lake, and
little by little the pebbles fell there, one after
another...All this was borne; but at last, one day, Maurice,
tired of the pin-pricks, spoke of giving up the game. That
could not be, and should not be. Chopin would not stand my
legitimate and necessary intervention. He bowed his head and
said that I no longer loved him.
What blasphemy after these eight years of maternal devotion!
But the poor bruised heart was not conscious of its delirium.
I thought that some months passed at a distance and in silence
would heal the wound, and make his friendship again calm and
his memory equitable. But the revolution of February came, and
Paris became momentarily hateful to this mind incapable of
yielding to any commotion in the social form. Free to return
to Poland, or certain to be tolerated there, he had preferred
languishing ten [and some more] years far from his family,
whom he adored, to the pain of seeing his country transformed
and deformed [denature]. He had fled from tyranny, as now he
fled from liberty.
I saw him again for an instant in March, 1848. I pressed his
trembling and icy hand. I wished to speak to him, he slipped
away. Now it was my turn to say that he no longer loved me. I
spared him this infliction, and entrusted all to the hands of
Providence and the future.
I was not to see him again. There were bad hearts between us.
There were good ones too who were at a loss what to do. There
were frivolous ones who preferred not to meddle with such
delicate matters; Gutmann was not there.
I have been told that he had asked for me, regretted me, and
loved me filially up to the very end. It was thought fit to
conceal this from me till then. It was also thought fit to
conceal from him that I was ready to hasten to him.

Liszt's account is noteworthy because it gives us the opinion of a man who knew the two principal actors in the drama intimately, and had good opportunities to learn what contemporary society thought about it. Direct knowledge of the facts, however, Liszt had not, for he was no longer a friend either of the one or the other of the two parties:—

These commencements, of which Madame de Stael spoke,
[FOOTNOTE: He alludes to her saying: En amour, il n'y a que
des commencemens.] had already for a long time been exhausted
between the Polish artist and the French poet. They had only
survived with the one by a violent effort of respect for the
ideal which he had gilded with its fatal brilliancy; with the
other by a false shame which sophisticated on the pretension
to preserve constancy in fidelity. The time came when this
factitious existence, which succeeded no longer in galvanising
fibres dried up under the eyes of the spiritualistic artist,
seemed to him to surpass what honour permitted him not to
perceive. No one knew what was the cause or the pretext of the
sudden rupture; one saw only that after a violent opposition
to the marriage of the daughter of the house, Chopin abruptly
left Nohant never to return again.

However unreliable Liszt's facts may be, the PHILOSOPHY of his account shows real insight. Karasowski, on the other hand, has neither facts nor insight. He speaks with a novelist's confidence and freedom of characters whom he in no way knows, and about whom he has nothing to tell but the vaguest and most doubtful of second-hand hearsays:—

The depressed invalid became now to her a burden. At first her
at times sombre mien and her shorter visits in the sick-room
showed him that her sympathy for him was on the decrease;
Chopin felt this painfully, but he said nothing...\The
complaints of Madame Sand that the nursing of the invalid
exhausted her strength, complaints which she often gave
expression to in his presence, hurt him. He entreated her to
leave him alone, to take walks in the fresh air; he implored
her not to give up for his sake her amusements, but to
frequent the theatre, to give parties, &c.; he would be
contented in quietness and solitude if he only knew that she
was happy. At last, when the invalid still failed to think of
a separation from her, she chose a heroic means.

By this heroic means Karasowski understands the publication of George Sand's novel Lucrezia Floriani (in 1847), concerning which he says the story goes that "out of refined cruelty the proof-sheets were handed to him [Chopin] with the request to correct the misprints." Karasowski also reports as a "fact" that

the children of Madame Sand [who, by the way, were a man of
twenty-three and a woman of eighteen] said to him [Chopin],
pointing to the novel: "M. Chopin, do you know that you are
meant by the Prince Karol?"...In spite of all this the
invalid, and therefore less passionate, artist bore with the
most painful feeling the mortification caused him by the
novel...At the beginning of the year 1847 George Sand brought
about by a violent scene, the innocent cause of which was her
daughter, a complete rupture. To the unjust reproaches which
she made to him, he merely replied: "I shall immediately leave
your house, and wish henceforth no longer to be regarded by
you as living." These words were very welcome to her; she made
no objections, and the very same day the artist left for ever
the house of Madame Sand. But the excitement and the mental
distress connected with it threw him once more on the sick-
bed, and for a long time people seriously feared that he would
soon exchange it for a coffin.