You have understood, Desirez and you, you whose soul is
delicate because it is ardent, that I passed through the
gravest and most painful phase of my life. I nearly succumbed,
although I had foreseen it for a long time. But you know one
is not always under the pressure of a sinister foresight,
however evident it may be. There are days, weeks, entire
months even, when one lives on illusions, and when one
flatters one's self one is turning aside the blow which
threatens one. At last, the most probable misfortune always
surprises us disarmed and unprepared. In addition to this
development of the unhappy germ, which was going on unnoticed,
there have arisen several very bitter and altogether
unexpected accessory circumstances. The result is that I am
broken in soul and body with chagrin. I believe that this
chagrin is incurable; for the better I succeed in freeing
myself from it for some hours, the more sombre and poignant
does it re-enter into me in the following hours...I have
undertaken a lengthy work [un ouvrage de longue haleine]
entitled Histoire de ma Vie...However, I shall not reveal the
whole of my life...It will be, moreover, a pretty good piece
of business, which will put me on my feet again, and will
relieve me of a part of my anxieties with regard to the future
of Solange, which is rather compromised.
We have, then, the choice of two explanations of the rupture: George Sand's, that it was caused by the disagreement of Chopin and her son; and Franchomme's, that it was brought about by Chopin's disregard of George Sand's injunction not to receive her daughter and son-in-law. I prefer the latter version, which is reconcilable with George Sand's letters, confirmed by the testimony of several of Chopin's friends, and given by an honest, simple-minded man who may be trusted to have told a plain unvarnished tale.
[FOOTNOTE: The contradictions are merely apparent, and disappear if we consider that George Sand cannot have had any inclination to give to Gutmann and Poncy an explanation of the real state of matters. Moreover, when she wrote to the former the rupture had, according to Franchomme, not yet taken place.]
But whatever reason may have been alleged to justify, whatever circumstance may have been the ostensible cause of the rupture, in reality it was only a pretext. On this point all agree—Franchomme, Gutmann, Kwiatkowski, Madame Rubio, Liszt, &c. George Sand was tired of Chopin, and as he did not leave her voluntarily, the separation had to be forced upon him. Gutmann thought there was no rupture at all. George Sand went to Nohant without Chopin, ceased to write to him, and thus the connection came to an end. Of course, Chopin ought to have left her before she had recourse to the "heroic means" of kicking him, metaphorically speaking, out of doors. But the strength of his passion for this woman made him weak. If a tithe of what is rumoured about George Sand's amorous escapades is true, a lover who stayed with her for eight years must have found his capacity of overlooking and forgiving severely tested. We hear on all sides of the infidelities she permitted herself. A Polish friend of Chopin's informed me that one day when he was about to enter the composer's, room to pay him a visit, the married Berrichon female servant of George Sand came out of it; and Chopin, who was lying ill in bed, told him afterwards that she had been complaining of her mistress and husband. Gutmann, who said that Chopin knew of George Sand's occasional infidelities, pretended to have heard him say when she had left him behind in Paris: "I would overlook all if only she would allow me to stay with her at Nohant." I regard these and such like stories, especially the last one, with suspicion (is it probable that the reticent artist was communicative on so delicate a subject, and with Gutmann, his pupil and a much younger man?), but they cannot be ignored, as they are characteristic of how Chopin's friends viewed his position. And yet, tormented as he must have been in the days of possession, crushed as he was by the loss, tempted as he subsequently often felt to curse her and her deceitfulness, he loved and missed George Sand to the very end—even the day before his death he said to Franchomme that she had told him he would die in no other arms but hers (que je ne mourrais que dans ses bras).
If George Sand had represented her separation from Chopin as a matter of convenience, she would have got more sympathy and been able to make out a better case.
The friendship of Chopin [she writes in Ma Vie] has never been
for me a refuge in sadness. He had quite enough troubles of
his own to bear. Mine would have overwhelmed him; moreover, he
knew them only vaguely and did not understand them at all. He
would have appreciated them from a point of view very
different from mine.
Besides Chopin's illnesses became more frequent, his strength diminished from day to day, and care and attendance were consequently more than ever needful. That he was a "detestable patient" has already been said. The world takes it for granted that the wife or paramour of a man of genius is in duty bound to sacrifice herself for him. But how does the matter stand when there is genius on both sides, and self-sacrifice of either party entails loss to the world? By the way, is it not very selfish and hypocritical of this world which generally does so little for men of genius to demand that women shall entirely, self-denyingly devote themselves to their gifted lovers? Well, both George Sand and Chopin had to do work worth doing, and if one of them was hampered by the other in doing it, the dissolution of the union was justified. But perhaps this was not the reason of the separation. At any rate, George Sand does not advance such a plea. Still, it would have been unfair not to discuss this possible point of view.
The passage from the letter of George Sand dated September 1, 1846, which I quoted earlier in this chapter, justifies us, I think, in assuming that, although she was still keeping on her apartments in the Square d'Orleans, the phalanstery had ceased to exist. The apartments she gave up probably sometime in 1847; at any rate, she passed the winter of 1847-8, for the most part at least, at Nohant; and when after the outbreak of the revolution of 1848 she came to Paris (between the 9th and 14th of March), she put up at a hotel garni. Chopin continued to live in his old quarters in the Square d'Orldans, and, according to Gutmann, was after the cessation of his connection with George Sand in the habit of dining either with him (Gutmann) or Grzymala, that is to say, in their company.
It is much to be regretted that no letters are forthcoming to tell us of Chopin's feelings and doings at this time. I can place before the reader no more than one note, the satisfactory nature of which makes up to some extent for its brevity. It is addressed to Franchomme; dated Friday, October 1, 1847; and contains only these few words:—
Dear friend,—I thank you for your good heart, but I am very
RICH this evening. Yours with all my heart.