The following words are written along the margin:—
The people here are ugly, but, it would seem, good. As a
compensation there are charming, apparently mischievous,
cattle, perfect milk, butter, eggs, and tout ce qui s'en suit,
cheese and chickens.
To save the reader from becoming confused by allusions in Chopin's letters to names of unknown persons and places, I will now say a few words about the composer's Scotch friends. The Stirlings of Keir, generally regarded as the principal family of the name, are said to be descended from Walter de Striveline, Strivelyn, or Strivelyng, Lucas of Strivelyng (1370-1449) being the first possessor of Keyr. The family was for about two centuries engaged in the East India and West India trade. Archibald Stirling, the father of the late baronet, went, as William Fraser relates in The Stirlings of Keir, like former younger sons, to Jamaica, where he was a planter for nearly twenty-five years. He succeeded his brother James in 1831, greatly improved the mansion, and died in 1847. When Chopin visited Keir it was in the possession of William Stirling, who, in 1865, became Sir William Stirling-Maxwell (his mother was a daughter of Sir John Maxwell), and is well-known by his literary works—Annals of the Artists of Spain (1848), The Cloister Life of the Emperor Charles V. (1852), Velasquez (1855), &c. He was the uncle of Jane Stirling and Mrs. Erskine, daughters (the former the youngest daughter) of John Stirling, of Kippendavie and Kippenross, and friends of Chopin. W. Hanna, the editor of the Letters of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, says that Jane Stirling was a cousin and particular friend of Thomas Erskine. The latter used in later life to regard her and the Duchess de Broglie as the most remarkable women he had ever met:—
In her later years she lived much in Paris, and counted among
her friends there Ary Scheffer. In his "Christus Consolator,"
this eminent artist has presented in one of the figures his
ideal of female beauty, and was struck on being first
introduced to Miss Stirling to find in her the almost exact
embodiment of that ideal. She was introduced afterwards in
many of his pictures.
In a letter addressed to Mrs. Schwabe, and dated February 14, 1859, we read about her:—
She was ill for eight weeks, and suffered a great deal...I
know you will feel this deeply, for you could appreciate the
purity and beauty of that stream of love which flowed through
her whole life. I don't think that I ever knew anyone who
seemed more entirely to have given up self, and devoted her
whole being to the good of others. I remember her birth like
yesterday, and I never saw anything in her but what was
lovable from the beginning to the end of her course.
Lindsay Sloper, who lived in Paris from 1841 to 1846, told me that Miss Stirling, who was likewise staying there, took for some time lessons from him. As she wished to become a pupil of Chopin, he spoke to his master about her. Chopin, Lindsay Sloper said, was pleased with her playing, and soon began to like her.
[FOOTNOTE: To the above I must append a cautionary foot-note. In his account to me Lindsay Sloper made two mistakes which prove that his memory was not one of the most trustworthy, and suggest even the possibility that his Miss Stirling was a different person from Chopin's friend. His mistakes were these: he called Mrs. Erskine, who was with Miss Stirling in Paris, her aunt instead of her sister; and thought that Miss Stirling was about eighteen years old when he taught her. The information I shall give farther on seems to show that she was older rather than younger than Chopin; indeed, Mr Hipkins is of opinion that she was in 1848 nearer fifty than forty.]
To her the composer dedicated his Deux Nocturnes, Op. 55, which he published in August, 1844. It was thought that she was in love with Chopin, and there were rumours of their going to be married. Gutmann informed me that Chopin said to him one day when he was ill: "They have married me to Miss Stirling; she might as well marry death." Of Miss Jane Stirling's elder sister Katherine, who, in 1811, married her cousin James Erskine, and lost her husband already in 1816, Thomas Erskine says: "She was an admirable woman, faithful and diligent in all duties, and unwearied in her efforts to help those who needed her help." Lord Torphichen, at whose residence (Calder House, twelve miles from Edinburgh) Chopin passed much of his time in Scotland, was, as we learn from the composer's letters, a brother-in-law of Miss Stirling and Mrs. Erskine. Johnstone Castle (twelve miles from Glasgow), where Chopin was also received as a guest, belonged to the Houston family, friends of the Erskines and Stirlings, but, I think, no relations. The death of Ludovic Houston, Esq., in 1862, is alluded to in one of Thomas Erskine's letters.
But Chopin, while in Scotland, was not always staying in manors and castles, now and then he was housed less aristocratically, though perhaps not less, nay, probably more, comfortably. Such humbler quarters he found at the house (10, Warriston Crescent) of Dr. Lyschinski, a Pole by birth, and a refugee, who after studying medicine in Edinburgh practised it there until a few years ago when he removed to London. For the information which I am now going to give I am indebted to Mrs. Lyschinski. Among those who received Chopin at the Edinburgh railway station was Dr. Lyschinski who addressed him in Polish. The composer put up at an hotel (perhaps the London Hotel, in St. Andrew's Square). Next day—Miss Paterson, a neighbour, having placed her carriage at Chopin's disposal—Mrs. Lyschinski took him out for a drive. He soon got tired of the hotel, in fact, felt it quite unbearable, and told the doctor, to whom he had at once taken a fancy, that he could not do without him. Whereupon the latter said: "Well, then you must come to my house; and as it is rather small, you must be satisfied with the nursery." So the children were sent to a friend's house, and the nursery was made into a bedroom for the illustrious guest, an adjoining bedroom being prepared for his servant Daniel, an Irish-Frenchman. Unless the above refers to Chopin's return to Scotland in September, after his visit to Manchester, Mrs. Lyschinski confuses her reminiscences a little, for, as the last-quoted letter proves, he tarried, on his first arrival, only one day in Edinburgh. But the facts, even if not exactly grouped, are, no doubt, otherwise correctly remembered. Chopin rose very late in the day, and in the morning had soup in his room. His hair was curled daily by the servant, and his shirts, boots, and other things were of the neatest—in fact, he was a petit-maitre, more vain in dress than any woman. The maid-servants found themselves strictly excluded from his room, however indispensable their presence might seem to them in the interests of neatness and cleanliness. Chopin was so weak that Dr. Lyschinski had always to carry him upstairs. After dinner he sat before the fire, often shivering with cold. Then all on a sudden he would cross the room, seat himself at the piano, and play himself warm. He could bear neither dictation nor contradiction: if you told him to go to the fire, he would go to the other end of the room where the piano stood. Indeed, he was imperious. He once asked Mrs. Lyschinski to sing. She declined. At this he was astonished and quite angry. "Doctor, would you take it amiss if I were to force your wife to do it?" The idea of a woman refusing him anything seemed to him preposterous. Mrs. Lyschinski says that Chopin was gallant to all ladies alike, but thinks that he had no heart. She used to tease him about women, saying, for instance, that Miss Stirling was a particular friend of his. He replied that he had no particular friends among the ladies, that he gave to all an equal share of his attention. "Not even George Sand then," she asked, "is a particular friend?" "Not even George Sand," was the reply. Had Mrs. Lyschinski known the real state of matters between Chopin and George Sand, she certainly would not have asked that question. He, however, by no means always avoided the mention of his faithless love. Speaking one day of his thinness he remarked that she used to call him mon cher cadavre. Miss Stirling was much about Chopin. I may mention by the way that Mrs. Lyschinski told me that Miss Stirling was much older than Chopin, and her love for him, although passionate, purely Platonic. Princess Czartoryska arrived some time after Chopin, and accompanied him, my informant says, wherever he went. But, as we see from one of his letters, her stay in Scotland was short. The composer was always on the move. Indeed, Dr. Lyschinski's was hardly more than a pied-a-terre for him: he never stayed long, and generally came unexpectedly. A number of places where Chopin was a guest are mentioned in his letters. Mrs. Lyschinski thinks that he also visited the Duke of Hamilton.
At the end of August and at the end of September and beginning of October, this idling was interrupted by serious work, and a kind of work which, at no time to his liking, was particularly irksome in the then state of his health.