This remark calls up a passage in a letter written two years later from Vienna to his friend John Matuszynski:—
When your former colleagues, for instance, Rostkowski,
Schuch, Freyer, Kyjewski, Hube, &c., are holding merry
converse in my room, then think that I am laughing and
enjoying myself with you.
A charming little genre picture of Chopin's home-life is to be found in one of his letters from Vienna (December 1, 1830) Having received news from Warsaw, he writes:—
The joy was general, for Titus also had letters from home. I
thank Celinski lor the enclosed note; it brought vividly back
to me the time when I was still amongst you: it seemed to me
as if I were sitting at the piano and Celinski standing
opposite me looking at Mr. Zywny, who just then treated
Linowski to a pinch of snuff. Only Matuszynski was wanting to
make the group complete.
Several names in the above extract remind me that I ought to say a few words about the young men with whom Chopin at that time associated. Many of them were no doubt companions in the noblest sense of the word. Of this class may have been Celinski, Hube, Eustachius Marylski, and Francis Maciejowski (a nephew of the previously-mentioned Professor Waclaw Maciejowski), who are more or less frequently mentioned in Chopin's correspondence, but concerning whom I have no information to give. I am as badly informed about Dziewanowski, whom a letter quoted by Karasowski shows to have been a friend of Chopin's. Of two other friends, Stanislas Kozmian and William Kolberg, we know at least that the one was a few years ago still living at Posen and occupied the post of President of the Society of the Friends of Science, and that the other, to whom the earliest letters of Chopin that have come down to us are addressed, became, not to mention lesser offices and titles, a Councillor of State, and died on June 4,1877. Whatever the influence of the friends I have thus far named may have been on the man Chopin, one cannot but feel inclined to think that Stephen Witwicki and Dominic Magnuszewski, especially the former, must have had a greater influence on the artist. At any rate, these two poets, who made their mark in Polish literature, brought the musician in closest contact with the strivings of the literary romanticism of those days. In later years Chopin set several of Witwicki's songs to music. Both Magnuszewski and Witwicki lived afterwards, like Chopin, in Paris, where they continued to associate with him. Of the musical acquaintances we have to notice first and foremost Julius Fontana, who himself said that he was a daily visitor at Chopin's house. The latter writes in the above-mentioned letter (December 27, 1828) to Titus Woyciechowski:—
The Rondo for two pianos, this orphan child, has found a step-
father in Fontana (you may perhaps have seen him at our
house, he attends the university); he studied it for more
than a month, but then he did learn it, and not long ago we
tried how it would sound at Buchholtz's.
Alexander Rembielinski, described as a brilliant pianist and a composer in the style of Fesca, who returned from Paris to Warsaw and died young, is said to have been a friend of Chopin's. Better musicians than Fontana, although less generally known in the western part of Europe, are Joseph Nowakowski and Thomas Nidecki. Chopin, by some years their junior, had intercourse with them during his residence in Poland as well as afterwards abroad. It does not appear that Chopin had what can rightly be called intimate friends among the young Polish musicians. If we may believe the writer of an article in Sowinski's Dictionary, there was one exception. He tells us that the talented Ignaz Felix Dobrzynski was a fellow-pupil of Chopin's, taking like him private lessons from Elsner. Dobrzynski came to Warsaw in 1825, and took altogether thirty lessons.
Working together under the same master, having the same
manner of seeing and feeling, Frederick Chopin and I.F.
Dobrzynski became united in a close friendship. The same
aims, the same artistic tendency to seek the UNKNOWN,
characterised their efforts. They communicated to each other
their ideas and impressions, followed different routes to
arrive at the same goal.
This unison of kindred minds is so beautiful that one cannot but wish it to have been a fact. Still, I must not hide the circumstance that neither Liszt nor Karasowski mentions Dobrzynski as one of Chopin's friends, and the even more significant circumstance that he is only mentioned twice and en passant in Chopin's letters. All this, however, does not necessarily nullify the lexicographer's statements, and until contradictory evidence is forthcoming we may hold fast by so pleasing and ennobling a creed.
The most intimate of Chopin's early friends, indeed, of all his friends—perhaps the only ones that can be called his bosom friends—have still to be named, Titus Woyciechowski and John Matuszynski. It was to them that Chopin wrote his most interesting and self-revealing letters. We shall meet them and hear of them often in the course of this narrative, for their friendship with the musician was severed only by death. It will therefore suffice to say here that Titus Woyciechowski, who had been Chopin's school-fellow, lived, at the period of the latter's life we have now reached, on his family estates, and that John Matuszynski was then studying medicine in Warsaw.