CHAPTER XVI.
1832-1834.
CHOPIN'S SUCCESS IN SOCIETY AND AS A TEACHER.—VARIOUS CONCERTS AT WHICH HE PLAYED.—A LETTER FROM CHOPIN AND LISZT TO HILLER.— SOME OF HIS FRIENDS.—STRANGE BEHAVIOUR.—A LETTER TO FRANCHOMME.- -CHOPIN'S RESERVE.—SOME TRAITS OF THE POLISH CHARACTER.—FIELD.- -BERLIOZ.—NEO-ROMANTICISM AND CHOPIN'S RELATION TO IT.—WHAT INFLUENCE HAD LISZT ON CHOPIN'S DEVELOPMENT—PUBLICATION OF WORKS.—THE CRITICS.—INCREASING POPULARITY.—JOURNEY IN THE COMPANY OF HILLER TO AIX-LA-CHAPELLE.—A DAY AT DUSSELDORF WITH MENDELSSOHN.
IN the season 1832-1833 Chopin took his place as one of the acknowledged pianistic luminaries of the French capital, and began his activity as a professor par excellence of the aristocracy. "His distinguished manners, his exquisite politeness, his studied and somewhat affected refinement in all things, made Chopin the model professor of the fashionable nobility." Thus Chopin is described by a contemporary. Now he shall describe himself. An undated letter addressed to his friend Dominic Dziewanowski, which, judging from an allusion to the death of the Princess Vaudemont, [FOOTNOTE: In a necrology contained in the Moniteur of January 6, 1833, she is praised for the justesse de son esprit, and described as naive et vraie comme une femme du peuple, genereuse comme une grande dame. There we find it also recorded that she saved M. de Vitrolles pendant les Cent-jours, et M. de Lavalette sous la Restoration.] must have been written about the second week of January, 1833, gives much interesting information concerning the writer's tastes and manners, the degree of success he had obtained, and the kind of life he was leading. After some jocular remarks on his long silence—remarks in which he alludes to recollections of Szafarnia and the sincerity of their friendship, and which he concludes with the statement that he is so much in demand on all sides as to betorn to pieces—Chopin proceeds thus:—
I move in the highest society—among ambassadors, princes, and ministers; and I don't know how I got there, for I did not thrust myself forward at all. But for me this is at present an absolute necessity, for thence comes, as it were, good taste. You are at once credited with more talent if you are heard at a soiree of the English or Austrian Ambassador's. Your playing is finer if the Princess Vaudemont patronises you. "Patronises" I cannot properly say, for the good old woman died a week ago. She was a lady who reminded me of the late Kasztelanowa Polaniecka, received at her house the whole Court, was very charitable, and gave refuge to many aristocrats in the days of terror of the first revolution. She was the first who presented herself after the days of July at the Court of Louis Philippe, although she belonged to the Montmorency family (the elder branch), whose last descendant she was. She had always a number of black and white pet dogs, canaries, and parrots about her; and possessed also a very droll little monkey, which was permitted even to…bite countesses and princesses.
Among the Paris artists I enjoy general esteem and friendship, although I have been here only a year. A proof of this is that men of great reputation dedicate their compositions to me, and do so even before I have paid them the same compliment—for instance, Pixis his last Variations for orchestra. He is now even composing variations on a theme of mine. Kalkbrenner improvises frequently on my mazurkas. Pupils of the Conservatoire, nay, even private pupils of Moscheles, Herz, and Kalkbrenner (consequently clever artists), still take lessons from me, and regard me as the equal of Field. Really, if I were somewhat more silly than I am, I might imagine myself already a finished artist; nevertheless, I feel daily how much I have still to learn, and become the more conscious of it through my intercourse with the first artists here, and my perception of what every one, even of them, is lacking in. But I am quite ashamed of myself for what I have written just now, having praised myself like a child. I would erase it, but I have no time to write another letter. Moreover, you will remember my character as it formerly was; indeed, I have remained quite the same, only with this one difference, that I have now whiskers on one side—unfortunately they won't grow at all on the other side. To-day I have to give five lessons; you will imagine that I must soon have made a fortune, but the cabriolet and the white gloves eat the earnings almost up, and without these things people would deny my bon ton. I love the Carlists, hate the Philippists, and am myself a revolutionist; therefore I don't care for money, but only for friendship, for the preservation of which I earnestly entreat you.
This letter, and still more the letters which I shall presently transcribe, afford irrefragable evidence of the baselessness of the often-heard statement that Chopin's intercourse was in the first years of his settlement in Paris confined to the Polish salons. The simple unexaggerated truth is that Chopin had always a predilection for, and felt more at home among, his compatriots.
In the winter 1832-1833 Chopin was heard frequently in public. At a concert of Killer's (December 15, 1832) he performed with Liszt and the concert-giver a movement of Bach's Concerto for three pianos, the three artists rendering the piece "avec une intelligence de son caractere et une delicatesse parfaite." Soon after Chopin and Liszt played between the acts of a dramatic performance got up for the benefit of Miss Smithson, the English actress and bankrupt manager, Berlioz's flame, heroine of his "Episode de la vie d'un artiste," and before long his wife. On April 3, 1833, Chopin assisted at a concert given by the brothers Herz, taking part along with them and Liszt in a quartet for eight hands on two pianos. M. Marmontel, in his silhouette of the pianist and critic Amedee de Mereaux, mentions that in 1832 this artist twice played with Chopin a duo of his own on "Le Pre aux Clercs," but leaves us in uncertainty as to whether they performed it at public concerts or private parties. M. Franchomme told me that he remembered something about a concert given by Chopin in 1833 at the house of one of his aristocratic friends, perhaps at Madame la Marechale de Lannes's! In summing up, as it were, Chopin's activity as a virtuoso, I may make use of the words of the Paris correspondent of the "Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung," who reports in April, 1833, that "Chopin and Osborne, as well as the other celebrated masters, delight the public frequently." In short, Chopin was becoming more and more of a favourite, not, however, of the democracy of large concert-halls, but of the aristocracy of select salons.
The following letter addressed to Hiller, written by Chopin and Liszt, and signed by them and Franchomme, brings together Chopin's most intimate artist friends, and spreads out before us a vivid picture of their good fellowship and the society in which they moved. I have put the portions written by Liszt within brackets [within parentheses in this e-text]. Thus the reader will see what belongs to each of the two writers, and how they took the pen out of each other's hand in the middle of a phrase and even of a word. With regard to this letter I have further to remark that Hiller, who was again in Germany, had lately lost his father:—
{This is at least the twentieth time that we have made arrangements to meet, sometimes at my house, sometimes here, [Footnote: At Chopin's lodgings mentioned farther on.] with the intention of writing to you, and some visit, or other unexpected hindrance, has always prevented us from doing so!…I don't know whether Chopin will be able to make any excuses to you; as regards myself it seems to me that we have been so excessively rude and impertinent that excuses are no longer either admissible or possible.