Mendelssohn, who arrived in London on August 24, 1837, wrote on
September 1 to Hiller:—
Chopin is said to have suddenly turned up here a fortnight ago; but he visited nobody and made no acquaintances. He played one evening most beautifully at Broadwood's, and then hurried away again. I hear he is still suffering very much.
Chopin accompanied by Camille Pleyel and Stanislas Kozmian, the elder, came to London on the 11th of July and stayed till the 22nd. Pleyel introduced him under the name of M. Fritz to his friend James Broadwood, who invited them to dine with him at his house in Bryanston Square. The incognito, however, could only be preserved as long as Chopin kept his hands off the piano. When after dinner he sat down to play, the ladies of the family suspected, and, suspicion being aroused, soon extracted a confession of the truth.
Moscheles in alluding in his diary to this visit to London adds an item or two to its history:—
Chopin, who passed a few days in London, was the only one of the foreign artists who visited nobody and also did not wish to be visited, as every conversation aggravates his chest- complaint. He went to some concerts and disappeared.
Particularly interesting are the reminiscences of the writer of an enthusiastic review [Footnote: Probably J. W. Davison.]of some of Chopin's nocturnes and a scherzo in the "Musical World" of February 23, 1838:—
Were he [Chopin] not the most retiring and unambitious of all living musicians, he would before this time have been celebrated as the inventor of a new style, or school, of pianoforte composition. During his short visit to the metropolis last season, but few had the high gratification of hearing his extemporaneous performance. Those who experienced this will not readily lose its remembrance. He is, perhaps, par eminence, the most delightful of pianists in the drawing- room. The animation of his style is so subdued, its tenderness so refined, its melancholy so gentle, its niceties so studied and systematic, the tout-ensemble so perfect, and evidently the result of an accurate judgment and most finished taste, that when exhibited in the large concert- room, or the thronged saloon, it fails to impress itself on the mass. The "Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik" of September 8, 1837, brought the piece of news that Chopin was then at a Bohemian watering-place. I doubt the correctness of this statement; at any rate, no other information to that effect has come to my knowledge, and the ascertained facts do not favour the assumption of its truth.
Never robust, Chopin had yet hitherto been free from any serious illness. Now, however, the time of his troubles begins. In a letter, undated, but very probably written in the summer of 1837, which he addressed to Anthony Wodzinski, who had been wounded in Spain, where civil war was then raging, occur remarks confirmatory of Mendelssohn's and Moscheles' statements:—
My dearest life! Wounded! Far from us—and I can send you nothing….Your friends are thinking only of you. For mercy's sake recover as soon as possible and return. The newspaper accounts say that your legion is completely annihilated. Don't enter the Spanish army….Remember that your blood may serve a better purpose….Titus [Woyciechowski] wrote to ask me if I could not meet him somewhere in Germany. During the winter I was again ill with influenza. They wanted to send me to Ems. Up to the present, however, I have no thought of going, as I am unable to move. I write and prepare manuscript. I think far more of you than you imagine, and love you as much as ever.