He came to see me in London; he appeared to me a fine young fellow, and he loves you much. He plays duets [fait de la musique] with a great lady of this country, Lady Murray, one of my sexagenarian pupils in London, to whom I have also promised a visit in her beautiful mansion. [FOOTNOTE: The wife of Lord (Sir John Archibald) Murray, I think. At any rate, this lady was very musical and in the habit of playing with Louis Drechsler.] But I do not know how I shall do it, for I have promised to be in Manchester on the 28th of August to play at a concert for 60 pounds. Neukomm is there, and, provided that he does not improvise on the same day [et pourvu qu'il ne m'improvise pas le meme jour], I reckon on earning my 60 francs [he means, of course, "60 pounds">[.
[FOOTNOTE: Thinking that this remark had some hidden meaning, I applied to Franchomme for an explanation; but he wrote to me as follows: "Chopin trouvait que Neukomm etait un musicien ennuyeux, et il lui etait desagreable de penser que Neukomm pourrait improviser dans le concert dans lequel il devrait jouer.">[
After that I don't know what will become of me. I should like very much if they were to give me a pension for life for having composed nothing, not even an air a la Osborne or Sowinski (both of them excellent friends), the one an Irishman, the other a compatriot of mine (I am prouder of them than of the rejected representative Antoine de Kontski— Frenchman of the north and animal of the south). [FOOTNOTE: "Frenchmen of the north" used to be a common appellation of the Poles.]
After these parentheses, I will tell you truly that I know [FOOTNOTE: Here probably "not" ought to be added.] what will become of me in autumn. At any rate, if you get no news from me do not complain of me, for I think very often of writing to you. If you see Mdlle. de Rozieres or Grzymala, one or the other of them will have heard something—if not from me, from some friends. The park here is very beautiful, the lord of the manor very excellent, and I am as well as I am permitted to be. Not one proper musical idea. I am out of my groove; I am like, for instance, an ass at a masked ball, a chanterelle [first, i.e., highest string] of a violin on a double bass— astonished, amazed, lulled to sleep as if I were hearing a trait 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.