[To the Comtesse d'Agoult.] Nobody has permitted himself to breathe the air of your room since you left it. Arrangements will be made to put up all those you may bring with you. I count on the maestro, on Chopin, on the Rat, [FOOTNOTE: Liszt's pupil, Hermann Cohen.] if he does not weary you too much, and all the others at your choice.
Chopin's love for George Sand was not instantaneous like that of Romeo for Juliet. Karasowski remembers having read in one of those letters of the composer which perished in 1863: "Yesterday I met George Sand…; she made a very disagreeable impression upon me." Hiller in his Open Letter to Franz Liszt writes:—
One evening you had assembled in your apartments the aristocracy of the French literary world—George Sand was of course one of the company. On the way home Chopin said to me "What a repellent [antipathische] woman the Sand is! But is she really a woman? I am inclined to doubt it."
Liszt, in discussing this matter with me, spoke only of Chopin's "reserve" towards George Sand, but said nothing of his "aversion" to her. And according to this authority the novelist's extraordinary mind and attractive conversation soon overcame the musician's reserve. Alfred de Musset's experience had been of a similar nature. George Sand did not particularly please him at first, but a few visits which he paid her sufficed to inflame his heart with a violent passion. The liaisons of the poet and musician with the novelist offer other points of resemblance besides the one just mentioned: both Musset and Chopin were younger than George Sand—the one six, the other five years; and both, notwithstanding the dissimilarity of their characters, occupied the position of a weaker half. In the case of Chopin I am reminded of a saying of Sydney Smith, who, in speaking of his friends the historian Grote and his wife, remarked: "I do like them both so much, for he is so lady-like, and she is such a perfect gentleman." Indeed, Chopin was described to me by his pupil Gutmann as feminine in looks, gestures, and taste; as to George Sand, although many may be unwilling to admit her perfect gentlemanliness, no one can doubt her manliness:—
Dark and olive-complexioned Lelia! [writes Liszt] thou hast walked in solitary places, sombre as Lara, distracted as Manfred, rebellious as Cain, but more fierce [farouche], more pitiless, more inconsolable than they, because thou hast found among the hearts of men none feminine enough to love thee as they have been loved, to pay to thy virile charms the tribute of a confiding and blind submission, of a silent and ardent devotion, to suffer his allegiance to be protected by thy Amazonian strength!
The enthusiasm with which the Poles of her acquaintance spoke of their countrywomen, and the amorous suavity, fulness of feeling, and spotless nobleness which she admired in the Polish composer's inspirations, seem to have made her anticipate, even before meeting Chopin, that she would find in him her ideal lover, one whose love takes the form of worship. To quote Liszt's words: "She believed that there, free from all dependence, secure against all inferiority, her role would rise to the fairy-like power of some being at once the superior and the friend of man. "Were it not unreasonable to regard spontaneous utterances— expressions of passing moods and fancies, perhaps mere flights of rhetoric—as well-considered expositions of stable principles, one might be tempted to ask: Had George Sand found in Chopin the man who was "bold or vile enough" to accept her "hard and clear" conditions? [FOOTNOTE: See extract from one of her letters in the preceding chapter, Vol. I., p. 334.]
While the ordinary position of man and woman was entirely reversed in this alliance, the qualities which characterised them can nevertheless hardly ever have been more nearly diametrically opposed. Chopin was weak and undecided; George Sand strong and energetic. The former shrank from inquiry and controversy; the latter threw herself eagerly into them. [FOOTNOTE: George Sand talks much of the indolence of her temperament: we may admit this fact, but must not overlook another one—namely, that she was in possession of an immense fund of energy, and was always ready to draw upon it whenever speech or action served her purpose or fancy.] The one was a strict observer of the laws of propriety and an almost exclusive frequenter of fashionable society; the other, on the contrary, had an unmitigated scorn for the so- called proprieties and so-called good society. Chopin's manners exhibited a studied refinement, and no woman could be more particular in the matter of dress than he was. It is characteristic of the man that he was so discerning a judge of the elegance and perfection of a female toilette as to be able to tell at a glance whether a dress had been made in a first-class establishment or in an inferior one. The great composer is said to have had an unlimited admiration for a well-made and well- carried (bien porte) dress. Now what a totally different picture presents itself when we turn to George Sand, who says of herself, in speaking of her girlhood, that although never boorish or importunate, she was always brusque in her movements and natural in her manners, and had a horror of gloves and profound bows. Her fondness for male garments is as characteristic as Chopin's connoisseurship of the female toilette; it did not end with her student life, for she donned them again in 1836 when travelling in Switzerland.
The whole of Chopin's person was harmonious. "His appearance," says Moscheles, who saw him in 1839, "is exactly like his music [ist identificirt mit seiner Musik], both are tender and schwarmerisch."
[FOOTNOTE: I shall not attempt to translate this word, but I will give the reader a recipe. Take the notions "fanciful," "dreamy," and "enthusiastic" (in their poetic sense), mix them well, and you have a conception of schwarmerisck.]
A slim frame of middle height; fragile but wonderfully flexible limbs; delicately-formed hands; very small feet; an oval, softly- outlined head; a pale, transparent complexion; long silken hair of a light chestnut colour, parted on one side; tender brown eyes, intelligent rather than dreamy; a finely-curved aquiline nose; a sweet subtle smile; graceful and varied gestures: such was the outward presence of Chopin. As to the colour of the eyes and hair, the authorities contradict each other most thoroughly. Liszt describes the eyes as blue, Karasowski as dark brown, and M. Mathias as "couleur de biere." [FOOTNOTE: This strange expression we find again in Count Wodzinski's Les trois Romans de Frederic Chopin, where the author says: "His large limpid, expressive, and soft eyes had that tint which the English call auburn, which the Poles, his compatriots, describe as piwne (beer colour), and which the French would denominate brown.">[ Of the hair Liszt says that it was blonde, Madame Dubois and others that it was cendre, Miss L. Ramann that it was dark blonde, and a Scotch lady that it was dark brown. [FOOTNOTE: Count Wodzinski writes: "It was not blonde, but of a shade similar to that of his eyes: ash-coloured (cendre), with golden reflections in the light.">[ Happily the matter is settled for us by an authority to which all others must yield—namely, by M. T. Kwiatkowski, the friend and countryman of Chopin, an artist who has drawn and painted the latter frequently. Well, the information I received from him is to the effect that Chopin had des yeux bruns tendres (eyes of a tender brown), and les cheveux blonds chatains (chestnut-blonde hair). Liszt, from whose book some of the above details are derived, completes his portrayal of Chopin by some characteristic touches. The timbre of his voice, he says, was subdued and often muffled; and his movements had such a distinction and his manners such an impress of good society that one treated him unconsciously like a prince. His whole appearance made one think of that of the convolvuli, which on incredibly slender stems balance divinely-coloured chalices of such vapourous tissue that the slightest touch destroys them.