I have interminable private interviews with Chopin, whom I love much, and who is a man of a rare distinction; he is the most true artist I have met. He is one of the few one can admire and esteem. Madame Sand suffers frequently from violent headaches and pains in her eyes, which she tries to master as much as possible and with much strength of will, so as not to weary us with what she suffers.
The greatest event of my stay has been a peasants' ball on the lawn of the chateau with the best bagpipers of the place. The people of this part of the country present a remarkable type of gentleness and good nature; ugliness is rare here, though beauty is not often seen, but there is not that kind of fever which is observable in the peasants of the environs of Paris. All the women have the appearance of those sweet faces one sees only in the pictures of the old masters. They are all Saint Annes.
Amidst the affectations, insincerities, and superficialities of Chopin's social intercourse, Delacroix's friendship—we have already seen that the musician reciprocated the painter's sentiments—stands out like a green oasis in a barren desert. When, on October 28, 1849, a few days after Chopin's death, Delacroix sent a friend a ticket for the funeral service of the deceased, he speaks of him as "my poor and dear Chopin." But the sincerity of Delacroix's esteem and the tenderness of his love for Chopin are most fully revealed in some lines of a letter which he wrote on January 7, 1861, to Count Czymala [Grzymala]:—
When I have finished [the labours that took up all his time], I shall let you know, and shall see you again, with the pleasure I have always had, and with the feelings your kind letter has reanimated in me. With whom shall I speak of the incomparable genius whom heaven has envied the earth, and of whom I dream often, being no longer able to see him in this world nor to hear his divine harmonies.
If you see sometimes the charming Princess Marcelline [Czartoryska], another object of my respect, place at her feet the homage of a poor man who has not ceased to be full of the memory of her kindnesses and of admiration for her talent, another bond of union with the seraph whom we have lost and who, at this hour, charms the celestial spheres.
The first three of the above extracts from Delacroix's letters enable us to form a clear idea of what the everyday life at Nohant was like, and after reading them we can easily imagine that its monotony must have had a depressing effect on the company-loving Chopin. But the drawback was counterbalanced by an advantage. At Paris most of Chopin's time was occupied with teaching and the pleasures of society, at Nohant he could devote himself undisturbed and undistracted to composition. And there is more than sufficient evidence to prove that in this respect Chopin utilised well the quiet and leisure of his rural retirement.
Few things excite the curiosity of those who have a taste for art and literature so much as an artist's or poet's mode of creation. With what interest, for instance, do we read Schindler's account of how Beethoven composed his Missa Solemnis—of the master's absolute detachment from the terrestrial world during the time he was engaged on this work; of his singing, shouting, and stamping, when he was in the act of giving birth to the fugue of the Credo! But as regards musicians, we know, generally speaking, very little on the subject; and had not George Sand left us her reminiscences, I should not have much to tell the reader about Chopin's mode of creation. From Gutmann I learned that his master worked long before he put a composition to paper, but when it was once in writing did not keep it long in his portfolio. The latter part of this statement is contradicted by a remark of the better- informed Fontana, who, in the preface to Chopin's posthumous works, says that the composer, whether from caprice or nonchalance, had the habit of keeping his manuscripts sometimes a very long time in his portfolio before giving them to the public. As George Sand observed the composer with an artist's eye and interest, and had, of course, better opportunities than anybody else to observe him, her remarks are particularly valuable. She writes:—
His creation was spontaneous and miraculous. He found it without seeking it, without foreseeing it. It came on his piano suddenly, complete, sublime, or it sang in his head during a walk, and he was impatient to play it to himself. But then began the most heart-rending labour I ever saw. It was a series of efforts, of irresolutions, and of frettings to seize again certain details of the theme he had heard; what he had conceived as a whole he analysed too much when wishing to write it, and his regret at not finding it again, in his opinion, clearly defined, threw him into a kind of despair. He shut himself up in his room for whole days, weeping, walking, breaking his pens, repeating and altering a bar a hundred times, writing and effacing it as many times, and recommencing the next day with a minute and desperate perseverance. He spent six weeks over a single page to write it at last as he had noted it down at the very first.
I had for a long time been able to make him consent to trust to this first inspiration. But when he was no longer disposed to believe me, he reproached me gently with having spoiled him and with not being severe enough for him. I tried to amuse him, to take him out for walks. Sometimes, taking away all my brood in a country char a bancs, I dragged him away in spite of himself from this agony. I took him to the banks of the Creuse, and after being for two or three days lost amid sunshine and rain in frightful roads, we arrived, cheerful and famished, at some magnificently-situated place where he seemed to revive. These fatigues knocked him up the first day, but he slept. The last day he was quite revived, quite rejuvenated in returning to Nohant, and he found the solution of his work without too much effort; but it was not always possible to prevail upon him to leave that piano which was much oftener his torment than his joy, and by degrees he showed temper when I disturbed him. I dared not insist. Chopin when angry was alarming, and as, with me, he always restrained himself, he seemed almost to choke and die.
A critic remarks in reference to this account that Chopin's mode of creation does not show genius, but only passion. From which we may conclude that he would not, like Carlyle, have defined genius as the power of taking infinite pains. To be sure, the great Scotchman's definition is inadequate, but nothing is more false than the popular notion that the great authors throw off their works with the pleasantest ease, that creation is an act of pure enjoyment. Beethoven's sketch-books tell a different story; so do also Balzac's proof-sheets and the manuscripts of Pope's version of the Iliad and Odyssey in the British Museum. Dr. Johnson speaking of Milton's MSS. observed truly: "Such reliques show how excellence is acquired." Goethe in writing to Schiller asks him to return certain books of "Wilhelm Meister" that he may go over them A FEW TIMES before sending them to the press. And on re- reading one of these books he cut out one third of its contents. Moreover, if an author writes with ease, this is not necessarily a proof that he labours little, for he may finish the work before bringing it to paper. Mozart is a striking instance. He has himself described his mode of composing—which was a process of accumulation, agglutination, and crystallisation—in a letter to a friend. The constitution of the mind determines the mode of working. Some qualities favour, others obstruct the realisation of a first conception. Among the former are acuteness and quickness of vision, the power of grasping complex subjects, and a good memory. But however varied the mode of creation may be, an almost unvarying characteristic of the production of really precious and lasting artwork is ungrudging painstaking, such as we find described in William Hunt's "Talks about Art":—"If you could see me dig and groan, rub it out and start again, hate myself and feel dreadfully! The people who do things easily, their things you look at easily, and give away easily." Lastly and briefly, it is not the mode of working, but the result of this working which demonstrates genius.