As Chopin disliked the pavilion in the Rue Pigalle, George Sand moved with her household in 1842 to the quiet, aristocratic- looking Cite (Court or Square) d'Orleans, where their friend Madame Marliani arranged for them a vie de famille. To get to the Cite d'Orleans one has to pass through two gateways—the first leads from the Rue Taitbout (close to the Rue St. Lazare), into a small out-court with the lodge of the principal concierge; the second, into the court itself. In the centre is a grass plot with four flower-beds and a fountain; and between this grass plot and the footpath which runs along the houses extends a carriage drive. As to the houses which form the square, they are well and handsomely built, the block opposite the entrance making even some architectural pretensions. Madame Sand's, Madame Marliani's, and Chopin's houses, which bore respectively the numbers 5, 4, and 3, were situated on the right side, the last-mentioned being just in the first right-hand corner on entering from the out- court. On account of the predilection shown for it by artists and literary men as a place of abode, the Court d'Orldans has not inaptly been called a little Athens. Alexander Dumas was one of the many celebrities who lived there at one time or other; and Chopin had for neighbours the famous singer Pauline Viardot- Garcia, the distinguished pianoforte-professor Zimmermann, and the sculptor Dantan, from whose famous gallery of caricatures, or rather charges, the composer's portrait was not absent. Madame Marliani, the friend of George Sand and Chopin, who has already repeatedly been mentioned in this book, was the wife of Manuel Marliani, Spanish Consul in Paris, author, [FOOTNOTE: Especially notable among his political and historical publications in Spanish and French is: "Histoire politique de l'Espagne moderne suivie d'un apercu sur les finances." 2 vols. in 8vo (Paris, 1840).] politician, and subsequently senator. Lenz says that Madame Marliani was a Spanish countess and a fine lady; and George Sand describes her as good-natured and active, endowed with a passionate head and maternal heart, but destined to be unhappy because she wished to make the reality of life yield to the ideal of her imagination and the exigences of her sensibility.
Some excerpts from a letter written by George Sand on November 12, 1842, to her friend Charles Duvernet, and a passage from Ma Vie will bring scene and actors vividly before us:—
We also cultivate billiards; I have a pretty little table, which I hire for twenty francs a month, in my salon, and thanks to kind friendships we approach Nohant life as much as is possible in this melancholy Paris. What makes things country-like also is that I live in the same square as the family Marliani, Chopin in the next pavilion, so that without leaving this large well-lighted and sanded Court d'Orleans, we run in the evening from one to another like good provincial neighbours. We have even contrived to have only one pot [marmite], and eat all together at Madame Marliani's, which is more economical and by far more lively than taking one's meals at home. It is a kind of phalanstery which amuses us, and where mutual liberty is much better guaranteed than in that of the Fourierists…
Solange is at a boarding-school, and comes out every Saturday to Monday morning. Maurice has resumed the studio con furia, and I, I have resumed Consuelo like a dog that is being whipped; for I have idled on account of my removal and the fitting up of my apartments…
Kind regards and shakes of the hand from Viardot, Chopin, and my children.
The passge [sic: passage] from Ma Vie, which contains some repetitions along with a few additional touches, runs as follows:- -
She [Madame Marliani] had fine apartments between the two we [George Sand and Chopin] occupied. We had only a large planted and sanded and always clean court to cross in order to meet, sometimes, in her rooms, sometimes in mine, sometimes in Chopin's when he was inclined to give us some music. We dined with her at common expense. It was a very good association, economical like all associations, and enabled one to see society at Madame Marliani's, my friends more privately in my apartments, and to take up my work at the hour when it suited me to withdraw. Chopin rejoiced also at having a fine, isolated salon where he could go to compose or to dream. But he loved society, and made little use of his sanctuary except to give lessons in it.
Although George Sand speaks only of a salon, Chopin's official residence, as we may call it, consisted of several rooms. They were elegantly furnished and always adorned with flowers—for he loved le luxe and had the coquetterie des appartements.
[FOOTNOTE: When I visited in 1880 M. Kwiatkowski in Paris, he showed me some Chopin relics: 1, a pastel drawing by Jules Coignet (representing Les Pyramides d'Egypte), which hung always above the composer's piano; 2, a little causeuse which Chopin bought with his first Parisian savings; 3, an embroidered easy- chair worked and presented to him by the Princess Czartoiyska; and 4, an embroidered cushion worked and presented to him by Madame de Rothschild. If we keep in mind Chopin's remarks about his furniture and the papering of his rooms, and add to the above- mentioned articles those which Karasowski mentions as having been bought by Miss Stirling after the composer's death, left by her to his mother, and destroyed by the Russians along with his letters in 1861 when in possession of his sister Isabella Barcinska—his portrait by Ary Scheffer, some Sevres porcelain with the inscription "Offert par Louis Philippe a Frederic Chopin," a fine inlaid box, a present from one of the Rothschild family, carpets, table-cloths, easy-chairs, &c., worked by his pupils—we can form some sort of idea of the internal arrangements of the pianist-composer's rooms.]
Nevertheless, they exhibited none of the splendour which was to be found in the houses of many of the celebrities then living in Paris. "He observed," remarks Liszt, "on this point as well as in the then so fashionable elegancies of walking-sticks, pins, studs, and jewels, the instinctive line of the comme il faut between the too much and the too little." But Chopin's letters written from Nohant in 1839 to Fontana have afforded the reader sufficient opportunities to make himself acquainted with the master's fastidiousness and good taste in matters of furniture and room decoration, above all, his horror of vulgar gaudiness.