"In NO drawing-room have I ever seen anyone smoke a cigar,
Madame," I answered, not without emphasis, with a bow!
George Sand fixed her eyes sharply upon me—the thrust had gone home! I looked calmly around me at the good pictures in the salon, each of which was lighted up by a separate lamp. Chopin had probably heard nothing; he had returned to the hostess at the table.
Pauvre Frederic! How sorry I was for him, the great artist! The next day the Suisse [hall-porter] in the hotel, Mr. Armand, said to me: "A gentleman and a lady have been here, I said you were not at home, you had not said you would receive visitors; the gentleman left his name, he had no card with him." I read: Chopin et Madame Sand. After this I quarrelled for two months with Mr. Armand.
George Sand was probably out of humour on the evening in question; that it was not her usual manner of receiving visitors may be gathered from what Chopin said soon after to Lenz when the latter came to him for a lesson. "George Sand," he said, "called with me on you. What a pity you were not at home! I regretted it very much. George Sand thought she had been uncivil to you. You would have seen how amiable she can be. You have pleased her."
Alexander Chodzko, the learned professor of Slavonic literature at the College de France, told me that he was half-a-dozen times at George Sand's house. Her apartments were furnished in a style in favour with young men. First you came into a vestibule where hats, coats, and sticks were left, then into a large salon with a billiard-table. On the mantel-piece were to be found the materials requisite for smoking. George Sand set her guests an example by lighting a cigar. M. Chodzko met there among others the historian and statesman Guizot, the litterateur Francois, and Madame Marliani. If Chopin was not present, George Sand would often ask the servant what he was doing, whether he was working or sleeping, whether he was in good or bad humour. And when he came in all eyes were directed towards him. If he happened to be in good humour George Sand would lead him to the piano, which stood in one of the two smaller apartments adjoining the salon. These smaller apartments were provided with couches for those who wished to talk. Chopin began generally to prelude apathetically and only gradually grew warm, but then his playing was really grand. If, however, he was not in a playing mood, he was often asked to give some of his wonderful mimetic imitations. On such occasions Chopin retired to one of the side-rooms, and when he returned he was irrecognisable. Professor Chodzko remembers seeing him as Frederick the Great.
Chopin's talent for mimicry, which even such distinguished actors as Bocage and Madame Dorval regarded with admiration, is alluded to by Balzac in his novel "Un Homme d'affaires," where he says of one of the characters that "he is endowed with the same talent for imitating people which Chopin, the pianist, possesses in so high a degree; he represents a personage instantly and with astounding truth." Liszt remarks that Chopin displayed in pantomime an inexhaustible verve drolatique, and often amused himself with reproducing in comical improvisations the musical formulas and peculiar ways of certain virtuosos, whose faces and gestures he at the same time imitated in the most striking manner. These statements are corroborated by the accounts of innumerable eye and ear-witnesses of such performances. One of the most illustrative of these accounts is the following very amusing anecdote. When the Polish musician Nowakowski [FOOTNOTE: He visited Paris in 1838, 1841, and 1846, partly for the purpose of making arrangements for the publication of his compositions, among which are Etudes dedicated to Chopin.] visited Paris, he begged his countryman to bring him in contact with Kalkbrenner, Liszt, and Pixis. Chopin, replying that he need not put himself to the trouble of going in search of these artists if he wished to make their acquaintance, forthwith sat down at the piano and assumed the attitude, imitated the style of playing, and mimicked the mien and gestures, first of Liszt and then of Pixis. Next evening Chopin and Nowakowski went together to the theatre. The former having left the box during one of the intervals, the latter looked round after awhile and saw Pixis sitting beside him. Nowakowski, thinking Chopin was at his favourite game, clapped Pixis familiarly on the shoulder and said: "Leave off, don't imitate now!" The surprise of Pixis and the subsequent confusion of Nowakowski may be easily imagined. When Chopin, who at this moment returned, had been made to understand what had taken place, he laughed heartily, and with the grace peculiar to him knew how to make his friend's and his own excuses. One thing in connection with Chopin's mimicry has to be particularly noted- -it is very characteristic of the man. Chopin, we learn from Liszt, while subjecting his features to all kinds of metamorphoses and imitating even the ugly and grotesque, never lost his native grace, "la grimace ne parvenait meme pas a l'enlaidir."
We shall see presently what George Sand has to say about her lover's imitative talent; first, however, we will make ourselves acquainted with the friends with whom she especially associated. Besides Pierre Leroux, Balzac, Pauline Viardot-Garcia, and others who have already been mentioned in the foregoing chapters, she numbered among her most intimate friends the Republican politician and historian Louis Blanc, the Republican litterateur Godefroy Cavaignac, the historian Henri Martin, and the litterateur Louis Viardot, the husband of Pauline Garcia.
[FOOTNOTE: This name reminds me of a passage in Louis Blanc's "Histoire de la Revolution de 1840" (p. 210 of Fifth Edition. Paris, 1880). "A short time before his [Godefroy Cavaignac's] end, he was seized by an extraordinary desire to hear music once more. I knew Chopin. I offered to go to him, and to bring him with me, if the doctor did not oppose it. The entreaties thereupon took the character of a supplication. With the consent, or rather at the urgent prayer, of Madame Cavaignac, I betook myself to Chopin. Madame George Sand was there. She expressed in a touching manner the lively interest with which the invalid inspired her; and Chopin placed himself at my service with much readiness and grace. I conducted him then into the chamber of the dying man, where there was a bad piano. The great artist begins…Suddenly he is interrupted by sobs. Godefroy, in a transport of sensibility which gave him a moment's physical strength, had quite unexpectedly raised himself in his bed of suffering, his face bathed in tears. Chopin stopped, much disturbed; Madame Cavaignac, leaning towards her son, anxiously interrogated him with her eyes. He made an effort to become self- possessed; he attempted to smile, and with a feeble voice said, 'Do not be uneasy, mamma, it is nothing; real childishness…Ah! how beautiful music is, understood thus!' His thought was—we had no difficulty in divining it—that he would no longer hear anything like it in this world, but he refrained from saying so.">[
Friends not less esteemed by her than these, but with whom she was less intimate, were the Polish poet Mickiewicz, the famous bass singer Lablache, the excellent pianist and composer Alkan aine, the Italian composer and singing-master Soliva (whom we met already in Warsaw), the philosopher and poet Edgar Quinet, General Guglielmo Pepe (commander-in-chief of the Neapolitan insurrectionary army in 1820-21), and likewise the actor Bocage, the litterateur Ferdinand Francois, the German musician Dessauer, the Spanish politician Mendizabal, the dramatist and journalist Etienne Arago, [FOOTNOTE: The name of Etienne Arago is mentioned in "Ma Vie," but it is that of Emmanuel Arago which occurs frequently in the "Corrcspcndance.">[ and a number of literary and other personages of less note, of whom I shall mention only Agricol Perdiguier and Gilland, the noble artisan and the ecrivain proletaire, as George Sand calls them.
Although some of George Sand's friends were also Chopin's, there can be no doubt that the society which gathered around her was on the whole not congenial to him. Some remarks which Liszt makes with regard to George Sand's salon at Nohant are even more applicable to her salon in Paris.