He would often mimic the playing of the most celebrated European virtuosi, imitating them even in the minutest details. He frequently played his mazurkas, which are full of a sweet melancholy, and then show how the rhythm must be shortened to adapt them for dancing. Directly the conversation turned upon his own family he grew serious; he was no longer the artist indulging his own wayward fancies, but the grateful son and affectionate brother. From infancy till death he had constantly received proofs of the tenderest affection, and his glowing and sensitive heart was bound to his parents and sisters by innumerable and indissoluble ties; he therefore suffered more from absence than many another.
When full of the hope of becoming a happy bridegroom, he formed a plan for leaving Paris, his second home, with all its fascinating charms, its glittering salons, the scene of so many of his triumphs, and returning to Poland. He wished to withdraw from the world and to settle in the country near his family in the neighbourhood of Warsaw; there he would establish schools for the people, and, without troubling himself about the public, quietly pursue his beloved art. With this idea in his mind, he bade, as he thought, a short adieu to his betrothed, and set off for Paris through Leipsic.
LETTER FROM SCHUMANN. Frederic wrote to Robert Schumann, who, having long desired to make his acquaintance, looked anxiously forward to his arrival. Chopin on his side was very pleased to have a chance of becoming acquainted with and personally expressing his regard for so famous a man. It was about this meeting that Schumann wrote the following letter to the Chapel-master, Heinrich Dorn:—
Leipsic, September, 6th, 1836.[24]
My very dear Sir,
The day before yesterday, just as I had received your letter and was about to answer it, who should walk in but Chopin. This was a great pleasure to me, and we spent a delightful day together.... I have got a new ballade of his; it seems to me the most pleasing but not the cleverest of his works (genialischtes nicht genialstes werk.) I told him I liked it best of all, and after a long pause he said, with much emphasis, “I am very glad you do, for it is my favourite also.”
He played also a host of new studies, nocturnes and mazurkas, all of them inimitable. The way in which he sits down to the piano is exceedingly impressive. You would be very pleased with his playing; yet Clara is a greater virtuosa than even he. Imagine to yourself perfection unconscious of its own merit.
Pleased with the warm reception of the German artist Chopin quitted Leipsic after having cast a garland on the monument of Prince Joseph Poniatowski.[25]
He was very busy with his own thoughts; he believed that his wandering life was now ended, and that with his new duties he would enter on a new career. Thinking of his lovely bride he soared on the rosy wings of fancy into an ideal land amidst images of indescribable happiness and blessed hope.
Rough reality, alas! aroused him from his delicious dreams, and inflicted a deep and painful wound upon his heart. Some time after his return to Paris, he learned that his bride had elected to marry a count instead of an artist. The consequences to Chopin were very serious: finding that his hopes of an ideal union were shattered, to wipe out and forget the insult he had received, he threw himself into the arms of a woman who exercised a very pernicious influence over him.
