In the latter part of February came the outbreak of the revolution, and Chopin's further stay in Paris was rendered impossible. At no time could he have heard the presage of war with the enthusiasm of Wagner or the carelessness of Haydn: in his present state of infirmity and depression it would have been mere madness to remain. He therefore accepted a cordial invitation to England, crossed the channel with his pupil Tellefsen for companion, and, about the end of April, established himself in London, where he was soon surrounded with all the help which kindness and sympathy can bestow. His visit to this country, which was of little less than a year's duration, seems at first to have been beneficial to him. His rooms in Dover Street were crowded with visitors, his days 'passed,' as he says, 'like lightning;' he was even persuaded to leave his retirement and give two recitals at the house of his friend Mrs Sartoris. From August to October he travelled northward, giving concerts at Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and enjoying with evident pleasure the hospitality that met him at every stage. Yet even here we may notice a tone of weariness in his letters, a sense of effort, made rather to satisfy some external claim than to answer to any inward stimulus. Now and again he can shake it off, and write with something of his old buoyancy of spirits; then the burden returns, heavy with a weight of listless indifference, or with a galling load of pain. And at the approach of November there came an ominous change for the worse. The stress of the summer produced an inevitable reaction, the frail body sank back into weakness and suffering, the ebbing life throbbed every day with a fainter pulse. Through the winter months he lay tossing with impatience till he could regain strength enough to escape. London had become unbearable. 'Another day here,' he writes in January, 'and I shall go mad or die.' The whole mind is overstrung, jarred into discord at a touch, or relapsing, not into quietude, but into the silence of despair.
His friends carried him back to Paris, where he lingered in slow wasting disease until the autumn. A few days before his death, George Sand, whose daughter was among the watchers at his bedside, came to his lodging and asked to see him. We can well imagine the yearning anxiety with which she stood for a moment on the threshold of reconciliation, and the bitter disappointment when Gutmann closed the door and refused her admittance. He was afraid, he tells us, that Chopin was too weak to bear the agitation of such a meeting, that the memories of past friendship and past estrangement were too heavily fraught with peril to be recalled.[41] It may be that the decision was right, and yet Chopin spoke of her and wondered at her absence. The fire of life is sacred in its lowest embers, yet a breath of love might have fanned them into a purer flame. In all Chopin's story, there is nothing more pathetic than the narrow chasm which kept asunder two severed hearts at the very point of union.
On the morning of October 17, it was known that the end had come. The tidings, though they could hardly have been unexpected, were heard through the length and breadth of Paris with the greatest regret and consternation. Everyone who had known Chopin felt his death as a personal sorrow; one had been honoured by his friendship, another enriched by his bounty, another gladdened by some kind word or some pleasant greeting; there was no chance acquaintance but had felt his ray of reflection from the master's life. For the rest, the whole world was poorer for the loss of a genius, whose bare forty years of time had sufficed to create a new musical language, and uphold a new idea of art. All preparations were made to celebrate the funeral with befitting pomp. At the Madeleine Mozart's Requiem was sung over the bier, the procession was joined by almost every man of note in Paris, and at Père la Chaise, the coffin, covered with flowers and sprinkled with Polish earth, was laid in a place of honour among the great French musicians. The country of his adoption had cherished the exile in his life; in his death, it was her privilege to show him honour.
III
A LYRIC POET
It is intelligible that any attempt to explain the charm of Chopin's music should provoke some attitude of impatience and revolt. His spirit, we may be told, is too volatile for our clumsy alembics, too intangible for our concrete methods of investigation; it eludes our glance, it vanishes at our touch, it mocks with a foregone failure all our efforts at description or analysis. The lyric gift, indeed, has always been allowed a special immunity from criticism. In the larger fields of epic and drama, the poet turns more directly to ourselves: he bids us approach, he confers with us, he interprets for our hearing some great truth of humanity, or some wise and searching judgment of life. But the lyric poet stands apart, careless of our presence, oblivious of our attention, pouring out his heart in a transport of purely personal joy or sorrow, singing because he must, and not because there are any to listen. Of his voice we may say, in the truest sense of the phrase, that it is 'not heard but overheard.' Of his thought we may say, with most justification, that it is self-centred, individual, characteristic. And hence, in estimating him, it would seem that we are confronted by a natural dilemma. Either we sympathise with his mood, and therefore approve, or we fail to sympathise, and therefore stand outside the limits of fair judgment.
Upon this conclusion there are two words of comment to offer. In the first place, the distinction itself is of far less importance in music than in poetry; for music, as such, has no truth of life or nature to interpret. When we speak of a symphony as epic, we are merely using a convenient formula by which we may call attention to its breadth and scale; we do not imply that it has any story to tell, or any record of events to communicate. When we call an overture 'Tragic,' we mean that it can evoke certain undefined impressions of gloom and grandeur; we do not imply that it contains any outline of a plot or any suggestion of dramatis personæ. No doubt there are in music differences of style, consequent upon differences of dimension, just as in painting the manner of a fresco will differ from that of a miniature. But in spirit the whole art of music is equally subjective: equally intent on expressing, through a medium of beautiful sound, the psychological conditions of the composer. It stands in no direct relation to the external world; it neither observes, nor depicts, nor criticises; its entire function is the embodiment, so far as embodiment is possible, of an abstract idea. If, therefore, when we apply the name 'lyric' to a musician, we mean to lay stress on a certain quality of style, then we are using a term which does not preclude, but invite, the application of the critical faculty. If we mean by it a certain temper of mind, then the term ceases to be distinctive as among musicians, for it belongs to all alike.