CHAPTER VII

Happy Years, Working Years

“To-morrow,” he wrote to his family, “to-morrow I cross the seas.” He crossed the Boulevards and encountered Prince Valentin Radziwill.

This Radziwill family seems to have had a special influence on the life of Chopin. What beautiful analogies one could draw in comparing this encounter with such another when some pope, king, lord or _fermier-général_ changed in one instant the fortunes of an artist apparently condemned to the miscarriage of his genius. It seems that there are between art and opulence secret and unconscious fructifications. François I never seems to us more inspired than in paying the debts of Clément Marot or in welcoming Leonardo da Vinci on the terrace of Amboise, nor Jules II more sympathetic than when climbing the scaffoldings of Michelangelo. Never does Elizabeth of England seem more intelligent than when she commissions _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ from the pen of Shakespeare, and Fouquet, Treasurer-General, is remembered only because he subsidized La Fontaine. Had they dictated their biographies themselves, these great princes would doubtless have made no mention of such trivial gestures. In the same way, this Radziwill dreamed not of adding a meritorious line to his life when, meeting on the Boulevards this pitiful compatriot, he proposed to take him that very evening to see Baron de Rothschild. It is, however, from that casual proposal that the glory of Chopin dates.

Baron de Rothschild received the most exclusive society. Chopin was asked to play and he acceded with good grace. In a moment he captured the elegant world, and on the morrow was bombarded with invitations and requests for lessons. The Maréchale Lannes, Princess de Vaudemont, Count Apponyi, and Prince Adam Czartoryski made themselves his protectors. The lessons he gave cost no less than twenty francs an hour. He changed his lodgings twice and finally installed himself at No. 5 Chaussée d’Antin. Everybody began to talk of this poet who, in the evening, in the rare salons where he would consent to play, would people the darkness with a conclave of fairies. He called it “telling little musical stories.” They were tales of infinite variety, since it was above all in improvising that he showed his boldness. The incompleteness of his sketches opened the avenues of the imagination wherein the spirit lost itself. Chopin possessed to a high degree this power of suggestion, the artist’s most precious gift. He talked to himself, did not finish, and left to his hearers the pleasure of having clothed with notes for an instant forms and feelings which then evaporated into nothingness. “Divine gambols,” said Berlioz on hearing them. “A cloud of love, winter roses,” said Liszt. “By the wonderful gate,” he added, “Chopin leads you into a world where everything is a delightful miracle, a mad surprise, a miracle come true. But you must be initiated to know how to cross the threshold.” And Frederick confided once to his friend Franz:

“I am not at all the person to give concerts. The crowd intimidates me; I feel asphyxiated by their breaths, paralysed by their curious stares, mute before these strange faces. But you, you are destined for it, because when you don’t win your public, you know how to knock them dead.”

Chopin himself would not have had the strength. He only sought to win them. Furthermore, was it really this that he wanted? The public mattered so little to him. It was his own pain that he chanted and enchanted. He did not like to express himself through others and, Bach, Beethoven and Mozart apart, he interpreted none but himself.

For Chopin, as later for Wagner, the superfluous was the only necessity. The money that was now coming in more or less abundantly, was spent in poetic pleasures; a smart cabriolet, beautifully cut clothes, white gloves, expensive suppers. He took great pains with the furnishing of his apartment, putting in crystal lustres, carpets and silver, and he insisted on being supplied with flowers in all seasons. When his new women friends came—Countess Delphine Potoçka, Princess Marceline Czartoryska, Mlle. O’Meara, Princess de Beauvau, the rule was that they should bring a rose or orchids that the artist would put in a vase and endlessly contemplate, like a Japanese enraptured by a unique print.

Happy years, working years. Chopin composed a solid portion of his work. In 1833 he published five _Mazurkas_, the _Trio_ for piano, violin and violoncello, three _Nocturnes_, the twelve great _Etudes_ dedicated to Liszt, the _Concerto in E minor_, and in 1834 the _Grand Fantasia_ on Polish airs, the _Krakoviak_ for piano and orchestra, three more _Nocturnes_, the _Rondeau in E flat major_ dedicated to Caroline Hartmann, four new _Mazurkas_, and the _Grand Waltz in E flat major_. His works were played by the greatest of the virtuosi at many concerts: Liszt, Moschelès, Field, Kalkbrenner and Clara Wieck. Liszt said of him: “A sick-room talent,” and Auber: “All his life he slays himself.” For Chopin, in spite of his success, was still suffering from nostalgia, and one day when his friend and pupil Gutmann was playing the third _Etude_, in E major, Chopin, who said he had never written a lovelier melody, cried suddenly, “Oh, my country!” Truly, for this young man of twenty-four, the mother country was always the strongest passion. He gave a Dantesque sadness to this name of Poland, more powerful on his heart than the call of a mistress. The hurt must have been deep indeed for Orlowski, in writing to his people, to take note of it as of a tubercular illness. “Chopin is well and vigorous,” he says. “He turns all the women’s heads. The men are jealous. He is the fashion. Doubtless we shall soon be wearing gloves _à la Chopin_. But home-sickness is burning him up.” The fact was that Poland remained the living spring, the reservoir whence he drew his dreams and his sentiments, the only effective rhythm,—in sun, the dynamo of his energies. Inspiration is chance caught on the wing. But art is not found hidden like the dove in the magician’s hat. Perhaps it is only perfect self-knowledge, the true perception of one’s own limitations, and the modulations that life teaches to our youthful fine enthusiasms. The Marquis de Custine wrote to Chopin: “When I listen to you I always think myself alone with you, and even perhaps with greater than you! or at least with all that is greatest in you.”

* * * * *

In the spring of ’34 Chopin and his friend Hiller went together to the Festival of Music at Aix-la-Chapelle. There they encountered Mendelssohn, who took a liking to the Pole and never tired of listening to his playing. He called him the first among pianists, and always reproached him, as well as Hiller, for the Parisian mania for a pose of despair. “I look like a schoolmaster,” he said, “while they resemble dandies and beaux.”

They returned by Düsseldorf and Cologne to Paris, where Chopin had the pleasure of seeing and entertaining his friend Matuszinski, who had just been made professor at the Ecole de Médecine. This was a period of the greatest serenity, for to his quiet fame Chopin could add the joy of daily companionship with one of his “brothers.” He exerted himself, entertained guests, played in public more than he usually did. On the 7th of December, at the Théâtre Italien, he appeared at a concert organized by Berlioz in honour of Harriet Smithson, the Irish actress he had just married. On Christmas Day, at the Salle Pleyel, he played, with Liszt at the other piano, a duet by Liszt on a theme of Mendelssohn. On the 15th of February, 1835, he took part in a concert at the Salle Erard, and on April 4th he played for the benefit of the Polish refugees. Berlioz wrote in the _Rénovateur_, “Chopin, as a player and as a composer, is an artist apart. He has no point of resemblance to any other musician I know. Unhappily, there is no one but Chopin himself who can play his music and give it that original turn, that impromptu that is one of its principal charms; his execution is veined with a thousand nuances of movement of which he alone has the secret, and which cannot be indicated... The detail in his mazurkas is unbelievable; then he has found a way to make them doubly interesting by playing them to the last degree of softness, with superlative _piano_, the hammers touching the strings so lightly that one is tempted to bend the ear over the instrument as one might at a concert of sylphs and pixies.”

But the crowd always awards the palms to brilliance, and Chopin, deciding that it had not given his _Concerto in E minor_ the reception he expected, declared that he was neither understood nor made for concerts, and made up his mind to abstain from appearing in public for a long time.

Nevertheless, he played once more in public, on the 26th of April, 1835, at the Conservatory. This was the only time he ever appeared in that famous hall. He played his _Polonaise brillante_, preceded by an _Andante Spianato_.

He found compensation for these slight professional disappointments in the friendship of the Italian Bellini, towards whom he was drawn by a quick sympathy and whom he often saw. He was further distracted by an interest in a celebrated beauty, Countess Delphine Potoçka.

She was twenty-five, of regal bearing, with a delicately chiselled nose, a most passionate mouth, and the high, pensive forehead of the true voluptuary. Her whole appearance suggested a slender and puissant goddess, but whatever luxuriance she had was cooled by the severity of her glance.

Miçkiewicz said that she was “the greatest of all sinners,” and Krasinski apostrophized her in a poem in the manner of Mephistopheles: “O stay, for thou art true beauty.” Frederick let himself float in the sensual _rayonnement_ of this beautiful animal of love. For the first time his head was turned. The sumptuous voice of Delphine enchanted him. He accompanied her at the piano, strove to make her soul be born again, to give it back its flower, and watched for possible beautiful vibrations; but the soul was the servant of this imperial flesh. Once or twice, however, she seemed to come out of her lethargy, to spread herself on an admirable note that sprang from the depths of her unconscious self, but immediately after, the shrieks, the laughter, the exigencies of this ravishing hysteric extinguished these gleams. And as the platonic love towards which Chopin wanted to direct her seemed to Delphine both comic and impossible, she gave herself before he had ever dreamed of asking her.

The adventure was of short duration. The Countess had a jealous husband, who, by cutting off her allowance, obliged this prodigal lady to make a prompt departure for Poland, whence she did not return till later on. But she retained a lasting affection for Chopin. The only lines from her to the artist that have been discovered furnish discreet witness to the fact:

“I shall not annoy you with a long letter, but I do not want to remain longer without news of your health and your plans for the future. I am sad to think of you abandoned and alone... Here my time is passed in an annoying fashion, and I hope not to have still more vexations. But I am disgusted. Everyone for whom I have done anything has repaid me with ingratitude. On the whole, life is one long dissonance. God bless you, dear Chopin. Good-bye.”

“One long dissonance,” so had Liszt already spoken. There was in these tormented bodies an invincible straining towards the suavest harmonies. At least in these beings—male or female—in whom the feminine predominates. But this is not the case with Chopin, whose musical travail was always virile. He would have subscribed to the words of Beethoven: “Emotion is good only for women; for man, music must draw fire from his spirit.” And even more, perhaps, to those quoted by Schumann from the German poet Johann-Paul Richter: “Love and friendship pass through this earth veiled and with closed lips. No human being can tell another how much he loves him; he knows only that he does love him. The inner man has no language; he is mute.”