This virtuosa [wrote to me the late keeper of the Musee of the
  Paris Conservatoire] had no less talent than the Princess
  Marcelline Czartoryska. I heard her at Florence in 1852, and I
  can assure you that she played Chopin's music in the true
  style and with all the unpublished traits of the master. She
  was of Russian origin.

But enough of amateurs. Mdlle. Friederike Muller, now for many years married to the Viennese pianoforte-maker J. B. Streicher, is regarded by many as the most, and is certainly one of the most gifted of Chopin's favourite pupils. [FOOTNOTE: She played already in public at Vienna in the fourth decade of this century, which must have been before her coming to Paris (see Eduard Hanslick, Geschichte des Concertwesens in Wien, p. 326). Marriage brought the lady's professional career to a close.] That the composer dedicated to her his Allegro de Concert, Op. 46, may be regarded as a mark of his love and esteem for her. Carl Mikuli found her assistance of great importance in the preparation of his edition of Chopin's works, as she had received lessons from the master for several years, and, moreover, had had many opportunities of hearing him on other occasions. The same authority refers to Madame Dubois (nee O'Meara) [FOOTNOTE: A relation of Edward Barry O'Meara, physician to the first Napoleon at St. Helena, and author of "Napoleon in Exile."] and to Madame Rubio (NEE Vera de Kologrivof) as to "two extremely excellent pianists [hochst ausgezeichnete Pianistinnen] whose talent enjoyed the advantage of the master's particular care." The latter lady was taught by Chopin from 1842 to 1849, and in the last years of his life assisted him, as we shall see, by taking partial charge of some of his pupils. Madame Dubois, who studied under Kalkbrenner from the age of nine to thirteen, became then a pupil of Chopin, with whom she remained five years. It was very difficult to obtain his consent to take another pupil, but the influence of M. Albrecht, a common friend of her father's and Chopin's, stood her in good stead. Although I heard her play only one or two of her master's minor pieces, and under very unfavourable circumstances too—namely, at the end of the teaching season and in a tropical heat—I may say that her suave touch, perfect legato, and delicate sentiment seemed to me to bear out the above-quoted remark of M. Marmontel. Madame Dubois, who is one of the most highly-esteemed teachers of the piano in Paris, used to play till recently in public, although less frequently in later than in earlier years. And here I must extract a passage from Madame Girardin's letter of March 7, 1847, in Vol. IV. of "Le Vicomte de Launay," where, after describing Mdlle. O'Meara's beauty, more especially her Irish look—"that mixture of sadness and serenity, of profound tenderness and shy dignity, which you never find in the proud and brilliant looks which you admire in the women of other nations "—she says:—

  We heard her a few hours ago; she played in a really superior
  way the beautiful Concerto of Chopin in E flat minor [of
  course E minor]; she was applauded with enthusiasm. [FOOTNOTE:
  Chopin accompanied on a second piano. The occasion was a
  soiree at the house of Madame de Courbonne.] All we can say to
  give you an idea of Mdlle. O'Meara's playing is that there is
  in her playing all that is in her look, and in addition to it
  an admirable method, and excellent fingering. Her success has
  been complete; in hearing her, statesmen were moved... and the
  young ladies, those who are good musicians, forgave her her
  prettiness.

As regards Chopin's male pupils, we have to note George Mathias (born at Paris in 1826), the well-known professor of the piano at the Paris Conservatoire, [FOOTNOTE: He retired a year or two ago.] and still more widely-known composer of more than half-a-hundred important works (sonatas, trios, concertos, symphonic compositions, pianoforte pieces, songs, &c.), who enjoyed the master's teaching from 1839 to 1844; Lysberg (1821-1873), whose real name was Charles Samuel Bovy, for many years professor of the piano at the Conservatoire of his native town, Geneva, and a very fertile composer of salon pieces for the piano (composer also of a one-act comic opera, La Fills du Carillonneur), distinguished by "much poetic feeling, an extremely careful form, an original colouring, and in which one often seems to see pass a breath of Weber or Chopin"; [FOOTNOTE: Supplement et Complement to Fetis' Biographie universelle des Musiciens, published under the direction of Arthur Pougin.] the Norwegian Thomas Dyke Acland Tellefsen (1823-1874), a teacher of the piano in Paris and author of an edition of Chopin's works; Carl Mikuli (born at Czernowitz in 1821), since 1858 artistic director of the Galician Musical Society (conservatoire, concerts, &c.), and author of an edition of Chopin's works; and Adolph Gutmann, the master's favourite pupil par excellence, of whom we must speak somewhat more at length. Karasowski makes also mention of Casimir Wernik, who died at St. Petersburg in 1859, and of Gustav Schumann, a teacher of the piano at Berlin, who, however, was only during the winter of 1840-1841 with the Polish master. For Englishmen the fact of the late Brinley Richards and Lindsay Sloper having been pupils of Chopin—the one for a short, the other for a longer period—will be of special interest.

Adolph Gutmann was a boy of fifteen when in 1834 his father brought him to Paris to place him under Chopin. The latter, however, did not at first feel inclined to accept the proposed trust; but on hearing the boy play he conceived so high an idea of his capacities that he agreed to undertake his artistic education. Chopin seems to have always retained a thorough belief in his muscular pupil, although some of his great pianist friends thought this belief nothing but a strange delusion. There are also piquant anecdotes told by fellow-pupils with the purpose of showing that Chopin did not care very much for him. For instance, the following: Some one asked the master how his pupil was getting on, "Oh, he makes very good chocolate," was the answer. Unfortunately, I cannot speak of Gutmann's playing from experience, for although I spent eight days with him, it was on a mountain-top in the Tyrol, where there were no pianos. But Chopin's belief in Gutmann counts with me for something, and so does Moscheles' reference to him as Chopin's "excellent pupil"; more valuable, I think, than either is the evidence of Dr. A. C. Mackenzie, who at my request visited Gutmann several times in Florence and was favourably impressed by his playing, in which he noticed especially beauty of tone combined with power. As far as I can make out Gutmann planned only once, in 1846, a regular concert-tour, being furnished for it by Chopin with letters of introduction to the highest personages in Berlin, Warsaw, and St. Petersburg. Through the intervention of the Countess Rossi (Henriette Sontag), he was invited to play at a court-concert at Charlottenburg in celebration of the King's birthday. [FOOTNOTE: His part of the programme consisted of his master's E minor Concerto (2nd and 3rd movements) and No. 3 of the first book of studies, and his own tenth study.] But the day after the concert he was seized with such home-sickness that he returned forthwith to Paris, where he made his appearance to the great astonishment of Chopin. The reader may perhaps be interested in what a writer in the Gazette Musicale said about Chopin's favourite pupil on March 24, 1844:—

  M. Gutmann is a pianist with a neat but somewhat cold style of
  playing; he has what one calls fingers, and uses them with
  much dexterity. His manner of proceeding is rather that of
  Thalberg than of the clever professor who has given him
  lessons. He afforded pleasure to the lovers of the piano
  [amateurs de piano] at the musical SOIREE which he gave last
  Monday at M. Erard's. Especially his fantasia on the
  "Freischutz" was applauded.

Of course, the expression of any individual opinion is no conclusive proof. Gutmann was so successful as a teacher and in a way also as a composer (his compositions, I may say in passing, were not in his master's but in a light salon style) that at a comparatively early period of his life he was able to retire from his profession. After travelling for some time he settled at Florence, where he invented the art, or, at least, practised the art which he had previously invented, of painting with oil-colours on satin. He died at Spezzia on October 27, 1882.

[FOOTNOTE: The short notice of Gutmann in Fetis' Biographie Universelle des Musiciens, and those of the followers of this by no means infallible authority, are very incorrect. Adolfo Gutmann, Riccordi Biografici, by Giulio Piccini (Firenze: Guiseppe Polverini, 1881), reproduces to a great extent the information contained in Der Lieblingsschuler Chopin's in Bernhard Stavenow's Schone Geister (Bremen: Kuhlmann, 1879), both which publications, eulogistic rather than biographical, were inspired by Gutmann.]

Whatever interest the reader may have taken in this survey of Chopin's pupils, he is sure to be more deeply interested by the account of the master's manner and method of teaching. Such an account, which would be interesting in the case of any remarkable virtuoso who devoted himself to instruction, is so in a higher degree in that of Chopin: first, because it may help us to solve the question why so unique a virtuoso did not form a single eminent concert-player; secondly, because it throws still further light on his character as a man and artist; and thirdly, because, as Mikuli thinks may be asserted without exaggeration, "only Chopin's pupils knew the pianist in the fulness of his unrivalled height." The materials at my disposal are abundant and not less trustworthy than abundant. My account is based chiefly on the communications made to me by a number of the master's pupils—notably, Madame Dubois, Madame Rubio, M. Mathias, and Gutmann—and on Mikuli's excellent preface to his edition of Chopin's works. When I have drawn upon other sources, I have not done so without previous examination and verification. I may add that I shall use as far as possible the ipsissima verba of my informants:—

  As to Chopin's method of teaching [wrote to me M. Mathias], it
  was absolutely of the old legato school, of the school of
  Clementi and Cramer. Of course, he had enriched it by a great
  variety of touch [d'une grande variete dans l'attaque de la
  touche]; he obtained a wonderful variety of tone and NUANCES
  of tone; in passing I may tell you that he had an
  extraordinary vigour, but only by flashes [ce ne pouvait etre
  que par eclairs].

The Polish master, who was so original in many ways, differed from his confreres even in the way of starting his pupils. With him the normal position of the hand was not that above the keys c, d, e, f, g (i.e., above five white keys), but that above the keys e, f sharp, g sharp, a sharp, b (I.E., above two white keys and three black keys, the latter lying between the former). The hand had to be thrown lightly on the keyboard so as to rest on these keys, the object of this being to secure for it not only an advantageous, but also a graceful position:—

[FOOTNOTE: Kleczynski, in Chopin: De l'interpretation de ses oeuvres—Trois conferences faites a Varsovie, says that he was told by several of the master's pupils that the latter sometimes held his hands absolutely flat. When I asked Madame Dubois about the correctness of this statement, she replied: "I never noticed Chopin holding his hands flat." In short, if Chopin put his hands at any time in so awkward a position, it was exceptional; physical exhaustion may have induced him to indulge in such negligence when the technical structure of the music he was playing permitted it.]

  Chopin [Madame Dubois informed me] made his pupils begin with
  the B major scale, very slowly, without stiffness. Suppleness
  was his great object. He repeated, without ceasing, during the
  lesson: "Easily, easily" [facilement, facilement]. Stiffness
  exasperated him.

How much stiffness and jerkiness exasperated him may be judged from what Madame Zaleska related to M. Kleczynski. A pupil having played somewhat carelessly the arpeggio at the beginning of the first study (in A flat major) of the second book of Clementi's Preludes et Exercices, the master jumped from his chair and exclaimed: "What is that? Has a dog been barking?" [Qu'est-ce? Est-ce un chien qui vient d'aboyer?] The rudeness of this exclamation will, no doubt, surprise. But polite as Chopin generally was, irritation often got the better of him, more especially in later years when bad health troubled him. Whether he ever went the length of throwing the music from the desk and breaking chairs, as Karasowski says, I do not know and have not heard confirmed by any pupil. Madame Rubio, however, informed me that Chopin was very irritable, and when teaching amateurs used to have always a packet of pencils about him which, to vent his anger, he silently broke into bits. Gutmann told me that in the early stages of his discipleship Chopin sometimes got very angry, and stormed and raged dreadfully; but immediately was kind and tried to soothe his pupil when he saw him distressed and weeping.

  To be sure [writes Mikuli], Chopin made great demands on the
  talent and diligence of the pupil. Consequently, there were
  often des lecons orageuses, as it was called in the school
  idiom, and many a beautiful eye left the high altar of the
  Cite d'Orleans, Rue St. Lazare, bedewed with tears, without,
  on that account, ever bearing the dearly-beloved master the
  least grudge. For was not the severity which was not easily
  satisfied with anything, the feverish vehemence with which the
  master wished to raise his disciples to his own stand-point,
  the ceaseless repetition of a passage till it was understood,
  a guarantee that he had at heart the progress of the pupil? A
  holy artistic zeal burnt in him then, every word from his lips
  was incentive and inspiring. Single lessons often lasted
  literally for hours at a stretch, till exhaustion overcame
  master and pupil.

Indeed, the pupils were so far from bearing their master the least grudge that, to use M. Marmontel's words, they had more for him than admiration: a veritable idolatry. But it is time that after this excursion—which hardly calls for an excuse—we return to the more important part of our subject, the master's method of teaching.

  What concerned Chopin most at the commencement of his
  instruction [writes Mikuli] was to free the pupil from every
  stiffness and convulsive, cramped movement of the hand, and to
  give him thus the first condition of a beautiful style of
  playing, souplesse (suppleness), and with it independence of
  the fingers. He taught indefatigably that the exercises in
  question were no mere mechanical ones, but called for the
  intelligence and the whole will of the pupil, on which account
  twenty and even forty thoughtless repetitions (up to this time
  the arcanum of so many schools) do no good at all, still less
  the practising during which, according to Kalkbrenner's
  advice, one may occupy one's self simultaneously with some
  kind of reading(!).

  He feared above all [remarked Madame Dubois to me] the
  abrutissement of the pupils. One day he heard me say that I
  practised six hours a day. He became quite angry, and forbade
  me to practise more than three hours. This was also the advice
  of Hummel in his pianoforte school.

To resume Mikuli's narrative:—

  Chopin treated very thoroughly the different kinds of touch,
  especially the full-toned [tonvolle] legato.

  [FOOTNOTE: Karasowski says that Chopin demanded absolutely
  from his pupils that they should practise the exercises, and
  especially the scales in major and minor, from piano to
  fortissimo, staccato as well as legato, and also with a change
  of accent, which was to be now on the second, now on the
  third, now on the fourth note. Madame Dubois, on the other
  hand, is sure she was never told by her master to play the
  scales staccato.]

  "As gymnastic helps he recommended the bending inward and
  outward of the wrist, the repeated touch from the wrist, the
  extending of the fingers, but all this with the earnest
  warning against over-fatigue. He made his pupils play the
  scales with a full tone, as connectedly as possible, very
  slowly and only gradually advancing to a quicker TEMPO, and
  with metronomic evenness. The passing of the thumb under the
  other fingers and the passing of the latter over the former
  was to be facilitated by a corresponding turning inward of the
  hand. The scales with many black keys (B, F sharp, and D flat)
  were first studied, and last, as the most difficult, C major.
  In the same sequence he took up Clementi's Preludes et
  Exercices, a work which for its utility he esteemed very
  highly."

  [FOOTNOTE: Kleczynski writes that whatever the degree of
  instruction was which Chopin's pupils brought with them, they
  had all to play carefully besides the scales the second book
  of Clementi's Preludes et Exercices, especially the first in A
  flat major.]

  According to Chopin the evenness of the scales (also of the
  arpeggios) not merely depended on the utmost equal
  strengthening of all fingers by means of five-finger exercises
  and on a thumb entirely free at the passing under and over,
  but rather on a lateral movement (with the elbow hanging quite
  down and always easy) of the hand, not by jerks, but
  continuously and evenly flowing, which he tried to illustrate
  by the glissando over the keyboard. Of studies he gave after
  this a selection of Cramer's Etudes, Clementi's Gradus ad
  Parnassum, Moscheles' style-studies for the higher development
  (which were very sympathetic to him), and J. S. Bach's suites
  and some fugues from Das wohltemperirte Clavier. In a certain
  way Field's and his own nocturnes numbered likewise with the
  studies, for in them the pupil was—partly by the apprehension
  of his explanations, partly by observation and imitation (he
  played them to the pupil unweariedly)—to learn to know, love,
  and execute the beautiful smooth [gebundene] vocal tone and
  the legato.

  [FOOTNOTE: This statement can only be accepted with much
  reserve. Whether Chopin played much or little to his pupil
  depended, no doubt, largely on the mood and state of health he
  was in at the time, perhaps also on his liking or disliking
  the pupil. The late Brinley Richards told me that when he had
  lessons from Chopin, the latter rarely played to him, making
  his corrections and suggestions mostly by word of mouth.]

  With double notes and chords he demanded most strictly
  simultaneous striking, breaking was only allowed when it was
  indicated by the composer himself; shakes, which he generally
  began with the auxiliary note, had not so much to be played
  quick as with great evenness the conclusion of the shake
  quietly and without precipitation. For the turn (gruppetto)
  and the appoggiatura he recommended the great Italian singers
  as models. Although he made his pupils play octaves from the
  wrist, they must not thereby lose in fulness of tone.

All who have had the good fortune to hear Chopin play agree in declaring that one of the most distinctive features of his style of execution was smoothness, and smoothness, as we have seen in the foregoing notes, was also one of the qualities on which he most strenuously insisted in the playing of his pupils. The reader will remember Gutmann's statement to me, mentioned in a previous chapter, that all his master's fingering was calculated for the attainment of this object. Fingering is the mainspring, the determining principle, one might almost say the life and soul, of the pianoforte technique. We shall, therefore, do well to give a moment's consideration to Chopin's fingering, especially as he was one of the boldest and most influential revolutionisers of this important department of the pianistic art. His merits in this as in other respects, his various claims to priority of invention, are only too often overlooked. As at one time all ameliorations in the theory and practice of music were ascribed to Guido of Arezzo, so it is nowadays the fashion to ascribe all improvements and extensions of the pianoforte technique to Liszt, who more than any other pianist drew upon himself the admiration of the world, and who through his pupils continued to make his presence felt even after the close of his career as a virtuoso. But the cause of this false opinion is to be sought not so much in the fact that the brilliancy of his artistic personality threw all his contemporaries into the shade, as in that other fact, that he gathered up into one web the many threads new and old which he found floating about during the years of his development. The difference between Liszt and Chopin lies in this, that the basis of the former's art is universality, that of the latter's, individuality. Of the fingering of the one we may say that it is a system, of that of the other that it is a manner. Probably we have here also touched on the cause of Liszt's success and Chopin's want of success as a teacher. I called Chopin a revolutioniser of fingering, and, I think, his full enfranchisement of the thumb, his breaking-down of all distinctions of rank between the other fingers, in short, the introduction of a liberty sometimes degenerating into licence, justifies the expression. That this master's fingering is occasionally eccentric (presupposing peculiarly flexible hands and a peculiar course of study) cannot be denied; on the whole, however, it is not only well adapted for the proper rendering of his compositions, but also contains valuable contributions to a universal system of fingering. The following particulars by Mikuli will be read with interest, and cannot be misunderstood after what has just now been said on the subject:—

  In the notation of fingering, especially of that peculiar to
  himself, Chopin was not sparing. Here pianoforte-playing owes
  him great innovations which, on account of their expedience,
  were soon adopted, notwithstanding the horror with which
  authorities like Kalkbrenner at first regarded them. Thus, for
  instance, Chopin used without hesitation the thumb on the
  black keys, passed it even under the little finger (it is
  true, with a distinct inward bend of the wrist), if this could
  facilitate the execution and give it more repose and evenness.
  With one and the same finger he took often two consecutive
  keys (and this not only in gliding down from a black to the
  next white key) without the least interruption of the sequence
  being noticeable. The passing over each other of the longer
  fingers without the aid of the thumb (see Etude, No. 2, Op.
  10) he frequently made use of, and not only in passages where
  the thumb stationary on a key made this unavoidably necessary.
  The fingering of the chromatic thirds based on this (as he
  marked it in Etude, No. 5, Op. 25) affords in a much higher
  degree than that customary before him the possibility of the
  most beautiful legato in the quickest tempo and with a
  perfectly quiet hand.

But if with Chopin smoothness was one of the qualities upon which he insisted strenuously in the playing of his pupils, he was by no means satisfied with a mere mechanical perfection. He advised his pupils to undertake betimes thorough theoretical studies, recommending his friend, the composer and theorist Henri Reber as a teacher. He advised them also to cultivate ensemble playing—trios, quartets, &c., if first-class partners could be had, otherwise pianoforte duets. Most urgent, however, he was in his advice to them to hear good singing, and even to learn to sing. To Madame Rubio he said: "You must sing if you wish to play"; and made her take lessons in singing and hear much Italian opera—this last, the lady remarked, Chopin regarded as positively necessary for a pianoforte-player. In this advice we recognise Chopin's ideal of execution: beauty of tone, intelligent phrasing, truthfulness and warmth of expression. The sounds which he drew from the pianoforte were pure tone without the least admixture of anything that might be called noise. "He never thumped," was Gutmann's remark to me. Chopin, according to Mikuli, repeatedly said that when he heard bad phrasing it appeared to him as if some one recited, in a language he did not know, a speech laboriously memorised, not only neglecting to observe the right quantity of the syllables, but perhaps even making full stops in the middle of words. "The badly-phrasing pseudo-musician," he thought, "showed that music was not his mother-tongue, but something foreign, unintelligible to him," and that, consequently, "like that reciter, he must altogether give up the idea of producing any effect on the auditor by his rendering." Chopin hated exaggeration and affectation. His precept was: "Play as you feel." But he hated the want of feeling as much as false feeling. To a pupil whose playing gave evidence of nothing but the possession of fingers, he said emphatically, despairingly: "METTEZ-Y DONc TOUTE VOTRE AME!" (Do put all your soul into it!)

[FOOTNOTE: "In dynamical shading [im nuanciren]," says Mikuli, "he was exceedingly particular about a gradual increase and decrease of loudness." Karasowski writes: "Exaggeration in accentuation was hateful to him, for, in his opinion, it took away the poesy from playing, and gave it a certain didactic pedantry."]

  On declamation, and rendering in general [writes Mikuli], he
  gave his pupils invaluable and significant instructions and
  hints, but, no doubt, effected more certain results by
  repeatedly playing not only single passages, but whole pieces,
  and this he did with a conscientiousness and enthusiasm that
  perhaps he hardly gave anyone an opportunity of hearing when
  he played in a concert-room. Frequently the whole hour passed
  without the pupil having played more than a few bars, whilst
  Chopin, interrupting and correcting him on a Pleyel cottage
  piano (the pupil played always on an excellent grand piano;
  and it was enjoined upon him as a duty to practise only on
  first-class instruments), presented to him for his admiration
  and imitation the life-warm ideal of the highest beauty.

With regard to Chopin's playing to his pupils we must keep in mind what was said in foot-note 12 on page 184. On another point in the above quotation one of Madame Dubois's communications to me throws some welcome light:—

  Chopin [she said] had always a cottage piano [pianino] by the
  side of the grand piano on which he gave his lessons. It was
  marvellous to hear him accompany, no matter what compositions,
  from the concertos of Hummel to those of Beethoven. He
  performed the role of the orchestra most wonderfully [d'une
  facon prodigieuse]. When I played his own concertos, he
  accompanied me in this way.

Judging from various reports, Chopin seems to have regarded his Polish pupils as more apt than those of other nationalities to do full justice to his compositions. Karasowski relates that when one of Chopin's French pupils played his compositions and the auditors overwhelmed the performer with their praise, the master used often to remark that his pupil had done very well, but that the Polish element and the Polish enthusiasm had been wanting. Here it is impossible not to be reminded of the contention between Chopin on the one hand and Liszt and Hiller on the other hand about the possibility of foreigners comprehending Polish national music (See Vol. 1., p. 256). After revealing the mystery of Chopin's tempo rubato, Liszt writes in his book on this master:—

  All his compositions have to be played with this sort of
  balancement accentue et prosodie, this morbidezza, of which it
  was difficult to seize the secret when one had not heard him
  often. He seemed desirous to teach this manner to his numerous
  pupils, especially to his compatriots, to whom he wished, more
  than to others, to communicate the breath of his inspiration.
  These [ceux-ci, ou plutot celles-la] seized it with that
  aptitude which they have for all matters of sentiment and
  poesy. An innate comprehension of his thought permitted them
  to follow all the fluctuations of his azure wave.

There is one thing which is worth inquiring into before we close this chapter, for it may help us to a deeper insight into Chopin's character as a teacher—I mean his teaching repertoire. Mikuli says that, carefully arranged according to their difficulty, Chopin placed before his pupils the following compositions: the concertos and sonatas of Clementi, Mozart, Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, Dussek, Field, Hummel, Ries, Beethoven; further, Weber, Moscheles, Mendelssohn, Hiller, Schumann, and his own works. This enumeration, however, does not agree with accounts from other equally authentic sources. The pupils of Chopin I have conversed and corresponded with never studied any Schumann under their master. As to the cultivation of Beethoven, it was, no doubt, limited. M. Mathias, it is true, told me that Chopin showed a preference for Clementi (Gradus ad Parnassum), Bach, Field (of him much was played, notably his concertos), and naturally for Beethoven, Weber, &c.—Clementi, Bach, and Field being always the composers most laid under contribution in the case of debutants. Madame Rubio, on the other hand, confined herself to stating that Chopin put her through Hummel, Moscheles, and Bach; and did not mention Beethoven at all. Gutmann's statements concerning his master's teaching contain some positive evidence with regard to the Beethoven question. What he said was this: Chopin held that dementi's Gradus ad Parnassum, Bach's pianoforte fugues, and Hummel's compositions were the key to pianoforte-playing, and he considered a training in these composers a fit preparation for his own works. He was particularly fond of Hummel and his style. Beethoven he seemed to like less. He appreciated such pieces as the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata (C sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 2). Schubert was a favourite with him. This, then, is what I learned from Gutmann. In parenthesis, as it were, I may ask: Is it not strange that no pupil, with the exception of Mikuli, mentions the name of Mozart, the composer whom Chopin is said to have so much admired? Thanks to Madame Dubois, who at my request had the kindness to make out a list of the works she remembers having studied under Chopin, we shall be able to form a pretty distinct idea of the master's course of instruction, which, to be sure, would be modified according to the capacities of his pupils and the objects they had in view. Well, Madame Dubois says that Chopin made her begin with the second book of Clementi's Preludes et Exercices, and that she also studied under him the same composer's Gradus ad Parnassum and Bach's forty-eight preludes and fugues. Of his high opinion of the teaching qualities of Bach's compositions we may form an idea from the recommendation to her at their last meeting—already mentioned in an earlier chapter—to practise them constantly, "ce sera votre meilleur moyen de progresser" (this will be your best means to make progress). The pieces she studied under him included the following ones: Of Hummel, the Rondo brillant sur un theme russe (Op. 98), La Bella capricciosa, the Sonata in F sharp minor (Op. 81), the Concertos in A minor and B minor, and the Septet; of Field, several concertos (the one in E flat among others) and several nocturnes ("Field" she says, "lui etait tres sympathique"); of Beethoven, the concertos and several sonatas (the Moonlight, Op. 27, No. 2; the one with the Funeral March, Op. 26; and the Appassionata, Op. 57); of Weber, the Sonatas in C and A flat major (Chopin made his pupils play these two works with extreme care); of Schubert, the Landler and all the waltzes and some of the duets (the marches, polonaises, and the Divertissement hongrois, which last piece he admired sans reserve); of Mendelssohn, only the G minor Concerto and the Songs without Words; of Liszt, no more than La Tarantelle de Rossini and the Septet from Lucia ("mais ce genre de musique ne lui allait pas," says my informant); and of Schumann, NOTHING.

Madame Streicher's interesting reminiscences, given in Appendix III., form a supplement to this chapter.





CHAPTER XXIX.

RUPTURE OF THE SAND-CHOPIN CONNECTION.—HER OWN, LISZT'S, AND KARASOWSKI'S ACCOUNTS.-THE LUCREZIA FLORIANI INCIDENT.—FURTHER INVESTIGATION OF THE CAUSES OF THE RUPTURE BY THE LIGHT OF LETTERS AND THE INFORMATION OF GUTMANN, FRANCHOMME, AND MADAME RUBIO.—SUMMING-UP OF THE EVIDENCE.—CHOPIN'S COMPOSITIONS IN 1847.—GIVES A CONCERT, HIS LAST IN PARIS (1848): WHAT AND HOW HE PLAYED; THE CHARACTER OF THE AUDIENCE.—GEORGE SAND AND CHOPIN MEET ONCE MORE.—THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION; CHOPIN MAKES UP HIS MIND TO VISIT ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.

WE now come to the catastrophe of Chopin's life, the rupture of his connection with George Sand. Although there is no lack of narratives in which the causes, circumstances, and time of this rupture are set forth with absolute positiveness, it is nevertheless an undeniable fact that we are not at the present moment, nor, all things well considered, shall be even in the most distant future, in a position to speak on this subject otherwise than conjecturally.

[FOOTNOTE: Except the letter of George Sand given on p. 75, and the note of Chopin to George Sand which will be given a little farther on, nothing, I think, of their correspondence has become public. But even if their letters were forth-coming, it is more likely than not that they would fail to clear up the mystery. Here I ought, perhaps, to reproduce the somewhat improbable story told in the World of December 14, 1887, by the Paris correspondent who signs himself "Theoc." He writes as follows: "I have heard that it was by saving her letters to Chopin that M. Alexandre Dumas won the friendship of George Sand. The anecdote runs thus: When Chopin died, his sister found amongst his papers some two hundred letters of Madame Sand, which she took with her to Poland. By chance this lady had some difficulties at the frontier with the Russian custom-house officials; her trunks were seized, and the box containing the letters was mislaid and lost. A few years afterwards, one of the custom-house officials found the letters and kept them, not knowing the name and the address of the Polish lady who had lost them. M. Dumas discovered this fact, and during a journey in Russia he explained to this official how painful it would be if by some indiscretion these letters of the illustrious novelist ever got into print. 'Let me restore them to Madame Sand,' said M. Dumas. 'And my duty?' asked the customs official. 'If anybody ever claims the letters,' replied M. Dumas, 'I authorise you to say that I stole them.' On this condition M. Dumas, then a young man, obtained the letters, brought them back to Paris, and restored them to Madame Sand, whose acquaintance he thus made. Madame Sand burnt all her letters to Chopin, but she never forgot the service that M. Dumas had rendered her."]

I have done my utmost to elucidate the tragic event which it is impossible not to regard as one of the most momentous crises in Chopin's life, and have succeeded in collecting besides the material already known much that is new; but of what avail is this for coming to a final decision if we find the depositions hopelessly contradictory, and the witnesses more or less untrustworthy—self-interest makes George Sand's evidence suspicious, the instability of memory that of others. Under the circumstances it seems to me safest to place before the reader the depositions of the various witnesses—not, however, without comment—and leave him to form his own conclusions. I shall begin with the account which George Sand gives in her Ma Vie:—

  After the last relapses of the invalid, his mind had become
  extremely gloomy, and Maurice, who had hitherto tenderly loved
  him, was suddenly wounded by him in an unexpected manner about
  a trifling subject. They embraced each other the next moment,
  but the grain of sand had fallen into the tranquil lake, and
  little by little the pebbles fell there, one after
  another...All this was borne; but at last, one day, Maurice,
  tired of the pin-pricks, spoke of giving up the game. That
  could not be, and should not be. Chopin would not stand my
  legitimate and necessary intervention. He bowed his head and
  said that I no longer loved him.

  What blasphemy after these eight years of maternal devotion!
  But the poor bruised heart was not conscious of its delirium.
  I thought that some months passed at a distance and in silence
  would heal the wound, and make his friendship again calm and
  his memory equitable. But the revolution of February came, and
  Paris became momentarily hateful to this mind incapable of
  yielding to any commotion in the social form. Free to return
  to Poland, or certain to be tolerated there, he had preferred
  languishing ten [and some more] years far from his family,
  whom he adored, to the pain of seeing his country transformed
  and deformed [denature]. He had fled from tyranny, as now he
  fled from liberty.

  I saw him again for an instant in March, 1848. I pressed his
  trembling and icy hand. I wished to speak to him, he slipped
  away. Now it was my turn to say that he no longer loved me. I
  spared him this infliction, and entrusted all to the hands of
  Providence and the future.

  I was not to see him again. There were bad hearts between us.
  There were good ones too who were at a loss what to do. There
  were frivolous ones who preferred not to meddle with such
  delicate matters; Gutmann was not there.

  I have been told that he had asked for me, regretted me, and
  loved me filially up to the very end. It was thought fit to
  conceal this from me till then. It was also thought fit to
  conceal from him that I was ready to hasten to him.

Liszt's account is noteworthy because it gives us the opinion of a man who knew the two principal actors in the drama intimately, and had good opportunities to learn what contemporary society thought about it. Direct knowledge of the facts, however, Liszt had not, for he was no longer a friend either of the one or the other of the two parties:—

  These commencements, of which Madame de Stael spoke,
  [FOOTNOTE: He alludes to her saying: En amour, il n'y a que
  des commencemens.] had already for a long time been exhausted
  between the Polish artist and the French poet. They had only
  survived with the one by a violent effort of respect for the
  ideal which he had gilded with its fatal brilliancy; with the
  other by a false shame which sophisticated on the pretension
  to preserve constancy in fidelity. The time came when this
  factitious existence, which succeeded no longer in galvanising
  fibres dried up under the eyes of the spiritualistic artist,
  seemed to him to surpass what honour permitted him not to
  perceive. No one knew what was the cause or the pretext of the
  sudden rupture; one saw only that after a violent opposition
  to the marriage of the daughter of the house, Chopin abruptly
  left Nohant never to return again.

However unreliable Liszt's facts may be, the PHILOSOPHY of his account shows real insight. Karasowski, on the other hand, has neither facts nor insight. He speaks with a novelist's confidence and freedom of characters whom he in no way knows, and about whom he has nothing to tell but the vaguest and most doubtful of second-hand hearsays:—

  The depressed invalid became now to her a burden. At first her
  at times sombre mien and her shorter visits in the sick-room
  showed him that her sympathy for him was on the decrease;
  Chopin felt this painfully, but he said nothing...\The
  complaints of Madame Sand that the nursing of the invalid
  exhausted her strength, complaints which she often gave
  expression to in his presence, hurt him. He entreated her to
  leave him alone, to take walks in the fresh air; he implored
  her not to give up for his sake her amusements, but to
  frequent the theatre, to give parties, &c.; he would be
  contented in quietness and solitude if he only knew that she
  was happy. At last, when the invalid still failed to think of
  a separation from her, she chose a heroic means.

By this heroic means Karasowski understands the publication of George Sand's novel Lucrezia Floriani (in 1847), concerning which he says the story goes that "out of refined cruelty the proof-sheets were handed to him [Chopin] with the request to correct the misprints." Karasowski also reports as a "fact" that

  the children of Madame Sand [who, by the way, were a man of
  twenty-three and a woman of eighteen] said to him [Chopin],
  pointing to the novel: "M. Chopin, do you know that you are
  meant by the Prince Karol?"...In spite of all this the
  invalid, and therefore less passionate, artist bore with the
  most painful feeling the mortification caused him by the
  novel...At the beginning of the year 1847 George Sand brought
  about by a violent scene, the innocent cause of which was her
  daughter, a complete rupture. To the unjust reproaches which
  she made to him, he merely replied: "I shall immediately leave
  your house, and wish henceforth no longer to be regarded by
  you as living." These words were very welcome to her; she made
  no objections, and the very same day the artist left for ever
  the house of Madame Sand. But the excitement and the mental
  distress connected with it threw him once more on the sick-
  bed, and for a long time people seriously feared that he would
  soon exchange it for a coffin.

George Sand's view of the Lucrezia Floriani incident must be given in full. In Ma Vie she writes as follows:—

  It has been pretended that in one of my romances I have
  painted his [Chopin's] character with a great exactness of
  analysis. People were mistaken, because they thought they
  recognised some of his traits; and, proceeding by this system,
  too convenient to be sure, Liszt himself, in a Life of Chopin,
  a little exuberant as regards style, but nevertheless full of
  very good things and very beautiful pages, has gone astray in
  good faith. I have traced in Prince Karol the character of a
  man determined in his nature, exclusive in his sentiments,
  exclusive in his exigencies.

  Chopin was not such. Nature does not design like art, however
  realistic it may be. She has caprices, inconsequences,
  probably not real, but very mysterious. Art only rectifies
  these inconsequences because it is too limited to reproduce
  them.

  Chopin was a resume of these magnificent inconsequences which
  God alone can allow Himself to create, and which have their
  particular logic. He was modest on principle, gentle by habit,
  but he was imperious by instinct and full of a legitimate
  pride which was unconscious of itself. Hence sufferings which
  he did not reason and which did not fix themselves on a
  determined object.

  Moreover, Prince Karol is not an artist. He is a dreamer, and
  nothing more; having no genius, he has not the rights of
  genius. He is, therefore, a personage more true than amiable,
  and the portrait is so little that of a great artist that
  Chopin, in reading the manuscript every day on my writing-
  desk, had not the slightest inclination to deceive himself, he
  who, nevertheless, was so suspicious.

  And yet afterwards, by reaction, he imagined, I am told, that
  this was the case. Enemies, I had such about him who call
  themselves his friends; as if embittering a suffering heart
  was not murder, enemies made him believe that this romance was
  a revelation of his character. At that time his memory was, no
  doubt, enfeebled: he had forgotten the book, why did he not
  reread it!

  This history is so little ours! It was the very reverse of it
  There were between us neither the same raptures [enivrements]
  nor the same sufferings. Our history had nothing of a romance;
  its foundation was too simple and too serious for us ever to
  have had occasion for a quarrel with each other, a propos of
  each other.

The arguments advanced by George Sand are anything but convincing; in fact, her defence is extremely weak. She does not even tell us that she did not make use of Chopin as a model. That she drew a caricature and not a portrait will hardly be accepted as an excuse, nay, is sure to be regarded as the very head and front of her offending. But George Sand had extraordinarily naive notions on this subject, notions which are not likely to be shared by many, at least not by many outside the fraternities of novelists and dramatists. Having mentioned, in speaking of her grand-uncle the Abbe de Beaumont, that she thought of him when sketching the portrait of a certain canon in Consuelo, and that she had very much exaggerated the resemblance to meet the requirements of the romance, she remarks that portraits traced in this way are no longer portraits, and that those who feel offended on recognising themselves do an injustice both to the author and themselves. "Caricature or idealisation," she writes, "it is no longer the original model, and this model has little judgment if it thinks it recognises itself, if it becomes angry or vain on seeing what art or imagination has been able to make of it." This is turning the tables with a vengeance; and if impudence can silence the voice of truth and humanity, George Sand has gained her case. In her account of the Lucrezia Floriani incident George Sand proceeds as usual when she is attacked and does not find it more convenient simply to declare that she will not condescend to defend herself—namely, she envelops the whole matter in a mist of beautiful words and sentiments out of which issues—and this is the only clearly-distinguishable thing—her own saintly self in celestial radiance. But notwithstanding all her arguments and explanations there remains the fact that Liszt and thousands of others, I one of them, read Lucrezia Floriani and were not a moment in doubt that Chopin was the prototype of Prince Karol. We will not charge George Sand with the atrocity of writing the novel for the purpose of getting rid of Chopin; but we cannot absolve her from the sin of being regardless of the pain she would inflict on one who once was dear to her, and who still loved her ardently. Even Miss Thomas, [FOOTNOTE: In George Sand, a volume of the "Eminent Women Series."] who generally takes George Sand at her own valuation, and in this case too tries to excuse her, admits that in Lucrezia Floriani there was enough of reality interwoven to make the world hasten to identify or confound Chopin with Prince Karol, that Chopin, the most sensitive of mortals, could not but be pained by the inferences which would be drawn, that "perhaps if only as a genius he had the right to be spared such an infliction," and that, therefore, "one must wish it could have appeared in this light to Madame Sand." This is a mild way of expressing disapproval of conduct that shows, to say the least, an inhuman callousness to the susceptibilities of a fellow-being. And to speak of the irresistible prompting of genius in connection with one who had her faculties so well under her control is downright mockery. It would, however, be foolish to expect considerateness for others in one who needlessly detailed and proclaimed to the world not only the little foibles but also the drunkenness and consequent idiocy and madness of a brother whose family was still living. Her practice was, indeed, so much at variance with her profession that it is preposterous rather to accept than to doubt her words. George Sand was certainly not the self-sacrificing woman she pretended to be; for her sacrifices never outlasted her inclinations, they were, indeed, nothing else than an abandonment to her desires. And these desires were the directors of her reason, which, aided by an exuberant imagination, was never at a loss to justify any act, be it ever so cruel and abject. In short, the chief characteristic of George Sand's moral constitution was her incapacity of regarding anything she did otherwise than as right. What I have said is fully borne out by her Ma Vie and the "Correspondance," which, of course, can be more easily and safely examined than her deeds and spoken words.

And now we will continue our investigations of the causes and circumstances of the rupture. First I shall quote some passages from letters written by George Sand, between which will be inserted a note from Chopin to her. If the reader does not see at once what several of these quotations have to do with the matter under discussion, he will do so before long.