George Sand had inherited Nohant from her father, a Napoleonic cavalry officer descended from an illegitimate daughter of the Maréchal de Saxe, himself a bastard of one of the Saxon kings of Poland. It was a comfortable rather than stylish eighteenth-century manor house standing on the edge of a village, with its own park stretching away on the other side. Not far away the river Indre flowed lazily through the flat landscape, which was beautiful, if a little melancholy.
Chopin was given a sunny room on the first floor with red and blue Chinese wallpaper and windows onto the garden. On one side a door led into a small book-lined study, beyond which was George Sand’s bedroom. On the other side of Chopin’s bedroom was a small room into which he later moved an upright piano. Life at Nohant was informal and there were no fixed hours. Guests could get up when they liked and have whatever breakfast they wished brought to their room, after which they were free to do as they chose until the bell called them to dinner at six o’clock.
George Sand would spend the night writing. She went to bed at five or six in the morning, and never got up before eleven or noon. She would pay no attention to her guests until dinner, after which she would sit with them until they retired, and then go back to work. Chopin on the other hand was always up early in the morning in order to work, and went to bed early. ‘We dine out in the open,’ wrote George Sand, ‘friends come over, first one, then another, we smoke and talk, and in the evening, when they have gone, Chopin plays to me in the dusk, after which he falls asleep like a child.’1 Not surprisingly, after only a couple of weeks of this regime, she was able to write to Charlotte Marliani: ‘his health improving mightily at Nohant. This life at least seems to be good for him.’2
Soon after they arrived, George Sand had called in one of her oldest friends, Dr Papet, to examine Chopin thoroughly. His verdict was that there was no evidence of tuberculosis, only a chronic infection of the larynx, and he was of the opinion that a steady diet, fresh air and a regular, restful life could repair Chopin’s constitution, echoing what the doctor on the Méléagre and Cauvière had said.
Chopin’s medical history has recently absorbed the attention of a number of experts, who have pointed out a glaringly obvious fact hitherto ignored by biographers – namely that not every lapse in the artist’s health must be related to one underlying chronic malady. It is, for instance, clear that he suffered from gastro-intestinal problems from an early age. He appears to have been put on a high carbohydrate diet for this reason, and it has been suggested that much of the vomiting on Majorca may have been provoked by his inability to keep down local foods, such as the staple pork. From an early age too, he was subject to severe toothaches, probably caused by abscesses. It has also been suggested that he suffered from various allergies, and a case has been made for his having cystic fibrosis. Given his weak constitution, he would have been prone to every kind of viral infection, and some of his coughing fits were probably just the result of a bad cold.3
The lack of consensus about his condition at the time is explained by the existence of two discrete schools of thought on the subject. The southern school, which included Spain, believed, rightly as it happened, in the contagiousness of tuberculosis and diagnosed the disease on the first telling symptoms, which Chopin’s condition certainly bore. The other school, which governed French medicine at the time, did not believe in the theory of contagion, and would not accept a diagnosis of tuberculosis until damage to the lungs was detectable. Chopin’s appeared to be in good condition. The doctors who examined him did all, however, spot a weakness in the larynx, which seemed to be the main problem at this stage.
There is a strong likelihood that Chopin did have tuberculosis, probably contracted in childhood. At the time, tuberculosis, or pulmonary consumption as it was then generally known, affected one in four of the population in most parts of Europe. It principally attacks the lungs, larynx and glands, but it can take other forms, and is often accompanied by other ailments. It progresses by stages, punctuated by periods of remission during which the patient can appear to have shaken it off entirely. If he did indeed have tuberculosis, Chopin enjoyed a long spell of remission between 1827 and 1835, and although subsequent intervals were usually much shorter, particularly in the later stages, they could still produce quite dramatic improvements. This would explain the disparities in contemporary accounts of his supposed condition – he could appear to be at death’s door one moment, and perfectly healthy a few weeks later.
Consumption has a profound effect on the character and behaviour of those it attacks, and has been known to change their nature over a period of time. It tends in the first place to cut them off from others and make them egocentric, sometimes to the point of paranoia. It heightens their sensitivity and sometimes their sexual awareness and appetite. It distorts their mental balance, leading to delusions and violent swings of mood, between depression and euphoria, apathy and excitement, laziness and feverish bouts of work. The outward symptoms include irritability, anxiety, mania and fits of rage. The disease also sometimes compensates for its own depredations, by inducing a state of hallucinatory intoxication at times of great physical suffering, and intensive bursts of creative energy at moments when the patient comes close to death.
It is important to keep all this in mind, for it has direct bearing on a problem which faces the biographer at this point. A couple of weeks after the couple’s arrival at Nohant, on 19 June 1839, George Sand took a knife and carved the date on the panelling of her bedroom. In the absence of any similar graffiti, one is led to assume that the date was a significant one from her point of view, and while it could have been something to do with her personal spiritual life, her books or even the date of planting a tree, it has usually been associated with Chopin, and often with the subject of sex. It has been pointed out, quite plausibly, that this could be the anniversary of the consummation of their love – the date would indeed seem to fit. This is no more than speculation, but it is the most reasonable explanation, for this was the first affair she had had which had lasted for a full year without going sour, and it looked like continuing happily for some time to come.
But there is another explanation often put forward: that on this day she decided to stop having sexual relations with Chopin. This is based on her assertion, first made in a letter to Grzymała written many years later, when she was breaking up with Chopin, and reiterated in her Histoire de ma Vie (much of which was written under the influence of her son, who did his utmost to expunge everything relating to Chopin from her life), that she stopped having sexual relations with Chopin on account of his poor health, and that their cohabitation over the next eight years was entirely chaste. Neither of these sources can be treated as impartial, and both contain a good many untruths.4
Whether Chopin and George Sand did or did not continue to make love, and when, is not something one can pronounce on with any authority. It seems most unlikely that they should have stopped so early in their relationship, and even more so that it should have been done in such a categorical way. The theory that she feared the occasional love-making might kill him holds no water, in view of her own assessment of his health. She believed passionately in natural remedies, and would have been the first to prescribe a healthy bout of sexual activity for the nervous tension and frustration which she held responsible for all his ills.
In Histoire de ma Vie she suggests that their relationship was over, and that the last thing she wanted after their return from Majorca was to have Chopin hanging around her. She claims she went along with his wishes out of fear that he might have a breakdown and die if she left him to himself. These sentiments accord ill with her treatment of Musset, whom she dumped in a foreign country while he was dangerously ill in order to run off with his doctor, and of various other lovers before and since. It is absurd to argue that any woman, let alone a woman like George Sand, would allow herself to be blackmailed into the role of titular mistress as well as mother and nurse for eight years to a man she did not love.
At Nohant they settled to a routine which did not allow for much passion, since they were two creative artists absorbed by their work. George Sand was frantically writing new books in order to patch up her finances, while Chopin quickly got down to composing. ‘He has already produced some beautiful things since his arrival here,’ she wrote in mid-July.5 Apart from polishing up a few pieces, such as the Mazurka he had written in Palma, he now composed the Scherzo and finale of the B flat minor Sonata, op.35 (the third movement, the famous Funeral March, had been written in 1837), one of his greatest works and a major landmark. He also wrote three new Mazurkas (op.41) and two Nocturnes (op.37). He was pleased with his work, and particularly with the three Mazurkas, ‘which I think are pretty, as all new children appear to their ageing parents’, as he put it to Fontana.6 In the afternoons, when he had nothing better to do, he would give piano lessons to Solange, George Sand’s eleven-year-old daughter, or else read the score of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, correcting his edition – ‘not just the engraver’s mistakes, but also passages accepted by those who claim to understand Bach (not because I pretend to understand him better, but from a feeling that perhaps I can sometimes guess right)’.7
In August, Chopin wrote to Fontana that he would not be returning to Paris until the weather changed, as the country air was doing him good. But the moment he felt better, he began to get bored. George Sand saw this coming, and put greater urgency into her invitation to Grzymała to join them. Some relief was provided by the visit of Witwicki, who was spending the summer not far away, but this only lasted a few days. Some of the neighbours who dropped in occasionally provided entertainment, particularly George Sand’s half-brother, Hippolyte Châtiron, a rowdy and bibulous country bumpkin whom Chopin took a liking to, but they could not make up for his need of close friends and of Paris.
‘Your little one is fair to middling,’ George Sand wrote to Grzymała in mid-August. ‘I think he needs a little less of the calm, solitude and regularity which country life entails. Who knows, perhaps he needs a little outing to Paris. I am ready to make any sacrifice rather than see him consume himself with melancholy. Come and take the pulse of his morale. Who will ever define the limit between physical illness and moral languor? It is not to me that he will want to admit he is bored. But I think I can guess it.’8
Grzymała did come down for a few days at the end of the month, and Chopin cheered up visibly, but after his departure he resumed his former state, ‘always a little better or a little worse, never decidedly well nor decidedly ill’, as George Sand described it. This does not seem to have been such a bad state, however, for ‘when he feels a little stronger he becomes very merry, and when he is feeling melancholy he goes to his piano and composes beautiful pages’.9 The pages in question were the F sharp major Impromptu, op.36.
In September, George Sand decided that she would have to spend that winter in Paris, since a play of hers had been accepted at the Comédie Française and she wished to supervise its production. It had also become evident that she could no longer go on providing her children’s education herself, and this could best be seen to in Paris. Chopin was already looking forward to getting back, because, as George Sand put it, Paris ‘is good for his morale, and natures like his need to be surrounded by the refinements of civilisation’.10 But Chopin’s apartment in the rue de la Chaussée d’Antin had been re-let, so he had nowhere to go back to. Grzymała and the unfortunate Fontana were therefore given the task of finding a new one. They were issued with endless instructions as to area, situation, floor, layout and general aspect. The brunt of this task fell on Fontana, who was still wrangling with publishers on Chopin’s behalf, and with astonishing speed he found the perfect flat, at No.5 rue Tronchet, just behind the Madeleine. But his duties did not end there. A stream of letters flowed from Nohant, and this one, dated 25 September 1839, is typical:
My Dearest,
Thank you for your kind, friendly, very un-English, very Polish soul [Fontana’s admiration for the English and their ways earned him continual jests about his ‘Englishness’]. Choose a wallpaper like the dove-coloured one I used to have – only glossy or varnished – for both the rooms, and a not too wide dark green strip for the borders. Get something different for the hall, but make sure it’s seemly. If you find something more beautiful; some newer, more fashionable paper which you like and know I would like, take that. I always prefer something smooth, clear and quiet to anything common or vulgar or grossier. That’s why I prefer pearly colours, they’re quiet and not vulgar. Thank you for fixing about the servant’s room, I shall be needing that. As for the furniture, it would be wonderful if you could take care of that too. Believe me, I didn’t dare to bother you with that problem, but since you’re so kind as to mention it, do collect it and move it in. I’ll ask Grzym to give you money for the moving; I’ll write to him myself. As for the bed and the desk, they ought to be given to some cabinet-maker to be freshened up. Don’t forget to take the papers out of the desk first – lock them up somewhere. I don’t have to tell you how to do these things. Do whatever you want and whatever you deem necessary. Whatever you do will be fine. You have my fullest confidence. That’s one thing. Now something else; you must write to Wessel [Chopin’s London publisher] and tell him that I have six new manuscripts, for each of which I want 300 francs (how many pounds is that?). Write to him and get an answer. (If you think he won’t give that much, write to me first.) Write and tell me whether Probst is in Paris. Also try to find me a servant – Perhaps some kind, decent Pole. Tell Grzymała to look too. He’ll have to look after his own meals and don’t offer him more than 80. I shall be in Paris towards the end of October, not before, keep that to yourself. The elastic mattress on my bed ought to be repaired, if it’s not too expensive – if it’s expensive, leave it. Have the chairs and things properly beaten and dusted. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, you know very well what to do. Give my love to Jaś [Matuszyński]. My dearest, I sometimes wonder in my heart – Let the Lord grant him what is best, but he mustn’t let himself be taken in; although on the other hand…Yes, no, I don’t know – That’s the greatest Truth on earth! And while it is so, as it always will be, I shall love you for the kind soul you are, and Jaś for another. Love to you both. Write. Soon.
Your ever longer-nosed
Ch.11
The lack of any attempt at construction and the heavy crossings-out which litter the page make this more of a list of chores than a letter, and it is only one of many such. The letters to Grzymała, though also taking for granted a multitude of favours, presume a little less, and contain the assurance that ‘if you need someone to help you or go running about for you, use Fontana. He’ll do anything for me, and in business he’s as exact as an Englishman.’12 But Fontana, who was presumably paid for some of his secretarial work, and who depended on Chopin’s recommendation for his pupils, seems to have thought nothing of this. Throughout his life Chopin managed to make slaves of his friends, and his behaviour towards them was often that of a spoilt child.
Fontana’s prowess in finding a flat for Chopin earned him the task of seeking accommodation for George Sand, who intended to set up house in Paris along with her son Maurice – Solange was to go to boarding school. Again he was sent detailed instructions, including a sketch showing the desired layout of the rooms, and again he acquitted himself well. He found two small pavilions in a garden courtyard just off the rue Pigalle, in a newly built area in what was then the northern suburb of Paris. One of the pavilions was for George Sand, while the other could accommodate Maurice, his studio (he wished to take up painting) and the servants she would bring from Nohant.
Once the apartments had been found and the furniture moved, Fontana was sent scurrying around the tailors and hatters of the capital, as Chopin suddenly realised that, having been away for a whole year, most of his wardrobe would be out of fashion. It was only after this that the poor factotum was given his final instructions. ‘And since you’re so good at all these things,’ Chopin wrote, ‘arrange the apartment so that I should get no sombre thoughts in it, and no fits of coughing – and set it up so that I should be good – and don’t forget to have them sweep out many episodes from my past. And, if you can manage it, I would like to find the next few years’ work finished and waiting for me.’13
But when he did return, on 10 October 1839, the work loomed before him. News of his arrival had spread, and within a couple of days he was besieged by would-be pupils. Nor had Fontana been able to sweep out the past as thoroughly as Chopin would have wished.
George Sand and Chopin had told few people of their plans before leaving Paris for Majorca, but a good many knew anyway, and there was no particular attempt at keeping their journey secret. Charlotte Marliani could not resist showing around some of the letters she received from Majorca, so while the travellers spent months without any news from Paris, most of Paris was well informed of their movements. At the beginning of January, Berlioz was remarking in a letter to Liszt that ‘Chopin is ill in the Balearic Islands’, and a couple of months later he was writing to Chopin in Marseille to find out whether he was still alive, as by then rumour had it that he was dying.14 The susceptible and fastidious Chopin, who might well have been anxious about all the publicity afforded to his relationship with France’s most scandalous woman and about the consequences this might have on his relations with Parisian society, was remarkably unworried. ‘I am not surprised at the various tales; you must realise that I knew I should be exposing myself to them,’ he wrote to Fontana, who faithfully reported everything. ‘Anyway, it will all pass, tongues will rot, and nothing can touch our souls.’15 He was right, for the gossip did not affect his standing in Paris or his peace of mind. What did was the vindictiveness of Marie d’Agoult, who had reappeared on the scene.
She had last seen George Sand at Nohant in the summer of 1837, a full year before the beginning of her liaison with Chopin, which she had done so much to encourage. The leave-taking between the two ladies had been edifyingly tearful, and vows of mutual esteem and love had been exchanged as the Countess set off for Italy with Liszt. The vows had been false on both sides.
George Sand was about to give Balzac all the material he needed for a novel which she could not afford to write herself: when his Béatrix came out in the spring of 1839, it was widely recognised as a portrait of the Liszt–Agoult affair. The Countess’s defects were depicted with a venomous insight which many realised could not have been Balzac’s. ‘Now I’ve really managed to set the two females at each other’s throats!’ the delighted novelist exclaimed to Bernard Potocki at the opera one night a few weeks later.16 In fact, he had only added fuel to a fire that was already smouldering.
While continuing to write sugary letters full of love and devotion to George Sand, Marie d’Agoult had begun to spread unflattering gossip about her. Somewhat unwisely, she vented her spite and dislike of George Sand in her letters to Charlotte Marliani, who lapped these up with delight, at the same time notifying George Sand that there were ‘murky plots and foul betrayal’ being stirred up against her.17 Eager to lend a note of morality to the intrigue, she showed the letters to the abbé de Lamennais, who was horrified and suggested that George Sand break off all relations with the Countess and ignore her letters.
Marie d’Agoult’s relationship with Liszt had in the meantime begun to founder, and in the summer of 1839 (while Chopin was at Nohant) they decided to part; he to go on a performing tour, she to return to Paris. In order to make her life there bearable, she would have to be on good terms with George Sand. She did not know that Charlotte Marliani had talked, but realised that something was wrong, since George Sand had not answered her last few letters. She decided to brazen it out, and therefore struck a righteous note in her next letter. ‘I cannot really believe that you have anything to complain of in my behaviour,’ she wrote. ‘I have searched my conscience and can find no shadow of guilt on my side. Franz too is wondering how it is that your close connection with a man he feels he has the right to call his friend should have had the immediate result of breaking off all communication between us…’18
The Countess’s truculence had a great deal to do with the fact that the Sand-Chopin ménage appeared to be flourishing while hers was not. It was she who had sacrificed everything to go and live with her pianist, but she had been disappointed in Liszt, who instead of sitting quietly in Olympus with her writing masterpieces, insisted on following the career of performing musician; in many respects George Sand’s pianist would have suited her better.
George Sand felt inclined to ignore her peace-making approaches, but the Countess carried on her bluff when she came back to Paris in October, telling everyone that George Sand had wronged her and dropped her, and that this was not unconnected with Chopin’s jealousy of Liszt as a pianist. George Sand realised that she would have to do something, for as she explained to Charlotte Marliani, Chopin’s ‘pride would prevent him from offering any explanation of his own behaviour, and if this were not demanded of him, which is possible (my silence being equivalent to an admission of guilt), he will have earned the bitterness of Liszt and the hatred of Madame d’Agoult’. She felt obliged to shield Chopin from the fallout of the Countess’s wrath. ‘Knowing her, she would provoke embarrassments and ructions which he can do without – he is so nervous, so discreet, so exquisite in all things.’19
Marie d’Agoult complained that she had been a victim of malevolent slanders, and wrote imploring letters to George Sand full of protestations of innocence. ‘George, once again, for the last time!’ she insisted. ‘You are wandering in a labyrinth of gossip, where I shall not follow you. In the name of Heaven…’20 Her lofty tone faltered when she discovered that the source of the ‘gossip’ was her own letters, which Charlotte Marliani had by now handed over to George Sand. There was an icy moment on 13 November when the two women came face to face in the Marliani drawing room, but by now Marie d’Agoult was as eager to save her face as George Sand was to put an end to the whole business. A private interview was arranged, after which the two ladies publicly advertised their renewed friendship.
The Countess proceeded to take the war underground: she kept up a sustained flow of vituperative gossip about George Sand, and worked hard to drive a wedge between Chopin and Liszt. At the beginning of November, for instance, she informed Liszt that Chopin and Berlioz disapproved of his tour of Austria and thought him ridiculous (her own opinion was that he was behaving like a mountebank). A few days later, she wrote that Grzymała and Chopin were being ‘rude’ and ostracising her, a week or two later again that Chopin was behaving fatuously, ‘like an oyster sprinkled with sugar’.21 She informed Liszt that ‘Chopin, whom you were naïve enough to regard as a friend’, had not had the decency to call on her, even though the whole of Paris knew Liszt was ill and that only she had news of him. She went on to say that in view of all this there was only one option open to them: to collect their allies and declare open war on the Chopin-Sand coterie as soon as Liszt returned to Paris in the spring.
Luckily for everyone involved, Liszt had no intention of being placed in a foolish situation by his former mistress, and was seriously alarmed at the confrontation she was trying to bring about between him and Chopin. He therefore humoured her, assuring her that she was a far greater personality than George Sand, and made light of Chopin’s behaviour. ‘I wouldn’t like you to take Chopin’s rudeness too seriously,’ he wrote soothingly. ‘I should think that by now you have punished him enough for it. You know what a deplorable influence the Piffoëllic bedlam can have. One must not blame Chopin too much for his gaucherie. Sharper men than he (though he is very, and above all would like to be thought infinitely, sharp) have lost their bearings in it.’22
He managed to rein in the Countess, but could not stop her from gossiping and making trouble at every opportunity, for she was now desperate. Far from bringing Liszt any closer to her, as she had hoped, the whole episode put him off and had the effect of isolating her in Parisian society. And while she predicted that George Sand was about to jilt Chopin and ‘take her lofty sentiments elsewhere’, her efforts only served to bring the two closer together and to make them avoid her.23
‘I never see Chopin at all,’ Stephen Heller, a Hungarian pianist just arrived in Paris, wrote to Schumann in January 1840. ‘He’s up to his ears in the aristocratic swamp…he prefers exalted salons to lofty mountaintops.’24 This was actually less true than ever during this season. Chopin was working hard at his lessons, giving up to eight a day, which sometimes exhausted him, but only physically. ‘Feeble, pale, coughing much, he often took opium drops with sugar or drank gum-water, rubbed his forehead with eau de cologne, and nevertheless taught with a patience, perseverance and zeal which were admirable,’ as Friederike Müller, a new pupil, related.25
He also saw a good deal of the other musicians in Paris, and we know that he drove out to Passy to see Rossini, with whom he discussed the music of Bellini, whom they both admired. And that season, with the arrival in Paris of Moscheles, he was able to at last meet one of the musicians he had admired from his earliest years, and whose works he had been brought up on. Chopin’s opinion had undergone some change, but he still regarded him highly. Moscheles, for his part, was a little perplexed by Chopin’s music, and was keen to meet the man. He had been told by Mendelssohn, with whom he was in close touch, of Chopin’s importance, but still had reservations. ‘I am a declared admirer of his genius; he has given to pianists everything that is most novel, most enchanting,’ he noted in his diary à propos of the second set of Études (op.25), but went on to say that, try as he might, he simply could not play them.26 ‘On the whole I find his music too sweet, not manly enough, and hardly the work of a profound musician,’ he wrote to Mendelssohn, adding that there was much in Chopin that appeared ‘unscholarlike’ to him.27
The idea that music must be manly and scholarly might seem curious, but it was rooted in the German Romantic tradition, which endowed it with a degree of sanctity. There was a feeling in Germany, echoed to some extent in England, that the music emanating from Paris was both lightweight and somehow disreputable. Mendelssohn’s opinion of Berlioz, for instance, was that ‘his orchestration is such a frightful muddle, such an incongruous mess, that one ought to wash one’s hands after handling one of his scores’.28 Moscheles’ and Mendelssohn’s opinions of Liszt were not dissimilar. Mendelssohn described his manner as ‘a perpetual fluctuation between scandal and apotheosis’; Moscheles considered him scruffy and inartistic; while Schumann felt that there was ‘too much tinsel’ about his playing.29
When he finally met Chopin, at the house of Auguste Léo in mid-October 1839, Moscheles must have had something of a shock: however much he might have matured musically, Chopin was still prone to childish pranks, and treated Moscheles to hilarious impersonations of Pixis and Liszt.30 But when he heard Chopin play, he forgot his reservations. ‘He played to me at my request and now for the first time I understand his music, and can also explain to myself the enthusiasm of the ladies,’ Moscheles wrote in his diary. ‘His ad libitum playing, which, with the interpreters of his music degenerates into disregard for time, is with him only the most charming originality of execution; the dilettante-like hard modulations which strike me disagreeably when I am playing his compositions no longer shock me, for he glides lightly over them in a fairy-like way with his delicate fingers; his piano is so softly breathed forth that he does not need any strong forte in order to produce the wished-for contrasts. It is for this reason that one does not miss the orchestra-like effects which the German school demands of the pianoforte-player, but allows oneself to be carried away, as by a singer who, little concerned by the accompaniment, entirely follows his feeling. In short, he is unique in the world of pianists.’31
The two composers saw much of each other during the next weeks, often playing together at soirées. As a result, it was together that they were asked to go and play to the royal family at Saint-Cloud on 29 October. They were fetched by the comte de Perthuis, the Director of the King’s Music, who drove them out to the palace. The command performance is described by Moscheles with characteristic preciousness:
We passed through many state rooms into a salon carré where the Royal Family were assembled en petit comité. At a round table sat the Queen, an elegant work-basket before her; beside her were Madame Adelaide, the Duchesse d’Orléans, and ladies-in-waiting. The noble ladies were as affable as though we had been old acquaintances. Chopin played first a number of Nocturnes and Studies, and was admired and petted like a favourite. After I had also played some old and new Studies, and had been honoured with similar applause, we seated ourselves together at the instrument – he again playing the bass, which he always insists on doing. The close attention of the little circle during my E flat major Sonata was interrupted only by the exclamations: ‘Divine! Delicious!’ After the Andante the Queen whispered to a lady-in-waiting: ‘Would it be indiscreet to ask them to play it again?’ This was naturally equivalent to a command to repeat it, so we played it again with increased abandon. In the finale we gave ourselves up to musical delirium. Chopin’s enthusiasm throughout the piece must, I think, have affected the listeners, who now burst forth into eulogies. Chopin again played alone with the same charm and called forth the same sympathy as before.32
A few days later Chopin received a handsome piece of Sèvres porcelain, while Moscheles was presented with an elegant travelling case, which, Chopin is supposed to have quipped, was a hint for him to go.
Chopin himself did not take part in any concerts that season, and does not seem to have gone to many either. He went to the Italian opera with Custine, and was present at Charles Hallé’s first public concert, in which Franchomme took part, but more often than not he would drive round to the rue Pigalle when his lessons were over and while away the evening with George Sand. Her lodgings there are described by Balzac, in a letter to his Polish mistress:
She lives at No.16 rue Pigalle, at the end of a garden, over the carriage-house and stables of a house which looks onto the street. She has a dining room furnished with carved oak, her little salon is mushroom-coloured, and the sitting room in which she receives is garnished with superb Chinese vases full of flowers. There is always a jardinière full of flowers; the furnishings are green; there is a dresser full of curiosities; paintings by Delacroix, her portrait by Calamatta…the piano is magnificent, upright, square, of rosewood. Chopin is always there…She only gets up at four o’clock, and at four o’clock Chopin has finished giving his lessons. One goes up to her room by a ladder staircase, steep and straight. Her bedroom is brown, her bed consists of two mattresses on the floor, Turkish style…There is a portrait of [Grzymała] in Polish Castellan’s costume in the dining room.33
Grzymała was one of the habitués of the rue Pigalle, along with Delacroix; Sand’s friend the lawyer Emmanuel Arago; Marie Dorval, the actress with whom she was thought to have had sapphic relations; and Pauline Garcia-Viardot, the renowned nineteen-year-old singer whom George Sand had ‘adopted’ and around whose person she was constructing her new novel, Consuelo. The informal way of life at the rue Pigalle was congenial to Chopin, and he soon moved in himself. He would use his apartment in the rue Tronchet for lessons and for receiving visits, and occasionally entertained there in the evenings, but otherwise he was to be found at the rue Pigalle, where he usually slept. This had obvious advantages for both of them. When Chopin fell ill again in April with a sudden pain which attacked him in the middle of the night, George Sand was able to help. She did not like the idea of Matuszyński continuing to treat him, and called in a French doctor.
Matuszyński was himself slowly dying of tuberculosis and was convinced that Chopin had the disease, but George Sand felt he was wrong. The symptoms of this particular crisis involved no coughing or spitting blood, merely a cramp-like pain in the chest which restricted his breathing but did not otherwise affect him. The new doctor, Gaubert, prescribed a regime of soothing potions, morning and evening chest rubs, and the avoidance of all emotional agitation.34
But it was not easy keeping Chopin tranquil. The crisis prevented him from attending the concert on 20 April 1840 given by Liszt, who had turned up in a conciliatory mood. Chopin, whose reservations about Liszt had matured, wanted to keep up appearances, and was seriously upset at not being able to go. ‘With my health one cannot do anything,’ he told one of his pupils on this occasion. ‘It is very annoying – I don’t have the time to be ill!’35
The living arrangements suited George Sand as well: Chopin, ‘the gentlest, the most modest, the most hidden of all men of genius’, was rarely in her way.36 Moreover, his presence repre sented a certain security and support to her. ‘Without his perfect and delicate friendship I would often lose heart,’ she wrote to her half-brother Hippolyte, as the problems of staging her play loomed before her.37 Chopin also provided both the excuse and the means for her to grow out of the affectation and licentiousness which had characterised her life during the 1830s. She had for some time felt a need to settle down, but the lack of a suitable companion had condemned her efforts to failure. When they came together she was still, with her philandering and her fantastic clothes, an object of scandal in many quarters. After a year or so with Chopin, she was rarely to be seen in anything but the simplest grey or black dresses, and her behaviour had grown more dignified. The restrained and scandal-free life she led with him over the next few years silenced the gossips and effaced her old reputation for nymphomania.
They continued to lead their own lives, often going out in dependently in the evenings, but in time they pooled their friends, and Chopin soon found that people as respectable as the Czartoryskis and as fastidious as Custine accepted George Sand wholeheartedly. To begin with, however, this was of scant importance to Chopin, who was happy to bask in the family atmosphere of the rue Pigalle and to leave Parisian society to itself. George Sand’s play Cosima was staged at the end of the season, which involved both of them (the only surviving note between Chopin and Donizetti is one by the Italian begging for a ticket). The play was a resounding flop, so George Sand could not afford to open her house at Nohant for the summer of 1840. Instead, she remained in Paris, only leaving for a week in August in order to accompany Pauline Viardot on a concert tour. Chopin felt even this short absence, and was clearly as lost without her as her son Maurice, who wrote: ‘Chopinet and I spend the evenings staring at each other by the light of two candle ends.’38
Chopin got on well with the seventeen-year-old Maurice, a somewhat effete and dim boy who was studying painting under Delacroix, but he preferred the twelve-year-old Solange, a difficult, turbulent girl who was not her mother’s favourite and felt it, particularly now that she had been confined in a boarding school. Chopin often took her out at weekends and, along with Delacroix and Grzymała, spoilt her.
Chopin must have been a welcome addition to the household as far as the two children were concerned, for he was good company and was always prepared to amuse them by his acts and conjuring tricks, or by teaching them Polish tongue-twisters. They would make fun of his accent and his bad grammar, and would sign their names ‘Solangska Sandska’, or write notes in a pastiche of Polish, like ‘Salutxi a Grrrzzziiimalla, quilski ne courski paska les filleski [Saluts à Grzymała, qu’il ne courre pas les filles].’39 The atmosphere at the rue Pigalle is caught in a vignette drawn by George Sand in a letter written that September:
This morning we have acquired a delightful little puppy, no bigger than a fist, dark brown, with a white waistcoat, white stockings in front and white shoes on the hind legs. This gentleman followed Chopin in the street, and simply would not leave him. Then, o miracle! Chopin took the little dog in adoration and has spent the whole day looking after it, even though it did its ‘something’ in the drawing room and gave us all fleas. Chopin finds this charming, mainly because the dog is all over him and cannot stand Solange. Solange is fiercely jealous. At this moment the little thing is sleeping at my feet. It has been called Mops, which is, quite simply, the Polish for Pug.40
The 1840–41 season held few attractions for Chopin, with the notable exception of Pauline Viardot’s concert at the Conservatoire on 7 February 1841, an event he would never have missed. And he did not compose much himself. His output for the whole of 1840 consisted of three Waltzes, one Song and a Polonaise (F sharp minor, op.44), which compares poorly with that of other years. This was not the result of indolence or lack of inspiration.
This period was a breathing space during which he, as it were, collected his thoughts before embarking on the final and greatest stage of his work as a composer, and the group of intellectuals and artists that gathered round George Sand in the rue Pigalle probably played a part in this process. Although no great talker herself, she had a way of creating discussion around her. ‘She’s a good listener,’ remarked Heine, while Liszt apparently felt that his ability to listen and absorb what people were saying made them more eloquent.41 George Sand was interested in music and in the interrelationship between the arts, which were well represented by the various members of the group, and the talk dwelt compulsively on these subjects. As far as Chopin was concerned, the most interesting members of the group were Pauline Viardot and Eugène Delacroix.
Pauline Viardot was not yet twenty years old, and came from an exceptionally gifted family, which included the famous singer Maria Malibran, her elder sister. When Liszt had met her as a young girl he had wanted to make a pianist of her, while her gift for drawing suggested to others that she should have become a painter. She was intelligent and well educated, and this, according to some, enhanced her magnificent singing voice: she could give new depth to an operatic role or a song. Chopin had from his earliest years been fascinated by the human voice, in which he recognised the most perfect instrument of all, and in Pauline Viardot he found not only one of the greatest voices of the century, but also a musician of refinement and intelligence. He spent a great deal of time listening and talking to her, and helped her compose songs of her own. When he felt uninspired and bored, he would long for her company, as he claimed she could ‘restore his musical faculty’.
Equally interesting as an influence on Chopin is Delacroix. Chopin had met him half a dozen years before and had occasionally run across him in Paris over the next years, although the painter was rarely seen in society. Delacroix was a friend and admirer of George Sand, and consequently Chopin began to see a great deal of him after the beginning of their liaison. Delacroix was immediately struck by Chopin’s genius, but his admiration was not reciprocated. Chopin had little sympathy for the exuberance and daring of Delacroix’s work, and it is likely that the reason the joint Chopin-Sand portrait was never finished was that he did not like it. The two men nevertheless became friends.
Like Chopin, Delacroix was reserved, discreet and fastidious – they were forever exchanging names of tailors and bootmakers, and Delacroix’s collection of waistcoats was as legendary as Chopin’s of gloves – and like Chopin he cultivated refinement of manners in himself and others. In his youth he had wanted to be a violinist, and throughout his life he remained fascinated by music, holding the same unfashionable views on it as Chopin, liking Haydn, Mozart and Bach better than Beethoven, and only acknowledging Bellini and Rossini amongst his contemporaries.
In 1840, Delacroix was forty-two years old and was embarking on a new stage in his career: he had recently been given a series of commissions for the large ceilings of public buildings, and this imposed on him a different approach to painting. He abandoned the spontaneity of his earlier Romantic style, studied the painters of the past more closely, grew more controlled in form and more intense in his use of colour, and sought a higher philosophical and aesthetic order and harmony. He also began to develop theories on the relationship between the artist and his instrument and that between the various forms of art. Like Heine, he saw Chopin as the quintessential artist, rather than just as a musician, and he was fascinated by the mixture of spontaneous creation and controlled purpose in Chopin’s improvisations.
There is no clue as to what Chopin made of Delacroix’s ideas. George Sand’s accounts of conversations between them smack much more of her own idea of the two artists than of their actual opinions. What is certain is that the two did talk a great deal about art and music, and that this exchange ushered in a new phase of work for both of them. The year of 1840, which Delacroix spent in getting to grips with his developing ideas on form and expression, was almost fallow for Chopin. But the F sharp minor Polonaise (op.44), written towards the end of it, took him firmly into the last span of his creative life. It clearly belongs to Chopin’s most mature period, during which he displayed many of the same tendencies as Delacroix: his music grew more dramatic and intense, and at the same time more controlled and subtle in form. The next few years were to see the birth of the great Polonaises, the Barcarolle and most of his greatest masterpieces.