Part 8

A few short weeks and the conqueror is in the dust. Nothing in all Chopin's life is more striking than the sudden and entire change which followed as a reaction from the excitements of the summer. His letters grew morbid, anxious, irritable; the clear-cut sentences wander off into vagueness and incoherence; the rapid judgment becomes hesitating and irresolute. Through all this dark time there runs the golden thread of an ideal friendship; but it is knotted and entwined with a love-story that can only seem to us singularly unreal and purposeless. Many of its details are absolutely unknown, but there is little need that we should know them. We are only concerned with its effect on Chopin's character; with the presage through which it may lead us to a better and fuller comprehension of his subsequent life. And herein the story, imperfect though it be, may serve us as a true guide. The two tragic episodes of Chopin's career, for all their unlikeness, have their explanation in a single point of temperament: the weakness which, in later years, lost the comradeship of George Sand, was but another form of that nervous sensibility which now called up, for its torment, the shadowy and fugitive vision of Constance Gladkowska.

Even at the outset there is no tone of hopefulness. 'I have, perhaps to my misfortune, already found my ideal,' he writes to his friend Woyciechowski; and a little later, 'It is bitter to have no one with whom one can share joy or sorrow, to feel one's heart oppressed, and to be unable to express one's complaints to any human soul.' All this time--it is a grotesque touch which somehow adds to the pathos--he had never spoken to her, and had only seen her occasionally as she was taking her lessons at the Conservatorium. At least six months had elapsed before he made her acquaintance, and even then we have no record of intimacy, no interchange of letters, no word of lover's vows; nothing but idle conjecture and a few wild confessions of doubt and despair. Warsaw had become intolerable to him. Come what may, he will not spend another winter at home. He will go to Berlin, to Vienna, to Paris, to Italy; anywhere to escape. And then comes a revulsion, and he fancies himself dying in a foreign land, with the unconcerned physician and the paid servants waiting beside his deathbed. Plans are made only to be reversed; projects are formed only to be abandoned; and every change is made the occasion for some fresh complaint, or some new exhibition of a self-inflicted wound.

This is not the manner of true passion. It is not love which degrades a chivalrous nature, which torments generosity with suspicion, and turns activity into a feverish impatience. Grant that the noblest character has its ignoble aspect; its concealed depths which an unforeseen storm may sometimes lash to the surface; yet we cannot look upon a current which is wholly turbid, and characterise it by the highest name in all man's vocabulary. Grant that every lover has his moments of unreason, fits of groundless ill-temper, of disproportionate remorse, of jealousy that is roused by a look and quieted by a word, yet we are here bidden to mistake the accidents for the substance, and to describe as love a shadow which is cast from no sun. The truth is that Chopin's passion was not a cause, but a symptom; not a power which influenced his life, but a direction of hectic energy that must itself be traced back to a remoter source. He was standing at the verge of manhood: always nervous and impressionable, he was come to the time when strength is weakest and courage the most insecure: he had just passed through the bewilderment of his first great enterprise, and had emerged to breathe an atmosphere electric with change and heavy with disquietude. It is little wonder that he lost his true self, and strayed from his appointed course. He would have been more than human if he had not felt some stress of uncertainty, or followed his restless impulses in the absence of a surer guide.

Yet the affection which is lacking to his romance is poured, in full and continuous profusion, upon his friend. 'You do not require my portrait,' he writes to Woyciecowski in November; 'I am always with you, and shall never forget you to the end of my life.' And later, 'You have no idea how much I love you. What would I not give to embrace you once again.' He suggests that they should travel abroad together, and then, by a refinement of sensibility, adds that it would be more delightful if they started separately, 'and met somewhere by chance.' All the compositions are discussed with entire frankness, all the plans submitted for advice and counsel; even omens and presentiments are called in and made to bear their witness to community of purpose. The very complaints take a brighter tone when we realise their absolute trust, and their certain expectation of sympathy. It is as though Chopin shrank from the thought of his passion as a child shrinks from the darkness, and turned to take refuge in the strong arms that he knew were waiting to protect him. He was never self-reliant, never strong enough to face the world alone. Now, in the time of his trouble, he looked to his friend for comfort, just as, ten years before, he would have taken some boyish sorrow to his mother.

It must not be supposed that this period of mental depression is entirely occupied with lamentations. Troilus may be 'weaker than a woman's tear' when he thinks of Cressida, yet he still has hours in which he can shake off his lethargy and take his place in the field or the council chamber; and even we must add, hours when he can find solace in the company of the white-armed Helen. Indeed, in spite of his troubles, Chopin seems to have been fairly busy during the autumn of 1829. By October 3, the 'Adagio' of his F minor Concerto was completed;[18] by October 20, the Finale had been sketched, and at least one of the Études written: then came a week's visit to Prince Radziwill, from whose house we hear something of a new Polonaise for Violoncello, and something, also, about the beauty and intelligence of Princess Wanda. 'I should like her to practise my work,' writes this distracted lover; 'it would be delightful to have the privilege of placing her pretty fingers upon the keys.'

The winter was spent quietly at home. Chopin finished his Concerto, showed it to Elsner for approval, and then set about looking for some opportunity of performance. It was a long time since he had played in public at Warsaw, and the newspaper notices from Vienna had aroused fresh interest which he thought it advisable to satisfy. So in March 1830 he gave two concerts, both of which were conspicuously successful. At the first, indeed, there was some complaint that he did not play loud enough; but, on hearing it, he sent to Vienna for one of Graff's pianos, and disarmed even this effort of criticism at the second. It is noticeable, as an indication of musical taste in 1830, that at both concerts the F minor Concerto was divided, the Allegro given by itself as a separate piece, and the Adagio and Rondo following later in the programme. We may remember that even in Paris it was the fashion of the time to give Beethoven's symphonies piecemeal, and to intersperse the movements with _bravura_ songs and _divertimenti_ for the French horn. It seems unlikely that a stage manager would ever present one of Shakespear's plays with portions of the _School for Scandal_ between the acts; but music has always lagged behind the other arts in its appreciation of structure, and if Berlioz could mishandle Beethoven, we need not be surprised at Chopin's tearing his own work in pieces for fear that the audience should suspect it of continuity. In any case, he seems to have lost nothing by the sacrifice, for the house was crowded, the applause vehement, and the receipts, after all expenses had been paid, amounted to the respectable figure of 5000 florins.

Summer came, with its presage of revolution. The great wave rolling eastward from Paris did not break on Warsaw until November; but as early as May there were signs on the horizon, and a murmur of expectation in the air. The Diet, which had not met for five years, was suddenly convened; the irregularities of the Russian administration were more freely criticised: and although the Czar had prohibited the publication of debates, there still remained sufficient means to show the people at large that its discontent was finding official utterance. Naturally this assemblage of senators gathered after it all the pomp and circumstance of Polish society. As the months wore on, the city filled with a crowd of nobles, and, while the halls of audience were busy with political intrigue, the ballrooms opened their doors to a music that seemed to have caught some echo from the night before Waterloo. War was almost certainly imminent; but until it came the hours uplifted their burden of song and dance, lest the silence should crave too ominously for the sound of cannon.

To Chopin, patriot as he was, the musical aspect of the season seems to have been the most important. Possibly in his seclusion rumours of wars found no space to enter: at any rate, there is no hint in his letters that he foresaw the storm, or that he was seriously occupied with anything more public than his _soirées_ and his concerts. There was, indeed, plenty to hear and plenty to enjoy. Some of the greatest artists in Europe presented themselves at Warsaw:--Mdlle. de Belleville, immortalised by the praise of Schumann; Lipinski, the famous violinist; Henrietta Sontag, the acknowledged rival of Catalani and Pasta. Of all these Chopin writes with his usual generous appreciation, unaffectedly delighted with their successes, and 'not at all surprised' that he is not asked to play at a Court party when they are present. Then followed Constance Gladkowska's _début_ as an operatic singer, and the lover is divided between his pleasure in her triumph and his reawakened consciousness of a hopeless passion. Once more the old irresolution returns; he decides to go, but cannot tear himself away; he waits on aimlessly, wondering from day to day whether the morrow will bring counsel, despising himself for his chain, yet not strong enough to break it. The suspense was beginning to tell upon his health. Heller, who passed through Warsaw in 1830, speaks of him as pale and hollow-eyed, little more than a shadow of his former, brighter self. And yet it is uncertain whether he had spent an hour with 'his Constantia' since his return from Antonin, nearly a year before; while it is quite clear, from his own letters, that during all that time he had never visited her.[19]

Surely it is one of the most inexplicable of dramas. The whole period which it occupies is of less than two years: eighteen months have elapsed, and we have not yet seen the heroine. We only guess at her darkly from the hero's soliloquies, or the rare secrets which he commends to the bosom of his confidant. We are in the fourth act, and have advanced to no further situation than was disclosed in the opening scene. It is true that for a few weeks in the autumn of 1830 the two actors are brought into a closer relationship: that she sang for him at his concert in October, and that she gave him a ring on his departure from Warsaw: but then, just as we are beginning to attain to some comprehension of the plot, the curtain falls, and there has been neither recognition nor catastrophe. Nor is the epilogue any less inconclusive. The farewell gift, which should have been the beginning of a more intimate romance, is virtually the end of the whole story. After Chopin had left his home, he seems to have held no further communication, other than indirect, with the woman whom he believed himself to love; in a few months her name has dropped out of his letters: and when she married, about a year later, he is said to have heard the news with a momentary outburst of brief anger, and then to have dismissed it from his recollection. And even during the days of his thraldom, he can forget his troubles whenever he is interested in his work. It is only when he is wearied or overwrought that the image of his love recurs, with its invariable train of forebodings and regrets: forebodings that he will find inaccessible a height which he never tries to climb: regrets for lost opportunities which he has never attempted to seize. As to her own attitude in the matter, we are even more at fault. We have no means of determining to what extent she looked with favour upon his suit, or to what extent she even trusted in its sincerity. We have no right to impute blame to her: we have no standpoint for imputation. All we can say is, that if Chopin's passion had been wholly visionary, this is the way in which it would have expressed itself. Of the joy, the hope, the impetus of true love there is not one recorded word: his highest point of stimulation is the desire to 'tell his piano' of the sorrow that she has brought him: his brightest hope of communion with her is that when he dies his ashes may be spread out under her feet.

It is pleasanter to look upon the more active side of Chopin's last summer in Warsaw. In spite of the social distractions which the season inevitably brought in its retinue, he worked away steadily at his E minor Concerto, finished it by the middle of August, and produced it, with his usual good fortune, at his third and last concert, on October 11. In addition, he composed what he modestly calls 'a few insignificant pieces,' and sketched or projected some works of larger scale--a concerto for two pianos, a polonaise with orchestra, and the like. Whether these ever came into complete existence is a matter of dispute: here, as elsewhere, the record of Chopin's life is too broken and imperfect to admit any tone of certainty: but, in either event, they testify to some acceptance of the 'beatitude of labour.' The results of a man's effort are a free gift to succeeding generations; it is in the effort itself that he finds his own reward.

As the winter approached, plans for departure grew more definite and more concrete. Chopin had cried 'Wolf' so often that his friends might well be excused for doubting the reality of his intentions, but this time it appeared that he was actually in earnest, and at the beginning of November he started. Even now he had no very clear idea of his destination. It was to be Vienna first, so much was certain, but after Vienna it might be Berlin, where Prince Radziwill could ensure him introductions, or it might be Italy, where he could bear his credentials to royalty at Milan, or it might be Paris, which was then the goal of almost every artist in Europe. 'I am going out into the wide world,' he writes, with a touch of knight-errantry foreign to his usual nature. Curiously enough, he seems to have had from the beginning a presentiment that he would never return to Poland; and when, at the first stage from Warsaw, Elsner met him with the pupils of the Conservatorium, and presented him with a silver cup full of Polish earth, the strange little ceremonial must have added force and ratification to his thought. Moreover, the presentiment came true. The nineteen years of life which remained to him only widened his separation from his native country; his exile, though voluntary, proved to be none the less irrevocable; and as the towers of Warsaw sank behind him on the horizon, there faded with them all but the memory of a home which he was never to see again.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] So says Karasowski, who was intimately acquainted with the Chopins, and was entrusted by them with the materials for an authoritative biography. The monument in the Holy Cross Church at Warsaw gives March 2, 1809, as the date. Liszt and Fétis both give 1810. It is a salient instance of the carelessness with which the records of Chopin's life have been treated.

[17] The Polonaise in B flat minor, 'Adieu an Wilhelm Kolberg,' appears to have been written on Chopin's departure for Reinerz in 1826. But Fontana calls the three, which were published posthumously as Op. 71, 'les trois premières Polonaises.' Two of them were composed in 1827-8 and the third in 1829.

[18] Not the E minor Concerto, as M. Karasowski asserts. The fact is put beyond dispute by a letter of May 15, 1830, in which Chopin says that the Adagio of the latter work is still unfinished. Both movements, by the way, are marked _Larghetto_ in the score.

[19] See the letter of Sept. 4, 1830, quoted by Professor Niecks.

II

PARIS--AND AN EPISODE

After the good leisurely fashion of the time, Chopin took nearly four weeks over his journey to Vienna. His first halting-place was Kalisz, where he was joined by his friend Woyciecowski, and thence the two travelled together through Breslau, Dresden and Prague, enjoying to the full that highest of human pleasures which is constituted by a clear road, brisk horses, and a single companion. The incidents, as recorded in his letters, are not of any great importance--impressions of the theatre at Breslau, renewal of old acquaintanceships at Dresden, and so forth--but the letters themselves are interesting, as showing how entirely he had recovered his spirits under the change of scene and circumstance. Everything is delightful, everybody is cordial, all prospects of the future career are painted in rose-colour, and the darkest moments of uncertainty are caused by his terror at the sight of the Saxon ladies, in their panoply of knitting-needles, or by the temptation, which he is at some pains to resist, of 'kicking out the bottom' from his first sedan chair. In a character so transparent, even these evanescent bubbles of humour acquire a certain significance. For the moment, Chopin's tone is equally free from regret or apprehension; for the moment, this exile from his country has succeeded in escaping from his recent self.

And yet, it was a bold challenge to fortune. On the one side, a world which is usually too busy to occupy itself with new aspirants, which grants no favour that cannot be claimed as a right, and is even less ready to show mercy to the conquered than to offer its applause to the conqueror: on the other, a boy of twenty-one, with delicate and fastidious appetites, with no experience of privation, no conception of the value of money, no settled habits of prudence or circumspection, equipped, it is true, with a flashing weapon of genius, but singularly ill provided with the ordinary armour of defence. It would have been no wonder if he had thought the bastions impregnable and the towers impossible to scale: if he had looked upon the camp life as coarse and uncouth, if he had found its discipline intolerable, its hardships degrading, and its pleasures typified by the rude laughter and boisterous jests of the canteen. Small wonder, either, if his comrades had set him down as a carpet-knight; an exquisite, better skilled to pay compliments to the women than to bear his part among the men; a dandy, whose chief care was the set of his clothes and the fragrance of his violets; a precisian, who was altogether devoid of redeeming vices; an idealist, who spent his days in pursuit of the unattainable, instead of taking life as it came, and letting ready action compensate for defective strategy. And in such an estimate there would have been a certain measure of truth. If, in order to be a good man, it is first necessary to be a good animal, we may admit at once that Chopin's virility was imperfect. There is no doubt that, to the end of his life, he was characterised by a super-sensitive refinement, which, fifty years ago, would have been described as feminine. But now, at the outset of his career, it is well to notice that he was by no means unprovided with the means of success. He was already one of the best pianists in Europe. He had discovered a secret of musical expression more readily understood and appreciated than that of any contemporary composer, with the exception of Mendelssohn. He was gifted with a great charm of manner, and an unusual power of making friends. And when it is added that he was only once in any great stress of poverty, it will be seen that his equipment was less incomplete than is generally imagined. After all, the dandies have played their part in history. Claverhouse was a dandy; Lovelace was a dandy; Sir Philip Sydney himself was censured by Milton for being 'vain and amatorious': and if a man can be something of a fop, and yet bear himself gallantly in the battle of arms, how much more shall he do so in the battle of life.

At the same time, we must confess that, in his first encounter with destiny, the hero was visited with a signal defeat. Before he had been a week in Vienna, news came that Warsaw had risen in revolt against the Russians; there was word of riot in the streets, of danger to the house; and Chopin, after a few hours of irresolution, started off to follow his friend Woyciecowski, who had gone at once to join the insurgents. On the way his determination broke down: his presence could avail nothing; it would only add to the disquietude of his parents; he had better wait for further tidings, for some message or injunction which would relieve him from taking the initiative. Without further thought he changed his plans, and returned to Vienna, waiting there in a transport of grief and anxiety for the letters which a man of prompter courage would have forestalled. As the days wore on, the bulletins grew more reassuring; for a time, at any rate, the cloud of peril rolled away from the city: the Poles had an army of 60,000 men in the field, and, in spite of the enormous forces of the Emperor Nicholas, were confident of success. Still Chopin lingered on, ready to start at the lightest summons, but not strong enough to take the first step of his own motion, until the noise of battle had passed to the Russian frontier, and he could write once more about his life and his surroundings.

Apparently the outlook was less encouraging than it had been in 1828. Vienna, since the death of Schubert, was passing through a period of musical inactivity, and the prospects of concert-giving were not very bright. Managers who had been ready enough to welcome Chopin when he played gratuitously, began to hang back now that he demanded payment; and the public, after its golden age of the classics, professed itself satisfied with the _kapellmeistermusik_ of Seyfried, and the dance-tunes of Strauss and Lanner. During the whole six months of Chopin's stay in the Austrian capital, he only gave one concert, and that, as we learn from M. Karasowski, was thinly attended and poorly paid. For the rest, his letters contain little more than the diary of a casual visitor:--operas at the Kärnthnerthor Theatre, dinners with his friend Dr Malfatti, a few criticisms of Thalberg, a few words of enthusiasm for Slavik; the whole lightened, every now and again, by some amusing story or some half-dozen lines of quaint description. His tone changes with every varying mood: at one moment he breaks into passionate regret that he is still absent from his home: at another he speaks of himself as enjoying his enforced idleness, as wonderfully restored in health, and as finding many acquaintances and much pleasant companionship. But it is clear that, whatever his temper, he was in no way to replenish his resources or advance his existing reputation.