Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician Part 28

In a few days I shall live in the most beautiful part of the world. Sea, mountains... whatever you wish. We are to have our quarters in an old, vast, abandoned and ruined monastery of Carthusians whom Mend [FOOTNOTE: Mendizabal] drove away as it were for me. Near Palma--nothing more wonderful: cloisters, most poetic cemeteries. In short, I feel that there it will be well with me. Only the piano has not yet come! I wrote to Pleyel. Ask there and tell him that on the day after my arrival here I was taken very ill, and that I am well again.

On the whole, speak little about me and my ma.n.u.scripts. Write to me. As yet I have not received a letter from you.

Tell Leo that I have not as yet sent the Preludes to the Albrechts, but that I still love them sincerely, and shall write to them shortly.

Post the enclosed letter to my parents yourself, and write as soon as possible.

My love to Johnnie. Do not tell anyone that I was ill, they would only gossip about it.

[FOOTNOTE: to Madame Dubois I owe the information that Albrecht, an attache to the Saxon legation (a post which gave him a good standing in society) and at the same time a wine-merchant (with offices in the Place Vendome--his specialty being "vins de Bordeaux"), was one of Chopin's "fanatic friends." In the letters there are allusions to two Albrechts, father and son; the foregoing information refers to the son, who, I think, is the T. Albrecht to whom the Premier Scherzo, Chopin's Op. 20, is dedicated.]

Chopin to Fontana; Palma, December 14, 1838:--

As yet not a word from you, and this is my third or fourth letter. Did you prepay? Perhaps my parents did not write.

Maybe some misfortune has befallen them. Or are you so lazy?

But no, you are not lazy, you are so obliging. No doubt you sent my two letters to my people (both from Palma). And you must have written to me, only the post of this place, which is the most irregular in the world, has not yet delivered your letters.

Only to-day I was informed that on the ist of December my piano was embarked at Ma.r.s.eilles on a merchant vessel. The letter took fourteen days to come from that town. Thus there is some hope that the piano may pa.s.s the winter in the port, as here n.o.body stirs when it rains. The idea of my getting it just at my departure pleases me, for in addition to the 500 francs for freight and duty which I must pay, I shall have the pleasure of packing it and sending it back. Meanwhile my ma.n.u.scripts are sleeping, whereas I cannot sleep, but cough, and am covered with plasters, waiting anxiously for spring or something else.

To-morrow I start for this delightful monastery of Valdemosa.

I shall live, muse, and write in the cell of some old monk who may have had more fire in his heart than I, and was obliged to hide and smother it, not being able to make use of it.

I think that shortly I shall be able to send you my Preludes and my Ballade. Go and see Leo; do not mention that I am ill, he would fear for his 1,000 francs.

Give my kind remembrances to Johnnie and Pleyel.

Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Palma, December 14, 1838:--

...What is really beautiful here is the country, the sky, the mountains, the good health of Maurice, and the radouciss.e.m.e.nt of Solange. The good Chopin is not in equally brilliant health. He misses his piano very much. We received news of it to-day. It has left Ma.r.s.eilles, and we shall perhaps have it in a fortnight. Mon Dieu, how hard, difficult, and miserable the physical life is here! It is beyond what one can imagine.

By a stroke of fortune I have found for sale a clean suite of furniture, charming for this country, but which a French peasant would not have. Unheard-of trouble was required to get a stove, wood, linen, and who knows what else. Though for a month I have believed myself established, I am always on the eve of being so. Here a cart takes five hours to go three leagues; judge of the rest. They require two months to manufacture a pair of tongs. There is no exaggeration in what I say. Guess about this country all I do not tell you. For my part I do not mind it, but I have suffered a little from it in the fear of seeing my children suffer much from it.

Happily, my ambulance is doing well. To-morrow we depart for the Carthusian monastery of Valdemosa, the most poetic residence on earth. We shall pa.s.s there the winter, which has hardly begun and will soon end. This is the sole happiness of this country. I have never in my life met with a nature so delicious as that of Majorca.

...The people of this country are generally very gracious, very obliging; but all this in words...

I shall write to Leroux from the monastery at leisure. If you knew what I have to do! I have almost to cook. Here, another amenity, one cannot get served. The domestic is a brute: bigoted, lazy, and gluttonous; a veritable son of a monk (I think that all are that). It requires ten to do the work which your brave Mary does. Happily, the maid whom I have brought with me from Paris is very devoted, and resigns herself to do heavy work; but she is not strong, and I must help her.

Besides, everything is dear, and proper nourishment is difficult to get when the stomach cannot stand either rancid oil or pig's grease. I begin to get accustomed to it; but Chopin is ill every time that we do not prepare his food ourselves. In short, our expedition here is, in many respects, a frightful fiasco.

On December 15, 1838, then, the Sand party took possession of their quarters in the monastery of Valdemosa, and thence the next letters are dated.

Chopin to Fontana; "Palma, December 28, 1838, or rather Valdemosa, a few miles distant from Palma":--

Between rocks and the sea, in a great abandoned Carthusian monastery, in one of the cells with doors bigger than the gates in Paris, you may imagine me with my hair uncurled, without white gloves, pale as usual. The cell is in the shape of a coffin, high, and full of dust on the vault. The window small, before the window orange, palm, and cypress trees.

Opposite the window, under a Moorish filigree rosette, stands my bed. By its side an old square thing like a table for writing, scarcely serviceable; on it a leaden candlestick (a great luxury) with a little tallow-candle, Works of Bach, my jottings, and old scrawls that are not mine, this is all I possess. Quietness... one may shout and n.o.body will hear... in short, I am writing to you from a strange place.

Your letter of the 9th of December I received the day before yesterday; as on account of the holidays the express mail does not leave till next week, I write to you in no great hurry. It will be a Russian month before you get the bill of exchange which I send you.

Sublime nature is a fine thing, but one should have nothing to do with men--nor with roads and posts. Many a time I came here from Palma, always with the same driver and always by another road. Streams of water make roads, violent rains destroy them; to-day it is impossible to pa.s.s, for what was a road is ploughed; next day only mules can pa.s.s where you were driving yesterday. And what carriages here! That is the reason, Julius, why you do not see a single Englishman, not even an English consul.

Leo is a Jew, a rogue! I was at his house the day before my departure, and I told him not to send me anything here. I cannot send you the Preludes, they are not yet finished. At present I am better and shall push on the work. I shall write and thank him in a way that will make him wince.

But Schlesinger is a still worse dog to put my Waltzes [FOOTNOTE: "Trois Valses brillantes," Op. 34.] in the Alb.u.m, and to sell them to Probst [FOOTNOTE: Heinrich Albert Probst founded in 1823 a music-shop and publis.h.i.+ng-house at Leipzig.

In 1831 Fr. Kistner entered the business (Probst-Kistner), which under his name has existed from 1836 down to this day.

In the Chopin letters we meet Probst in the character of Breitkopf and Hartel's agent.] when I gave him them because he begged them for his father in Berlin. [FOOTNOTE: Adolf Martin Schlesinger, a music-publisher like his son Maurice Adolph of Paris, so frequently mentioned in these letters.] All this irritates me. I am only sorry for you; but in one month at the latest you will be clear of Leo and my landlord. With the money which you receive on the bill of exchange, do what is necessary. And my servant, what is he doing? Give the portier twenty francs as a New Year's present.

I do not remember whether I left any debts of importance. At all events, as I promised you, we shall be clear in a month at the latest.

To-day the moon is wonderful, I never saw it more beautiful.

By the way, you write that you sent me a letter from my people. I neither saw nor heard of one, and I am longing so much for one! Did you prepay when you sent them the letter?

Your letter, the only one I have hitherto received, was very badly addressed. Here nature is benevolent, but the people are thievish. They never see any strangers, and therefore do not know what to ask of them. For instance, an orange they will give you for nothing, but ask a fabulous sum for a coat- b.u.t.ton.

Under this sky you are penetrated with a kind of poetical feeling which everything seems to exhale. Eagles alarmed by no one soar every day majestically over our heads.

For G.o.d's sake write, always prepay, and to Palma add always Valdemosa.

I love Johnnie, and I think it is a pity that he did not altogether qualify himself as director of the children of some benevolent inst.i.tution in some Nuremberg or Bamberg. Get him to write to me, were it only a few words.

I enclose you a letter to my people...I think it is already the third or fourth that I send you for my parents.

My love to Albrecht, but speak very little about me.

Chopin to Fontana; Valdemosa, January 12, 1839:--

I send you the Preludes, make a copy of them, you and Wolf; [FOOTNOTE: Edouard Wolff] I think there are no mistakes. You will give the transcript to Probst, but my ma.n.u.script to Pleyel. When you get the money from Probst, for whom I enclose a receipt, you will take it at once to Leo. I do not write and thank him just now, for I have no time. Out of the money which Pleyel will give you, that is 1,500 francs, you will pay the rent of my rooms till the New Year, 450 francs and you will give notice of my giving them up if you have a chance to get others from April. If not it will be necessary to keep them for a quarter longer. The rest of the amount, or 1,000 francs, you will return from me to Nougi. Where he lives you will learn from Johnnie, but don't tell the latter of the money, for he might attack Nougi, and I do not wish that anyone but you and I should know of it. Should you succeed in finding rooms, you could send one part of the furniture to Johnnie and another to Grzymala. You will tell Pleyel to send letters through you.

I sent you before the New Year a bill of exchange for Wessel; tell Pleyel that I have settled with Wessel.

[FOOTNOTE: The music-publisher Christian Rudolph Wessel, of Bremen, who came to London in 1825. Up to 1838 he had Stodart, and from 1839 to 1845 Stapleton, as partner. He retired in 1860, Messrs. Edwin Ashdown and Henry Parry being his successors. Since the retirement of Mr. Parry, in 1882, Mr.

Ashdown is the sole proprietor. Mr. Ashdown, whom I have to thank for the latter part of this note, informs me that Wessel died in 1885.]

In a few weeks you will receive a Ballade, a Polonaise, and a Scherzo.

Until now I have not yet received any letters from my parents.

I embrace you.

Sometimes I have Arabian b.a.l.l.s, African sun, and always before my eyes the Mediterranean Sea.

I do not know when I shall be back, perhaps as late as May, perhaps even later.

Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Valdemosa, January 15, 1839:--

...We inhabit the Carthusian monastery of Valdemosa, a really sublime place, which I have hardly the time to admire, so many occupations have I with my children, their lessons, and my work.