The Love Affairs of Great Musicians Volume I Part 18

As to the final separation, following my principle of letting the people tell their own stories so far as possible, I may turn again to George Sand's own version:

"After the last relapse of the invalid, his mind had become extremely gloomy, and Maurice [her son], 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-p.r.i.c.ks, 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 pa.s.sed at a distance and in silence would heal the wound, and make his friends.h.i.+p 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 languis.h.i.+ng 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.

"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 from him that I was ready to hasten to him. It was thought fit to conceal this from me till then."

This, then, is George Sand's story, which has not been granted very much credence.

The cause of their--"divorce," one might call it--is blurred by the usual discrepancies of gossip. The most probable account seems to be that according to which Chopin mortally wounded Sand by receiving her daughter and her son-in-law when they were out of Sand's favour. All accounts agree that this was to her only a pretext for breaking shackles that had begun to be irksome. All are agreed that it was Sand and not Chopin who ended the relations.h.i.+p, and that she, as Niecks bluntly puts it, "had recourse to the heroic means of kicking him, metaphorically speaking, out-of-doors."

The woman seems easily to have forgotten the man who had proved, at best, of little joy to her, for, as she says, she could never go to him with her troubles, since he had always a plenty of his own. It was a relief, then, to her, being a far busier woman than he a man, to find herself free.

But Chopin was robbed of his last support. The strong woman he had leaned upon was gone, and he was alone with the consumption that was eating his life away. He started forth upon a concert tour, but the chill climates of England and Scotland were not refuges from his haunting disease. He died slowly and in poverty, though he was unconscious of want, thanks to the generosity of a Russian countess and a Scotch woman. Dependent upon women to the last! In his dying hours it is said that George Sand called at his house, but was not admitted to see him, though, as he wailed two days before his death, "She said I should die in no other arms than hers" (_Que je ne mourrais que dans ses bras_).

But even the story of her visit is denied. Turgeniev said that fifty countesses had claimed that he died in their arms. Among the number was the Countess Potocka, who is cherished traditionally as one of Chopin's loves, and who was much with him during his last days, and sang for him, at his request, as he lay dying. Poor genius! he must even have a woman sing his swan-song for him! Potocka is best known by a familiar portrait that you will find in a thousand homes. But how the higher criticism undermines the gospel of tradition! The truth is that Chopin denied ever having been in love with her or she with him, and Huneker even claims that the famous portrait of her is not of her at all.

But however attended, visited, caressed, Chopin died at the threshold of his prime, his life, lighted at most with a little feverish twinkling of stars, one nocturne.

END OF VOLUME I.