Prince Radz'will had watched over Chopin's education. He had been received when quite young in the most aristocratic circles, and "the most celebrated beauties had smiled on him as a youth."Social life, then, and feminine influence had thus helped to make him ultra refined. It was very evident to every one who met him that he was a well-bred man, and this is quickly observed, even with pianists.
On arriving he made a good impression, he was well dressed, his white gloves were immaculate. He was reserved and somewhat languid.
Every one knew that he was delicate, and there was a rumour of an unhappy love affair. It was said that he had been in love with a girl, and that her family had refused to consent to her marriage with him.
People said he was like his own music, the dreamy, melancholy themes seemed to accord so well with the pale young face of the composer.
The fascination of the languor which seemed to emanate from the man and from his work worked its way, in a subtle manner, into the hearts of his hearers. Chopin did not care to know Lelia.
He did not like women writers, and he was rather alarmed at this one.
It was Liszt who introduced them. In his biography of Chopin, he tells us that the extremely sensitive artist, who was so easily alarmed, dreaded "this woman above all women, as, like a priestess of Delphi, she said so many things that the others could not have said.
He avoided her and postponed the introduction. Madame Sand had no idea that she was feared as a sylph. . . ." She made the first advances. It is easy to see what charmed her in him.
In the first place, he appealed to her as he did to all women, and then, too, there was the absolute contrast of their two opposite natures.
She was all force, of an expansive, exuberant nature. He was very discreet, reserved and mysterious. It seems that the Polish characteristic is to lend oneself, but never to give oneself away, and one of Chopin's friends said of him that he was "more Polish than Poland itself." Such a contrast may prove a strong attraction, and then, too, George Sand was very sensitive to the charm of music.
But what she saw above all in Chopin was the typical artist, just as she understood the artist, a dreamer, lost in the clouds, incapable of any activity that was practical, a "lover of the impossible."And then, too, he was ill. When Musset left Venice, after all the atrocious nights she had spent at his bedside, she wrote: "Whom shall I have now to look after and tend?" In Chopin she found some one to tend.
About this time, she was anxious about the health of her son Maurice, and she thought she would take her family to Majorca. This was a lamentable excursion, but it seemed satisfactory at first.
They travelled by way of Lyons, Avignon, Vaucluse and Nimes.
At Perpignan, Chopin arrived, "as fresh as a rose." "Our journey,"wrote George Sand, "seems to be under the most favourable conditions."They then went on to Barcelona and to Palma. In November, 1838, George Sand wrote a most enthusiastic letter: "It is poetry, solitude, all that is most artistic and _chique_ on earth. And what skies, what a country; we are delighted."[26] The disenchantment was soon to begin, though. The first difficulty was to find lodgings, and the second to get furniture. There was no wood to burn and there was no linen to be had. It took two months to have a pair of tongs made, and it cost twenty-eight pounds at the customs for a piano to enter the country. With great difficulty, the forlorn travellers found a country-house belonging to a man named Gomez, which they were able to rent. It was called the "Windy House."The wind did not inconvenience them like the rain, which now commenced.
Chopin could not endure the heat and the odour of the fires.
His disease increased, and this was the origin of the great tribulations that were to follow.
[26] The following is an unpublished letter to Madame Buloz:
_Monday 13th._
MY DEAR CHRISTINE, "I have only been at Palma four days. My journey has been very satisfactory, but rather long and difficult until we were out of France. I took up my pen (as people say) twenty times over to write the last five or six pages for which _Spiridion_ has been waiting for six months. It is not the easiest thing in the world, I can assure you, to give the conclusion of one's own religious belief, and when travelling it is impossible. At twenty different places I have resolved to think it solemnly over and to write down my conclusion.
But these stoppages were the most tiring part of our journey.
There were visits, dinners, walks, curiosities, ruins, the Vaucluse fountain, Reboul and the Nimes arena, the Barcelona cathedrals, dinners on board the war-ships, the Italian theatres of Spain (and what theatres and what Italians!), guitars and Heaven knows what beside. There was the moonlight on the sea and above all Valma and Mallorca, the most delightful place in the world, and all this kept me terribly far away from philosophy and theology.
Fortunately I have found some superb convents here all in ruins, with palm-trees, aloes and the cactus in the midst of broken mosaics and crumbling cloisters, and this takes me back to _Spiridion_.
For the last three days I have had a rage for work, which I cannot satisfy yet, as we have neither fire nor lodging. There is not an inn in Palma, no house to let and no furniture to be bought.
