Of Chopin's visit Jenny Lind-Goldschmidt had to the last years of her life a most pleasing and vivid recollection. She sang to him Polskas, [FOOTNOTE: Polskas are dances of Polish origin, popular in Sweden, whose introduction dates from the time of the union of the crowns of Sweden and Poland in 1587.] which delighted him greatly. The way Madame Goldschmidt spoke of Chopin showed unmistakably that he made the best possible impression upon her, not only as an artist, but also as a man—she was sure of his goodness, and that he could not but have been right in the Sand affair, I mean as regards the rupture. She visited him when she went in the following year (1849) to Paris.

In his letter to Gutmann, Chopin speaks of his intention to give a matinee at a private house. And he more than realised it; for he not only gave one, but two—the first at the house of Mrs. Sartoris (nee Adelaide Kemble) and the second at the house of Lord Falmouth. Here are two advertisements which appeared in the Times.

From an account of the first matinee in the Athenaeum we learn that Chopin played nocturnes, etudes, mazurkas, two waltzes, and the Berceuse, but none of his more developed works, such as sonatas, concertos, scherzos, and ballades. The critic tries to analyse the master's style of execution—a "mode" in which "delicacy, picturesqueness, elegance, and humour are blended so as to produce that rare thing, a new delight"—pointing out his peculiar fingering, treatment of scale and shake, tempo rubato, &c. But although the critic speaks no less appreciatively of the playing than of the compositions, the tenor of the notice of the second matinee (July 15, 1848) shows that the former left nevertheless something to be desired. "Monsieur Chopin played better at his second than at his first matinee—not with more delicacy (that could hardly be), but with more force and brio." Along with other compositions of his, Chopin played on this occasion his Scherzo in B flat and his Etude in C sharp minor. Another attraction of the matinee was the singing of Madame Viardot-Garcia, "who, besides her inimitable airs with Mdlle. de Mendi, and her queerly-piquant Mazurkas, gave the Cenerentola rondo, graced with great brilliancy; and a song by Beethoven, 'Ich denke dein.'"

[FOOTNOTE: No doubt, those Mazurkas by Chopin which, adapting to them Spanish words, she had arranged for voice and piano. Hiller wrote mostenthusiastically of these arrangements and her performance of them.]

Mr. Salaman said, at a meeting of the London Musical Association (April 5, 1880), in the course of a discussion on the subject of Chopin, that he was present at the matinee at the house of Mrs. Sartoris, and would never forget the concert-giver's playing, especially of the waltz in D flat. "I remember every bar, how he played it, and the appearance of his long, attenuated fingers during the time he was playing. [FOOTNOTE: Their thinness may have made them appear long, but they were not really so. See Appendix III.] He seemed quite exhausted." Mr. Salaman was particularly struck by the delicacy and refinement of Chopin's touch, and the utmost exquisiteness of expression.

To Chopin, as the reader will see in the letter addressed to Franchomme, and dated August 6th and 11th, these semi-public performances had only the one redeeming point—that they procured him much-needed money, otherwise he regarded them as a great annoyance. And this is not to be wondered at, if we consider the physical weakness under which he was then labouring. When Chopin went before these matinees to Broadwood's to try the pianoforte on which he was to play, he had each time to be carried up the flight of stairs which led to the piano-room. Chopin had also to be carried upstairs when he came to a concert which his pupil Lindsay Sloper gave in this year in the Hanover Square Rooms. But nothing brings his miserable condition so vividly before us as his own letters.

Had Chopin, when he left Paris, really in view the possibility of settling in London? There was at the time a rumour of this being the case. The Athenaeum (April 8, 1848), in the note already adverted to, said:—"M. Chopin is expected, if not already here—it is even added to remain in England." But if he embraced the idea at first, he soon began to loosen his grasp of it, and, before long, abandoned it altogether. In his then state of health existence would have been a burden anywhere, but it was a greater one away from his accustomed surroundings. Moreover, English life to be enjoyable requires a robustness of constitution, sentimental and intellectual as well as physical, which the delicately-organised artist, even in his best time, could not boast of. If London and the rest of Britain was not to the mind of Chopin, it was not for want of good-will among the people. Chopin's letters show distinctly that kindness was showered upon him from all sides. And these letters do not by any means contain a complete roll of those who were serviceable to him. The name of Frederick Beale, the publisher, for instance, is not to be found there, and yet he is said, with what truth I do not know, to have attached himself to the tone-poet.

[FOOTNOTE: Mr. Hipkins heard Chopin play at Broadwood's to Beale the Waltzes in D flat major and C sharp minor (Nos. 1 and 2 of Op. 64), subsequently published by Cramer, Beale and Co. But why did the publisher not bring out the whole opus (three waltzes, not two), which had already been in print in France and Germany for nine or ten months? Was his attachment to the composer weaker than his attachment to his cash-box?]

The attentions of the piano-makers, on the other hand, are duly remembered. In connection with them I must not forget to record the fact that Mr. Henry Fowler Broadwood had a concert grand, the first in a complete iron frame, expressly made for Chopin, who, unfortunately, did not live to play upon it.

[FOOTNOTE: For particulars about the Broadwood pianos used by Chopin in England and Scotland (and he used there no others at his public concerts and principal private entertainments), see the List of John Broadwood & Sons' Exhibits at the International Inventions Exhibition (1885), a pamphlet full of interesting information concerning the history and construction of the pianoforte. It is from the pen of A. J. Hipkins.]

A name one misses with surprise in Chopin's letters is that of his Norwegian pupil Tellefsen, who came over from Paris to London, and seems to have devoted himself to his master. [FOOTNOTE: Tellefsen, says Mr. Hipkins, was nearly always with Chopin.] Of his ever-watchful ministering friend Miss Stirling and her relations we shall hear more in the following letters.

Chopin started for Scotland early in August, 1848, for on the 6th August he writes to Franchomme that he had left London a few days before.

To save the reader from becoming confused by allusions in Chopin's letters to names of unknown persons and places, I will now say a few words about the composer's Scotch friends. The Stirlings of Keir, generally regarded as the principal family of the name, are said to be descended from Walter de Striveline, Strivelyn, or Strivelyng, Lucas of Strivelyng (1370-1449) being the first possessor of Keyr. The family was for about two centuries engaged in the East India and West India trade. Archibald Stirling, the father of the late baronet, went, as William Fraser relates in The Stirlings of Keir, like former younger sons, to Jamaica, where he was a planter for nearly twenty-five years. He succeeded his brother James in 1831, greatly improved the mansion, and died in 1847. When Chopin visited Keir it was in the possession of William Stirling, who, in 1865, became Sir William Stirling-Maxwell (his mother was a daughter of Sir John Maxwell), and is well-known by his literary works—Annals of the Artists of Spain (1848), The Cloister Life of the Emperor Charles V. (1852), Velasquez (1855), &c. He was the uncle of Jane Stirling and Mrs. Erskine, daughters (the former the youngest daughter) of John Stirling, of Kippendavie and Kippenross, and friends of Chopin. W. Hanna, the editor of the Letters of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, says that Jane Stirling was a cousin and particular friend of Thomas Erskine. The latter used in later life to regard her and the Duchess de Broglie as the most remarkable women he had ever met:—

In a letter addressed to Mrs. Schwabe, and dated February 14, 1859, we read about her:—

Lindsay Sloper, who lived in Paris from 1841 to 1846, told me that Miss Stirling, who was likewise staying there, took for some time lessons from him. As she wished to become a pupil of Chopin, he spoke to his master about her. Chopin, Lindsay Sloper said, was pleased with her playing, and soon began to like her.

[FOOTNOTE: To the above I must append a cautionary foot-note. In his account to me Lindsay Sloper made two mistakes which prove that his memory was not one of the most trustworthy, and suggest even the possibility that his Miss Stirling was a different person from Chopin's friend. His mistakes were these: he called Mrs. Erskine, who was with Miss Stirling in Paris, her aunt instead of her sister; and thought that Miss Stirling was about eighteen years old when he taught her. The information I shall give farther on seems to show that she was older rather than younger than Chopin; indeed, Mr Hipkins is of opinion that she was in 1848 nearer fifty than forty.]

To her the composer dedicated his Deux Nocturnes, Op. 55, which he published in August, 1844. It was thought that she was in love with Chopin, and there were rumours of their going to be married. Gutmann informed me that Chopin said to him one day when he was ill: "They have married me to Miss Stirling; she might as well marry death." Of Miss Jane Stirling's elder sister Katherine, who, in 1811, married her cousin James Erskine, and lost her husband already in 1816, Thomas Erskine says: "She was an admirable woman, faithful and diligent in all duties, and unwearied in her efforts to help those who needed her help." Lord Torphichen, at whose residence (Calder House, twelve miles from Edinburgh) Chopin passed much of his time in Scotland, was, as we learn from the composer's letters, a brother-in-law of Miss Stirling and Mrs. Erskine. Johnstone Castle (twelve miles from Glasgow), where Chopin was also received as a guest, belonged to the Houston family, friends of the Erskines and Stirlings, but, I think, no relations. The death of Ludovic Houston, Esq., in 1862, is alluded to in one of Thomas Erskine's letters.

But Chopin, while in Scotland, was not always staying in manors and castles, now and then he was housed less aristocratically, though perhaps not less, nay, probably more, comfortably. Such humbler quarters he found at the house (10, Warriston Crescent) of Dr. Lyschinski, a Pole by birth, and a refugee, who after studying medicine in Edinburgh practised it there until a few years ago when he removed to London. For the information which I am now going to give I am indebted to Mrs. Lyschinski. Among those who received Chopin at the Edinburgh railway station was Dr. Lyschinski who addressed him in Polish. The composer put up at an hotel (perhaps the London Hotel, in St. Andrew's Square). Next day—Miss Paterson, a neighbour, having placed her carriage at Chopin's disposal—Mrs. Lyschinski took him out for a drive. He soon got tired of the hotel, in fact, felt it quite unbearable, and told the doctor, to whom he had at once taken a fancy, that he could not do without him. Whereupon the latter said: "Well, then you must come to my house; and as it is rather small, you must be satisfied with the nursery." So the children were sent to a friend's house, and the nursery was made into a bedroom for the illustrious guest, an adjoining bedroom being prepared for his servant Daniel, an Irish-Frenchman. Unless the above refers to Chopin's return to Scotland in September, after his visit to Manchester, Mrs. Lyschinski confuses her reminiscences a little, for, as the last-quoted letter proves, he tarried, on his first arrival, only one day in Edinburgh. But the facts, even if not exactly grouped, are, no doubt, otherwise correctly remembered. Chopin rose very late in the day, and in the morning had soup in his room. His hair was curled daily by the servant, and his shirts, boots, and other things were of the neatest—in fact, he was a petit-maitre, more vain in dress than any woman. The maid-servants found themselves strictly excluded from his room, however indispensable their presence might seem to them in the interests of neatness and cleanliness. Chopin was so weak that Dr. Lyschinski had always to carry him upstairs. After dinner he sat before the fire, often shivering with cold. Then all on a sudden he would cross the room, seat himself at the piano, and play himself warm. He could bear neither dictation nor contradiction: if you told him to go to the fire, he would go to the other end of the room where the piano stood. Indeed, he was imperious. He once asked Mrs. Lyschinski to sing. She declined. At this he was astonished and quite angry. "Doctor, would you take it amiss if I were to force your wife to do it?" The idea of a woman refusing him anything seemed to him preposterous. Mrs. Lyschinski says that Chopin was gallant to all ladies alike, but thinks that he had no heart. She used to tease him about women, saying, for instance, that Miss Stirling was a particular friend of his. He replied that he had no particular friends among the ladies, that he gave to all an equal share of his attention. "Not even George Sand then," she asked, "is a particular friend?" "Not even George Sand," was the reply. Had Mrs. Lyschinski known the real state of matters between Chopin and George Sand, she certainly would not have asked that question. He, however, by no means always avoided the mention of his faithless love. Speaking one day of his thinness he remarked that she used to call him mon cher cadavre. Miss Stirling was much about Chopin. I may mention by the way that Mrs. Lyschinski told me that Miss Stirling was much older than Chopin, and her love for him, although passionate, purely Platonic. Princess Czartoryska arrived some time after Chopin, and accompanied him, my informant says, wherever he went. But, as we see from one of his letters, her stay in Scotland was short. The composer was always on the move. Indeed, Dr. Lyschinski's was hardly more than a pied-a-terre for him: he never stayed long, and generally came unexpectedly. A number of places where Chopin was a guest are mentioned in his letters. Mrs. Lyschinski thinks that he also visited the Duke of Hamilton.

At the end of August and at the end of September and beginning of October, this idling was interrupted by serious work, and a kind of work which, at no time to his liking, was particularly irksome in the then state of his health.

The Manchester Guardian of August 19, 1848, contained the following advertisement:—

From an account of the concert in the same paper (August 30), the writer of which declares the concert to have been the most brilliant of the season, we learn that the orchestra, led by Mr. Seymour, played three overtures—Weber's Ruler of the Spirits, Beethoven's Prometheus, and Rossini's Barbiere di Siviglia; and that Chopin performed an Andante and Scherzo, and a Nocturne, Etudes, and the Berceuse of his own composition. With regard to Chopin we read in this critique:—

From the criticism of the Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser (August 30, 1848), I cull the following remarks:—

Mr. Osborne, in a paper on Chopin read before the London Musical Association, says:—

Mr. Osborne told his audience further that notwithstanding this appeal he was present in a remote corner of the room. I may add that although he could absent himself from the hall for the time Chopin was playing, he could not absent himself from the concert, for, as the papers tell us, he acted as accompanist. The impression which Chopin's performance on this occasion left upon his friend's mind is described in the following few sad words: "His playing was too delicate to create enthusiasm, and I felt truly sorry for him."

Soon after the concert Chopin returned to Scotland. How many days (between August 23 and September 7?) he remained in Manchester, I do not know, but it is well known that while staying there he was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Salis Schwabe. To Mrs. Salis Schwabe, a lady noted for her benevolence, Thomas Erskine addressed the letter concerning Miss Jane Stirling a part of which I quoted on one of the foregoing pages of this chapter. The reader remembers, of course, Chopin's prospective allusions to the Manchester concert in his letters to Franchomme (August 6, 1848) and Grzymala (July 18, 1848).

About a month after the concert at which he played in Manchester, Chopin gave one of his own in Glasgow. Here is what may be read in the Courier of September 28 and previous days:—

The net profits of this concert are said to have been 60 pounds. Mr. Muir Wood relates:—

No doubt Chopin's playing and compositions must have been to the good Glasgow citizens of that day what caviare is to the general. In fact, Scotland, as regards music, had at that period not yet emerged from its state of primitive savagery. But if we may believe the learned critic in the Glasgow Courier, Chopin's matinee was numerously attended, and the audience, which consisted of "the beauty and fashion, indeed of the very elite of the West-end," thoroughly enjoyed the playing of the concert-giver and the singing of Madame Adelasio de Margueritte who assisted him. I think the reader will be interested by the following specimen of criticism for more than one reason:—

Clearly this critic was not without judgment, although his literary taste and skill leave much to be desired. That there were real Chopin enthusiasts in Glasgow is proved by an effusion, full of praise and admiration, which the editor received from a correspondent and inserted on September 30, two days after the above criticism. But, without indulging our curiosity further, we will now take our leave of Glasgow and Glasgow critics.

On October 4, Chopin gave an evening concert in Edinburgh. Here is the programme:—

Mrs. Lyschinski told me that this concert was chiefly attended by the nobility. Half-a-guinea had never been charged for admission to a concert (which is probably overstating the case), and Chopin was little known. Miss Stirling, who was afraid the hall might not be filled, bought fifty pounds' worth of tickets. The piano on which Chopin played (one sent by Broadwood, and used in Glasgow as well as in Edinburgh) was afterwards sold for 30 pounds above the price. Thus, at any rate, runs the legend.

In the Edinburgh Courant, which contained on September 30 and on other days an advertisement similar to the Glasgow one (with the addition of a programme, consisting, however, only of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 6th items of the one above given), there appeared on October 7, 1848, a notice of the concert, a part of which may find a place here:—

An Edinburgh correspondent of the Musical World, who signs himself "M.," confirms (October 14, 1848) the statements of the critic of the Courant. From this communication we learn that one of the etudes played was in F minor (probably No. 2 of Op. 25, although there are two others in the same key—No. 9 of Op. 10 and No. 1 of Trois Etudes without opus number). The problematical Andante precede d'un Largo was, no doubt, a juxtaposition of two of his shorter compositions, this title being chosen to vary the programme. From Mr. Hipkins I learned that at this Chopin played frequently the slow movement from his Op. 22, Grande Polonaise preceded d'un Andante Spianato.

And now we will let Chopin again speak for himself.

Chopin to Grzymala; Keir, Perthshire, Sunday, October 1, 1848:—

Chopin to Gutmann; Calder House, October 16, 1848 (twelve miles from Edinburgh):—