Frederic Chopin as a Man and Musician, vol 2 | Page 5

composer which perished in 1863: "Yesterday I met
George Sand...; she made a very disagreeable impression upon me."
Hiller in his Open Letter to Franz Liszt writes:--
One evening you had assembled in your apartments the aristocracy of
the French literary world--George Sand was of course one of the
company. On the way home Chopin said to me "What a repellent
[antipathische] woman the Sand is! But is she really a woman? I am
inclined to doubt it."
Liszt, in discussing this matter with me, spoke only of Chopin's
"reserve" towards George Sand, but said nothing of his "aversion" to
her. And according to this authority the novelist's extraordinary mind
and attractive conversation soon overcame the musician's reserve.
Alfred de Musset's experience had been of a similar nature. George
Sand did not particularly please him at first, but a few visits which he
paid her sufficed to inflame his heart with a violent passion. The
liaisons of the poet and musician with the novelist offer other points of
resemblance besides the one just mentioned: both Musset and Chopin
were younger than George Sand--the one six, the other five years; and
both, notwithstanding the dissimilarity of their characters, occupied the
position of a weaker half. In the case of Chopin I am reminded of a
saying of Sydney Smith, who, in speaking of his friends the historian
Grote and his wife, remarked: "I do like them both so much, for he is so
lady-like, and she is such a perfect gentleman." Indeed, Chopin was
described to me by his pupil Gutmann as feminine in looks, gestures,
and taste; as to George Sand, although many may be unwilling to admit
her perfect gentlemanliness, no one can doubt her manliness:--
Dark and olive-complexioned Lelia! [writes Liszt] thou hast walked in
solitary places, sombre as Lara, distracted as Manfred, rebellious as
Cain, but more fierce [farouche], more pitiless, more inconsolable than
they, because thou hast found among the hearts of men none feminine
enough to love thee as they have been loved, to pay to thy virile charms
the tribute of a confiding and blind submission, of a silent and ardent
devotion, to suffer his allegiance to be protected by thy Amazonian
strength!
The enthusiasm with which the Poles of her acquaintance spoke of their

countrywomen, and the amorous suavity, fulness of feeling, and
spotless nobleness which she admired in the Polish composer's
inspirations, seem to have made her anticipate, even before meeting
Chopin, that she would find in him her ideal lover, one whose love
takes the form of worship. To quote Liszt's words: "She believed that
there, free from all dependence, secure against all inferiority, her role
would rise to the fairy-like power of some being at once the superior
and the friend of man. "Were it not unreasonable to regard spontaneous
utterances-- expressions of passing moods and fancies, perhaps mere
flights of rhetoric--as well-considered expositions of stable principles,
one might be tempted to ask: Had George Sand found in Chopin the
man who was "bold or vile enough" to accept her "hard and clear"
conditions? [FOOTNOTE: See extract from one of her letters in the
preceding chapter, Vol. I., p. 334.]
While the ordinary position of man and woman was entirely reversed in
this alliance, the qualities which characterised them can nevertheless
hardly ever have been more nearly diametrically opposed. Chopin was
weak and undecided; George Sand strong and energetic. The former
shrank from inquiry and controversy; the latter threw herself eagerly
into them. [FOOTNOTE: George Sand talks much of the indolence of
her temperament: we may admit this fact, but must not overlook
another one--namely, that she was in possession of an immense fund of
energy, and was always ready to draw upon it whenever speech or
action served her purpose or fancy.] The one was a strict observer of
the laws of propriety and an almost exclusive frequenter of fashionable
society; the other, on the contrary, had an unmitigated scorn for the so-
called proprieties and so-called good society. Chopin's manners
exhibited a studied refinement, and no woman could be more particular
in the matter of dress than he was. It is characteristic of the man that he
was so discerning a judge of the elegance and perfection of a female
toilette as to be able to tell at a glance whether a dress had been made
in a first-class establishment or in an inferior one. The great composer
is said to have had an unlimited admiration for a well-made and well-
carried (bien porte) dress. Now what a totally different picture presents
itself when we turn to George Sand, who says of herself, in speaking of
her girlhood, that although never boorish or importunate, she was
always brusque in her movements and natural in her manners, and had

a horror