“Also, if you will permit me to say this, I believe she is jealous. I suppose no one could be the daughter of one so famous and not be resentful of time taken away from her, of attentions shared by others when she wants them for herself alone. Far be it from me to advise you to deny yourself for her sake. But you must be prepared for the revenge she will take on you.”
I said nothing. Already I had seen evidence of this. The carefree relationship Solange and I had enjoyed in Switzerland was now only a memory. A few days ago, when I had awakened and begun looking over my work from the night before, I saw that three consecutive pages from the middle of my pile were missing. I looked around my room, under the bed, even on the ground outside the window I had left cracked open. The pages were nowhere to be found. But when I came into the dining room, I saw that they had been thrown into the fireplace and burned: a quarter of one page lay with its charred edges off to one side, in the ashes. I knew who had done it, and I called Solange into my bedroom to account for herself. “Was it you who burned my manuscript pages?” I asked.
She stared at me, her face cold and unyielding.
“Why?”
Again, I was met with silence, and I dismissed her. I knew why she had burned the pages. She craved her mother’s love the same way I had craved my own mother’s—and still did. And as I was never satisfied, so Solange was destined to be always wanting. My mother was a slave to her need for love and attention. As an artist, I belonged primarily to my work. But whereas I, for the most part, had suffered in silence from the wrongdoings of my mother, Solange would not. Perhaps could not.
I rewrote the pages and found them better than before.
Living with me that winter, Arabella discovered other things about me. My capriciousness was revealed in all its glory; every day gave her another example of how indecisive I could be; she remarked upon it humorously, but with her brows knit. She came to understand that what many people misinterpreted as coldness or disdain was actually my shyness. She, who outfitted herself in wildly expensive dresses and jewels every morning, whose hair needed to be styled just so, saw that what I preferred most was a peasant’s smock.
Most tellingly, though, she saw my weakness and hypocrisy in love. Despite having renounced romantic love in general and Michel de Bourges in particular, I still wrote passionate letters to him, begging to simply cast my eyes upon him. One night, I showed her one in which I had written,
The delights of love are to be found not only in those fleeting hours of furious passion which send the soul careening madly to the stars, but also in the innocent and persevering tenderness of intimacy.
She looked up from reading, and I expected her to express sympathy, or agreement that the best part of love was indeed that gentle intimacy, or at least admiration for the way I had with words. But she only said, “I should have thought you would have preferred Chopin.”
She leaned over and touched my hand, and her eyes softened. “Poor George. Such a fire in your soul, and nothing for it to lay hold upon.”
It is one thing to keep the shadow of love’s humiliation hidden in a corner of one’s soul; it is another to have someone bring it out into the open. Being revealed in this way is devastating, but it is a relief, too; one has no choice then but to acknowledge the truth, and begin the process of moving forward.
—
LISZT CAME BACK IN MAY, and the house was full of sublime pleasures. He and Arabella were in the bedroom below me. Near their window, I had stationed a piano for him, and I often wrote to the sounds of his composing. I thought the birds must be in thrall to his music, for they fell silent whenever he played. Sometimes I paused in my storytelling to listen to the broken phrases he began, then left suspended in the air; and it seemed as though the breezes outside carried the music onward, where it brushed against the nodding blossoms in the garden before lifting itself heavenward.
After dinner, we would gather on the patio to talk and smoke, and one evening Arabella, who loved to dress dramatically, came outside in a diaphanous white gown and a long white veil that fell to her heels. She talked with us for a while, then rose to walk around the grounds. She was like a ghost; she would vanish behind the trees and then silently appear again. Franz and I watched her as if in a dream, beneath a rising moon that finally settled, seemingly caught in the branches of the pines. In the stillness, one could almost hear the heartbeat of the earth. I sought out Franz’s eyes and understood that he heard music in what we were seeing. As for me, phrases floated into my brain. I believed that the next day each of us would translate some part of the experience into our respective art.
—
MY GUESTS AND I had had a very pleasant day. The weather was fine for hiking, and Franz and Arabella had accompanied Maurice, Solange, and me for a long walk. The countryside offered gifts at every step: a slight give to the warm earth, wildflowers grouped like freestanding bouquets, clear running streams, birdsong of every variety, the inviting darkness and spicy pine scent of the woods.
Afterward, we had a dinner of roast chicken stuffed with lemon and garlic, fingerling potatoes, and a mix of lovely vegetables from the garden, followed by an apple tart. Then we adjourned to the drawing room, where we enjoyed piano music from Franz, card games, and charades. Maurice and Solange, who were exhausted, went to bed after that, but Arabella lingered with Franz and me. Then she, too, began to yawn and excused herself.
“I suppose I should try to work a bit,” I told Franz, “but I am enjoying your company.”
“I have work to do as well,” he said. “Why don’t we do so together? I shall sit at one end of the dining room table, you at the other.”
I was not sure we could work in each other’s company, but I agreed to it. Anyway, my work had been going so poorly I doubted I’d get much done no matter where I sat.
We gathered our materials, took our places, and tended to our individual endeavors. Franz worked on a score; I worked on an as yet unnamed novel. There were the sounds of quiet, for quiet is rarely absolute: the clock ticking, the house creaking, the wind rising up now and again, the owls hooting. I tightened my shawl about myself as the night deepened and the air grew cool. Once, I silently brought tea to both of us.
There was in Liszt’s company a rare peace. I knew that he would not interrupt me, and I knew, too, that he would not be jealous of work that took me away from paying attention to him. It is to be expected that people who are not artists might not understand the need for one to immerse oneself totally in one’s work; but it also sometimes happens that other artists feel no compunctions about interrupting, or in feeling slighted that one’s attention is not focused on them first and foremost. What jealousy can be inspired by a person’s singular devotion to something the other cannot share! It was a concern for Liszt, I knew, who had once confided to me that it was difficult to play the piano with a woman’s arms around his neck.
Just as the sky was beginning to lighten, I wrote a few lines to finish a scene. Then, as quietly as I could, I began to gather my papers so that I might retire.
“Don’t go,” Franz said.
I looked up at him. “I don’t want to disturb your work.”
He smiled. “I have been finished with my work for some time. I have been watching you.”
I was embarrassed. “I’m afraid there is not much to see.”
“Ah, you are wrong. The words you are writing play out upon your brow. It is fascinating to behold.”
“As music is represented in your face when you play.”
“Without a doubt. But you also sigh quite often.”
“Do I?”
He nodded solemnly, then imitated me, arranging his features into what I suppose he thought was a reasonable facsimile of feminine expression and heaving a sigh.
I burst out laughing, quickly covering my mouth; I did not want to wake the others.
Then I said, “Do you know, Franz, some mornings I sit in my room when I awaken, waiting to hear the sounds of your piano. And I often grow q
uite impatient that you have not yet started when I am ready for you to!”
“I thought you slept the mornings away.”
“Only when I am working well. I am not working well lately. Tonight was an exception. When I am happy, my pen can barely keep up with my thoughts. When I am in despair, my imagination is as flat and lifeless as my spirit.”
“Tell me, dear friend. What is the sorrow that fills you with such despair?”
“It is simple. I am not loved.”
“But your friends, your children, your many admirers! And surely you must know how much I love you!”
“I am grateful for that. But I need romantic love as I need air to breathe. I need someone to offer body, heart, and soul and to accept mine in return.”
Franz rose from his chair and came to sit closer to me. He took hold of my hands. “George, the soul of a man belongs only to God. And that is how it should be.”
“I know you believe that, Franz. I know that you have not lost the ardor for God that you had as a child.”
It was one of the things that made us immediately close, the similarities Franz and I shared with regard to mysticism. Early on, he had confided in me, somewhat shyly, how he used to speak aloud to the statue of the Virgin that was at his bedside as a boy. I had told him about Corambe and even shown him the spot where I had made my altar. He had moved forward into the space and stood quietly, his back to me. Then he had turned around to say, “I can feel what this place was to you.” I had nodded, my heart full. How glad I had been to have met someone who as a youth had longed for the same transcendence, who had read the same books as I, who had considered devoting his life to the church even as I once had.
“Imagine, Franz,” I said now, “if we had followed our earliest longings, you would now be a priest and I a nun!”
Franz smiled wryly. “It seems we have strayed far from that course. I fear you and your bold demands for personal freedom have had a corrupting influence on me!”
“Not fair, for you are your own bad influence! Your mind is divided between aesthetic ideals and lust for women, and your heart cannot choose between the need for freedom and the need for love.”
He sighed. “You are right.”
We were quiet for a long moment, enjoying the comfortable silence the way good friends can. But then a kind of melancholy came upon me and I said, “We both long for something bigger than ourselves. But whereas you still seek that in God, I now search for it in love. Perhaps we are both irrational and destined always to be disappointed.”
Franz began to speak, then stopped himself.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Please understand that I say this with love, George. With love and great concern. I may sometimes be disappointed, but I do not despair as you do. I fear that in your romantic relationships, you tend toward the self-destructive. You choose men because they need you, not because you love them. You begin in passion but move quickly to maternal feelings.”
I thought for a moment. “If that is so,” I said, “perhaps it is because I feel that if they depend on me, they will not leave me. If they will not leave me, I can open my heart to them.”
“But where in this equation is there room for you to be cared for? You give disproportionately, and then you suffer the consequences.”
I had heard these words before. I pulled my hands away and sat straighter in my chair. “You have been talking with Arabella. I see that she has shared her conclusions about my heart’s concerns with you.”
He started to defend her, but I held up my hand. “You are more of a friend to me than she. Had you not been away on tour, I would no doubt have shared my feelings with you rather than her.”
“But do you agree with what you call her conclusions?”
“Do you?”
“Ah, George. I am afraid I do.”
I wanted to argue vigorously, but the words rang true. How much of the failure of my love affairs lay squarely with me? How much did I contribute to the end of things because of habit, or example, or fear? How much did what I shared with Marie Dorval make the failure of any other relationship a foregone conclusion? I did not know. It is an ongoing and exasperating truth about our species that one can be remarkably astute about others but blind to oneself.
But Franz had problems of his own. I leaned forward and looked directly into his eyes to say, “We both are ill-suited for love. You want a woman to be a golden-haired angel fallen to earth. Then, when your fantasy is inevitably revealed as being all too human, you want to run away.”
Franz’s stomach growled just then. “The body speaks,” he said. “The body begs us to move from anguish to bread.”
Over breakfast, we changed our conversation to something less threatening to both of us. I suggested that language was limited for creative expression, but music was not.
“No, music is limited, too: to the power of the instrument, to the power of the musician’s imagination, to one’s ability to let go of conscious thought in favor of an unseen power.”
“It seems we are back to mysticism,” I said, and then, hearing rapid footsteps above us, I added, “And to the start of a new day.”
“Before you go, if I may be a priest after all, peace be with you,” Franz said.
“And with my spirit,” I answered. I did wish for it, truly.
August 1837
PARIS
On a lovely summer afternoon, my mother died. She was unaware of the seriousness of her condition, a liver that failed her. Her doctors had told my half sister, Caroline, and me that her pain was now over and there was no need to let her know that she had not long for the world. He advised us to let her last days be happy ones, and indeed they had seemed to be. We took her for a carriage ride through Paris, despite her dramatic weakness, and she smiled throughout. Her last words, to Caroline, were “Please tidy my hair.” Afterward, she looked at herself in the hand mirror, smiled, and her soul flew away.
She was buried in Montmartre Cemetery. The next day, before I returned to Nohant, I stood by her grave and let wash over me all the memories of her I could recall. Flowers and butterflies were everywhere; it seemed incongruous to have tears on my face and a leaden ache in my heart that made it hard to breathe. My mother had been as difficult in her later years as she ever had been; I never knew, when I visited her, what face I would be met with. But she had been the first one to hear the stories I made up and, when she was in the mood, the one who most ardently praised them. I remembered clearly her pulling me onto her lap and kissing me what seemed like thousands of times, then putting my hands together to make me applaud my own ingenuity. She had taken me to the theater when we had no money for bread. She had instilled in me respect for honesty, and she had been a fierce defender of my actions when I had gone to court to separate from Casimir.
There was a flame in my heart for my mother that burned steadily all my life, regardless of the way she treated me. Overall, I believe that she tried her best. She was a deeply passionate woman, one who in another life would have had her many talents broadened and widely praised. She was broken irretrievably by the death of the truest love she had known, all but mortally wounded; yet she lived on as best she could.
And I was her daughter.
June 1838
PARIS
A kind of turning point came between me and Chopin. Though months had gone by without any contact between us, we had long had an interest in each other. But that spring I came to Paris often, and he and I saw each other then. He would play for me, and afterward we would talk long into the night.
It was on one of those evenings that I had come close to achieving the kind of intimacy I sought. We shared a kiss, and afterward I pressed against him, letting him know that I was eager for more. But the mood evaporated when Chopin stepped back from me, flustered, and said, “Certain deeds could spoil the remembrance.”
By then I knew the man as tidy, fastidious; he was exacting, with his insistence on lavender kid gloves, silk waistcoats, muted c
ravats, the finest leather boots, and hats made light so as not to bear down too heavily upon him. When he was out, his shirts were white batiste; when he taught, he wore white muslin blouses with mother-of pearl buttons. He would not be without his good soaps and his scented water. He was extraordinarily sensitive: a rose petal in a snowstorm. His manners were exquisite; he was a model of discretion and had a truly kind heart. But he was also full of contradictions: he would “fall in love” with three women in one evening and not go home with or even follow up with a single one. He loved his homeland, Poland, passionately; he had relished living in a household where intellectuals connected to the European Enlightenment gathered; but he made himself an exile rather than live under Russian rule. He knew himself to be possessed of frail health because of his numerous respiratory problems (some said he was consumptive), yet he refused to eat well or get enough rest.
Most bafflingly, he seemed to want out of a self-imposed prison regarding the display of his affection, yet he did nothing about it. Liszt said that Chopin gave everything but himself. I knew Chopin had been hurt in love by a young Polish girl whose parents had disallowed their marriage, but that had been long ago.
I wrote for help to Count Albert Grzymala, our mutual friend and Chopin’s countryman, asking for guidance. If Chopin’s affections were bound up with another, I said, I would desist in my attempts to forge an intimate relationship with him. But otherwise, what would compel him to open himself to me? What lay behind his inability to indulge in the joys of an intimate and exclusive relationship? I wanted to care for him, who needed care; did Grzymala think he would let me?
It was a very long letter, and in it I did a great deal of soul-searching. I wanted to be fair, to be honorable, to be honest. I did not want to force myself upon someone who would rather I not do so. But Chopin’s responses to me had varied so much I was lost in confusion.