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Part 3: England, Scotland and Pere la Chaise (Ch. III)

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Part 3 of chopin-the-man-and-his-music (Chapter III: England, Scotland and Pere la Chaise).

Question this unit answers

How did Chopin’s last years play out — the 1848 British tour and the death and burial in Paris — and what do the surviving eyewitness accounts actually establish, as against the legends that grew around his deathbed?

Key terms

  • Pere la Chaise — the Paris cemetery where Chopin was buried; Huneker uses it as shorthand for the closing act of the life.
  • Matinee musicale — the mid-day drawing-room concert format Chopin used in London and Glasgow, aimed at an aristocratic subscription audience.
  • Viaticum / Extreme Unction — the Catholic last rites administered by Abbe Jelowicki, central to the eyewitness death narrative.
  • “More loved than loving” — Huneker’s formula for Chopin’s surface affection toward friends.
  • Posthumous publications — works issued against Chopin’s dying instruction to burn his inferior compositions.
  • Funeral march (B flat minor) — the movement from the sonata, orchestrated by Henri Reber for the Madeleine funeral.
  • Abbe Jelowicki letters — the document Huneker prints in full, first time in English (trans. Hugh Craig), routed via La Mara’s German version.
  • Jane Stirling — Scottish pupil, dedicatee of the two nocturnes op. 55, organizer of the Scottish visit and secret donor of 25,000 francs.

Propositions

  1. Chopin’s final years were materially lonely: his father (1844), his sister Emilia, and John Matuszynski all died, leaving only Grzymala and Fontana as close confidants (Ch. III).
  2. Chopin’s friendships were warm in manner but shallow in substance — he was “more loved than loving,” which makes his character hard to read (Ch. III).
  3. The English visit of April 1848 to January 1849 produced no significant artistic success; it is chiefly a record of ill-health and complaint (Ch. III).
  4. Part of the London musical press attacked Chopin out of malice and stupidity, but he was too ill to be much wounded (Ch. III).
  5. Chopin could not function without female attention — Jane Stirling, Princess Czartoryska, Jenny Lind all orbited him — and “a woman was always within call” (Ch. III).
  6. Physical collapse, not merely temperament, defined the Scottish tour: he had to be carried up and down stairs in Edinburgh and still played concerts (Ch. III).
  7. The Glasgow concert of 27 September 1848 was a social success but a commercial and sonic failure: profits of about L60 against Paganini’s L1,400 for two Glasgow concerts sixteen years earlier, and a touch too feeble to avoid monotony (Ch. III).
  8. Chopin disliked England and the English, and said so bluntly on the way back to Paris (Ch. III).
  9. Chopin was financially rescued in his last months by concealed charity: Countess Obreskoff quietly paid half his Rue Chaillot rent, and Jane Stirling sent 25,000 francs (Ch. III).
  10. He died in Gutmann’s arms at 12 Place Vendome on 17 October 1849, between three and four in the morning — not in the arms of the “half hundred countesses” who later claimed the honour (Ch. III).
  11. Chopin’s explicit dying instruction that his weak compositions be burned has been ignored, and the posthumous publications are mostly feeble (Ch. III).
  12. Accounts of the deathbed diverge sharply — Liszt, Karasowski, and Gutmann disagree about the Potocka singing scene, and Gutmann denies barring George Sand from the room (Ch. III).
  13. Lombroso’s reading of Chopin’s burial instructions and Sand anecdote as symptoms of insanity is worthless: it elevates gossip into diagnosis (Ch. III).

Arguments

  • Against the biographical grandeur reflex. Huneker refuses to make the ending heroic — “a life not for a moment heroic, yet lived according to his lights” — while still insisting on its freedom from vulgarity. The argument is that dignity and heroism are separable, and Chopin had only the first.
  • Documentary caution. Huneker prints the Jelowicki letters in full because they are new to English readers, but immediately flags two grounds for scepticism: the abbe “must have had a phenomenal memory,” and the text reached him through La Mara’s German translation. He then falls back on the consensus rather than the document: everyone agrees the end was serene.
  • Illness as camouflage. Because Chopin had been visibly dying for a decade and repeatedly reported dead, the real death was met with disbelief. The chronic condition made the fatal one invisible — Huneker uses this to explain the public’s slow reaction rather than to indict it.
  • Controversy as a signature. The disagreement at the graveside is not treated as an accident of reporting but as characteristic: Chopin “was always the calm centre of argument,” so a contested funeral is of a piece with a contested life.

Evidence

  • Franchomme and Gutmann each privately told Niecks that he was Chopin’s alter ego — used as evidence that the intimacy was distributed and therefore thin.
  • Hipkins is named as the chief authority on the English visit, with Hueffer, Bennett, and Niecks all drawing from him.
  • Concrete London dates and venues: arrival 21 April 1848; a Mozart duet with Benedict at the Duchess of Sutherland’s; matinees at Adelaide Kemble’s and Lord Falmouth’s on 23 June and 7 July, with Viardot-Garcia singing.
  • The Glasgow “Courier” advertisement, reproduced verbatim: Merchant Hall, Wednesday 27 September, half-past two, tickets half-a-guinea from Mr. Muir Wood, 42 Buchanan Street.
  • Muir Wood’s testimony on the audience (unprecedented number of private carriages, county people rather than Glasgow citizens) and on the difficulty of arranging the concert, Chopin “constantly changed his mind.”
  • Dr. James Hedderwick’s physical description — pale gray suit, whiskerless, consulting a watch “no bigger than an agate stone on the forefinger of an alderman” — and his verdict that Chopin was marked for an early grave.
  • Julius Seligmann’s account: hall three-quarters filled, Madame Adelasio de Margueritte singing between groups, an encore of the mazurka in B flat op. 7 no. 1 repeated with different nuances, an audience including the Duchess of Argyll and Lady Blantyre.
  • George Russell Alexander on the “pale, cadaverous appearance” and his own need to leave the room to recover.
  • Osborne on the Manchester concert of 28 August: the playing was too delicate to create enthusiasm.
  • Mathias on Chopin in 1847: swelling legs, bent back, bowed head, “always amiable and full of distinction.”
  • Funeral particulars: buried from the Madeleine on 30 October; Reber’s orchestration of the B flat minor funeral march; Lefebure-Wely playing the E and B minor Preludes on the organ; pall-bearers Meyerbeer, Delacroix, Pleyel, Franchomme, as reported by Gautier.
  • Kwiatowski’s report to Niecks that Chopin was buried in his concert evening clothes, but not by his own request.

Quotes

  • “So he was ‘more loved than loving.’” (Ch. III)
  • “It is safe to say that a woman was always within call of Chopin.” (Ch. III)
  • “his playing was too delicate to create enthusiasm and I felt truly sorry for him” (Ch. III)
  • “He lived ten miraculous years with a breath ready to fly away” (Ch. III)
  • “the want of power made his playing somewhat monotonous” (Ch. III)
  • “I owe it to the public, and to myself to publish only good things.” (Ch. III)
  • “She said to me that I would die in no arms but hers.” (Ch. III)
  • “his death was the most beautiful concerto of all his life” (Ch. III)
  • “Even at his grave in Pere la Chaise no two persons could agree about Chopin.” (Ch. III)
  • The abbe’s Chopin vs. Huneker’s Chopin. Jelowicki’s document gives a doubter converted by visible rays of divine light, ending as “a saint.” Huneker prints it whole, then quietly dismantles its reliability. Two incompatible registers sit inside one chapter, and Huneker does not resolve them.
  • Sand’s exclusion. Whether George Sand called and was refused, or never called, is left open — “so they say” — while Chopin’s remark to Franchomme two days before death suggests he was still thinking of her. Connects back to the Nohant years in Ch. II.
  • Dying wish vs. published canon. The instruction to burn the weaker works is directly at odds with the posthumous catalogue that later Chopin scholarship (and Huneker’s own later chapters on the music) depends on.
  • Physical decline vs. interpretive delicacy. Contemporaries describe feebleness of touch, yet also “finish, grace, elegance.” The same playing reads as refinement or as weakness depending on the listener — relevant to any discussion of Chopin’s own performance style and dynamic range.
  • Charity vs. pride. The Rue Chaillot rent deception and the Stirling packet show that his last independence was staged for him; the packet was mislaid by the portress and only recovered after she was accused.

Open questions

  • Did Chopin play at the English court? Huneker leaves it unanswered — “Whether he played at court the Queen can tell; Niecks cannot.”
  • What was actually sung at the deathbed on 16 October: Stradella, Mozart, or Marcello? The sources conflict.
  • How much of the Jelowicki narrative survives the double translation (French to German by La Mara, German to English by Hugh Craig)?
  • Was the “Ca a plus d’intelligence que des Anglais” remark genuine contempt or nonsense taken too seriously by Niedzwiecki?
  • Which specific posthumous publications does Huneker consider “feeble stuff,” and does he hold to that judgment in Part II?

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