Chopin by Adam Zamoyski

Author:Adam Zamoyski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

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*Chopin’s expletives are typical of the unguarded way he wrote to his close friends, and should certainly not be taken, as they might be today, to denote anti-Semitism: the ‘Jew’ Léo remained one of his closest friends to the end, as did other Jews such as Thomas Albrecht, Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn, Moscheles and so on.

ELEVEN

Conjugal Life

George Sand had inherited Nohant from her father, a Napoleonic cavalry officer descended from an illegitimate daughter of the Maréchal de Saxe, himself a bastard of one of the Saxon kings of Poland. It was a comfortable rather than stylish eighteenth-century manor house standing on the edge of a village, with its own park stretching away on the other side. Not far away the river Indre flowed lazily through the flat landscape, which was beautiful, if a little melancholy.

Chopin was given a sunny room on the first floor with red and blue Chinese wallpaper and windows onto the garden. On one side a door led into a small book-lined study, beyond which was George Sand’s bedroom. On the other side of Chopin’s bedroom was a small room into which he later moved an upright piano. Life at Nohant was informal and there were no fixed hours. Guests could get up when they liked and have whatever breakfast they wished brought to their room, after which they were free to do as they chose until the bell called them to dinner at six o’clock.

George Sand would spend the night writing. She went to bed at five or six in the morning, and never got up before eleven or noon. She would pay no attention to her guests until dinner, after which she would sit with them until they retired, and then go back to work. Chopin on the other hand was always up early in the morning in order to work, and went to bed early. ‘We dine out in the open,’ wrote George Sand, ‘friends come over, first one, then another, we smoke and talk, and in the evening, when they have gone, Chopin plays to me in the dusk, after which he falls asleep like a child.’1 Not surprisingly, after only a couple of weeks of this regime, she was able to write to Charlotte Marliani: ‘his health improving mightily at Nohant. This life at least seems to be good for him.’2

Soon after they arrived, George Sand had called in one of her oldest friends, Dr Papet, to examine Chopin thoroughly. His verdict was that there was no evidence of tuberculosis, only a chronic infection of the larynx, and he was of the opinion that a steady diet, fresh air and a regular, restful life could repair Chopin’s constitution, echoing what the doctor on the Méléagre and Cauvière had said.

Chopin’s medical history has recently absorbed the attention of a number of experts, who have pointed out a glaringly obvious fact hitherto ignored by biographers – namely that not every lapse in the artist’s health must be related to one underlying chronic malady. It is, for instance, clear that he suffered from gastro-intestinal problems from an early age.

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