e with
the facts of the case, is a quotation from G. Sand's novel Lucrezia
Floriani (of which more will be said by-and-by), in which the authoress
is supposed, although this was denied by her, to have portrayed Chopin.
Liszt is a poet, not a chronicler; he must be read as such, and not
be taken au pied de la lettre. However, even Karasowski, in whom one
notices a perhaps unconscious anxiety to keep out of sight anything
which might throw doubt on the health and strength of his hero, is
obliged to admit that Chopin was "delicate," although he hastens to
add, "but nevertheless healthy and pretty strong." It seems to me
that Karasowski makes too much of the statement of a friend of
Chopin's--namely, that the latter was, up to manhood, only once ill, and
then with nothing worse than a cold. Indeed, in Karasowski's narrative
there are not wanting indications that the health of Chopin cannot have
been very vigorous; nor his strength have amounted to much; for in one
place we read that the youth was no friend of long excursions on foot,
and preferred to lie down and dream under beautiful trees; in another
place, that his parents sent him to Reinerz and some years afterwards
to Vienna, because they thought his studies had affected his health,
and that rest and change of air and scene would restore his strength.
Further, we are told that his mother and sisters never tired of
recommending him to wrap up carefully in cold and wet weather, and
that, like a good son and brother, he followed their advice. Lastly,
he objected to smoking. Some of the items of this evidence are very
trivial, but taken collectively they have considerable force. Of greater
significance are the following additional items. Chopin's sister Emilia
was carried off at the age of fourteen by pulmonary disease, and his
father, as a physician informed me, died of a heart and chest complaint.
Stephen Heller, who saw Chopin in 1830 in Warsaw, told me that the
latter was then in delicate health, thin and with sunken cheeks, and
that the people of Warsaw said that he could not live long, but would,
like so many geniuses, die young. The real state of the matter seems
to me to have been this. Although Chopin in his youth was at no time
troubled with any serious illness, he enjoyed but fragile health, and if
his frame did not alreadv contain the seeds of the disease to which he
later fell a prey, it was a favourable soil for their reception.
How easily was an organisation