1,1809, as in the biography by Karasowski, with whom agree
the earlier J. Fontana (Preface to Chopin's posthumous works.--1855),
C. Sowinski (Les musiciens polonais et slaves.--1857), and the writer
of the Chopin article in Mendel's Musikalisches Conversations-Lexikon
(1872). According to M. A. Szulc (Fryderyk Chopin.--1873) and the
inscription on the memorial (erected in 1880) in the Holy Cross Church
at Warsaw, the composer was born on March 2, 1809. The monument in Pere
Lachaise, at Paris, bears the date of Chopin's death, but not that of
his birth. Felis, in his Biographie universelle des musiciens, differs
widely from these authorities. The first edition (1835--1844) has
only the year--1810; the second edition (1861--1865) adds month and
day--February 8.]

in a mean little house at Zelazowa Wola, a village about twenty-eight
English miles from Warsaw belonging to the Countess Skarbek.

[FOOTNOTE: Count Wodzinski, after indicating the general features of
Polish villages--the dwor (manor-house) surrounded by a "bouquet of
trees"; the barns and stables forming a square with a well in the
centre; the roads planted with poplars and bordered with thatched huts;
the rye, wheat, rape, and clover fields, &c.--describes the birthplace
of Frederick Chopin as follows: "I have seen there the same dwor
embosomed in trees, the same outhouses, the same huts, the same plains
where here and there a wild pear-tree throws its shadow. Some steps from
the mansion I stopped before a little cot with a slated roof, flanked
by a little wooden perron. Nothing has been changed for nearly a hundred
years. A dark passage traverses it. On the left, in a room illuminated
by the reddish flame of slowly-consumed logs, or by the uncertain
light of two candles placed at each extremity of the long table,
the maid-servants spin as in olden times, and relate to each other a
thousand marvellous legends. On the right, in a lodging of three rooms,
so low that one can touch the ceiling, a man of some thirty years,
brown, with vivacious eyes, the face closely shaven." This man was
of course Nicholas Chopin. I need hardly say that Count Wodzinski's
description is novelistically tricked out. His accuracy may be judged
by the fact that a few pages after the above passage he speaks of the
discoloured tiles of the roof which he told his readers before was of
slate.]

The son of the latter, Count Frederick Skarbek, Nicholas Chopin's pupil,
a young man of seven