ss of Frederick must indeed
have been considerable, for in Clementina Tanska-Hofmanowa's Pamiatka po
dobrej matce (Memorial of a good Mother) [FOOTNOTE: Published in 1819.]
the writer relates that she was at a soiree at Gr----'s, where she found
a numerous party assembled, and heard in the course of the evening young
Chopin play the piano--"a child not yet eight years old, who, in the
opinion of the connoisseurs of the art, promises to replace Mozart."
Before the boy had completed his ninth year his talents were already so
favourably known that he was invited to take part in a concert which was
got up by several persons of high rank for the benefit of the poor. The
bearer of the invitation was no less a person than Ursin Niemcewicz, the
publicist, poet, dramatist, and statesman, one of the most remarkable
and influential men of the Poland of that day. At this concert, which
took place on February 24, 1818, the young virtuoso played a concerto
by Adalbert Gyrowetz, a composer once celebrated, but now ignominiously
shelved--sic transit gloria mundi--and one of Riehl's "divine
Philistines." An anecdote shows that at that time Frederick was neither
an intellectual prodigy nor a conceited puppy, but a naive, modest child
that played the pianoforte, as birds sing, with unconscious art. When
he came home after the concert, for which of course he had been arrayed
most splendidly and to his own great satisfaction, his mother said to
him: "Well, Fred, what did the public like best?"--"Oh, mamma," replied
the little innocent, "everybody was looking at my collar."

The debut was a complete success, and our Frederick--Chopinek
(diminutive of Chopin) they called him--became more than ever the pet of
the aristocracy of Warsaw. He was invited to the houses of the Princes
Czartoryski, Sapieha, Czetwertynski, Lubecki, Radziwill, the Counts
Skarbek, Wolicki, Pruszak, Hussarzewski, Lempicki, and others. By the
Princess Czetwertynska, who, says Liszt, cultivated music with a true
feeling of its beauties, and whose salon was one of the most brilliant
and select of Warsaw, Frederick was introduced to the Princess Lowicka,
the beautiful Polish wife of the Grand Duke Constantine, who, as
Countess Johanna Antonia Grudzinska, had so charmed the latter that,
in order to obtain the Emperor's consent to his marriage with her, he
abdicated his right of succession to the throne. The way in which
she exerted her influence over her brutal, eccentric, if