enjoyed a
brief dream of marrying and of settling near Warsaw, teaching and
composing--the occasional dream that tempts most active artists,
soothing them with the notion that there is really a haven of rest from
the world's buffets. Again the gods intervened in the interest of
music. The father of the girl objected on the score of Chopin's means
and his social position--artists were not Paderewskis in those
days--although the mother favored the romance. The Wodzinskis were
noble and wealthy. In the summer of 1836, at Marienbad, Chopin met
Marie again. In 1837, the engagement was broken and the following year
the inconstant beauty married the son of Chopin's godfather, Count
Frederic Skarbek. As the marriage did not prove a success--perhaps the
lady played too much Chopin--a divorce ensued and later she married a
gentleman by the name of Orpiszewski. Count Wodzinski wrote "Les Trois
Romans de Frederic Chopin," in which he asserts that his sister
rejected Chopin at Marienbad in 1836. But Chopin survived the shock. He
went back to Paris, and in July 1837, accompanied by Camille Pleyel and
Stanislas Kozmian, visited England for the first time. His stay was
short, only eleven days, and his chest trouble dates from this time. He
played at the house of James Broadwood, the piano manufacturer, being
introduced by Pleyel as M. Fritz; but his performance betrayed his
identity. His music was already admired by amateurs but the critics
with a few exceptions were unfavorable to him.

Now sounds for the first time the sinister motif of the George Sand
affair. In deference to Mr. Hadow I shall not call it a liaison. It was
not, in the vulgar sense. Chopin might have been petty--a common
failing of artistic men--but he was never vulgar in word or deed. He
disliked "the woman with the sombre eye" before he had met her. Her
reputation was not good, no matter if George Eliot, Matthew Arnold,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and others believed her an injured saint.
Mr. Hadow indignantly repudiates anything that savors of irregularity
in the relations of Chopin and Aurore Dudevant. If he honestly believes
that their contemporaries flagrantly lied and that the woman's words
are to be credited, why by all means let us leave the critic in his
Utopia. Mary, Queen of Scots, has her Meline; why should not Sand boast
of at least one apologist for her life--besides herself? I do not say
this with cynical intent. Nor do I propose to discuss the details