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A third letter, supposed by Karasowski to be written at Valdemosa in February, I hold to be written at Marseilles in April. My dear friend, I am at Palma, among palms, cedars, cactuses, aloes, and olive, orange, lemon, fig, and pomegranate trees, &c., which the Jardin des Plantes possesses only thanks to its stoves.
The words of most of these songs are by his friend Stephen Witwicki; others are by Adam Mickiewicz, Bogdan Zaleski, and Sigismond Krasinski, poets with all of whom he was personally acquainted. Karasowski states that many songs sung by the people in Poland are attributed to Chopin, chief among them one entitled "The third of May."
Chopin died, October 17, 1849, between three and four in the morning, after having been shrived by the Abbe Jelowicki. His last word, according to Gavard, was "Plus," on being asked if he suffered. Regarding the touching and slightly melodramatic death bed scene on the day previous, when Delphine Potocka sang Stradella and Mozart or was it Marcello? Liszt, Karasowski, and Gutmann disagree.
Seeing that Liszt who was at the time in Italy and Karasowski speak only from hearsay, we cannot do better than accept George Sand's account, which contains nothing improbable. In connection with this migration to the south, I must, however, not omit to mention certain statements of Adolph Gutmann, one of Chopin's pupils. Here is the substance of what Gutmann told me.
The coffin was then carried from the church, all along the Boulevards, to the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise-a distance of three miles at least Meyerbeer and the other chief mourners, who held the cords, walking on foot, bareheaded. Karasowski mentions the same gentlemen as pall-bearers; Madame Audley, on the other hand, names Meyerbeer instead of Gutmann.
Very virtuoso-like, but not so intimate as some of the others. Karasowski selects No. 2 in C as an illustration. "It is as though the composer had sought for the moment to divert himself with narcotic intoxication only to fall back the more deeply into his original gloom." There is the peasant in the first bars in C, but the A minor and what follows soon disturb the air of bonhomie.
The time came when this factitious existence, which succeeded no longer in galvanising fibres dried up under the eyes of the spiritualistic artist, seemed to him to surpass what honour permitted him not to perceive. However unreliable Liszt's facts may be, the PHILOSOPHY of his account shows real insight. Karasowski, on the other hand, has neither facts nor insight.
Further on in the letter, after inviting Madame Marliani and her husband to come to Nohant in May, she proceeds thus: It can hardly be said that he enjoys himself in Marseilles; but he resigns himself to recover patiently. The following letter of Chopin to Fontana, which Karasowski thinks was written at Valdemosa in the middle of February, ought to be dated Marseilles, April, 1839:
Liszt and Karasowski, who follows him, say that the Countess sang the Hymn to the Virgin by Stradella, and a Psalm by Marcello; on the other hand, Gutmann most positively asserted that she sang a Psalm by Marcello and an air by Pergolesi; whereas Franchomme insisted on her having sung an air from Bellini's Beatrice di Tenda, and that only once, and nothing else.
Premising that Fetis in telling the story is less circumstantial and lays the scene of the incident in the pianoforte-saloon of Pleyel, I shall quote Karasowski's version, as he may have had direct information from Schulhoff, who since 1855 has lived much of his time at Dresden, where Karasowski also resides: Schulhoff came when quite a young man and as yet completely unknown to Paris.
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