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How greatly the interiors of George Sand's pavilions in the Rue Pigalle differed from those of Senor Gomez's villa and the cells in the monastery of Valdemosa, may be gathered from Gutmann's description of two of the apartments. Regarding the small salon, he gives only the general information that it was quaintly fitted up with antique furniture.
It was Turgenev who spoke of the half hundred countesses in Europe who claimed to have held the dying Chopin in their arms. In reality he died in Gutmann's, raising that pupil's hand to his mouth and murmuring "cher ami" as he expired. Solange Sand was there, but not her mother, who called and was not admitted so they say. Gutmann denies having refused her admittance.
Madame Rubio, on the other hand, confined herself to stating that Chopin put her through Hummel, Moscheles, and Bach; and did not mention Beethoven at all. Gutmann's statements concerning his master's teaching contain some positive evidence with regard to the Beethoven question.
The sounds which he drew from the pianoforte were pure tone without the least admixture of anything that might be called noise. "He never thumped," was Gutmann's remark to me.
A married sister of Gutmann's remembers that Chopin had already, in 1843-4, to be carried upstairs, when he visited her mother, who in that year was staying with her children in Paris; to walk upstairs, even with assistance, would have been impossible to him.
While the priest was reading the prayers for the dying, he rested silently and with his eyes closed upon Gutmann's shoulder; but at the end of the prayers he opened his eyes wide and said with a loud voice: "Amen." The Polish priest above mentioned was the Abbe Alexander Jelowicki.
Gutmann's account does not tally in several of its details with Moscheles'. As, however, Moscheles does not give us reminiscences, but sober, business-like notes taken down at the time they refer to, and without any attempt at making a nice story, he is the safer authority.
With regard to this story of Gutmann's it has, however, to be stated that, though it may have some foundation of fact, it is not true as he told it; for Wessel certainly had published the Berceuse by June 26, 1845, and also published in the course of time the five following works. Then, however, the connection was broken off by Wessel.
Chopin died in this same Gutmann's arms, and, despite de Lenz, Gutmann was in evidence until his death as a "favorite pupil." And now we have reached the grandest oh, banal and abused word of Chopin's compositions, the Fantaisie in F minor, op. 49.
Unfortunately, I cannot speak of Gutmann's playing from experience, for although I spent eight days with him, it was on a mountain-top in the Tyrol, where there were no pianos. But Chopin's belief in Gutmann counts with me for something, and so does Moscheles' reference to him as Chopin's "excellent pupil"; more valuable, I think, than either is the evidence of Dr.
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