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Updated: May 31, 2025
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.
Gutmann, on the other hand, related that George Sand came to the landing of the staircase and asked him if she might see Chopin; but that he advised her strongly against it, as it was likely to excite the patient too much.
Let us, therefore, hear first what Chopin's pupils have got to say on this point, and then go and inquire further. Gutmann said that Chopin played generally very quietly, and rarely, indeed hardly ever, fortissimo. As for the famous octave passages which occur in it, he began them pianissimo and continued thus without much increase in loudness. And, then, Chopin never thumped.
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.
A. C. Mackenzie, who at my request visited Gutmann several times in Florence and was favourably impressed by his playing, in which he noticed especially beauty of tone combined with power. As far as I can make out Gutmann planned only once, in 1846, a regular concert-tour, being furnished for it by Chopin with letters of introduction to the highest personages in Berlin, Warsaw, and St. Petersburg.
Gutmann was sure that this matinee took place either in 1836 or in 1837, and was inclined to think that it was in the first-mentioned year. Franchomme, whom I questioned about the matinee at the Marquis de Custine's, had no recollection of it. Nor did he remember the circumstance of having on this or any other occasion played a trio of Mayseder's with Gutmann and Vidal.
Chopin, his future assured, moved to Place Vendome, No. 12. There he died. His sister Louise was sent for, and came from Poland to Paris. In the early days of October he could no longer sit upright without support. Gutmann and the Countess Delphine Potocka, his sister, and M. Gavard, were constantly with him.
It was indeed small, but at the same time it was thin, light, delicately articulated, and, if I may say so, highly expressive. Chopin's whole body was extraordinarily flexible. According to Gutmann, he could, like a clown, throw his legs over his shoulders.
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.
Another cause, he thought, was Chopin's disagreements with Maurice Sand. There were hasty remarks and sharp retorts between lover and son, and scenes in consequence. Gutmann is a very unsatisfactory informant, everything he read and heard seemed to pass through the retort of his imagination and reappear transformed as his own experience.
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