NTERCOURSE WITH MUSICIANS (OSBORNE, BERLIOZ, BAILLOT,
CHERUBINI, KALKBRENNER, FONTANA, SOWINSKI, WOLFF, MEYERBEER, ALKAN,
ETC.).--HIS FRIENDSHIP WITH LISZT.--HIS DISLIKE TO LETTER-WRITING.

George Sand, although one of the cleverest of the literary portrayers
who have tried their hand at Chopin, cannot be regarded as one of the
most impartial; but it must be admitted that in describing her deserted
lover as un homme du monde par excellence, non pas du monde trop
officiel, trop nombreux, she says what is confirmed by all who
have known him, by his friends, foes, and those that are neither.
Aristocratic society, with which he was acquainted from his earliest
childhood, had always a great charm for him. When at the beginning
of 1833, a little more than two years after his arrival in Paris,
he informed his friend Dziewanowski that he moved in the highest
society--among ambassadors, princes, and ministers--it is impossible not
to see that the fact gives him much satisfaction. Without going so far
as to say with a great contemporary of Chopin, Stephen Heller, that the
higher you go in society the greater is the ignorance you find, I
think that little if any good for either heart or mind can come from
intercourse with that section of the people which proudly styles itself
"society" (le monde). Many individuals that belong to it possess, no
doubt, true nobility, wisdom, and learning, nay, even the majority
may possess one or the other or all of them in some degree, but these
qualities are so out of keeping with the prevailing frivolity that few
have the moral courage to show their better nature. If Chopin imagined
that he was fully understood as an artist by society, he was sadly
mistaken. Liszt and Heller certainly held that he was not fully
understood, and they did not merely surmise or speak from hearsay, for
neither of them was a stranger in that quarter, although the latter
avoided it as much as possible. What society could and did appreciate in
Chopin was his virtuosity, his elegance, and his delicacy. It is not my
intention to attempt an enumeration of Chopin's aristocratic friends and
acquaintances, but in the dedications of his works the curious will
find the most important of them. There, then, we read the names of the
Princess Czartoryska, Countess Plater, Countess Potocka, Princesse de
Beauvau, Countess Appony, Countess Esterhazy, Comte and Comtesse de
Perthuis, Baroness Bronicka, Princess Czernicheff, Princess S