ll be able to breathe and
play, and the sun visits me to-day for the first time. I feel
less suffocated this morning, but all last week I was good for
nothing. How are you and your wife and the dear children? You
begin at last to become more tranquil, [FOOTNOTE: This, I
think, refers to some loss Franchomme had sustained in his
family] do you not? I have some tiresome visits; my letters of
introduction are not yet delivered. I trifle away my time, and
VOILA. I love you, and once more VOILA.

Yours with all my heart.

My kindest regards to Madame Franchomme.
48, Dover Street.
Write to me, I will write to you also.

Were Chopin now to make his appearance in London, what a stir there
would be in musical society! In 1848 Billet, Osborne, Kalkbrenner,
Halle, and especially Thalberg, who came about the same time across
the channel, caused more curiosity. By the way, England was just then
heroically enduring an artistic invasion such as had never been seen
before; not only from France, but also from Germany and other musical
countries arrived day after day musicians who had found that their
occupation was gone on the Continent, where people could think of
nothing but politics and revolutions. To enumerate all the celebrities
then congregated in the British Metropolis would be beyond my power and
the scope of this publication, but I must at least mention that among
them was no less eminent a creative genius than Berlioz, no less
brilliant a vocal star than Pauline Viardot-Garcia. Of other
high-priests and high-priestesses of the art we shall hear in the
sequel. But although Chopin did not set the Thames on fire, his visit
was not altogether ignored by the press. Especially the Athenaeum (H.
F. Chorley) and the Musical World (J. W. Davison) honoured themselves
by the notice they took of the artist. The former journal not only
announced (on April 29) his arrival, but also some weeks previously (on
April 8) his prospective advent, saying: "M. Chopin's visit is an event
for which we most heartily thank the French Republic."

In those days, and for a long time after, the appreciation and
cultivation of Chopin's music was in England confined to a select few.
Mr. Hipkins told me that he "had to struggle for years to gain adherents
to Chopin's music, while enduring the good-humoured banter of Sterndale
Bennett and J. W. Davison." The latter--the author of An Essay on the
Works of Frederic Chopin (Lond