iven in his honour, and to which Thackeray,
Mrs. Procter, Berlioz, and Julius Benedict were invited. On the other
hand, Chopin was heard at the Countess of Blessington's (Gore House,
Kensington) and the Duchess of Sutherland's (Stafford House). On the
latter occasion Benedict played with him a duet of Mozart's. More than
thirty years after, Sir Julius had still a clear recollection of "the
great pains Chopin insisted should be taken in rehearsing it, to make
the rendering of it at the concert as perfect as possible." John
Ella heard Chopin play at Benedict's. Of another of Chopin's private
performances in the spring of 1848 we read in the Supplement du
Dictionnaire de la Conversation, where Fiorentino writes:

We were at most ten or twelve in a homely, comfortable little
salon, equally propitious to conversation and contemplation.
Chopin took the place of Madame Viardot at the piano, and
plunged us into ineffable raptures. I do not know what he
played to us; I do not know how long our ecstasy lasted: we
were no longer on earth; he had transported us into unknown
regions, into a sphere of flame and azure, where the soul,
freed from all corporeal bonds, floats towards the infinite.
This was, alas! the song of the swan.

The sequel will show that the concluding sentence is no more than a
flourish of the pen. Whether Chopin played at Court, as he says in a
letter to Gutmann he expected to do, I have not ascertained. Nor have
I been able to get any information about a dinner which, Karasowski
relates, some forty countrymen of Chopin's got up in his honour when
they heard of his arrival in London. According to this authority the
pianist-composer rose when the proceedings were drawing to an end, and
many speeches extolling him as a musician and patriot had been made,
and spoke, if not these words, to this effect: "My dear countrymen! The
proofs of your attachment and love which you have just given me have
truly moved me. I wish to thank you, but lack the talent of expressing
my feelings in words; I invite you therefore to accompany me to my
lodgings and to receive there my thanks at the piano." The proposal
was received with enthusiasm, and Chopin played to his delighted and
insatiable auditors till two o'clock in the morning. What a crush, these
forty or more people in Chopin's lodgings! However, that is no business
of mine.

[FOOTNOTE: After reading the above, Mr. Hipkins remarked: "I fancy this
dinner