Daguerreotype: The Mystery of Frédéric Chopin

by Lucyna Olejniczak

  Intrigued by the story, we silently agreed so that he could continue telling it.

  “The person who sent those letters was her sister, the woman in the portrait. You may also remember her from our daguerreotype – you know, the one we keep on the mantle?”

  I nodded, remembering it very well indeed. A daguerreotype was one of the earliest types of photographs, created in the early-to-mid nineteenth century using silvered plates and mercury vapor to capture an image. The image in question was kept on the mantelpiece in the chateau’s living room, amongst other old, faded photographs. The plate was old and spotted, set in a black velvet and ornamental silver frame, and barely recognizable as the likeness of a young woman in an old-fashioned gown. Sophie had told me once that she knew from old family stories that the woman was a distant relative, but had never really shown an interest in it. Like most places its age, the old chateau was filled with portraits and other memorabilia from ancestors both distant and recent.

  “And? Did you read the letters?” Tadeusz and I asked, nearly simultaneously.

  “Not all of them, there are so many. I did bring a couple with me, if you want to see—”

  “Dear, this may not be the best time,” Sophie said, stopping her husband with a gesture as he started to stand up. “Let’s finish dinner first, then we can go into the living room and look at the letters. You don’t want to get your greasy fingers all over them, do you?”

  Claude instinctively wiped his fingers on a linen napkin, but sat back down in his chair anyway.

  “I guess you’re right,” he admitted. “I didn’t think of that.”

  It sounded interesting. I felt a thrill of excitement, as I always did when I came in contact with some fascinating secret of the past. The fiddle below the window seemed to play a little louder now, and the clink of cutlery sounded almost like the sound of a blacksmith’s forge as that excitement brought my senses to a finer edge. I barely made it through dinner.

  Half an hour later, we finally finished, washed up, and moved into the living room.

  “Here.” Claude brought a few yellowed pieces of paper to me. I set the wine Sophie had served us down on a small, inlaid side table, and eagerly reached for the letters.

  The paper was covered in precise, even, flawlessly elegant handwriting. Though the ink had faded in some places, I could read most of the words without a problem. In the first one, the girl seemed to be talking about an event that had occurred on her way home from her art classes. I quickly skimmed the content, planning to read it properly once we got back to our room. I preferred to have dictionaries on hand for a task like this, anyway.

  The next two letters didn’t seem to contain anything special at first glance. There was some information about her latest shopping trips, expressions of homesickness, but mostly she spoke about her infatuation with Paris and the people who surrounded her.

  “That’s all?” I asked, a little disappointed. “I was expecting something a little more exciting than just regular old letters…”

  “Oh, there’s plenty of excitement in there,” Claude said, making a mysterious face. “I haven’t had a chance to read all of the letters just yet, but I have learned much, much more…”

  “Such as?” I prompted.

  “Apparently Marie had an affair with a young foreigner. She may have even had a child with him. Quite the scandal, for those days.”

  “Her lover was a bohemian artist?” Tadeusz asked. “When was this, exactly?”

  “During the 1830’s,” Claude replied. “We don’t think it was an artist. We’re thinking he was a young musician, who had just arrived in Paris.”

  “Well, that complicates things a bit,” Tadeusz said, unable to hide the disappointment in his voice. “There were a lot of young artist and musicians from all over Europe flocking to Paris back then. Even Liszt, Chopin, and—” He stopped suddenly, seeing Claude’s face. “Oh come on, you’re not trying to tell me it was Chopin?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” Claude waved his hand. “But it’s not completely impossible. The biographers make no mention of any such affair, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I think it’s unlikely, but you never know.”

  “Too bad.” I sighed with regret. “Just think what a sensation that would have been!”

  “Oh yes,” he agreed, smiling at the thought. “But I think it was just some other musician, one of the hordes of starving artists who flocked to Paris back in the day. But the story is pretty juicy anyway, don’t you think?”

  “You have me intrigued, that’s for sure…”

  “That’s what I was counting on,” Claude said with a sly grin, reaching for his delicate crystal wine glass. “Perhaps you’d like to come to Trigny this weekend? You can look over the letters yourself. Who knows? Maybe you’ll find the material you need for your next book in them?”

  “A tempting proposition.”

  I shot a questioning glance at Tadeusz, who wagged his finger playfully at our host.

  “You’re making me jealous here,” he said. “It usually takes me forever to convince her to do anything.”

  “Well, then. A toast to the success of your research in Trigny,” Claude said, raising his glass with a smile. “And to a new book.”

  After dinner, Tadeusz and I walked through the music room on the way upstairs, as usual, and suddenly I found myself unable to resist walking up to the piano in the corner. It was a concert Bechstein, a shiny black box, massive and heavy yet somehow as elegant as a late model luxury car. That instrument had always delighted me, with its exquisitely well-crafted shape and form, and the power of the strings hidden within it. With a sense of something like reverence, I raised the varnished lid and touched a chord in the lower register of C minor. The hammers fell on the strings, and the mechanism of wood and metal responded nearly instantly with a sound that reverberated throughout the whole room. I felt a shiver run down my back.

  “Do you still remember how to play?” Tadeusz asked, watching me with a smile.

  “Not really,” I admitted.

  “But you graduated from music school, right?”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “I thought it was supposed to be one of those things you can’t just forget?”

  “You’re thinking of bicycles, honey.” I lowered the lid carefully. “This isn’t a bicycle. If you don’t practice regularly, you forget. Just like learning languages.”

  In truth, I had little to forget. I never went beyond the level of the simplest exercises and songs. As a little girl, I’d briefly been considered something of a prodigy, the hope of Polish pianism. Those had been my glory days. I’d inherited an old Czech piano from my grandfather, and I played sonatinas from forgotten Italian composers, Czerny’s etudes and Bach’s simpler compositions. Every Christmas, in addition to the usual carols, I played a modified version of Schubert’s Ave Maria, to the great enthusiasm of my grandmothers, uncles and aunts – and the lesser enthusiasm of my cousins. But, that was all I could ever get out of the cursed instrument. My stiff wrists, tense shoulders, shaking hands, and short fingers couldn’t cope with the real challenges.

  I quit the piano at the age of seventeen, and my parents had to come to terms with the fact that I was never going to be the new Marta Argerich. I have never regretted that decision. I’ve watched too many of my friends, who had planned on conquering world’s greatest concert halls, end up teaching scales to children, or playing piano at ballet schools.

  “Was it a hard decision?” Tadeusz asked.

  “Very hard,” I admitted, laughing. “Especially since I grew up in family of musicians. When I was a kid, I thought every person in the world played the piano. It seemed as natural to me as eating or sleeping. I remember how surprised I was when I discovered that not everyone knew how to play – and that some of my friends didn’t have a piano at all!”

  “Don’t you miss it sometimes?” Tadeusz asked, clearly amused by drilling me on the subject. “Sometimes you must just lo
ng to sit down and play something, right?”

  “I tap the keys here and there, sometimes play one of the simpler pieces, but I prefer to listen to real pianists. I still like to read the music, though.”

  Suddenly, Sophie appeared behind us. We’d been chatting quietly, so she hadn’t heard our exchange.

  “Do you feel like playing?” she asked me, then looked at Tadeusz and smiled. “She’s quite good, you know.”

  We exchanged a look and burst out laughing, much to poor Sophie’s confusion.

  Chapter Three

  After returning to our little room upstairs, we immediately started pawing over the letters. I sat comfortably on the bed, surrounded by dictionaries. With two multilingual people in the house who loved languages, they had plenty of dictionaries on hand. Tadeusz moved closer, peering over my shoulder at the letter in my hand.

  “Look, what a lovely drawing,” he murmured, gently touching the paper. “Simple and economical, revealing the hand of a well-practiced artist. I like it.”

  The letter, dated November 20th 1832, included a sketch of a young woman with a frightened expression looking back over her shoulder. Behind her, a man with a cane was emerging into the light of her lantern. The letter was signed from Marie, in Paris.

  My dear sister,

  The season is now unpleasant, cold, rainy, and somehow sad. I have been taking drawing lessons and trying to paint a little, if only to please Auntie. If only she knew that I’d posed at the art studio yesterday! Worry not, it wasn’t a nude but a regular portrait, and not a very good one at that.

  “Well, this is off to an interesting start…” I said dryly.

  Tadeusz put down the drawing he’d been studying and gave me a quizzical look. I went back to the letter.

  This painter is such a funny little man, sister, with a disheveled beard and long hair. He was constantly dissatisfied with my pose, and he even screamed at Cousin Juliette that I was stiff as a board and simply unacceptable as a model. Well, good, because I told him I would not pose for him again anyway! We left in quite a hurry after that, and laughed all the way home at the memory of his expression. Some great master artist! I could have painted a better portrait myself, even though I lack his formal schooling. Truly hideous!

  “Hah! Well, the girl sure had some character. I like her already,” I said, then I paused to read on. “Mmm… listen to this.”

  Juliette has promised to introduce me to some other painters and musicians she knows through friends. I do hope that Auntie doesn’t find out, or I’m sure she’d write to Papa and have him come take me home. It’s so interesting here, dear sister! Such a shame you could not come with me.

  “Well, there you have it. Now we know how she came into contact with the Parisian bohemian crowd. It was her cousin—what was her name?” I consulted the letter for a moment. “Ah yes, Juliette. Juliette must have gotten her involved. I guess they were rather adventurous girls, for their time.”

  Life here is very different to what we’re used to back home, but also more dangerous as well.

  “Oh, here we go…”

  Auntie was at her country house for the day, so we stayed out rather late last night. When we were walking home, we were accosted by a drunken lout in the street! Juliette ran away, but I froze in my step, stricken by fear and uncertain what to do! Luckily, he was too intoxicated to keep his feet. He was mumbling and swaying, then he dropped his walking stick on the pavement. While he was retrieving it, I found my feet and ran after Juliette.

  “Right, well, that’s why young ladies weren’t supposed to be walking the streets alone at night, isn’t it? But why were you going to those art lessons unattended, hmm? Young ladies in those days were supposed to be attended by a servant or chaperone whenever they went out. And why were you out in the evening at all?”

  “You sound like a mother hen,” Tadeusz commented. I playfully slapped at him and he adroitly dodged the blow, laughing. “Maybe the chaperone was supposed to collect them later in the evening, but the session ended early? You read yourself that it didn’t go well. Or maybe, since the aunt was out of town, they didn’t take a chaperone at all? These are young girls, after all. Young people aren’t exactly known for following the rules. Yes, I know, you wouldn’t let your Magda go to Paris alone…”

  “Well, of course I wouldn’t let her,” I replied, “but I have no doubt she’d try if she thought she could get away with it. Let’s get back to the letter.”

  Fortunately, the drunkard did not attempt to give chase, and nothing happened to either of us. I put my drawing lessons to good use and drew a sketch of the drama for you to see. How funny he looked, in that ridiculous crushed top hat. For shame!

  I kiss you a million times, dearest sister. Give my love to Papa; I’ll send a separate missive to him with a less lurid description of my stay. Say hello to everyone at home, too, and tell them I think of them every day.

  Your Affectionate Sister,

  Marie

  I put the letter down and closed my eyes, trying to imagine a young girl fleeing down an empty street to escape the lecherous clutches of a drunkard. And then, a meeting with a mysterious lover?

  “I wonder, who was that young musician? Do you think we’ll be able to find him?”

  “Mmm…” A sleepy grunt came from under the covers next to me. “Sleep, darling, we’ll look tomorrow.”

  “Maybe there’s a clue in these other letters…”

  The only answer I got was the sound of his muffled snores. I glanced at the clock and realized that it was nearly midnight, so no great wonder that he’d fallen asleep. I, on the other hand, felt too excited to even close my eyes for a moment.

  I slipped out of bed and went to the balcony’s open doors. The full moon illuminated large parts of the courtyard and art studio below. A spectral glow radiated from the windows, almost looking like someone had lit a candle or lamp inside. Perhaps the ghosts of dead artists had gathered to work on their unfinished masterpieces by the light of the moon?

  What’s that dark shadow slithering around the courtyard? I wondered. Is that a man with a crushed top hat on his head?

  A cloud drifted across the moon, and suddenly it grew dark and cold. I closed the balcony door and retreated back to bed.

  How did the letter go…?

  “Auntie was at her country house for the day, so we stayed out rather late last night. When we were walking home, we were accosted by a drunken lout in the street…”

  Paris, 1832

  The young man looked around, wondering if the wine was ever going to be served. The evening had been terribly boring so far, and it was starting to seem seemed like the hosts, the Count and Countess de Bourdeilles, were only going to serve water. The temperance movement had become rather prevalent as of late.

  They didn’t even serve as many dishes tonight as that exquisite soiree last week, the young Pole thought, yawning discreetly in the corner. Where were the delicious Milanese risottos? The carp a’ la salmon? The soup seasoned with parmesan, accompanied by a glass of Madeira? The young man swallowed hard and looked around, disappointed. Here? Even the company wasn’t very interesting. Pale young women in simple, unadorned muslin dresses drifted around the drawing room like ghosts, accompanied by their chaperones. Some curious older matrons in heavy crinolines and bustles brought a tiny shred of Versailles high fashion to the room.

  “So, you’re that Polish pianist?” one of the matrons asked excitedly, a tall woman with a wart on her cheek and a very dark, very obvious mustache on her upper lip. “How very sweet! So young and so talented!”

  Before he had a chance to say anything, she looked over his shoulder and called out in a deliberately affected tone. “Oh, Countess, how wonderful you look today! You look like a goddess given mortal form.”

  The ‘goddess’, who resembled nothing so much as a haystack on invisible wheels, glided majestically towards them. The young man took a wary step backward, but she didn’t pay him the slightest bit of attention. The tw
o ladies fell into a passionate discussion about the details of the embroidery and lace worn by the local vicar, then smoothly transitioned to the subject most beloved of all older people: illnesses, doctors and hospitals.

  “I heard, my dear Countess, that your most esteemed husband was ill recently? I do hope it is nothing serious?”

  The mustachioed lady’s oversweet tone made the young musician feel ill for a moment. He watched her intently, with the kind of attention one gives to a disgusting yet somehow fascinating insect. Her ugly face was practically radiating joy at what he could only imagine was the possibility of embarrassing a social superior.

  “Oh, no.” The countess waved her hand dismissively, but even through a thick layer of white face-powder, a faint flush of displeasure was visible on her cheeks. “Nothing serious, really. The doctor decided it was harmless, but interesting enough that he just had to present it to his students. He asked permission first, of course, and my husband approved. These young doctors, they have to learn somehow, don’t they? We are both quite progressive and modern when it comes to this kind of thing. The doctor said afterwards that it was an exceptionally beautiful rash, and all of the students were delighted by the sight of it!” She added the last bit with no small measure of pride.

  Delighted, huh? The young man smiled inwardly. He suspected he knew who that doctor might be. He’d heard of a doctor who liked to imitate Plato by giving his lectures in the grove of the Academy, strolling through the hospital gardens during summertime. From what he’d heard, everything – no matter how gruesome to regular mortals – was ‘delightful’ or ‘beautiful’ to he and his students.