‘That’s not as easy as you think,’ said the tall Hungarian piano virtuoso, flicking his mane of hair back behind his shoulders. ‘One day he’ll hide in his room and declare life is all over, and the same night he’ll caper and mimic at a society party until the small hours. Fred only likes who he knows. Makes it hard for strangers, and difficult to forge introductions. If you really want to meet him, George, let’s just throw a party. Now that Marie and I are back from our time in Switzerland, we’ll call it a housewarming. Just be careful. Fred’s not the strongest of men. We don’t want you killing him and leaving his broken heart to be dissected by the feuilletons, like all the others they say you’ve left behind.’
‘Franzi! Never believe what you read,’ said George, knocking the ash from her thin cigar, her enormous brown eyes blinking with mock indignation. It was an ironic remark, coming from one of the most celebrated and notorious writers of the time, the most famous woman in France, whose novels dripped with autobiographical detail. The real-life affairs of George Sand were the fodder of much salon gossip.
The soirée took place at the Hôtel de France on the rue Laffitte in rooms George shared with Franz Liszt, his mistress the Countess d’Agoult, and their baby daughter, Blandine. George and Marie were of like mind, independent spirits who had managed their escapes from marriages of convenience with the consolations of new lovers.
As evening fell, the room was full of conversation George found instructive: news on the latest marital indiscretions, tales of opera first nights, unfortunate wardrobe choices – all of it worthy of note for the time when she would sit at her desk and describe the fatuousness of people’s lives in books those same people would devour, presuming the stories to be about other people. Her work was serialised in the newspapers, one of whose writers had turned up for that evening’s spectacle. Would Tout Paris have a scoop tomorrow morning? We shall see, George thought confidently.
All heads turned when the special guest arrived with his fellow pianist and friend Ferdinand Hiller. Even from a distance, George felt a tug at her heart at first sight of the delicate figure, wondering how he would survive anyone’s embrace: painfully thin, with a sunken chest. He had been ill a few months before, she was told; too weak to walk, spitting up blood. Doctors had prescribed ice swallowed whole to staunch the bleeding. He had recovered to a degree, but the spectre of death looked as if it had only retreated to a back room of his apartment. Frédéric still referred to himself as a ‘cadaver’ when he was in one of his black moods. Such melancholy was not a good state to be in for a man of twenty-six, six years George’s junior.
Like her friend Marie, George preferred the company and the touch of younger men. She also liked tending to the injured, the broken birds of the world; to examine them, nurture them, caress them back to health. Chopin made a perfect candidate for her special brand of care, and he looked fabulous in a very elegant way on this occasion with his black fitted frockcoat and trousers, white gloves, handmade varnished shoes on his tiny feet, and the sublime touch of a white cravat knotted in one of seventy-two possible ways. He was every inch an aristocrat in monochrome.
George Sand was even more striking, dressed like a man to match her nom de plume in a frockcoat, vest and trousers, her brown hair parted in the middle and curling untrammelled down to her shoulders, a cigarette or cigar always between her fingers. Strangers pointed at her in the street. She loved the effect, the confusion she caused. Those fortunate enough to come close had no doubt about her gender. One of her greatest admirers called her a modern-day Venus de Milo.
The comparison with sculpture was lost on Chopin, who returned the scrutiny of this bizarre apparition. He leaned close to Hiller.
‘Over there, Ferdinand. That is George Sand? Surely she’s not a woman.’
Hiller followed Chopin’s gaze.
‘Oh, yes – it’s a she all right, Frédéric. Rumour has it George could eat you for breakfast and still have room for croissants.’
‘I am nobody’s breakfast,’ said Chopin.
The indignant tone was no surprise to Hiller. Like most of Chopin’s friends, he doubted if the fragile Pole had ever been consumed. Perhaps he wasn’t a meat eater. Frédéric never spoke about his dining history.
‘Just as well, my friend,’ he said, smirking. ‘You don’t want to end up in a kiss-and-tell book. At least anyone sharing a ménage with her wouldn’t be in any doubt about who’s wearing the pants.’
‘I don’t really have anything to say to literary women,’ Chopin replied. He grabbed Hiller’s arm. ‘My God! She’s coming over. This is terribly forward.’
‘Monsieur Chopin? But of course! Bonsoir.’ George Sand extended her hand.
The two men bowed slightly. Hiller seized her hand and kissed it.
‘You are correct, madame. My friend, Hiller,’ said Chopin.
George noticed the thickness of his Polish accent. ‘You know, we have really arranged this evening so that I can hear you both play,’ she continued, smiling directly at the Pole.
It wasn’t the most attractive smile Hiller had ever seen. Still, she did have an intriguing lower lip, full and slightly pendulous. A lot of sauce had dripped from that lip.
‘Play, madame? I thought we were here for the conversation,’ said Chopin.
‘In that case, perhaps we may converse?’
‘Under the circumstances, I think I should prefer to play. You will excuse me.’
He turned and walked away. George looked bemused.
Ouch, thought Hiller. George is the perfect gentleman, and Fred’s being a bitch.
Eventually the music started from three of the greatest party pianists in Europe. Liszt and Hiller gave typically dazzling accounts, Liszt eliciting whoops of admiration from the guests during his recital after some quicksilver arpeggios. His mistress looked at him through adoring eyes; Marie knew how randy Franz became after two bottles of the best and a couple of trips around the ivories. She hoped that George would be similarly occupied enough after the end of the evening not to overhear them upstairs.
There was a break for more digestifs before Chopin’s turn at the keys.
Hearing Frédéric Chopin perform was a rare event, Paris had learned. His public appearances were few. It was said that he was overawed, even frightened, of large audiences, his piano sound so soft that his artistry was almost inaudible in big concert rooms. Indeed, as his Nocturne in D flat floated gently through the salon George wondered how such filigree music would make it across the edge of a concert platform. The wider world was too coarse for such a quiet exhalation.
His hands were small, but the tapered fingers easily stretched across the keys; the right hand singing a sinuous melody over the rippling of the left, a song on a dark lagoon. Around the keyboard, a circle of people – their faces barely illuminated by lamplight – were drawn into the night of an interior world.
The music stopped, as did every heart in the room except George’s, beating hard.
His eyes met hers briefly, then turned away. She wondered if his expression was warmer now than at their introduction; if she had fallen into his mind while his music filled the air. He must be a supremely sensitive being, she thought. Could he not be aware of the feelings flowing back to him?
‘Mazurka in A minor, published as Opus 17, number four,’ Chopin said in an undertone. Most did not hear him. Again, he played.
George expected something lively and folksy; all those exuberant Polish aristocrats jumping about in their ballrooms. This music was homesick, halting, drained of energy; a melody too tired to dance. Someone alone, making futile steps in an empty space.
George felt the composer’s oppressed solitude. If only she could have rushed over to him and lifted that emaciated figure from the stool. But he was sealed off from the room while he played. All she could do was look at him through the strands of smoke from her cigar and try to suppress her sudden desire for sex.
The music ended a second time, its silence merging with that of the room
. Mere applause felt vulgar after such rarefied sound. Chopin glanced at George once more, and in that split second she tried to channel something to him with her eyes that would have taken days to write – even at her prodigious speed.
Then he slipped on his gloves, clutched his bespoke hat, muttered his excuses to Liszt and Countess d’Agoult, and was gone.
People whispered to each other. George saw the Tout Paris feuilletonist was scribbling furiously.
‘What do you think he’s writing?’ said Madame d’Agoult, sidling next to George.
‘Heaven knows. Perhaps he saw something I didn’t. I know this is unlikely, but for once that idiot may have a better imagination than mine.’ George felt her familiar surge of appetite. She wanted to be satisfied by someone. Tonight, the pianist was unavailable.
She noticed the so-so Swiss writer Didier casting her imploring looks from his position at the far wall. They had enjoyed a few liaisons of late when the mood took her. He was attractive – and reliable.
‘Excuse me, Marie,’ she said abruptly. ‘We can’t have fiction being spread around town.’ She stubbed out her cigar and strode across the room.
‘Madame Sand,’ Didier said with relief. ‘I was hoping we might speak —’
‘Come now, Charles,’ she interrupted, taking his hand. ‘I want you to see me to my room.’
In the street outside, Chopin lifted the collar of his great-coat and coughed as he and Hiller made their way back to the composer’s apartment on the Chaussée d’Antin, a couple of blocks away. It was colder than usual for an autumn night.
‘Madame Sand – what did you think, Fred?’ said Ferdinand. George’s looks at Chopin had not gone unnoticed around the salon. She had gone far beyond flirtation. She wanted him.
‘Repulsive,’ said Frédéric.
‘You had quite a night,’ said Marie d’Agoult early the following afternoon.
‘I didn’t actually,’ said George, dark circles under her eyes, far from completing her toilette, already nursing her first cigarette of the day. ‘Charles must have been overawed by the occasion, or my sudden renewal of interest, or something. He was very slow to get going. I had to keep at him for hours.’
‘Perhaps he sensed you were thinking of someone else.’
‘That’s not like a man. Normally, the machinery is always willing. The head is of no consequence.’
There was a pause as George stared out the window, idly pinching flecks of tobacco from the tip of her tongue.
She swivelled back to Marie and said abruptly, ‘There is something so noble, so aristocratic about Chopin, isn’t there?’
‘Franz says he’s a genius – a complete original,’ said Marie. ‘I must say, I agree. His music comes from a mysterious place. Where do you think it comes from?’
‘Poland, I suppose,’ said George. ‘I want to see him again.’
‘That may be a problem. Franz told me Monsieur Chopin was not greatly taken with you.’
‘He’ll come around,’ said George. ‘All the others do.’
Two weeks later, the invitation arrived from the Chaussée d’Antin for Franz, Marie and George to come to Chopin’s for dinner. Just the four of them.
Marie put down the letter and looked at George.
‘You’ve suddenly leapt into Frédéric’s inner circle,’ she said. ‘Was there something I missed? Something you said?’
‘You missed nothing, and I said nothing,’ said George. ‘Our little one is just as intuitive as I suspected. He knows I will have been thinking about him.’
Marie smiled. Really, she and Franz share an insolent confidence, she thought. I wonder sometimes why they didn’t get together. Some said they had, but that was typical of Paris.
Chopin’s dinner was the opposite of the frivolous soirée Liszt and Marie had hosted two weeks before. Much as she would have loved to hear Frédéric play again, George felt it would have offended him to be asked. She and Liszt smoked their cigars and threw back cognac; Chopin ate sparingly, coughed a little when the fug of tobacco in the room became too dense, and drank milk.
The conversation dispensed with gossip and stuck to fact. Marie revealed a deep knowledge of politics, Liszt reminisced to Chopin about meeting George, and to George about meeting Chopin. He put down his cigar and his glass to expound on the benefits of asceticism, asserting that Art was the way to God.
‘I’ve often thought about becoming a priest,’ he said. ‘God sees me and I fear that I could offend him in his presence if I don’t aspire to meekness and a refutation of earthly love. We have so little time to get it right in this life. I like the words of Thomas à Kempis: “Love to be unknown, and accounted as nought”.’
The others looked at him with disbelief. Liszt, with his smoking and drinking, his crazy hours, his music full of acrobatics. An ascetic?
‘I don’t doubt your sincerity on this, Franzi,’ said Marie, ‘but I wish you’d told me sooner.’ She winked at him.
George raised an eyebrow, took a long draw on her cigar and glanced at Chopin.
‘Don’t worry, Frédéric,’ she said. ‘Franzi is just preaching his personal gospel for today. Like all gospels, it is frequently ignored by those who are most ardent. By his own standards, Franz is a heretic. It may be that God alone deserves to be loved, but when one has loved a man, or a woman, it is very different to loving God. And I know which I prefer,’ she added, blinking slowly at Marie.
‘And that would be?’ Marie asked. It was a tease.
‘There is only one happiness in life, Marie. To love and be loved. Franz is right about having no time to waste. This is our goal.’
‘Madame, for women this is a recipe for captivity!’ said Chopin with mock dismay. And for men too, he thought.
‘Are we talking about love, or marriage?’ asked Liszt. ‘If the latter, I agree completely.’
‘Not if one refuses it – or can escape from it, as I have done,’ said George. ‘My profession is to be free. I am now divorced, after much trouble. I don’t want to represent conventional womanliness in the way I dress. I am not subject to the control of public opinion. I choose to live outside the world’s prejudices; false, outdated and dull as they are. Nonetheless, I aspire to the happiness I have described. Believe me, this is no vague dream.’
She looked at Frédéric with the same intensity as at their first meeting. He was suddenly aware of her hand on his leg under the table.
‘Heaven is all around us, anyway,’ said Marie. ‘So is Hell, in all the puerile gossip Franz and I have endured these past few years. I agree with Heine. He said that when dear God gets bored with Heaven, he opens the window and contemplates the boulevards of Paris.’
‘In that case, you and I should follow God to the heavenly boulevards now, my dear mistress, and leave our friends to discuss the possibilities of finding happiness on earth,’ said Liszt. ‘We are going. I want to create more cigar smoke, and I fear it might not be agreeable to Frédéric’s constitution. You’ll be staying, George?’
‘I believe so,’ said George. ‘The main course was splendid. I am hoping for a typically Polish dessert.’ She slid her hand up Chopin’s thigh.
The host’s white face turned crimson, his mouth falling open.
‘Madame Sand, I do not think —’
‘Please, monsieur – call me Aurore,’ she said.
‘Madame … I have lessons to give tomorrow morning. I … I am very tired. Your company has enchanted me; I will spend my time in bed tonight thinking a great deal.’
‘You are much too creative,’ said George, without sarcasm. ‘I only think in bed when the sun is up and I need to write. As it is,’ she said, looking out the window and then at her man’s pocket watch, ‘we do not need to think for another seven hours.’
He looked at her, aghast. She withdrew her straying hand, deciding to end his discomfort.
‘Let’s go home then,’ she said to Franz and Marie. ‘It’s late, and our friend clearly has work to do. Thank you, monsieur, for th
e hospitality.’
George looked once more at his beautiful face with its conflicted expression before closing the apartment door. The dear, dear child, she thought. Is it possible that a man of twenty-six could be so charmingly innocent?
She asked Liszt and Marie the same question on the way back to the rue Laffitte.
‘Many of the young ladies of Paris wish that he wasn’t,’ replied Liszt. ‘God knows, they’re lining up down the boulevards to have lessons with him. He could probably teach them all if he didn’t put aside time every morning to compose. Some of them must be in love with him, I suppose. Don’t be fooled by tonight, George. He’s certainly not immune. In a single evening he’ll convince three women at a party that he loves them all, and the next day will say nothing about it. I can’t tell whether he’s saving himself for someone special, or just isn’t interested in that sort of thing.’
Or is simply a prude, he thought. He had used Fred’s apartment for an afternoon the previous year to have a quickie with a married woman while Marie was laid up at home having their daughter Blandine, and Fred had been very sniffy about it.
‘Either way, George, you should consider that you may be attempting to seduce a virgin,’ said Marie. ‘Sometimes I look at poor Frédéric and wonder if it’s a mother he really needs, rather than a lover.’
‘I’ve been down that path before,’ said George. Younger than she, sick, in need of nurturing back to health: she found these to be irresistible qualities in her men. She had been their mother – and with the virgins, even their teacher. How many virgins had there been? Certainly, thin little Jules Sandeau, who was curly-haired and just nineteen when she took him to the special pavilion on her estate at Nohant and watched his hormones push the colour into his cheeks while she undressed and lowered herself onto his lap. That had gone on and off for years with their leaving for Paris to live and write together, leaving her husband and his wine cellar back in the country home. She had quickly outpaced and eclipsed Jules in the world of letters, consoling herself by the end with the knowledge she had transformed him from provincial hick into a city professional. In return, he gave her a convenient nom de plume when she was ready to publish her first sole-authored novel, Indiana, under cover of a man’s name: ‘Sand’, a contraction of his own.
Symphony of Seduction Page 12