That evening they went off to the opera to see Rossini’s Otello, eyeing the girls in the street on the way (although Chopin did not fail to insert a pious reference to Konstancja in his letter to the go-between Matuszyński).
The next morning he received the greatest possible compliment of a visit from Hummel. Such a mark of respect from the most eminent composer left in what was still the capital of music could not have failed to encourage Chopin’s boldest expectations. But these were a little clouded later that morning by the publisher Haslinger, whom he hastened to call on. Haslinger had probably lost money on the La ci darem la mano Variations, and had therefore not published the C minor Sonata (op.4) or the variations that Chopin had left with him on his previous visit. He declared that he had no intention of giving Chopin any money for the two concertos he had brought him. He did intimate that he might consider publishing one of them if Chopin let him have the copyright for nothing, but Chopin was determined not to let himself be exploited further. ‘From now on it’s: “Pay up, Animal!”’ he announced in a letter to his family, explaining that he was growing wary of the ‘crooks and Jews’ who stood between him and making money.3 With the reputation he had built up and the contacts he had made, he felt he could afford to be firm with them.
After a few days Chopin and Tytus moved to a cheaper hotel while they waited for the lodgings they had found to be vacated by their current tenant, an English admiral. ‘An Admiral! Yes, but I shall be held in admiration, so the lodgings will lose nothing in the change!’ Chopin blustered in his letter home.4 The three spacious rooms were ‘beautifully, luxuriously and elegantly furnished’, the rent was low, and the landlady, a pretty young widow who professed a love for Poles and contempt for Austrians and Germans, had been to Warsaw and had heard of Chopin. But it was the position of the apartment, on the third floor of a house on the Kohlmarkt, which particularly delighted the two young men. As Chopin pointed out to his parents, it was ‘right in the centre of town, with a wonderful promenade below’, the music shop of Artaria on the left, and those of Mechetti and Haslinger on the right, and the opera just behind – ‘what else could one possibly need?’5 Graf, whose soft-toned pianos enchanted him, and to whose shop he had been going every afternoon in order to ‘loosen [his] fingers after the journey’, had promised to move an instrument into the lodgings free of charge, and this would enable Chopin to invite people to come and listen to him.6
His immediate preoccupation was to arrange a concert, and he duly called on musicians and others who might help him in this purpose. He looked up Nidecki, who had settled in Vienna, and the composer Czerny, who was in a tremendously good mood, having just finished writing out ‘an overture for eight pianos and sixteen players’.7 Old Würfel, now bedridden with tuberculosis, proffered advice on where the concert should be held and which of the two concertos Chopin should play. He was categorical that Chopin should under no circumstances perform free, advice which was seconded by Count Husarzewski and others who promised to help organise the event.
One of the most prominent of these was a new acquaintance, the imperial physician and erstwhile friend of Beethoven, Dr Giovanni Malfatti, who had a somewhat unusual position both at court and in Viennese society. Chopin had a letter of introduction to Malfatti’s wife, a Polish countess, and was greeted ‘like a member of the family’.8 The doctor promised to introduce him to the most notable musical personages and to arrange a concert for him at court, which was not immediately possible since this was in mourning following the recent death of the King of Naples.
‘I shall be giving a concert, but where, when and how, I still cannot say,’ Chopin wrote home at the end of his first week, which ‘flew by’. He basked in the novelty of living in his own rooms, of eating out in the restaurants Mozart and Beethoven had frequented, of spending his days entirely as he wished and of going to the opera almost every evening. He went five times during the first week, three of them to operas he did not know – Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito, Auber’s Fra Diavolo and Rossini’s Guillaume Tell. He found the standard of singing just as high as in the previous year, and what was most welcome to him was the continual change of programme, which meant that he could rapidly improve his education in this field.9
Chopin was suffering from a cold, or ‘swollen nose’ as he put it, which is why he did not immediately call on the grander ladies to whom he had introductions. As soon as he recovered, however, he began to make up for lost time, and called on Countess Rzewuska, at whose home he expected to meet ‘the cream of Viennese society’, and several other Polish ladies married to Austrians. He also delivered his most important letter of introduction, from Grand Duke Constantine to Countess Tatischev, wife of the Russian ambassador. It was while he was awaiting her pleasure to receive him that, on 5 December, news arrived from Warsaw which shattered his hopes.
On 29 November, revolution had broken out in the Polish capital. The Grand Duke had narrowly escaped being assassinated in the Belvedere by a group of cadets, while the Russian troops in the city were attacked and disarmed by bands of patriots. Although the reports were far from clear, both Chopin and Tytus were well aware of what lay behind them and of what probably lay ahead – national insurrection and armed conflict with Russia. After emotional deliberations lasting all night, Tytus prepared to return to Warsaw in order to fight in the national cause, but Chopin was prevailed upon to remain in Vienna.10
‘After Tytus left, too much suddenly fell on my shoulders,’ Chopin complained.11 He was utterly unprepared, either practically or psychologically, to cope on his own, and he naturally fretted about family and friends in Warsaw. More to the point, events taking place there had a direct bearing on his position in Vienna. Austria was one of the three powers that had dismembered and abolished the Polish state at the end of the previous century, and while a degree of cordiality reigned between Poles and Austrians at the social level, their national interests were diametrically opposed. Events taking place in Warsaw did not directly threaten anyone in Vienna, but they evoked hostility and apprehension. Although after the initial outburst the leadership of the Polish rising was assumed by Prince Adam Czartoryski, Viennese society shared Metternich’s view that it was a revolution against the established order of Europe, and it was feared and disapproved of as much as the French Revolution had been. Even in the cheap trattoria where he sometimes took his dinner, Chopin overheard remarks such as ‘God made a mistake in creating the Poles,’ and ‘Nothing worthwhile has ever come out of Poland,’ which he took as personal as well as national insults.12
Malfatti tried to persuade him that the artist should be cosmopolitan and overcome national feeling, to which Chopin retorted that he must be a very poor artist. He had never taken any interest in politics before, but now that everyone he knew and respected in Warsaw was engaged in a fight for survival, in which defeat would entail annihilation of the world he had grown up in, he felt personally involved.
He never went near the Russian Embassy, wrote to his parents telling them to sell the diamond ring he had been given by Tsar Alexander, acquired shirt studs with Polish eagles on them, and brandished handkerchiefs embroidered with Polish motifs. He consorted with other Poles, mostly young men returning from foreign travel to join the Polish ranks who formed a rowdy element in Vienna, demonstrating their patriotic feelings at every opportunity.
The Austrian police and Russian agents kept a close watch on their comings and goings, and Chopin’s sympathies were no secret to them. In consequence he never met ‘the cream of Viennese society’. In fact, during his eight-month sojourn in the city he did not once play at an aristocratic gathering; all the Lichnowskys and Schwarzenbergs who were so kind to him on his previous visit do not figure in his life at all during this one. No more is heard, either, of Dr Malfatti’s promises to arrange an appearance at court. Even