[1] The “-B” on the dressing-case stands for “-Bartholdy.”  When the Mendelssohn family changed from Judaism to Protestantism, it added the mother’s family name.

Chopin and the Countess Delphine Potocka

“Her voice was destined to be the last which should vibrate upon the musician’s heart.  Perhaps the sweetest sounds of earth accompanied the parting soul until they blended in his ear with the first chords of the angels’ lyres.”

It is thus Liszt describes the voice of Countess Delphine Potocka as it vibrated through the room in which Chopin lay dying.  Witnesses disagree regarding details.  One of the small company that gathered about his bed says she sang but once, others that she sang twice; and even these vary when they name the compositions.  Yet however they may differ on these minor points, they agree as to the main incident.  That the beautiful Delphine sang for the dying Chopin is not a mere pleasing tradition; it is a fact.  Her voice ravished the ear of the great composer, whose life was ebbing away, and soothed his last hours.

“Therefore, then, has God so long delayed to call me to Him.  He wanted to vouchsafe me the joy of seeing you.”  These were the words Chopin whispered when he opened his eyes and saw, beside his sister Louise, the Countess Delphine Potocka, who had hurried from a distance as soon as she was notified that his end was drawing near.  She was one of those rare and radiant souls who could bestow upon this delicate child of genius her tenderest friendship, perhaps even her love, yet keep herself unsullied and an object of adoration as much for her purity as for her beauty.  Because she was Chopin’s friend, because she came to him in his dying hours, because along paths unseen by those about them her voice threaded its way to his very soul, no life of him is complete without mention of her, and in the mind of the musical public her name is irrevocably associated with his.  Each succeeding biographer of the great composer has sought to tell us a little more about her—­yet little is known of her even now beyond the fact that she was very beautiful—­and so eager have we been for a glimpse of her face that we have accepted without reserve as an authentic presentment of her features the famous portrait of a Countess Potocka who, I find, died some seven or eight years before Delphine and Chopin met.

[Illustration:  Frederic Chopin (missing from book)]

But we have portraits of Delphine by Chopin himself, not drawn with pencil or crayon, or painted with brush, but her face as his soul saw it and transformed it into music.  Listen to a great virtuoso play his two concertos.  Ask yourself which of the six movements is the most beautiful.  Surely your choice will fall on the slow movement of the second—­dedicated to the Countess Delphine Potocka, and one of the composer’s most tender and exquisite productions; or play over the waltzes—­the one over which for grace and poetic sentiment you will linger longest will be the sixth, dedicated to the Countess Delphine Potocka.