by fellow-pupils with the purpose of showing that Chopin did not care very much for him.  For instance, the following:  Some one asked the master how his pupil was getting on, “Oh, he makes very good chocolate,” was the answer.  Unfortunately, I cannot speak of Gutmann’s playing from experience, for although I spent eight days with him, it was on a mountain-top in the Tyrol, where there were no pianos.  But Chopin’s belief in Gutmann counts with me for something, and so does Moscheles’ reference to him as Chopin’s “excellent pupil”; more valuable, I think, than either is the evidence of Dr. A. C. Mackenzie, who at my request visited Gutmann several times in Florence and was favourably impressed by his playing, in which he noticed especially beauty of tone combined with power.  As far as I can make out Gutmann planned only once, in 1846, a regular concert-tour, being furnished for it by Chopin with letters of introduction to the highest personages in Berlin, Warsaw, and St. Petersburg.  Through the intervention of the Countess Rossi (Henriette Sontag), he was invited to play at a court-concert at Charlottenburg in celebration of the King’s birthday. [Footnote:  His part of the programme consisted of his master’s E minor Concerto (2nd and 3rd movements) and No. 3 of the first book of studies, and his own tenth study.] But the day after the concert he was seized with such home-sickness that he returned forthwith to Paris, where he made his appearance to the great astonishment of Chopin.  The reader may perhaps be interested in what a writer in the Gazette Musicale said about Chopin’s favourite pupil on March 24, 1844:—­

M. Gutmann is a pianist with a neat but somewhat cold style of playing; he has what one calls fingers, and uses them with much dexterity.  His manner of proceeding is rather that of Thalberg than of the clever professor who has given him lessons.  He afforded pleasure to the lovers of the piano [amateurs de piano] at the musical soiree which he gave last Monday at M. Erard’s.  Especially his fantasia on the “Freischutz” was applauded.

Of course, the expression of any individual opinion is no conclusive proof.  Gutmann was so successful as a teacher and in a way also as a composer (his compositions, I may say in passing, were not in his master’s but in a light salon style) that at a comparatively early period of his life he was able to retire from his profession.  After travelling for some time he settled at Florence, where he invented the art, or, at least, practised the art which he had previously invented, of painting with oil-colours on satin.  He died at Spezzia on October 27, 1882.

[Footnote:  The short notice of Gutmann in Fetis’ Biographie Universelle des Musiciens, and those of the followers of this by no means infallible authority, are very incorrect.  Adolfo Gutmann, Riccordi Biografici, by Giulio Piccini (Firenze:  Guiseppe Polverini, 1881), reproduces to a great extent the information contained in Der Lieblingsschuler Chopin’s in Bernhard Stavenow’s Schone Geister (Bremen:  Kuhlmann, 1879), both which publications, eulogistic rather than biographical, were inspired by Gutmann.]