[Footnote:  To the above I must append a cautionary foot-note.  In his account to me Lindsay Sloper made two mistakes which prove that his memory was not one of the most trustworthy, and suggest even the possibility that his Miss Stirling was a different person from Chopin’s friend.  His mistakes were these:  he called Mrs. Erskine, who was with Miss Stirling in Paris, her aunt instead of her sister; and thought that Miss Stirling was about eighteen years old when he taught her.  The information I shall give farther on seems to show that she was older rather than younger than Chopin; indeed, Mr Hipkins is of opinion that she was in 1848 nearer fifty than forty.]

To her the composer dedicated his Deux Nocturnes, Op. 55, which he published in August, 1844.  It was thought that she was in love with Chopin, and there were rumours of their going to be married.  Gutmann informed me that Chopin said to him one day when he was ill:  “They have married me to Miss Stirling; she might as well marry death.”  Of Miss Jane Stirling’s elder sister Katherine, who, in 1811, married her cousin James Erskine, and lost her husband already in 1816, Thomas Erskine says:  “She was an admirable woman, faithful and diligent in all duties, and unwearied in her efforts to help those who needed her help.”  Lord Torphichen, at whose residence (Calder House, twelve miles from Edinburgh) Chopin passed much of his time in Scotland, was, as we learn from the composer’s letters, a brother-in-law of Miss Stirling and Mrs. Erskine.  Johnstone Castle (twelve miles from Glasgow), where Chopin was also received as a guest, belonged to the Houston family, friends of the Erskines and Stirlings, but, I think, no relations.  The death of Ludovic Houston, Esq., in 1862, is alluded to in one of Thomas Erskine’s letters.

But Chopin, while in Scotland, was not always staying in manors and castles, now and then he was housed less aristocratically, though perhaps not less, nay, probably more, comfortably.  Such humbler quarters he found at the house (10, Warriston Crescent) of Dr. Lyschinski, a Pole by birth, and a refugee, who after studying medicine in Edinburgh practised it there until a few years ago when he removed to London.  For the information which I am now going to give I am indebted to Mrs. Lyschinski.  Among those who received Chopin at the Edinburgh railway station was Dr. Lyschinski who addressed him in Polish.  The composer put up at an hotel (perhaps the London Hotel, in St. Andrew’s Square).  Next day—­Miss Paterson, a neighbour, having placed her carriage at Chopin’s disposal—­Mrs. Lyschinski took him out for a drive.  He soon got tired of the hotel, in fact, felt it quite unbearable, and told the doctor, to whom he had at once taken a fancy, that he could not do without him.  Whereupon the latter said:  “Well, then you must come to my house; and as it is rather small, you must be satisfied with the nursery.”  So the children were sent to a friend’s house, and the nursery