On a tour which I made with Alboni, I met Chopin at Manchester, where he was announced to play at a grand concert without orchestra.  He begged I should not be present.  “You, my dear Osborne,” said he, “who have heard me so often in Paris, remain with those impressions.  My playing will be lost in such a large room, and my compositions will be ineffective.  Your presence at the concert will be painful both to you and me.”

Mr. Osborne told his audience further that notwithstanding this appeal he was present in a remote corner of the room.  I may add that although he could absent himself from the hall for the time Chopin was playing, he could not absent himself from the concert, for, as the papers tell us, he acted as accompanist.  The impression which Chopin’s performance on this occasion left upon his friend’s mind is described in the following few sad words:  “His playing was too delicate to create enthusiasm, and I felt truly sorry for him.”

Soon after the concert Chopin returned to Scotland.  How many days (between August 23 and September 7?) he remained in Manchester, I do not know, but it is well known that while staying there he was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Salis Schwabe.  To Mrs. Salis Schwabe, a lady noted for her benevolence, Thomas Erskine addressed the letter concerning Miss Jane Stirling a part of which I quoted on one of the foregoing pages of this chapter.  The reader remembers, of course, Chopin’s prospective allusions to the Manchester concert in his letters to Franchomme (August 6, 1848) and Grzymala (July 18, 1848).

About a month after the concert at which he played in Manchester, Chopin gave one of his own in Glasgow.  Here is what may be read in the Courier of September 28 and previous days:—­

Monsieur Chopin has the honour to announce that his Matinee musicals will take place on Wednesday, the 27th September, in the Merchant Hall, Glasgow.  To commence at half-past two o’clock.  Tickets, limited in number, half-a-guinea each, and full particulars to be had from Mr. Muir Wood, 42, Buchanan Street.

The net profits of this concert are said to have been 60 pounds.  Mr. Muir Wood relates:—­

I was then a comparative stranger in Glasgow, but I was told that so many private carriages had never been seen at any concert in the town.  In fact, it was the county people who turned out, with a few of the elite of Glasgow society.  Being a morning concert, the citizens were busy otherwise, and half- a-guinea was considered too high a sum for their wives and daughters.

No doubt Chopin’s playing and compositions must have been to the good Glasgow citizens of that day what caviare is to the general.  In fact, Scotland, as regards music, had at that period not yet emerged from its state of primitive savagery.  But if we may believe the learned critic in the Glasgow Courier, Chopin’s matinee was numerously attended, and the audience, which consisted of “the beauty and fashion, indeed of the very elite of the West-end,” thoroughly enjoyed the playing of the concert-giver and the singing of Madame Adelasio de Margueritte who assisted him.  I think the reader will be interested by the following specimen of criticism for more than one reason:—­