Had Chopin, when he left Paris, really in view the possibility of settling in London?  There was at the time a rumour of this being the case.  The Athenaeum (April 8, 1848), in the note already adverted to, said:—­“M.  Chopin is expected, if not already here—­ it is even added to remain in England.”  But if he embraced the idea at first, he soon began to loosen his grasp of it, and, before long, abandoned it altogether.  In his then state of health existence would have been a burden anywhere, but it was a greater one away from his accustomed surroundings.  Moreover, English life to be enjoyable requires a robustness of constitution, sentimental and intellectual as well as physical, which the delicately-organised artist, even in his best time, could not boast of.  If London and the rest of Britain was not to the mind of Chopin, it was not for want of good-will among the people.  Chopin’s letters show distinctly that kindness was showered upon him from all sides.  And these letters do not by any means contain a complete roll of those who were serviceable to him.  The name of Frederick Beale, the publisher, for instance, is not to be found there, and yet he is said, with what truth I do not know, to have attached himself to the tone-poet.

[Footnote:  Mr. Hipkins heard Chopin play at Broadwood’s to Beale the Waltzes in D flat major and C sharp minor (Nos. 1 and 2 of Op. 64), subsequently published by Cramer, Beale and Co.  But why did the publisher not bring out the whole opus (three waltzes, not two), which had already been in print in France and Germany for nine or ten months?  Was his attachment to the composer weaker than his attachment to his cash-box?]

The attentions of the piano-makers, on the other hand, are duly remembered.  In connection with them I must not forget to record the fact that Mr. Henry Fowler Broadwood had a concert grand, the first in a complete iron frame, expressly made for Chopin, who, unfortunately, did not live to play upon it.

[Footnote:  For particulars about the Broadwood pianos used by Chopin in England and Scotland (and he used there no others at his public concerts and principal private entertainments), see the List of John Broadwood & Sons’ Exhibits at the International Inventions Exhibition (1885), a pamphlet full of interesting information concerning the history and construction of the pianoforte.  It is from the pen of A. J. Hipkins.]

A name one misses with surprise in Chopin’s letters is that of his Norwegian pupil Tellefsen, who came over from Paris to London, and seems to have devoted himself to his master. [Footnote:  Tellefsen, says Mr. Hipkins, was nearly always with Chopin.] Of his ever-watchful ministering friend Miss Stirling and her relations we shall hear more in the following letters.

Chopin started for Scotland early in August, 1848, for on the 6th August he writes to Franchomme that he had left London a few days before.