From Anne Thackeray Ritchie's memoirs of her childhood. Anne Thackeray Ritchie was the daughter of novelist W.M. Thackeray and herself a novelist. At the time of this anecdote, she was 11 or 12.
I remember three Scotch ladies, for whom my grandmother had a great regard, who were not part of our community, but who used to pass through Paris and always made a certain stay … . I was very much afraid of them, though interested at the same time as girls are in unknown quantities. They were well connected and had estates and grand relations in the distance, though they seemed to live as simply as we did. One winter it was announced that they had taken an apartment for a few weeks, and next morning I was sent with a note to one of them by my grandmother. They were tall, thin ladies, two were widows, one was a spinster; of the three the unmarried one frightened me most. On this occasion, after reading the note, one of the widow ladies said to the spinster Miss X., who had her bonnet on, 'Why, you were just going to call on the child’s grandmother, were you not? Why don’t you take her back with you in the carriage?' 'I must first go and see how he is this morning,' said Miss X., somewhat anxiously, 'and then I will take her home, of course. Are the things packed?' A servant came in carrying a large basket with a variety of bottles and viands and napkins. I had not presence of mind to run away as I longed to do, and somehow in a few minutes I found myself sitting in a little open carriage with the Scotch lady, and the basket on the opposite seat. I thought her, if possible, more terrible than ever — she seemed grave, preoccupied. She had a long nose, a thick brown complexion, grayish sandy hair, and was dressed in scanty cloth skirts, gray and sandy too. She spoke to me, I believe, but my heart was in my mouth; I hardly dared even listen to what she said. We drove along the Champs Elysées towards the Arc, and then turned into a side street, and presently came to a house at the door of which the carriage stopped. The lady got out, carefully carrying her heavy basket, and told me to follow, and we began to climb the shiny stairs – one, two flights I think; then we rang at a bell and the door was almost instantly opened. It was opened by a slight, delicate-looking man with long hair, bright eyes, and a thin, hooked nose. When Miss X. saw him she hastily put down her basket upon the floor, caught both his hands in hers, began to shake them gently, and to scold him in an affectionate reproving way for having come to the door. He laughed, said he guessed who it was, and motioned to her to enter, and I followed at her sign with the basket, --- followed into a narrow little room, with no furniture in it whatever but an upright piano against the wall and a few straw chairs standing on the wooden shiny floor. He made us sit down with some courtesy, and in reply to her questions said he was pretty well. Had he slept? He shook his head. Had he eaten? He shrugged his shoulders and then he pointed to the piano. He had been composing something – I remember that he spoke in an abrupt, light sort of way – would Miss X. like to hear it? `She would like to hear it,' she answered, `of course, she would dearly like to hear it; but it would tire him to play; it could not be good for him.' He smiled again, shook back his long hair, and sat down immediately; and then the music began, and the room was filled with continuous sound, he looking over his shoulder now and then to see if we were liking it. The lady sat absorbed and listening, and as I looked at her I saw tears in her eyes --- great clear tears rolling down her cheeks, while the music poured on and on. As we were coming downstairs she wiped her eyes again. By this time I had got to understand the plain, tall, grim, warm-hearted woman; all my silly terrors were gone. She looked hard at me as we drove away. `Never forget that you have heard Chopin play,' she said with emotion, `for soon no one will ever hear him play any more.'
Sometimes reading the memoirs of the great musician, the sad story of his early death, of his passionate fidelity, and cruel estrangement from the companion he most loved, I have remembered this little scene with comfort and pleasure, and known that he was not altogether alone in life, and that he had good friends who cared for his genius and tended him to the last. Of their affection he was aware. But of their constant secret material guardianship he was unconscious; the basket he evidently hated, the woman he turned to with most grateful response and dependence. He was to the very end absorbed in his music, in his art, in his love. He had bestowed without counting all that he had to give: he poured it forth upon others, never reckoning the cost: and then dying away from it all, he in turn took what came to him as a child might do, without pondering or speculating overmuch.