Jane Stirling

Jean ("Jane") Wilhelmina Stirling[1][2] (15 July 1804 – 6 February 1859) was a Scottish amateur pianist who is best known as a student and later friend of Frédéric Chopin, who dedicated Nocturnes, Op.

[4] She involved herself not only in music and the arts, but also in subjects such as prison reform, homeopathy, and the Protestant movement.

[8] She also expressed a desire to learn the cello, and so Chopin referred her to his collaborator, Auguste Franchomme.

The concluding item of the concert was the Barcarolle in F-sharp major, but Chopin was too exhausted to complete the final section.

[4] There had been plans for another concert there in March, but on 23 February a revolution broke out, many people fled the city, and Chopin was suddenly deprived of his livelihood.

[6] By August, the London season being at an end, he accepted an invitation from Jane Stirling to visit her homeland of Scotland.

It was an exhausting 12 hour train journey, but Chopin appreciated the hospitality of the Stirling sisters, whom he said 'even bring me the Paris newspapers every day'[12] near Edinburgh, at Calder House, the castle of Lord Torphichen, the ladies' brother-in-law.

[3]) He went on to give a "very select" concert in Glasgow,[13] staying with Stirling's sister Ann at Johnstone Castle.

[4] It was during this tour, in late October 1848 in Edinburgh, at the home of Dr Adam Łyszczyński, a Polish physician with whom he stayed for a number of days, that Chopin wrote his last will and testament – "a kind of disposition to be made of my stuff in the future, if I should drop dead somewhere," he wrote to his friend Wojciech Grzymała.

[12] He referred to both Stirling and Mrs Erskine as "mes braves Écossaises", and was frequently exasperated by their over-solicitude, saying 'They will suffocate me with their goodness' [12] and her sister Ann's habit of bringing him religious pamphlets.

The second-floor, seven-room apartment had previously housed the Russian Embassy; Chopin could not afford it, but Jane Stirling rented it for him.

She purchased all of Chopin's remaining furniture and effects, including his death mask by Auguste Clésinger.

She had a considerable correspondence with Ludwika Jędrzejewicz concerning the posthumous publication of some of his unpublished works, and 25 of these letters are now in the Muzeum Fryderyka Chopina in Warsaw.