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Today, Paderewski's once-golden, once-silver mane is grey and thinning at the top. But he still sports the oversized, low, soft collars and droopy ties that he wore in the time of Queen Victoria. Watery-eyed and frail, but still erect as a ramrod, he now walks with the aid of a stick. Still a natty and very individual dresser, he prefers striped trousers and a white vest for daytime wear. Though his manner in conversation is kindly, dignified and somewhat remote (he speaks English without trace of an accent), his eyes can still flash like an aging lion's when Poland is mentioned.
Old & Mild. When he is not traveling, Paderewski lives in his 26-room villa Riond Bosson at Morges, Switzerland. Once the property of Fouche, Napoleon's Minister of Police, Riond Bosson overlooks Lake Geneva towards towering Mont Blanc. Paderewski has at different times bought half-a-dozen farms and country estates, including a large walnut ranch in California. But Riond Bosson has for 40 years been the nearest thing to a permanent home that Paderewski has had. There, with his sister
Antoinina Wilkonska, a woman secretary and her mother, and a dozen servants, he lives the mild life of a well-to-do country gentleman.
Rising promptly at nine in the morning, he first of all reads his daily newspaper from cover to cover. After breakfasting on a roll and tea at 10:30, he retires to practice until 2:15, when lunch is served. His afternoons are spent walking about the grounds, smoking a few specially-made Mignon brand Egyptian cigarets, which he imports from a Manhattan tobacconist, and reading books on history, philosophy and politics. From 5 to 8:30 he plays the piano, then dines and spends the evening in the nightly ritual of a bridge game. At 10:30 he shuffles off to bed.
Paderewski has always regarded himself as a composer, and still spends much of his time composing. Aside from, his famous Minuet, which he wrote while a student in Vienna more than 50 years ago, the musical public has paid little attention to Paderewski's composition. But his Symphony in B Minor and his Polish opera, Manru, have been performed in most of the big musical centres of the world.
Old Booper. Today, Paderewski has long since passed the peak of one of the most spectacular careers in the history of music. But the life of success that he looks back upon in the pastoral elegance of Riond Bosson was won with bitter years of discouragement and struggle. The son of a small-town Polish farm administrator, he felt as a child the knouts of Cossack riding whips, saw his father thrown into prison as a revolutionist against the Tsars. No infant prodigy, he worked until he was nearly 30 before attracting any public notice as a pianist. His early studies at the Warsaw Conservatory met with little encouragement. Only the trombone teacher, with whom he took a few experimental booping lessons, saw a future for him. Said he: "You will earn your livelihood with the trombone, not the piano."