Almost inevitably, most of Chopin's pupils were wealthy young ladies with talents in inverse proportion to their social status. Wilhelm von Lenz, an occasional Russian pupil, noted that a steady stream of such students – 'each one even prettier than the last' would emerge from the music room and parade haughtily past the next in line. Nevertheless, one or two of these 'perfumed ladies in frilly dresses' might actually have pursued professional careers, had such a prospect not been entirely unthinkable.
Camille O'Meara in particular was an extremely accomplished player with an instinctive feeling for her teacher's style. Yet, as Liszt said many years later, Chopin was 'unlucky with his students'. None achieved international fame as performers, though a few of them – such as Karol Mikuli, teacher of Moriz Rosenthal – fruitfully passed on to subsequent generations what they had learned in the Place d'Orleans.
Chopin himself had especially high hopes for Carl Filtsch, an astonishingly talented prodigy only 13 years old who came to study with him at the end of 1842. 'When this lad starts touring', joked Liszt, 'I'd better shut up shop'. But Filtsch was already ill. He died of consumption in 1845, a few years before Chopin's own death from the same disease.