Franz Liszt

e, and to this mixture could have been added the name of Stendhal. Liszt's love affairs, Liszt's children, Liszt's perilous escapes from daggers, pistols and pois

s much as he, whether author, pianoforte virtuoso or composer, could have hardly had much idle time on his hands for the devil to dip into; and then his correspondence. He wrote or dictated literally thousands of letters. He was an ideal letter-writer. No one went unanswered, and a fairly good biography might be evolved from the many volumes of his correspondence. Nevertheless he did find time for much philanderi

life through rose-coloured spectacles, and Liszt is one of her gods. For her he is more sinned against than sinning, more pursued than pursuer; his angelic wings grow in size on his shoulders while you watch. Only a few of the ladies, titled and otherwise, mentioned in this book en

ded money for the support of his mother. Among his aristocratic pupils was Caroline de Saint-Criq, the daughter of the Minister of Commerce, Count de Saint-Criq. It must have been truly a love in the clouds. Caroline was motherless. She was, as Liszt later declared, "a woman ideally good." Her father did not enjoy the prospect of a son-in-law who gave music lessons, and the intimacy suddenly snapped. But Liszt never forgot her; sh

, abo

sponded for years, and at the moment of their youthful parting, caused by a cruel and extremely sensible father, they made a promise to recall each other's names at the hour of the dai

stellan in English; no wonder he wrote such chromatic music later, these dissonantal names must have been an inspiration) was purely platonic, as were the majority of his friendships with the sex. But he dearly loved a princess, and the sharp eyes of Miss Amy Fay noted that his bow when meeting a woman of rank was a trifle too profound. (See her admirable Music Study in Germany.) The truth is that Liszt was a courtier. He was reared in aristocratic surroundings, and he took to luxury as would a cat. With the cannon booming in Paris he sketched the plan of his Revolutionary Symphony, but he continued to visit the aristocracy. In 1831 at Stuttgart his friend Frédéric Chopin wrote a "revolutionary" study (in C minor, opus 10) on hearing of Warsaw's do

set and Chopin. Balzac speaks of the matter in his novel Béatrix, in which George Sand is depicted as Camille Maupin, the Countess d'Agoult as Béatrix, Gustave Planché as Claude Vignon, and Liszt as Conti. Furthermore, the D'Agoult was jealous of Madame Sand, doubly jealous of her as a friend of Liszt and as a writer of genius. Read the D'Agoult's novel, written after her parting with Liszt, and see how in this Nélida she imitates the Elle et Lui. That she hated George Sand, after a pretended friendship, cannot be doubted; we have her own words as wit

was a reason why the relations between Chopin and Liszt cooled; the latter said: "Our lady loves had quarrelled, and as good cavaliers we were in duty bound to side with them." Chopin said: "We are friends, we were comrades." Liszt told Dr. Niecks: "There was a cessation of intimacy, but no enmity. I left Paris soon after, and

painting by

go Pagani

e Sand Coun

at the

bly the closest graze with hatred and revenge ever experienced by Liszt was the Olga Janina episode. Polish and high born, rich, it is said, she adored Liszt, studied with him, followed him from Weimar to Rome, from Rome to Budapest, bored him, shocked him as an abbé and scandalised ecclesiastical Rome by her mad behaviour; finally she attempted to stab him, and, failing, took a dose of poison. She didn't die, but lived to compose a malicious and clever book, Souvenirs d'une Cosaque (written at Paris and Karentec, March to September, published by the Libraire Internationale, 1875, now out of print), and si

an-Genast, Agnes Street Klindworth, Jessie Hillebrand Laussot, Sofie Menter, the greatest of his women pupils; the Countess Wolkenstein and Bülow, Elpis Melena, Fanny, the Princess Rospigliosi, the Baroness Olga Meyendorff (this lady enjoyed to an extraordinary degree the confidence of Liszt. At Weimar she was held in high esteem by him-and hated by his pupils), and Nadine Helbig-Princess Nadine Schahawskoy. Madame Helbig was born in 1847 and went to Rome the first time in 1865. She becam

ele auf d

doch nic