While by the seaside Franz Liszt lost the father who had loved him
with the devotion of father and mother combined. This fresh stroke of
affliction deepened his dejection, and finally resulted in a fit of
severe illness. When he was convalescent new views of life seemed
to inspire him. He was now entirely thrown on his own resources for
support, for Adam Liszt had left his affairs so deeply involved that
there was but little left for his son and widow. A powerful nature,
turned awry by unhealthy broodings, is often rescued from its own mental
perversities by the sense of some new responsibility suddenly imposed on
it. Boy as Liszt was, the Titan in him had already shown itself in
the agonies and struggles which he had undergone, and, now that the
necessity of hard work suddenly came, the atmosphere of turmoil and
gloom began to clear under the imminent practical burden of life. He set
resolutely to work composing and giving concerts. The religious mania
under which he had rested for a while turned his thoughts to sacred
music, and most of his compositions were masses. But the very effort of
responsible toil set, as it were, a background against which he could
appoint the true place and dimensions of his art work. There was another
disturbance, however, which now stirred up his excitable mind. He fell
madly in love with a lady of high rank, and surrendered his young heart
entirely to this new passion. The unfortunate issue of this attachment,
for the lady was much older than himself, and laughed with a gentle
mockery at the infatuation of her young adorer, made Liszt intensely
unhappy and misanthropical, but it did not prevent him from steady
labor. Indeed, work became all the more welcome, as it served to
distract his mind from its amorous pains, and his fantastic musings,
instead of feeding on themselves, expressed themselves in his art.
Certainly no healthier sign of one beginning to clothe himself in his
right mind again can easily be imagined.
Liszt was now twenty years of age, and had regularly settled in Paris.
He became acquainted intimately with the leaders of French literature,
and was an habitué of the brilliant circles which gathered these great
minds night after night. Lamartine and Chateaubriand were yielding
place to a young and fiery school of writers and thinkers, but cordially
clasped hands with the successors whom they themselves had made
possible. Mme. George Sand, Balzac, Dumas, Victor Hugo, and others were
just then beginning to stir in the mental revolution which they made
famous. Liszt felt a deep interest in the literary and scientific
interests of the day, and he threw himself into the new movement with
great enthusiasm, for its strong wave moved art as well as letters with
convulsive throes. The musician found in this fresh impulse something
congenial to his own fiery, restless, aspiring nature. He entered
eagerly into all the intellectual movements of the day. He became a
St. Simonian and such a hot-headed politician that, had he not been an
artist, and as such considered a harmless fanatic, he would perhaps have
incurred some penalties. Liszt has left us, in his "Life of Chopin," and
his letters, some very vivid portraitures of the people and the events,
the fascinating literary and artistic reunions, and the personal
experiences which made this part of his life so interesting; but,
tempting as it is, we can not linger. There can be no question that this
section of his career profoundly colored his whole life, and that
the influence of Victor Hugo, Balzac, and Mme. George Sand is very
perceptible in his compositions not merely in their superficial tone
and character, but in the very theory on which they are built. Liszt
thenceforward cut loose from all classic restraints, and dared to fling
rules and canons to the winds, except so far as his artistic taste
approved them. The brilliant and daring coterie, defying conventionality
and the dull decorum of social law, in which our artist lived, wrought
also another change in his character. Liszt had hitherto been almost
austere in his self-denial, in restraint of passion and license, in
a religious purity of life, as if he dwelt in the cold shadow of the
monastery, not knowing what moment he should disappear within its gates.
There was now to be a radical change.
One of the brilliant members of the coterie in which he lived a life of
such keen mental activity was Countess D'Agoult, who afterward became
famous in the literary world as "Daniel Stern." Beautiful, witty,
accomplished, imaginative, thoroughly in sympathy with her friend
George Sand in her views of love and matrimony, and not less daring
in testifying to her opinion by actions, the name of Mme. D'Agoult had
already been widely bruited abroad in connection with more than one
romantic escapade. In the powerful personality of young Franz Liszt,
instinct with an artistic genius which aspired like an eagle, vital with
a resolute, reckless will, and full of a magnetic energy that overflowed
in everything--looks, movements, talk, playing--the somewhat fickle
nature of Mme. D'Agoult was drawn to the artist like steel to a magnet.
Liszt, on the other hand, easily yielded to the refined and delicious
sensuousness of one of the most accomplished women of her time, who to
every womanly fascination added the rarest mental gifts and high social
place.
The mutual passion soon culminated in a tie which lasted for many years,
and was perhaps as faithfully observed by both parties as could be
expected of such an irregular connection. Three children were the
offspring of this attachment, a son who died, and two daughters, one of
whom became the wife of M. Ollivier, the last imperial prime minister of
France, and the other successively Mme. Von Bûlow and Mme. Wagner, under
which latter title she is still known. The _chroniques scandaleuses_
of Paris and other great cities of Europe are full of racy scandals
purporting to connect the name of Liszt with well-known charming and
beautiful women, but, aside from the uncertainty which goes with such
rumors, this is not a feature of Liszt's life on which it is our purpose
to dilate. The errors of such a man, exposed by his temperament and
surroundings to the fiercest breath of temptation, should be rather
veiled than opened to the garish day. Of the connection with Mme.
D'Agoult something has been briefly told, because it had an important
influence on his art career. Though the Church had never sanctioned the
tie, there is every reason to believe that the lady's power over Liszt
was consistently used to restrain his naturally eccentric bias, and to
keep his thoughts fixed on the loftiest art ideals.