The feminine friendships of Franz Liszt gained for him as much notoriety
as his music making. To the average public he was a compound of
Casanova, Byron and Goethe, 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 poisons were the subjects of
conversation in Europe three-quarters of a century ago, as earlier Byron
was both hero and black-sheep in the current gossip of his time. And as
Liszt was in the public eye and ubiquitous--he travelled rapidly over
Europe in a post-chaise, often giving two concerts in one day at
different places--he became a sort of legendary figure, a musical Don
Juan. He was not unmindful of the value of advertisement, so the legend
grew with the years. That his reputation for gallantry was hugely
exaggerated it is hardly necessary to add; a man who, accomplished as
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 philandering, and
for the cultivation of numerous platonic friendships. But the witty
characterisation of Madame Plater holds good of Liszt. She said one day
to Chopin: "If I were young and pretty, my little Chopin, I would take
thee for husband, Ferdinand Hiller for friend, and Liszt for lover."
This was in 1833, when Liszt was twenty-two years of age and the
witticism definitely places Liszt in the sentimental hierarchy.
La Mara, an indefatigable and enthusiastic collector of anecdotes about
unusual folk, has just published a book, Liszt und die Frauen. It deals
with twenty-six friends of Liszt and does not lean heavily on scandal as
an attractive adjunct; indeed La Mara (Marie Lipsius) sees musical 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 enjoyed the
fleeting affection of the pianist-composer. Whatever else he might have
been, Liszt was not a vulgar gallant. Over his swiftest passing
intrigues he contrived to throw an air of mystery. In sooth, he was an
idealist and romanticist. No one ever heard him boast his conquests.
Did Liszt ever love? It has been questioned by some of his biographers.
His first passion, however, seems to have been genuine, as genuine as
his love for his mother and for his children; he proved more admirable
as a father than he would have been as a husband. In 1823 as "le petit
Litz" he had set all musical Paris wondering. When his father died in
1827 he gave lessons there like any everyday pianoforte pedagogue
because he needed 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; she became his mystic Beatrice, for
her and to her he composed and dedicated a song; and even meeting her at
Pau in 1844, just sixteen years after their rupture, did not create the
disenchantment usual in such cases. Berlioz, too, sought an early love
when old, and in his eyes she was as she always had been; Stendhal burst
into tears on seeing again Angela Pietagrua after eleven years
absence. Verily art is a sentimental antiseptic.
[Illustration: Liszt, about 1850]
Caroline de Saint-Criq had married like the dutiful daughter she was,
and Liszt's heart by 1844 was not only battle-scarred but a cemetery of
memories. She died in 1874. They had corresponded 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 daily angelus. Liszt averred that he kept his promise. The
name of the lyric he wrote for her is: "Je voudrais m'evanouir comme la
pourpre du soir" ("Ich moechte hingehn wie das Abendrot").
Before the affair began with the Countess d'Agoult, afterward the mother
of his three children, Liszt enjoyed an interlude with the Countess
Adele Laprunarede. It was the year of the revolution, 1830, and the
profound despondency into which he had been cast by his unhappy love for
Caroline was cured, as his mother sagely remarked, by the sound of
cannon. He became a fast friend of Countess Adele and followed her to
her home in the Alps, there, as he jestingly said, to pursue their
studies in style in the French language. It must not be forgotten that
the Count, her husband, was their companion. But Paris wagged its myriad
tongues all the same. Liszt's affiliation with Countess Louis Plater,
born Graefin Brzostowska, the Pani Kasztelanowa (or lady castellan 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 Frederic Chopin wrote a
"revolutionary" study (in C minor, opus 10) on hearing of Warsaw's
downfall. Wagner rang incendiary church bells during the revolutionary
days at Dresden in May 1849. Brave gestures, as our French friends would
put it, and none the less lasting. Liszt's symphony is lost, but its
themes may have bobbed up in his Faust and Dante symphonies. Who
remembers the Warsaw of 1831 except Chopin lovers? And the rebellious
spirit of Wagner's bell-ringing passed over into his Tetralogy. Nothing
is negligible to an artist, not even a "gesture." Naturally there is no
reference to the incident in his autobiography. If you are to take
Wagner at his word he was a mere looker-on in Dresden during what
Bakounine contemptuously called "a petty insurrection." Nietzsche was
right--great men are to be distrusted when they write of themselves.
With the Madame d'Agoult and Princess Wittgenstein episodes we are not
concerned just now. So much has been written in this two-voiced fugue in
the symphony of Liszt's life that it is difficult to disentangle the
truth from the fable. La Mara is sympathetic, though not particularly
enlightening. Of more interest, because of the comparative mystery of
the affair, is the friendship between George Sand and Liszt. Naturally
La Mara, sentimentalist that she is, denies a liaison. She errs. There
was a brief love passage. But Liszt escaped the fate of De Musset and
Chopin. Balzac speaks of the matter in his novel Beatrix, in which
George Sand is depicted as Camille Maupin, the Countess d'Agoult as
Beatrix, Gustave Planche 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 Nelida
she imitates the Elle et Lui. That she hated George Sand, after a
pretended friendship, cannot be doubted; we have her own words as
witnesses. In My Literary Life, by Madame Edmond Adam (Juliette Lamber),
she said of George Sand to the author: "Her lovers are to her a piece of
chalk, with which she scratches on the black-board. When she has
finished she crushes the chalk under her foot, and there remains but the
dust, which is quickly blown away." "How is it, my esteemed and beloved
friend, you have never forgiven?" sadly asked Madame Adam. "Because the
wound has not healed yet. Conscious that I had put my whole life and
soul into my love for Liszt she tried to take him away from me."
One would suppose from the above that Liszt was faithful to Madame
d'Agoult or that George Sand had separated the runaway couple, whereas
in reality Liszt knew George Sand before he met the D'Agoult. What
Madame Sand said of Liszt as a gallant can hardly be paraphrased in
English. She was not very flattering. Perhaps George Sand 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 never saw him again." It was at the
beginning of 1840 that Liszt went to Chopin's apartment accompanied by a
companion. Chopin was absent. On his return he became furious on
learning of the visit. No wonder. Who was the lady in the case? It could
have been Marie, it might have been George Sand, and probably it was
some new fancy.
[Illustration: _After an oil painting by J. Danhauser_
Victor Hugo Paganini Rossini
Dumas George Sand Countess d'Agoult