More adventurous were Liszt's affairs with Marguerite Gautier, the lady
of the camellias, the consumptive heroine of the Dumas play, as related
by Jules Janin, and with the more notorious Lola Montez, who had to
leave Munich to escape the wrath of the honest burghers. The king had
humoured too much the lady's extravagant habits. She fell in love with
Liszt, who had parted with his Marie in 1844, and went with him to
Constantinople. Where they separated no one knows. It was not destined
to be other than a fickle passion on both sides, not without its
romantic aspects for romantically inclined persons. Probably 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 abbe 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 signed "Robert Franz." Poor
old Liszt is mercilessly dissected, and his admiring circle at Weimar
slashed by a vigourous pen. In truth, despite the falsity of the
picture, Olga Janina wrote much more incisively, with more personal
colour and temperament, than did Countess d'Agoult, who also caricatured
Liszt in her Nelida (as "Guermann"), and the good Liszt wrote to his
princess: "Janina was not evil, only exalted." [I have heard it
whispered that the attempt on Liszt's life at Rome was a melodramatic
affair, concocted by his princess, who was jealous of the Janina girl,
with the aid of the pianist's valet.]
La Mara shows to us twenty-six portraits in her Liszt and the Ladies;
they include Princess Cristina Belgiojoso, Pauline Viardot-Garcia,
Caroline Unger-Sabatier, Marie Camille Pleyel, Charlotte von Hagn,
Bettina von Arnim, Marie von Mouchanoff-Kalergis, Rosalie, Countess
Sauerma, a niece of Spohr and an accomplished harp player; the Grand
Duchess of Saxony, Maria Pawlowna, and her successor, Sophie, Grand
Duchess of Weimar, both patronesses of Liszt; the Princess Wittgenstein,
Emilie Merian-Genast, Agnes Street Klindworth, Jessie Hillebrand
Laussot, Sofie Menter, the greatest of his women pupils; the Countess
Wolkenstein and Buelow, 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 became a Liszt pupil and a fervent propagandist. Her
crayon sketch drawing of the venerable master is excellent. In her
possession is a drawing by Ingres, who met Liszt in Rome, 1839, when the
pianist was twenty-eight years of age. We learn that Liszt never
attempted "poetry" with the exception of a couplet which he sent to the
egregious Bettina von Arnim. It runs thus, and it consoles us with its
crackling consonants for the discontinuance of further poetic flights on
the part of its creator:
"Ich kraxele auf der Leiter
Und komme doch nicht weiter."