Mrs. Kemble, in her chatty book, Records of Later Life, relates a
pleasant incident in September, 1842:
"Our temporary fellowship with Liszt procured for us a delightful
participation in a tribute of admiration from the citizen workmen of
Coblentz, that was what the French call saisissant. We were sitting all
in our hotel drawing-room together, the maestro, as usual, smoking his
long pipe, when a sudden burst of music made us throw open the window
and go out on the balcony, when Liszt was greeted by a magnificent
chorus of nearly two hundred men's voices. They sang to perfection,
each with his small sheet of music and his sheltered light in his hand;
and the performance, which was the only one of the sort I ever heard,
gave a wonderful impression of the musical capacity of the only really
musical nation in the world."
Mrs. Kemble also gives her impression of Liszt at Munich in 1870:
"I had gone to the theatre at Munich, where I was staying, to hear
Wagner's opera of the Rheingold, with my daughter and her husband. We
had already taken our places, when S. exclaimed to me, 'There is Liszt.'
The increased age, the clerical dress had effected but little change in
the striking general appearance, which my daughter (who had never seen
him since 1842, when she was quite a child) recognised immediately. I
went round to his box, and, recalling myself to his memory, begged him
to come to ours, and let me present my daughter to him. He very
good-naturedly did so, and the next day called upon us at our hotel and
sat with us a long time. His conversation on matters of art (Wagner's
music which he and we had listened to the evening before) and literature
was curiously cautious and guarded, and every expression of opinion
given with extreme reserve, instead of the uncompromising fearlessness
of his earlier years; and the Abbe was indeed quite another from the
Liszt of our summer on the Rhine of 1842."