An American lady who signs herself "B. W. H.," and wrote some
reminiscences of the great musician at Weimar in 1877, calls her
contribution An Hour Passed with Liszt:
"How much more some of us get than we deserve! A pleasure has come to us
unsought. It came knocking at our door seeking entrance and we simply
did not turn it away. It happened in this fashion: A friend had been
visiting Liszt in Weimar and happened to mention us to the great master,
who promised us a gracious reception should we ever appear there. To
Weimar then we came, and the gracious reception we certainly had, to our
satisfaction and lasting remembrance.
"After sending our cards, and receiving permission to present ourselves
at an appointed and early hour, we drove to the small, cosy house
occupied by Liszt when here, on the outskirts of the garden of
the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and were ushered by his Italian valet into a
comfortable, cosy, home-like apartment, where we sat awaiting the great
man's appearance. Wide casements opened upon a stretch of lawn and noble
old trees; easy-chairs and writing-tables; MS. music, with the pen lying
carelessly beside it; masses of music piled up on the floor, a row of
books there, too; a grand piano and an upright one; a low dish of roses
on the table; a carpet, which is not taken for granted here as with
us--altogether the easy, friendly look of a cottage drawing-room at
home, where people have a happy use of pleasant things.
"He entered the room after a few minutes and greeted us with a charming
amiability, for which we inwardly blessed the absent friend. Of course
everybody knows how he looks--tall, thin, with long white hair; a long,
black, robe-like coat, being an abbe; long, slight, sensitive hands; a
manner used to courts, and a smile and grace rare in a man approaching
seventy. He spoke of Anna Mehlig, and of several young artists just
beginning their career, whom we personally know. Very graciously he
mentioned Miss Cecilia Gaul, of Baltimore; spoke kindly of Miss Anna
Bock, one of the youngest and most diligent of artists, and most
forcibly perhaps of Carl Hermann, like Anna Mehlig, a pupil in the
Stuttgart Conservatory, 'There is something in the young man,' he said
with emphasis. So he chatted in the most genial way of things great and
small, as if he were not one of the world's geniuses, and we two little
insignificant nobodies sitting before him, overcome with a consciousness
of his greatness and our nothingness, yet quite happy and at ease, as
every one must be who comes within the sphere of his gracious
kindliness.
"Suddenly he rose and went to his writing-table, and, with one of his
long, sweet smiles, so attractive in a man of his age--but why shouldn't
a man know how to smile long, sweet smiles who has had innumerable
thrilling romantic experiences with the sex that has always adored
him?--he took a bunch of roses from a glass on his table and brought it
to us. Whether to kiss his hand or fall on our knees we did not quite
know; but, America being less given than many lands to emotional
demonstration, we smiled back with composure, and appeared, no doubt, as
if we were accustomed from earliest youth to distinguished marks of
favour from the world's great ones.
"But the truth is we were not. And these roses which stood on Liszt's
writing-table by his MS. music, presented by the hand that has made him
famous, are already pressing and will be kept among our penates, except
one, perhaps, that will be distributed leaf by leaf to hero-worshipping
friends, with date and appropriate inscriptions on the sheet where it
rests. How amiable he was, indeed! The roses were much, but something
was to come. The Meister played to us. For this we had not even dared to
hope during our first visit. No one, of course, ever asks him to play,
and whether he does or not depends wholly on his mood. It was beautiful
to sit there close by him, the soft lawns and trees, framed by the open
casement, making a background for the tall figure, the long, peculiar
hands wandering over the keys, the face full of intellect and power. And
how he smiles as he plays! We fancied at first in our own simplicity
that he was smiling at us, but later it seemed merely the music in his
soul illuminating his countenance. His whole face changes and gleams,
and grows majestic, revealing the master-spirit as his hands caress
while they master the keys. With harrowing experiences of the difficulty
of Liszt's compositions, we anticipated, as he began, something that
would thunder and crash and teach us what pigmies we were; but as an
exquisitely soft melody filled the room, and tones came like whispers to
our hearts, and a theme drawn with a tender, magical touch brought
pictures and dreams of the past before us, we actually forgot where we
were, forgot that the white-haired man was the famous Liszt, forgot to
speak as the last faint chord died away, and sat in utter silence, quite
lost to our surroundings, with unseeing eyes gazing out through the
casement.
"At last he rose, took our hands kindly, and said, 'That is how I play
when I am suffering from a cold as at present.' We asked if he had been
improvising, or if what he played was already printed. 'It was only a
little nocturne,' he said. 'It sounded like a sweet remembrance.' 'And
was that,' he replied cordially. Then fearing to disturb him too long,
and feeling we had been crowned with favours, we made our adieux,
receiving a kind invitation to come the following day and hear the young
artists who cluster around him here, some of whom he informed us played
'famos.' And after we had left him he followed us out to the stairway to
repeat his invitation and say another gracious word or two. And we went
off to drive through Weimar, and only half observed its pleasant homely
streets, its flat, uninteresting, yet friendly aspect, its really
charming park--so Lisztified we were, as a friend calls our state of
mind. The place has, indeed, little to charm the stranger now, except
the memories of Goethe and Schiller and all the famous literary stars
who once made it glorious, and the presence of Liszt."
The lives of musicians are, in general, so devoid of extraordinary
incident, that the relation of them is calculated more to instruct than
amuse.
That of Liszt, however, was an exception to the rule. His adventures
seemed to have been so many and so various as almost to encourage a
belief that in describing them his literary admirers often used the pen
of romance.
The last letter that Liszt indited with his own pen is addressed to Frau
Sofie Menter, and is dated Bayreuth, July 3, 1886. What proved to be
almost a death-bed epistle runs as follows:
"To-morrow, after the religious marriage of my granddaughter Daniela von
Buelow to Professor Henry Thode (art-historian), I betake myself to my
excellent friends the Munkacsys, Chateau Colpach, Grand Duchy of
Luxemburg. On the 20th July I shall be back here again for the first 7-8
performances of the Festspiel; then alas! I must put myself under the,
to me, very disagreeable cure at Kissingen, and in September an
operation for the eyes is impending for me with Graefe at Halle. For a
month past I have been quite unable to read, and almost unable to write,
with much labour, a couple of lines. Two secretaries kindly help me by
reading to me and writing letters at my dictation. How delightful it
would be to me, dear friend, to visit you at your fairy castle at Itter!
But I do not see any opportunity of doing so at present. Perhaps you
will come to Bayreuth, where, from July 20th to the 7th August, will be
staying your sincere friend F. Liszt."
The master was spared the infliction of the cure he dreaded at
Kissingen, and Frau Menter did not meet him at Bayreuth, for on July
31st Liszt died, what to him must have been a pleasant death, after
witnessing the greatest work of the poet-composer whom he had done so
much to befriend--Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.