(and, to cite Lizst's own words, "like a fairy godmother or an ideal Mæcenas" changed the current of his existence, ministering to "an imagination that would have exhausted the treasures of Golconda" * with a lavish sumptuousness that enlisted every art in the glorification of the one of which his favorite was the high priest), Wagner's life had been spent in clamoring for the "co-operation of all the arts."

Two magnificent cartoons bear witness, in an inverted sense, to Lizst's dictum, that music and painting merge into and complete each other. One depicts Dante communing with Virgil at the gate of Hell, the other St. Francis walking on the waters. They are both signed Gustave Doré, and are the outcome of an evening that the painter spent with the musician. Doré, electrified by Lizst's performance of his "Dante Symphony and of his "

Legend of St. Francis," pre

sented the composer with the cartoons as a proof of the close affinity existing be

tween the sister arts.

Although Pope Pius IX., of melomaniac memory, had assured his dear "Palestrina" "that the time was not far distant" when humanitarian governments would bring psychic means (such as Lizst's music) to bear on "hardened criminals," Lizst never wearied of declaring, with singular tenacity, that music was too much neglected by governments. Opera, he said,

was the only musical institution which in some

..

countries is supported by the State; but it does not furnish composers of another guild with the necessary emulation, so that their genius, if they possess any, remains in their portfolios. And without emulation, there is no art, says Schumann. Philharmonic societies are inadequate, because they are necessarily guided by the taste of the public. Timidly and tentatively, from time to time they venture upon the production of a novelty; but if the first performance fails to captivate an audience they never risk a repetition. Schumann was furious if any one said, This has

at a first performance, I always feel as if I were present at a court of assizes.

If governments and individuals who have the means of impartially encouraging the Fine Arts were just in the bestowal of their favors, they would organize orchestral concerts with a view to aiding youthful talent, just as they purchase pictures and statues for museums and galleries. It is true that it would be useless to buy musical scores and shut them up like works of art, for they do not appeal to the eves but let them speak, give them a chance of expanding in the light of day! Conservatoires* serve but to ripen a variety of more or less remarkable talents, destined to an existence of struggle, deception, and too often of poverty. I did my best at Weimar, so long as I could command an orchestra, to bring new talent before the public, but the effort of one individual is insufficient among the myriad aspirants to fame. A musical society should be founded by national subsidy in every country. Its special mission should be to enable composers who have not yet becelebrated, to produce their works. Its

members might be recruited in the orchestra

of the opera-house, which (in cases where the orchestra is maintained by royal or national munificence) would simplify matters, and allow of a share of its receipts being paid to the composer; all the more easily if picture-galleries were utilized as concert-rooms.

III.

WHEN we consider the phenomenal activity of a public career that began in 1820, with Lizst's first performance at a concert, at the age of nine; † the wide area of his travels and public triumphs, the prodigious number of the composer's works, the great part he played in the development

of the music and of the artistic life of the

century; his brilliant social career, his countless deeds of charity and efforts in the cause of justice, - we marvel, with his biographer, at the extraordinary mind that was a store-house of so much wisdom and learning. Madame Wohl avers that in the course of the "Conversations" that are the raison d'être of this memoir, there was no art nor science (without taking note of abstract questions) that he did not touch upon. His erudition was the more reof himself, Vous savez que je suis ignorant comme trois carpes, he must have been prepared for expostulation as emphatic as it was affectionately contradictory. The gods loved him, and be died young, despite his threescore years and ten. He liked flattery, and, to the last, had a keen appreciation of all the sweets of life. Indeed, he never became blasé of the delights of this "best of all worlds." Perhaps his really juvenile capacity for enjoyment was due to the fact that, literally, his path through life had been strewn

with flowers.

from French territory under the second empire.

In taking his place behind his little table, M. Rogeard was in habit of announcing his programme, as, for instance, "The Writers and Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century," "The Salons of the Eighteenth Century," "The Champions of the Literature of the Sixteenth Century, etc. Lizst would amuse his neighbor and himself by foretelling (in a whisper) the names, facts, and dates that Rogeard was about to mention in the course and would even (in his discreet undertone) correct the lecturer's data

lecture

if needs be.

German philosophy had no secrets for Lizst, who, while he was on the best of terms with all the great atheists, and took a connoisseur's delight in the analysis of their arguments, kept his own steadfast faith untarnished, as childlike, vivid, and profound as the faith of a young peasant girl who has not learnt to read. The idea of God was ever with him, as in his childhood. The sacred fire that burned within him brought him so near to its divine source, that no manner of philosophy had the power to lead him astray from the deeply rooted intuition that upheld

...

filled several rooms.

..

four celebrated beauties of the Court of Berlin had themselves painted as Cariatides, supporting the bust of Lizst, who was then in the heyday of his art and of his fame. The town was illuminated in his honor, and the King and Queen drove through the streets in an open carriage, to take part in the ovations that were showered on the hero of the hour whose name, a household word alike in castle and cottage, acted upon the masses like an electric current.

No wonder he loved flattery, for although it had been lavished on him for the greater part of threescore years and ten, the jade had never deceived him. Yet this amiable weakness did not blind him to facts; he never ceased to deplore that he had not followed a regular course of study. "I scribbled music," said Lizst, "before I could write a single letter of the alphabet; I was absorbed in books on philosophy and mysticism before I was certain of my grammar. Oh! that perfidious grammar. Many a weary hour has

it cost me." This from the brilliant author of the axiom: Les œuvres ne durent que par le style, whose own prose is so remarkable for finish and purity! When he was at Pesth, he was fond of attending the "conferences" of M. Rogeard, which were held at the house of Madame de Gerando, known to fame as the friend of Michelet and of Réclus. M. Rogeard was

IV.

To do artistic work, and even to do it well, does not necessarily imply the possession of the supreme creative power; that is the difference between talent and genius. The former manipulates forms and sentiments already known; the latter sings out of the fulness of personal inspiration, in the modes it teaches and distates,

wrote Lizst, in a work entitled "Les Bohémiens." This was what he wrote; what he said was: "To interpret the works of others as Rubinstein interprets them, one must needs be as great an artist and composer as he is. That is the difference between Rubinstein and Bülow. Bülow is prodigious, amazing; but Rubinstein has the supreme gift of creative power."

...

Lizst naturally judged persons in whom he detected "personal inspiration," the germ of the "supreme gift," more severely than mere executants. Thus it was that he watched the development of music in Russia with unremitting interest, seeking eagerly in the compositions of contemporary Russian composers (among whom are some of his pupils) the exotic aroma which he held to be a guarantee of the lasting power of the genius of the soil.

"Their art is young," he would say, "and in art, youth is no advantage." Their dreamy

...

music is, as yet, too vague and undefined. As the long months of their winter are followed by a short summer of wild, exuberant vitality, so does their music abound in monotonous lengths, brightened by gleams of melody but these melodies must emulate the lavish splendor of their summer ere they can express the originality that is native to the soil. It is its very emanation, inseparable from its steppes, and the manner in which Slavonic races face both life and death; due as much to the climate as to hereditary tendencies. The Russian spirit which, although in a continual state of ferment, is, at the same time, both numbed and repressed, will find the task of directing these natural tendencies a hard one but it has already done wonders and will yet do more.

..

A propos of the princes of the house of Romanof, Madame Wohl inquired of Lizst, during a dinner party, what manner of men they were. He did not reply immediately, but, after the lapse of a quarter of an hour, he took her hand in his and said: "You know, chère enfant, there is white, and there is black; there is good, and there is evil, and then there are princes!" But, courtier as he was, princes were not more exempt from the shafts of

his humor when they deserved them, or when he thought his dignity as an artist was assailed, than lesser mortals. On the occasion of a party at the Winter Palace, the emperor Nicolas began a conversation with a lady while Lizst was playing. Sud

• Marie Sophie Menter, one of Lizst's favorite pupils, of whom he declared that she was the foremost pianist of her time-la seule à laquelle j'ai pu apprendre ce qui ne s'apprend pas.

denly the virtuoso stopped short and rose from the piano.

The czar, puzzled, approached the master, and inquired of him,

"Why did you stop playing?"

"When the emperor speaks, others should be silent," was the Macchiavellian reply.

When, thanks to Lizst's munificent contribution of thirty thousand francs, the statue of Beethoven was at last inaugurated at Bonn, King Frederic William entertained a brilliant company at a neighboring royal castle. Queen Victoria with the prince consort were among the illustrious guests; but it so happened that the most "sympathetic sovereign of Europe," as Lizst designated her Majesty, was not so well disposed as usual. An Austrian archduke, who happened to be present, took precedence of Prince Albert, and the queen of England was too young and too passionately attached to her husband to hide the annoyance occasioned by the rigorous etiquette of a German court. On the night of the court concert Lizst had arranged to play a piece with an "Introduction." Queen Victoria arrived late, and did not appear in good spirits. As soon as he had taken his seat at the piano, her Majesty complained of the heat, and a chamberlain flew to open a window. Two minutes later the queen found the draught unendurable. The chamberlain hastened to anticipate her wishes by closing the window. When he had played his "Introduction," instead of striking the opening chords of his piece, the master rose from his seat, bowed, and vanished into the park to smoke a cigar. When he re-entered the concert-room half an hour

later, King Frederic William rose to meet him, saying,

"You ran away just now; what was the matter with you?"

"I feared to inconvenience Queen Victoria while she was giving her orders," replied Lizst.

The king laughed heartily; Lizst continued his performance amidst devout silence.

Neither were "subjects" more fortunate when they attempted to trifle with the majesty of art. Princess Metternich, wife of the famous minister, who hated Lizst for reasons of her own, once ventured to call across her salon to him, at Vienna, "Doctor, are you doing a good business?"

"Princess," replied the undaunted doc. tor of music, "it is only bankers and diplomatists who do a good business."

She was a singer of European fame and unblemished reputation, watched over not only by a jealous husband, but by a maniacal admirer, whose name was on every lip, and whose madness consisted in hoping that he would end by discovering, at least, if not a flaw in her blameless conduct, an indiscretion that would place her at his mercy. This fact was so well known that Lizst trembled for her safety. She had arrived from a neighboring watering-place, and was as innocent as she was unsuspicious of evil. He convinced her that her disguise was ill-advised, and after a tête-à-tête breakfast, persuaded her to return whence she came before there was a chance of her being recognized. She made him promise to go and see her; but Lizst, with his innate dislike to anything that approached melodrama, refrained from so doing. Two years later, while he was leading a hermit's life at Monte-Mario, she reappeared in the same manner, and sang to him his own "Ave Maria." "De façon à damner un saint," he said; "it will never be sung like that again." "Was it Malibran?" queried feminine curiosity.

"Malibran, indeed! she was dead." "Jenny Lind, then?"

She,

"Still more dead for me, for I never had the honor of her especial favor. to whom I refer, was a child's soul in woman's garb - an angelic purity!"

"And afterwards what became of her?" "She died," said the abbé, with unwonted emotion.

The name of the ladies, who, more or less, en tout bien, tout honneur, grouped themselves round the great man's chariotwheels, is legion.

"The restless soul of this strange being," says Madame Wohl, "was ever in search of the ideal we call happiness, that is to say, of the unattainable; in the heart of woman, on the heights of art, in the mystic gloom of churches. What were those struggles that preceded the quiet monastic calm he often sought within monastic walls? Was he flying from himself, or from others?"

...

The compiler of these "Souvenirs," with a filial fanaticism that is both whimsical and touching, avers that Lizst was not adapted for family life, because "his hearth was the world; altars were dedicated to him wheresoever he trod, and the incense that was burned before him blinded him to the charms of home life." Lizst's view of the subject was naturally a more virile one. "We must never," he said, "allow ourselves to be dragged along

by the current. The soul of the artist should be as the solitary rock; surrounded, sometimes submerged, by the waters, but immovable. Only thus may he hope to retain his originality, and to rescue from amid the tempests of life the ideal he has in view."

Madame d'Agoult, in the zenith of her brilliant beauty, her mind steeped with the sophisms of the romanticism that was in vogue in her time, chose to pose as Lizst's Egeria; and one day, in his presence, compared herself to Beatrix, and dilated on the ennobling influence of woman. Lizst exclaimed sharply, in the presence of Louis de Ronchaud, " You are mistaken, it is the Dantes who create the Beatrixes; the real Beatrixes die at eighteen, and nothing is ever heard of them." When the headstrong folly, of which Lizst was rather the victim than the initiator, had separated the brilliant mondaine from her family and her world, it was Lizst who persuaded her to try to fill the void in her existence by literature. Her first attempt was "prettily written, full of esprit and grace." But the glory of George Sand cost the Comtesse d'Agoult many a bitter tear. It deprived her of sleep, and Daniel Stern would never have arisen had it not been for the existence of George Sand, "which would have been a pity," said Lizst. Madame d'Agoult contrived to make a breach between her literary rival and Lizst, and attempted to create one between the latter and Balzac. After the publication of "Beatrix, ou les Amours Forcés," Madame d'Agoult, deluged in tears, reproached Lizst with his "dreadful friends." "Here is Balzac," she said, "writing a novel about me, crying me down, and making me ridiculous for all time. It is an infamous thing, an abomination; you must call him to account. Your honor as well as mine is at stake." Lizst did not believe in any reference to himself, and was as disinclined to cut Balzac's throat as to assume the responsibility of Madame d'Agoult's conduct. He therefore asked the afflicted one if "her name was to be found in the book, or her address, with the number of her door?" "No." "Then why these tears? By what right do you assume that you are attacked?" "You have but to read the infamous book. See how I am treated. What an insolent skit on my person and my life!" "Que celui qui est morveux se mouche. Let him whom the cap fits wear it. If you keep silent, not

• George Sand.