[Illustration: The Altenburg, Weimar, where Liszt and Carolyne lived.]
And yet—convention is the result of the concentrated essence of the experience of ages; and no one seems able to break through it without the effort leaving a scar. It cast its shadow even over the life at the Altenburg. There remained one great longing to the Princess, the nonfulfilment of which was as a void in her soul. She yearned to bear the name of the man she adored. During the twelve years of their Weimar sojourn she battled for it, but in vain. Then she transferred the battlefield to Rome.
Her husband, a Protestant, had found no difficulty in securing a divorce from her. She was an ardent Roman Catholic, and the church stood in her way, her own relatives, who had been scandalized at her flight, being active in invoking its opposition. She went to Rome in the spring of 1860, to press her suit at the very centre of churchly authority. Liszt remained in Weimar awaiting word from her. It took her more than a year to secure the Papal sanction. Then, when everything seemed auspiciously settled and her marriage with Liszt a certainty, her enthusiasm led her to take a step which, at the very last moment, proved fatal to her long-cherished hope.
Had she returned at once to Weimar, her union with Liszt undoubtedly would have taken place. But no. In her joy she must go too far. In Rome, there where the marriage had been interdicted, there where she had successfully overcome opposition to it, there it should take place. Her triumph should be complete.
Liszt was sent for. His last two letters to her before their meeting in Rome are dated from Marseilles in October, 1861. The marriage was to take place October 22, his fiftieth birthday. He writes her from the Hotel des Empereurs, himself "plus heureux que tous les empereurs du monde!" and again, "Mon long exil va finir." Yet it was only just beginning!
He arrived in Rome on October 20. All arrangements for the ceremony in the San Carlo al Corso had been made. Then, by a strange fatality, it chanced that several of the Princess's relations, who were most bitter against her, entered upon the scene. Of all times, they happened to be in Rome at this critical moment, and, getting wind of the impending marriage, they entered a violent protest. When, on the evening of the 21st, Liszt was visiting the Princess, a Papal messenger called and announced that His Holiness had decided to forbid the ceremony until he could look into the matter more fully, and requested from her a resubmission of the documents bearing on the case.
To the Princess, then on the threshold of realizing her most cherished hopes, this was the last stroke. Her over-wrought nature saw in it a Judgment of Heaven. She refused to resubmit the papers; and even, when a few years later, Prince Wittgenstein died and she was free, she regarded marriage with Liszt as opposed by the Divine will. A strain of mysticism, nurtured by busy ecclesiastics, developed itself in her; she became possessed of the idea that she was a chosen instrument in the Church's hands to further its interests; and with feverish, desperate energy she devoted herself to literary work as its champion. She had her own press, which set up each day's work and showed it to her in proof the next. She did not leave Rome except on one occasion, and then for less than a day, during the remaining twenty-six years of her life.
It has been hinted more than once that the Princess's course was not as completely governed by religious mysticism as might be supposed—that her sensitive nature had divined in Liszt an unexpressed opposition to the marriage, as if, possibly, he did not wish to be tied down to her, yet felt bound in honor, because of the sacrifices she had made for him, to appear to share her hope. La Mara (Marie Lipsius), the editor of the Liszt letters and whose interesting notes form the connecting links in the correspondence, does not take this view. It is noticeable, however, although Liszt and the Princess saw each other frequently whenever he was in Rome, and he became an abbé probably through her influence, that while in some of his letters to her in later years there are notes of regret, those written after the crisis in Rome breathe an intellectual rather than a personal affinity.
Be this as it may, it was a tragedy in his life as well as in her own. Practically the rest of his life was divided, each year, between Budapest, at the Conservatory there; Weimar, but no longer at the Altenburg; and Rome, but not at the Princess's residence, Piazza di Spagna. Thus he had three homes—none of which was home. The "golden period" of his life, as well as the Altenburg itself, where others now were installed, were dim shadows of the past. Liszt was the "grand old man" of the piano, and is a great figure among composers; but whoever knows the story of the last years of his life, sees him a wandering and pathetic figure. He died at Bayreuth in July, 1886; Carolyne survived him less than a year. The literary work of her twenty-six years in Rome probably will be forgotten; it will be the linking of her name with Liszt, and its association with the "golden period" of Weimar, that will cause her to be remembered.