[Illustration: The Princess Carolyne in her later years at Rome.]
One of the billets relates to an incident that has become historic. Wagner had been obliged, because of his participation in the revolution, to flee from Dresden. He sought refuge with Liszt in Weimar, but, learning that the Saxon authorities were seeking to apprehend him, decided to continue his flight to Switzerland. He was without means and, at the moment, Liszt, too, was out of funds. In this extremity, Liszt despatched a few lines to the Princess. "Can you send me by bearer sixty thalers? Wagner is obliged to flee, and I am unable at present to come to his aid. Bonne et heureuse nuit." The money was forthcoming, and Wagner owed his safety to the Princess. This is but one instance in which, at Liszt's instigation, she was the good fairy of poor musicians. About a year after the Princess settled in the Altenburg, Liszt, too, took up his residence there. From that time until they left it, it was the Mecca of musical Europe. Thither came Von Bülow and Rubinstein, then young men; Joachim and Wieniawski; Brahms, on his way to Schumann, who, as the result of this visit from Brahms, wrote the famous article hailing him as the coming Messiah of music; Berlioz, and many, many others. The Altenburg was the headquarters of the Wagner propaganda. From there came material and artistic comfort to Wagner during the darkest hours of his exile and poverty.
Wendelin Weissheimer, a German orchestral leader, a friend of Liszt and Wagner, and of many other notable musicians of his day, has given in his reminiscences (which should have been translated long ago) a delightful glimpse of life at the Altenburg. He describes a dinner at which Von Bronsart, the composer, and Count Laurencin, the musical writer, were the other guests. At table the Princess did the honors "most graciously," and her "divinity," Franz Liszt, was in "buoyant spirits." After the champagne, the company rose and went upstairs to the smoking-room and music salon, which formed one apartment, "for with Liszt, smoking and music-making were, on such occasions, inseparable." One touch in Weissheimer's description recalls the Princess's early acquired habit of smoking.
"He [Liszt] always had excellent Havanas, of unusual length, ready, and they were passed around with the coffee. The Princess also had come upstairs. When Liszt sat down at one of the two pianos, she drew an armchair close up to it and seated herself expectantly, also with one of the long Havanas in her mouth and pulling delectably at it. We others, too, drew up near Liszt, who had the manuscript of his 'Faust' symphony open before him. Of course he played the whole orchestra; of course the way in which he did it was indescribable; and—of course we all were in the highest state of exaltation. After the glorious 'Gretchen' division of the symphony, the Princess sprang up from the armchair, caught hold of Liszt and kissed him so fervently that we all were deeply moved. [In the interim her long Havana had gone out.]"
The years which Liszt passed with the Princess at the Altenburg, and when he was most directly under her influence, were the most glorious in his career. Besides the "Faust" symphony, he composed during this period the twelve symphonic poems, thus originating a new and highly important musical form, which may be said to bear, in their liberation from pedantry, the same relation to the set symphony that the music drama does to opera; the "Rhapsodies Hongroises;" his piano sonata and concertos; the "Graner Messe;" and the beginnings of his "Christus" and "Legend of the Holy Elizabeth." The Princess ordered the household arrangements in such a way that the composer should not be disturbed in his work. No one was admitted to him without her visé; she attended to the voluminous correspondence which, with a man of so much natural courtesy as Liszt, would have occupied an enormous amount of his time. He was the acknowledged head of the Wagner movement, at that time regarded as nothing short of revolutionary; he was looked upon as the friend of all progressive propaganda in his art; to play for Liszt, to have his opinion on performance or composition, was the ambition of every musical celebrity, or would-be one; his cooperation in innumerable concerts and music festivals was sought for. His was a name to conjure with. Between him and these assaults on his almost proverbial kindness stood the Princess, and the list of his great musical productions during this period, to say nothing of his literary work, like the rhapsody on Chopin, is the tale of what the world owes her for her devotion. The relations between Liszt and the Princess were frankly acknowledged, and by the world as frankly accepted, as if they were two exceptional beings in whom one could pardon things which in the case of ordinary mortals would mean social ostracism. The nearest approach to this situation was that of George Eliot and Lewes. But with Liszt and his Princess the world, possibly after the fashion of the Continent, was far more lenient, and their lives in their outward aspects were far more brilliant. No exalted mind in literature, music, art or science passed through Weimar, or came near it, without being drawn to the Altenburg as by a magnet. There seems to have been within its walls an almost uninterrupted intellectual revel, or, to use a trite expression, which here is most apt, a steady feast of reason and flow of soul. The sojourn of Liszt and the Princess in the Altenburg was a "golden period" for Weimar, a revival of the time when Goethe lived there and reflected his glory upon it.
