I hardly thought that he was serious, and so paid no attention to him. But, sure enough, about a week later there was a knock at my door, and the optician presented himself, saying he had come at the command of Dr. Liszt to examine my eyes and fit a pair of spectacles to them. As I was evidently to have no say in the matter, I submitted, and a few days later I received two pairs, one in a green and one in a red case. I thought them extremely unbecoming, but I was very particular to put them on whenever I went to see Liszt.
Not long afterward Liszt went to Paris, and when we called to see him after his return, and he was talking about his experiences there, he said casually: "By the way, Mason, I find that gentlemen in Paris are wearing eye-glasses now. In fact, they are considered quite comme il faut, so I have no objection to your wearing yours." As he did not ask me to send him the spectacles, I kept them, and have them to this day.
Klindworth, Pruckner, and I had played the Bach triple concerto in a concert at the town hall, and had been requested to repeat it at an evening concert at the ducal palace. An hour before the ducal carriage arrived to take me to the concert, a servant came from the Altenburg with a package which he said Liszt had requested him to be sure to deliver to me. On opening it, I found two or three white ties. It was a hint to me from Liszt that I most dress suitably to play at court.
This incident shows the care that Liszt bestowed on little things relating to the customs and amenities of social life. He evidently sent the ties as a precautionary measure. Possibly he was not sure whether Americans were civilized enough to wear white ties with evening dress, and was afraid I might appear in a red-white-and-blue one. Seriously, however, it was very kind of him to think of a little thing like this.
A MUSICAL BREAKFAST
BEFORE I went to Weimar I had not been of a very sociable disposition. At Weimar I had to be. Liszt liked to have us about him. He wished us to meet great men. He would send us word when he expected visitors, and sometimes he would bring them down to our lodgings to see us. In every way he tried to make our surroundings as pleasant as possible. It would have been strange if, under such circumstances, we had not derived some benefit from our intercourse with our great master and his visitors.
I shall always recall with amusement a breakfast which, at Liszt's request, Klindworth and I gave to Joachim and Wieniawski, the violinists, then, of course, very young men, and to several other distinguished visitors. Liszt had been entertaining them for several days. We knew that it was about time for him to bring them down to see one of us. So I was not surprised when he turned to me one evening and said, "Mason, I want you and Klindworth to give us a breakfast to-morrow." I asked him what we should have. "Oh," he replied, "some Semmel [rolls], caviar, herring," etc.
The next morning Liszt and his visitors came. I remember looking out of my window and watching them cross the ducal park, over the long foot-path which ended directly opposite the house where Klindworth and I lived. It had been raining, and the path was slippery, so that their footsteps were somewhat uncertain.
The breakfast passed off all right. When he had finished, Liszt said, "Now let us take a stroll in the garden." This garden was about four times as large as the back yard of a New York house, and it was unflagged and, of course, muddy from the rain of the previous night. Never shall I forget the sight of Liszt, Joachim, Wieniawski, and our other distinguished guests "strolling" through this garden, wading in mud two inches deep.