BOOKS.

JANKA WOHL'S RECOLLECTIONS OF LISZT.* TnE author of these striking reminiscences—a Hungarian lady who for several years acted as Liszt's private secretary —has executed an extremely difficult task with, on the whole, exceedingly good judgment and taste. While her aim has

Francois Liszt Recollections of a Compatriot. Translated from the Freneh of Jenks Wohl. by B. Peyton War& London: Ward and Downey. been to give an idea of Liszt in private life, for which task her long and intimate acquaintance has fully fitted her, she has resolutely refused to gratify the morbid curiosity of the public as to the details of certain episodes in his life. " We artists," said Liszt himself, " are a convenient prey to writers hard up for copy." Madame Janka Wohl is so far from being " hard up for copy," that she has withheld for the present all her treasures relating to one of the most interesting periods of Liszt's life, the fourteen years spent at Weimar between 1847-1861. In some points she displays a naive and 'almost Herodotean reserve which is rather amusing. Again, her admiration, though sincere and enthusiastic, has nothing of fetishism about it. As a. child she idolised him, when he used to come leaping up the stairs of their house "four steps at a time, a tall and elegant figure, his beautiful iron-grey hair streaming over his shoulders and wrapped in a large cloak, which, with a turn of the wrist, he could throw over his body as cleverly as any Roman did his toga." This childish hero-worship was succeeded by many phases of feeling, and finally settled down into an attitude of cordial but by no means undiscriminating affection. "His nature," writes Madame Wohl, " consisted of uneven proportions of demon and angel. Uneven, because the angelic part of him always got the better of the diabolical." She was forced to admit that all incense, no matter how rank, was acceptable to him. " As in all complicated individualities, the defects of his good qualities were pre-eminently conspicuous I was at times surprised at the pleasure with which he accepted the most commonplace compliments and the most exaggerated praises." She contrasts with his attitude towards tried friends the surface amiability of his manner in society, when he rarely said what he thought, or at best expressed himself under cover of a diplomatic irony. Over womenkind his influence at all times amounted to something little short of sorcery. He recalls to us in this respect the unholy fascination exerted by Muzio, also a musician, in that weird tale of Tourgueniefs, Le Chant de r Amour Triomphant. But if we are to believe his biographers—Madame Ramann and Madame Wohl—so far from consciously exerting this power, he repelled and even strove against it. If his remarks on the other sex savoured occasionally of cynicism—e.g., " misunderstood women are generally women who have been too well under- stood "—his experiences furnish some explanation of this attitude. According to the view of the author of these Recollections, "unconsciously he always brought into existence exceptional cases," a circumstance which naturally impairs the value of his generalisations. This idolatry had its grotesque as well as its serious aspect. Thus, we learn that "a certain Polish Countess used regularly to receive him in a boudoir ankle-deep in rose-leaves, wishing in that way to symbolise her affection for him,—an affection without a thorn, and full of humility." At the coronation of Francis Joseph at Buda-Peath in 1867, Liszt shared the honours of the day with his Sovereign. The ladies of the Hungarian aristo- cracy " smothered his apartments with magnificent em- broideries." "I have seen," writes Madame Wohl, "charming young girls prostrating themselves before him and crying

bitterly at his annual departure, and even sobbing aloud if he but frowned at them." The most original tributes of all were from America. " Nothing amused me so much as

the invitations, of unheard-of naiveté, which came from the other aide of the Atlantic. One Chicago lady used to send him

a card for her at home ;' another sent him word to say that he was always at the head of her list of guests. A lady of Omaha invited him to come to her day,' promising to have several of his compositions played."

Liszt's generosity was proverbial, and this volume contains many pleasant instances of this trait. He was always helping poor pianists, providing them with golden keys to publicity, or social " open sesames." He delighted in " playing at Provi- dence," as he called it; though he took care to conceal his benevolent actions as carefully as if they were crimes. Madame Wohl devotes a very interesting chapter to the relations of Liszt towards his native country, and effectively disposes of the charges of those who held him to be a bad patriot because he could not speak his mother-tongue and lived abroad. As she puts it,—" Finding himself unable to learn Hungarian, he was obliged to be contented with feeling himself to be a Magyar If deeds speak more eloquently than words, Liszt was a greater patriot than many of our brilliant orators." Like Tourguenief and Ole Bull, he seems to have felt that he could help his native land better by living out of it. Hungarians, says Madame Wohl, have to go abroad in order to become great. As a child, he found a congenial home in France ; but the news of the terrible inundations of 1838 aroused the national sentiment in him, the chivalrous love of nobilis Hungaria which found vent in so many acts of princely generosity, as well as in so many characteristic com- positions. His Hungarian rhapsodies, as Madame Wohl remarks, have revealed to many persons the existence of Hungary. To hear him play them- . " was a revelation ! For the first time, I felt that the artist was truly blood of our blood, and that if his lips could not speak our language, his soul spoke it all the better. One could feel the fire and sweetness of Tokay in those languorous • melopceias,' in those daring rhythms, and in the electric fluid which seemed to be generated. The saying, The Hungarian amuses himself in tears,' which describes so concisely the Magyar disposition, was never better expressed."

Space fails us, or we would gladly quote the sequel, a really brilliant word-picture of the Second Rhapsody.

Not the least interesting chapter of the book is that which contains Liszt's own reminiscences of George Eliot and G. H. Lewes. "Ugly though she was," he said to Madame Wohl, who had read to him an article on George Eliot which appeared in the Mbats- " Miss Evans had a charm, and knew how to captivate those around her. At times her way of listening reminded me of Madame Sand. She seemed to absorb like a sponge everything she saw and heard. Her long, ill-favoured face put on an expres- sion of attention so rapt that it became positively interesting."

Of Lewes's versatile talent Liszt formed a high opinion. On the other hand, George Eliot fell completely under the spell of the magician. Liszt was " splendid," his conversation " delightful ;" he was unequalled as a raconteur. He played, and for the first time in her life she witnessed an inspiration. " His face looked simply sublime." And even before he played she saw " reflected on that face, lit as it was by a ray from on high, gentleness, genius, tenderness, and benevolence : an expression in perfect harmony with his ways."

Liszt expressed himself with regard to George Sand, whose genius and independence he cordially admired, with more point than sympathy. "Madame Sand," he remarked in conversation to the author- " caught her butterfly and tamed it in her box by giving it grass and flowers,—this was the love period. Then she stuck her pin into it when it struggled,—this was the conge, and it always came from her. Afterwards she vivisected it, stuffed it, and added it to her collection of heroes for novels. It was this traffic of souls which had given themselves up unreservedly to her which, eventually, disgusted me with her friendship."

Berlioz himself, with his dagger-like pen, could hardly have written anything more scathing. Of her method of work, Liszt added, in the same conversation, some interesting details :— " Her pen ran over her paper with a continuous buzz, which has often thrown me into curious reveries. She made use of everything to find copy.' I have found in her pages a number of our discus- sions, of which she was able to make better use than anybody else. Subjects crowded each other so thickly in her fertile brain, that if she happened to finish a novel at two in the morning, she began another without a break, as she would work until three, which was her usual hour."

Liszt's feelings towards Wagner appear to have been latterly of somewhat mixed character. His admiration for his genius was somewhat affected by a contempt for Wagner's abuse of prosperity, and by the undisguised hostility of the Wagnerites. But the whole matter is best summed up in Liszt's own words, as follows :-- " The worshipped Wagner, the friend of the King of Bavaria, in no way resembles the Wagner who knocked at my door at Weimar. Then he was a man in despair, a Christopher Columbus in extremities, who had seen and touched this new world which nobody would believe existed. He carried the treasures of it in his brain, and he was looked upon as a madman. His inspirations were catching, and he had a power of making fanatics possessed by few. He was a born reformer, and neither blood nor fire would have daunted him. Still, there never was a man who worked against his chances like Wagner did. His genius triumphed, so to speak, in spite of him, for nobody put so many spokes in his wheels as Richard Wagner."

Equally excellent is the following remark on Wagner's extravagant behaviour in late years:— "lathe matter of glory, Wagner had fasted almost continuously for thirty years. Now fasting weakens, and when glory at last did come to him, not drop by drop like to other mortals, but in a flood, he was not able to receive it with calmness." No matter what the subject, the utterances of Liszt here recorded are invariably pointed and suggestive. As Madame Wohl happily puts it, " No matter what chord was touched, one was sure to hear him vibrate." propos of the Greville Memoirs, he declared that the past, which we love to idealise, would lose all its fascination if the number of such works were to increase. His views on the future of Russian art and literature, in which he took a keen interest, are in particular worth transcribing. He maintained that- " Russia has more intellectual horizons still to discover than

lands to explore The Russian mind, which is in continual activity on the one side and comatose on the other, will have to do an immense amount of work in order to properly direct its natural tendencies ; and this is the result of the climate of the country and of the Slav character in general. Just as td3e long months of their winters are followed by short summers full of rapid expansion, so Russian music has long monotonous intervals in between the burst& of melody; but these melodies ought to be brimful of the sap of their short summer. . . . . Besides, there is yet too much of the vague, of the undecided, too much of dreaminess in this music, destined nevertheless, I believe, to have a great future Their originality is deep-rooted in the soil ; it is an emanation of the land, and is inseparable from its snows, its steppes, and from the way its sons look upon life and death."

Here, again, are some wholly admirable remarks upon the impossibility of judging a work on a first hearing :- " Schumann used to get furious if it was said, This was a. success ; this was not." Just as if the only important thing was

to please people !' said he. And he was perfectly right People generally forget that many works, and often the best, have to be thoroughly understood to be appreciated. That is why, when I hear a performance, I always feel I am witnessing a trial at the criminal court."

The foregoing extracts do not exhaust a tithe of the wise and witty sayings in this volume. Liszt was a master in the art.

of repartee, and could not resist the temptation to " score of any one who gave him legitimate provocation, from the Czar downwards. As for the translation, it is neither better nor- worse than the ordinary run of such works. At any rate, it does not make nonsense of the original, and if not displaying a high degree of literary finish, is at least readable. G. H. Lewes's and Tausig's names are invariably misspelt. The ser of the well-known biographer of Liszt, Madame Hamann, is misrepresented on p. 56. But in the main, the meaning of the original is honestly given.