Franz Liszt, Volume 1: The Virtuoso Years: 1811

Marie arrived in Basel, in the company of her mother, at the beginning of June 1835 and took rooms at the Drei Könige hotel. She had not yet summoned up the courage to tell her family about her future plans, let alone her present condition. That fact stands revealed in a letter she wrote to Liszt shortly after her arrival in Switzerland.

Liszt had arrived in Basel after Marie, on June 4, and had registered at a different hotel in order to avoid meeting her relatives. The last sentence of his reply was written in English, presumably to avoid detection.

It used to be a commonplace of the Liszt literature that he had gone to Basel for no other purpose than to escape the clutches of Marie d’Agoult, and that she, on finding that her young lover had fled Paris, pursued him to Switzerland, there to throw herself on his charity.³ The facts speak differently. We have a letter from Liszt, written to his mother, in which it becomes abundantly plain that the elopement to Switzerland was planned in Paris, that Basel was merely a temporary solitude, and that Liszt was far from unhappy at the hand fate had dealt him.

The Viscountess de Flavigny now learned for the first time of the crisis through which her daughter was passing. The countess returned to Paris alone in order to break the sensational news to the rest of the family. The attitude of Maurice, Marie’s elder brother and head of the family, appears to have been both generous and forgiving. He wrote Marie a letter full of tender and affectionate understanding, and thoughtfully enclosed a little note from Marie’s daughter, Claire, then five years old: “I embrace you. Will you come back soon?”⁵ Marie had expected reproaches. Had her family’s attitude been harsh and uncompromising, it would have been easier to bear. But this letter from Maurice, who had not been trained as a diplomat for nothing, nearly broke her heart.

The lovers tarried at Basel for a week. It was during this trying time that they decided on Geneva as their ultimate refuge. This French-speaking city was a quiet backwater, far enough away from Paris for the couple to feel reasonably insulated against the scandal their elopement would provoke. Moreover, Liszt had useful connections there; he had made at least two previous visits to the city in earlier years. Thanks to the good offices of the parents of his pupil Pierre-Etienne Wolff, who now lived there, Liszt was able to rent an apartment in the city at 1, rue Tabazan. On June 14 the couple set out for Geneva, making several excursions into the Swiss countryside along the way. They arrived at Lake Constance on the 16th. A few days later they were at Lake Wallenstadt, which Liszt immortalized with his piano piece of that name. Marie d’Agoult later wrote in her Mémoires, “The shores of Lake Wallenstadt detained us for a long time. Franz wrote for me there a melancholy harmony, imitative of the sigh of the waves and the cadence of oars, which I have never been able to hear without weeping.”⁶ By the 23rd they had made the ascension of St.-Gothard. Following the Rhône Valley, they were at Martigny by July 1. After sojourning at Bex for a few days, they continued their journey, finally arriving in Geneva on July 19.

The house on the rue Tabazan in which the lovers installed themselves still stands today. It occupied the corner site next to the rue des Belles-Filles.⁷ Liszt wrote to his mother, describing it as “a magnificent residence,” and asked her to send from Paris his manuscripts, his library of books, his piano, and other personal possessions.⁸ Although he and Marie lived there for only thirteen months, it was clear that they at first regarded it as a permanent home. News of the distinguished couple’s arrival spread swiftly. They were pleased to receive some unexpected visitors from Paris—Prince Belgiojoso, Countess Potocka, Mallefille, and Ronchaud. Among the habitués of the rue Tabazon were the doctor Coindet, the botanist Pyrame de Candolle, the politician James Fazy, the orientalist Alphonse Denis, and the economist Simonde de Sismondi. One of the best accounts of Liszt’s first few weeks in Geneva comes from the journal of Madame Auguste Boissier, then living in Geneva. Ever since their lessons in Paris in 1832, Valérie Boissier had showered Liszt with invitations to visit her family in Switzerland.⁹ Little could she have imagined the circumstances of the reunion when it finally took place. It was in their imposing house (called Le Rivage) that the twenty-three-year-old Liszt presented his runaway countess, “without blushing,” and apparently shrugging his shoulders “at the blessing of marriage and similar bagatelles,” to the honest burghers of this straitlaced, Calvinist community.¹⁰

Marie idealizes this “honeymoon period” in her Mémoires. For her, the rue Tabazan seemed at first a paradise, a perfect setting for the realization of a cherished dream. Here, in this isolated retreat, she would become Liszt’s Egeria, his inspirational guide. And through the stream of masterpieces that would now pour from his pen, her “great man” would be revealed to the world—together with the true nature of her sacrifice. Not for a humdrum piano player had she callously abandoned hearth and home, but for a shining genius whose matchless art would one day vindicate her choice. Meanwhile, the world had to be helped. It is no accident that on June 14, just two weeks after their elopement to Switzerland, the Gazette Musicale came out with Liszt’s first “official” biography, by Joseph d’Ortigue. The timing was perfect; the word “genius” appears frequently. On May 3, that same journal had published the first part of Liszt’s literary effort “On the Position of Artists”; and the following December the Gazette carried his first Bachelor of Music essay, “To George Sand.” Whether written by Liszt or by Marie, or more likely by them both, these articles served to burnish Liszt’s image and present him to the public as a philosopher and a seer.¹¹

Marie’s horizons could not remain cloudless for long. Her elation was diminished by the sudden arrival in Geneva that August of Liszt’s fifteen-year-old pupil Hermann Cohen.¹² This gifted youth, having been Liszt’s student in Paris for the past two years, was now inseparable from him. “Puzzi” had become a familiar sight in the Faubourg districts, accompanying Liszt to his concerts. George Sand had already immortalized his name in one of her Lettres d’un voyageur, in which she gives a memorable depiction of the boy standing by his master’s side, turning the pages.¹³ Puzzi had started pining for Liszt almost as soon as his teacher had left France, and Liszt now gave him permission to come to Geneva. Cohen arrived in the company of his elder brother and their mother. Madame Cohen had been obliged to place her young daughter in a Paris boarding school and undertake the journey to Switzerland at a financial loss, and the family took up residence near Liszt so that Puzzi might resume his daily lessons. It was entirely characteristic of the fatherly attitude Liszt adopted towards his pupils that he thought it quite normal to see them every day, and even have them move into his home and live with him en famille;¹⁴ and it was equally characteristic of Marie d’Agoult that she should object. In her Mémoires she makes heavy weather of Hermann’s abrupt appearance in Geneva. She was piqued that Liszt had not properly discussed the matter with her before bringing an “intruder” into the house. “Six days later,” she wrote, “a resounding hammer blow fell on the outside door of the house. Somebody ran up the stairs, four at a time, brushed past the servant, and threw himself around Franz’s neck. It was Hermann.”¹⁵ Puzzi stayed in Switzerland for almost a year. His name appeared in the Geneva concert programmes several times during the 1835–36 season, and we shall find him adding some unexpected colour to Liszt’s life during this period.¹⁶

III

The three witnesses signed this document without turning a hair, but they all knew that they had perjured themselves by bearing false testimony. Catherine-Adélaïde Méran was none other than Countess Marie d’Agoult, married; she was not twenty-four but thirty years old; and she was born at Frankfurt-am-Main, not Paris. Moreover, she did not live at 8, Grande Rue. The civil servant Golay knew two of the witnesses very well. James Fazy was the celebrated publisher of the Journal de Genève; it is amusing to see the future mayor of Geneva putting his hand to this document. Pierre Wolff was a respected professor at the newly opened Geneva Conservatoire. Many years later Marie d’Agoult herself explained why this document was fabricated. It was not possible to disclose her identity, she said, without making Blandine the legitimate child of Count Charles d’Agoult. “Liszt and I had but one thought: to avoid this monstrosity.”¹⁸

By January 1836 Wolff had left Geneva for Russia. Liszt therefore proposed that Wolff’s position be offered to Alkan (nothing came of this interesting idea); in the meantime, he and young Hermann would take on Wolff’s pupils as well as their own. The directors turned down this proposal; Liszt’s multifarious interests, they thought, would not allow him to do justice to so many students.²³ Liszt himself then left the Conservatoire, in the summer of 1836. Bartholini presented him with a gold watch and chain as a token of their esteem. As a further mark of recognition, Liszt was given the title “Honorary Professor of the Geneva Conservatoire.”

And what of the “piano method” which Liszt had promised to prepare? It is mentioned several times in the Minutes of the Directorate meetings. On July 13, 1836, for instance, Bartholoni was recorded as saying, “Liszt has confirmed his intention of offering the rights of his method to the Conservatoire, on condition that the latter pay the costs of engraving and printing.” A few months later, on October 12, Bartholoni informed his colleagues that “Liszt himself has decided to carry out the engraving at his own expense. He has requested permission to dedicate his oeuvre to the Geneva Conservatoire and to offer it some copies.” These copies never arrived. Nothing more is known of Liszt’s “method,” which appears never to have existed.²⁴

One of the more forward-looking items is Au Bord d’une source, a piece of “water music” prophetic of Ravel’s Jeux d’eau in its evocation of splashing fountains. It is prefaced with a quotation from Schiller: “In murmuring coolness the play of young nature begins.”

What was the three-year “game” that Liszt declared himself to be playing? Nothing less than total dominion over the piano and a repertoire to embody that fact. As early as 1835, it seems, the twenty-four-year-old Liszt was working on two major piano compositions normally attributed to a later period: the Transcendental Studies (first called Grandes Etudes) and the ten-part collection of pieces called Harmonies poétiques et religieuses. Both collections were to point the piano in a new direction.²⁷

As the summer of 1836 approached, Liszt and Marie planned to explore the Swiss valley of Chamonix, which was dotted with picturesque hamlets and villages and dominated at its southwesterly end by Mont Blanc and its glaciers. They invited George Sand to accompany them. At that moment Sand was detained at La Châtre, a chief witness in the divorce proceedings she had brought against her husband, Casimir Dudevant. The case was a seamy one (involving assault, lesbianism, and the division of property, as well as good old-fashioned adultery) and it dragged on for three months. Judgement was finally given in her favour at the end of July,²⁸ and possession of her family home at Nohant was restored to her control. It was in a mood of elation that Sand, at the end of August, set out for Geneva to meet her old friends.

By the time Sand and her retinue arrived in Geneva (she had brought along her two children, Maurice and Solange, as well as Ursule Josse, her maid), Liszt and Marie d’Agoult had already set out for Chamonix. Liszt had left a note for her at the Geneva hotel where they were all supposed to rendezvous, explaining that their good friend Major Adolphe Pictet would act as her travelling companion. The major (so called because of his pioneering work on percussion shells for the Swiss federal army) sported a fierce beard and a military cape. He reminded Sand of Mephistopheles dressed as a customs official. He was a voracious debater, and within five minutes he and Sand were in the middle of a heated argument about the merits of Swiss democracy. Sand won this particular round by handing the major one of her famous “poetic cigars” (obtained from an obscure source in the Middle East, and wrapped in datura leaves), which left him feeling dizzy.

The travelling circus now took to the road. There was Liszt, his long hair streaming in the wind, and at his side the major, wearing his military cloak, arguing and gesticulating. Then came Sand in her male attire, smoking a cigar, and Arabella, mounted demurely on a donkey. Gambolling at their heels were Solange and Maurice Sand, and Puzzi Cohen, with his long hair dressed in imitation of his revered master, making him look like a young girl; the maid Ursule brought up the rear. They looked like a strolling band of vagabonds. It is not difficult to imagine the astonishment they aroused at some of the small mountain inns. One of the first stops was Martigny. It was very late when they arrived at the local hotel, and a disgruntled maid let the bedraggled party in. Ursule, who had never been out of France, was sobbing uncontrollably, thinking that the party had arrived at Martinique by mistake. Exhausted, they fell into their beds, only to be awakened by the sound of the major giving Puzzi (with whom he had been obliged to share a room) a good thrashing to stop him from snoring. At Lucerne, “Arabella” and “Kamporoupi” contracted food poisoning, with its attendant consequences. To crown everything, it rained solidly for the rest of the trip.

The party spent their last few days in Geneva before finally dispersing. The lights burned into the small hours at the rue Tabazan. Liszt used to play the piano in those convivial surroundings with George Sand sitting underneath the instrument, the only place, she claimed, where she felt “enveloped” by the sound. Inspired by Liszt’s performance of his newly completed rondo El Contrabandista, Sand stayed up the whole of one night and, in a furious burst of creative energy, wrote her short story “Le Contrabandier”—an amplification of Liszt’s rondo. On September 26 they all attended a concert given by young Hermann Cohen in the Casino, at which Liszt and some of his pupils at the Geneva Conservatoire assisted.³² Then, with embraces and kisses all round, and with promises to meet again in Paris, Sand and her group returned to France. The Chamonix holiday was ended.

VII

At this same time Liszt had discreetly sounded out old friends and acquaintances and was relieved to learn that he and Marie would not be unwelcome in Paris. He had also talked frankly to his mother about their situation, and had written back to Marie, “My mother accepts everything.”³⁶

The pair arrived in Paris on October 16 ³⁷ and installed themselves in the fashionable Hôtel de France at 23, rue Lafitte. Everything went better than they had dared hope. Lamennais came to see them; so did Rossini and Meyerbeer. Hard on their heels followed Berlioz and Chopin. Soon the couple were surrounded by a host of old companions. Among the brilliant men of letters who called on them to pay their compliments were Sainte-Beuve, Balzac, Heinrich Heine, and Victor Hugo. Marie gave a number of soirées and it must have seemed as if she and Liszt were about to be rehabilitated in the eyes of Parisian society. The bevy of artists which surrounded Marie was totally different from the one that she had entertained during her days as a society hostess in the Faubourg St.-Germain. In the Hôtel de France she mixed as an equal with some of the greatest poets, musicians, and novelists of the time. Quick to seize the advantage, she now started to forge that powerful network of connections which would one day be so valuable to her when she turned herself into “Daniel Stern.” Marie wrote enthusiastically to George Sand, now back in Nohant, about her latest circle of literati and invited her to join them. Sand arrived at the Hôtel de France at the end of October and occupied rooms on the floor immediately below Liszt and Marie. They shared a common sitting room where they entertained mutual friends. “Those of mine you don’t like,” wrote Sand, “will be received on the landing.” It was in the Hôtel de France that George Sand was introduced to Chopin and heard him play for the first time. Chopin appears at first to have been affronted by her cigars, her mannish dress, and her flamboyant manners. “What an antipathetic woman that Sand is!” he exclaimed to Hiller as they walked home after the party. “Is it really a woman? I am ready to doubt it.” And to his family in Warsaw he wrote that there was “something about her that repels me.”³⁸ From such unlikely seeds blossomed a grande passion which perplexed even their closest friends, so mismatched a pair did they seem to be. Shortly afterwards (probably in early November) Liszt and Marie took Sand to see Chopin in his apartments in the rue de la Chaussée d’Antin. After some behind-the-scenes prodding, Chopin invited Sand back to his apartments on December 13, when he gave a large soirée. The company included the pianist Pixis, the tenor Adolphe Nourrit, and a number of Polish exiles, led by Albert Grzymala, who had been wounded by the Russians in the winter campaign of 1812. Sand was determined to make a better impression this time and turned up wearing white pantaloons and a scarlet sash—the colours of the Polish flag. Marie d’Agoult served tea and helped pass round ices; Nourrit sang some Schubert songs, with Liszt accompanying. The highlight of the evening was a performance by Chopin and Liszt of Moscheles’s Sonata in E-flat major for four hands, with Chopin playing the secondo part and Liszt the primo. The Sand-Chopin affair, so important in the annals of Romantic music, was aided and abetted in its beginnings by Marie d’Agoult, who was doubtless glad to shift the spotlight from herself and give Paris a different scandal to gossip about.

The ceaseless commotion at the Hôtel de France, and the perpetual discussions among the intellectuals who congregated there about politics, society, Saint-Simonism, and all the other issues then agitating the left-wing liberals of Paris, led the locals to dub the group “the Humanitarians.” It was a good label, and it stuck. A contemporary periodical⁴¹ has left a satirical description of one of their gatherings under the title “An Evening with the Gods.”

1. AM, p. 42.

2. ACLA, vol. 1, p. 136.

3. The story was put about by Göllerich, among others. (GL, pp. 89–90.) It achieved total fantasy in Schrader: “Liszt, warned by Berlioz, maintained an attitude of reserve towards her; but when he seemed in danger of succumbing, his friends advised him to leave Paris and so avoid a scandal. Liszt, therefore, went in the spring of 1835 to Switzerland. One day when he was sitting at his writing table in Berne [sic] the door flew open and the countess burst in, followed by her servants, who deposited her numerous trunks in the room.” (SFL [2], pp. 29–30.) William Wallace (WW, p. 130) went further, calmly asserting that Marie used the weapon of divorce to bring Liszt to heel, then, “having obtained her decree was after him with tons of portmanteaux and hat boxes.” Marie and Charles d’Agoult were never divorced. On the question of who followed whom to Switzerland, Liszt’s unpublished Pocket Diary proves that he arrived there after Marie. (EDW.) So much for the “chase” theory.

Two other troublesome errors can be disposed of here. Ramann wrongly reported the location of the tryst as Berne instead of Basel. Ernest Newman, in his one-man crusade against Liszt (NML, pp. 51–53), huffs and puffs his way across three pages in an attempt to show that the substitution of Berne for Basel was symptomatic of a plot by Liszt’s official biographer (with Liszt’s own connivance) to cast a smokescreen over his elopement with Marie d’Agoult. Such zeal is worse than useless, since it becomes necessary for later biographers to clear up the mistakes it generates in its wake. In Liszt’s personal copy of Ramann’s biography (WA, Kasten 352, no. 1) the composer himself struck out Berne wherever it occurs and substituted Basel. Ramann’s innocent blunder is one more proof that the first time Liszt ever saw his official biography was when a printed copy was handed to him. The other error stems from the same source. “She was without revenue,” wrote Ramann (RLKM, vol. 1, p. 333), the implication quite clearly being that the countess arrived in Basel penniless and that the twenty-three-year-old Liszt was henceforth expected to shoulder a heavy financial burden, keeping his titled mistress in the luxurious style to which she was accustomed, in addition to coping with all his other cares. This is a romantic notion, designed to make him look chivalrous, but Liszt corrected his copy of Ramann’s book and wrote in the margin the terse comment “nicht richtig” (“not true”). He was the first to acknowledge that during their early years together the countess, who was in receipt of a regular income from her share of the Bethmann fortune, bore most of their expenses.

4. LLBM, pp. 16–17. The original copy of this letter was not dated. We know it to be June 4, however, from collateral evidence in Liszt’s unpublished Pocket Diary. (EDW.)

5. AM, p. 49.

6. AM, p. 45. A detailed itinerary of the excursion from Basel to Geneva can be found in Madame d’Agoult’s “Unpublished Notebooks” (AC).

7. Today the house bears the address 22, rue Etienne-Dumont, and carries a memorial plaque to Liszt, unveiled in 1891.

8. LLBM, pp. 20–22.

9. See Liszt’s letters to Valérie Boissier. Eight of these rare items were preserved by the Boissier family and published for the first time in 1928. (BDLL.)

10. BRRS, pp. 29–30.

11. Liszt was already working on four articles for the Gazette Musicale by November 1835. (LLBM, p. 24.)

12. According to Marie d’Agoult’s “Unpublished Notebooks,” Hermann arrived in Geneva on August 14, less than a month after she and Liszt got there. (AC, folio 63.)

13. SLV, p. 45.

14. Liszt referred to his Paris pupils of this period as “my children.” See his letters to his mother, LLBM, pp. 24 and 27. Later, during his Weimar years, pupils such as von Bülow and Tausig had the run of his home in the Altenburg—the latter living under Liszt’s roof for months at a time.

15. AM, pp. 57–58. Young Hermann was certainly a boisterous youth. Countess Dash dreaded his coming to 61, rue de Provence, for his lessons with Liszt. She describes him as “a rowdy little boy, dressed in overalls, running about the stairways and in the courtyard.” (DMA, vol. 4, p. 149.)

16. Puzzi’s subsequent career may be briefly summarized here. After returning to Paris he fell in with bad company and lost huge amounts of money at the gambling tables. Liszt took him in hand, and in 1841 entrusted him with some private business affairs. Puzzi repaid Liszt by swindling him out of 3,000 francs. (ACLA, vol. 2, p. 183.) He later defended himself by saying that “a plot, prepared with the most diabolical cunning,” had succeeded in estranging him from Liszt, but his explanation (SLFH, p. 32) does not ring true. After drinking the cup of worldly pleasures to its dregs, the dissipated young man was converted from the Judaism of his forefathers to Christianity. In 1850 he became a Barefoot Carmelite priest and was henceforth known as Father Hermann. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 he ministered to the prisoners in Spandau jail, where he caught typhoid fever. He died in Spandau on January 20, 1871, aged fifty. (See E. von Asow’s “Hermann Cohen: Ein Lieblingsschüler Franz Liszts,” Oesterreichische Musikzeitschrift, no. 9, September 1961.)

17. Register of Births, vol. 38, no. 651, State Archives, Geneva.

18. Unpublished letter to Dr. Guépin (Archives Daniel Ollivier), VCA, vol. 1, pp. 393–94.

19. BRRS, pp. 44–51. See the Minutes of the Directorate of the Conservatoire, August 5, 1835, Geneva Conservatoire Library. See also Henri Bochet, Le Conservatoire de Musique de Genève, 1835–1935 (Geneva, 1935), pp. 17–22.

20. Minutes of the Directorate, November 4, 1835.

21. Geneva Conservatoire Library.

22. We surmise that this pupil was the daughter of Pastor Demelleyer, Blandine’s foster parent.

23. Minutes of the Directorate, March 16, 1836.

24. Despite all the rumours to the contrary which have dogged the Liszt literature for years, one of which even has Olga Janina running off with the still-unpublished manuscript of Liszt’s “method” to America in the 1870s and losing it there, we can now say with certainty that it was never written. We have Liszt’s own word for that. When the story of the missing method reached Lina Ramann’s ears nearly forty years later, she asked Liszt point-blank for information about it. His reply was unequivocal: “I have never written such a work, and will never think of writing one.… The only methodisches opus I have committed to writing is a series of technical studies.” (Unpublished letter dated August 30, 1874, WA, Kasten 326.) This refers to the twelve volumes of Technical Studies, a product of Liszt’s maturity published by Alexander Winterberger in 1887 (WTS), a quite different work from that intended for the Geneva Conservatoire in 1836.

25. Liszt’s first title, Album d’un voyageur, was possibly derived from George Sand’s Lettres d’un voyageur, which she had begun in 1835. The “Swiss” volume was originally divided into three parts, called Impressions et poésies, Fleurs mélodiques des Alpes, and Paraphrase. For the genesis of these early pieces, and for their transformation and condensation into the Années de pèlerinage: “Suisse” a decade or so later, see SML, pp. 23–29.

26. UB, p. 45.

27. See the chapter “Liszt and the Keyboard,” where works from both collections are discussed.

28. The details were reported in the July 30–31 issues of Le Droit.

29. Liszt had a lifelong fondness for nicknames. In his correspondence he often refers to Marie d’Agoult as “Longinus” or “Zio.” She in turn dubbed him “Crétin,” a mock tribute to his sharp intelligence. Their three children came to be affectionately known by them both as “les Mouches” (the flies), because as infants they crawled all over one. Hermann Cohen, as we have seen, was known to everyone as “Puzzi,” a houseboy. During the Weimar period Liszt invented a whole battery of nicknames for his pupils, including “Ludwig II” for Anton Rubinstein, who had a striking facial resemblance to Beethoven. The reader who works his way diligently through Liszt’s correspondence will soon conclude that he requires a veritable Who’s Who to keep him on the right track.

30. PCC, p. 144.

31. SLV, p. 309; PCC, pp. 102–3.

32. Le Fédéral printed an appreciative review of Hermann’s playing in its issue of September 30, and drew attention to the presence of Sand in the audience. See KLG, p. 325, where the programme is reproduced in full.

33. ACLA, vol. 1, pp. 159 and 172.

34. WA, Kasten 327.

35. AMA, p. 79.

36. ACLA, vol. 1, p. 163.

37. Not in December 1836, as wrongly reported by Daniel Ollivier (ACLA, vol. 1, p. 180). For the true sequence of events consult Vier (VCA, vol. 1, p. 233).

38. SCC, vol. 2, p. 208.

39. All these concerts took place in the Salle Erard on January 28 and February 4, 11, and 18, respectively. They attracted widespread attention. Berlioz devoted no fewer than three articles to them, published in the Gazette Musicale on February 5 and 19 and March 12, 1837.

40. ACLA, vol. 1, p. 187. The event was later incorporated into Liszt’s Bachelor of Music essay “To George Sand.” (RGS, vol. 2, pp. 139–40; CPR, pp. 118–19.)

41. Vert Vert, December 15, 1836.

42. Dantan’s famous statuettes, depicting Liszt in agonized caricature at the keyboard with a proliferation of fingers at the ends of his hands, had appeared earlier that year (1836). Charivari had actually carried a picture of one on July 11, 1836, shortly before this particular “evening with the Gods.” It was well known that Liszt disliked these statuettes, which, paradoxically, have always been admired by everybody else. Léon Escudier casts an interesting sidelight on Liszt’s reaction to Dantan’s work in his Souvenirs. When Liszt saw the first caricature in Dantan’s studio he complained that the sculptor had exaggerated the length of his hair. After he had left, Dantan started work on a second statuette in which one sees nothing but a head of hair (Liszt is viewed from behind, still seated at the keyboard). That is what one gets, punned Escudier, for “splitting hairs” with a man whose wit extended to the point of his chisel. (ES, p. 341.)

Julie Raffard		Remarkable musical feeling. Very small hands. Brilliant execution.
Marie Demelleyer²²		Vicious technique (if technique there be), extreme zeal but little talent. Grimaces and contortions. Glory to God in the Highest and Peace to All Men of Good Will.
Ida Milliquet		An artist from Geneva. Languid and mediocre. Fingers good enough. Posture at the piano good enough. Enough ‘enoughs,’ the grand total of which is not much.
Jenny Gambini		Beautiful eyes.

Parnassus				Place of birth:
Profession:				Musician-Philosopher
Coming from:				Doubt
Journeying towards:				Truth

Names of travellers:				Piffoël family
Domicile:				Nature
Coming from:				God
Journeying towards:				Heaven
Place of birth:				Europe
Occupation:				Loafers
Date of passport:				Eternity
Issued by:				Public opinion

Elopement to Geneva

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII