Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8: A series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in History
History
Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8: A series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in History
Biography
In 1824 Liszt, then thirteen years old, came with his father to
England; his mother returned to Austria. He went down to Windsor to
see George IV., who was delighted with him, and Liszt, speaking of him
to me, said: "I was very young at the time, but I remember the king
very well--a fine, pompous-looking gentleman." George IV. went to
Drury Lane on purpose to hear the boy, and commanded an encore. Liszt
was also heard in the theatre at Manchester, and in several private
houses.
On his return to France, people noticed a change in him. He was now
fourteen, grave, serious, often pre-occupied, already a little tired
of praise, and excessively tired of being called "le petit Liszt." His
vision began to take a wider sweep. The relation between art and
religion exercised him. His mind was naturally devout. Thomas à Kempis
was his constant companion. "Rejoice in nothing but a good deed;"
"Through labor to rest, through combat to victory;" "The glory which
men give and take is transitory," these and like phrases were already
deeply engraven on the fleshly tablets of his heart. Amid all his
glowing triumphs he was developing a curious disinclination to appear
in public; he seemed to yearn for solitude and meditation.
In 1827 he again hurried to England for a short time, but his father's
sudden illness drove them to Boulogne, where, in his forty-seventh
year, died Adam Liszt, leaving the young Franz for the first time in
his life, at the early age of sixteen, unprotected and alone. Rousing
himself from the bodily prostration and torpor of grief into which he
had been thrown by the death of his father, Franz, with admirable
energy and that high sense of honor which always distinguished him,
began to set his house in order. He called in all his debts, sold his
magnificent grand "Erard," and left Boulogne for Paris with a heavy
heart and a light pocket, but not owing a sou.
He sent for his mother, and for the next twelve years, 1828-1840, the
two lived together, chiefly in Paris. There, as a child, he had been a
nine days' wonder, but the solidity of his reputation was now destined
to go hand in hand with his stormy and interrupted mental and moral
development. Such a plant could not come to maturity all at once. No
drawing-room or concert-room success satisfied a heart for which the
world of human emotion seemed too small, and an intellect piercing
with intuitive intelligence into the "clear-obscure" depths of
religion and philosophy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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