A Child's Recollection of Liszt

—Several summers of my childhood were passed at Castel Gandolfo, the summer residence of the Roman pontiff, a short distance from Rome. Alongside of the crumbling wall of the palace garden a little steep street ascends to the piazza and the parish church. The villa in which my parents had their summer home was at the foot of this street, — a curious old house, large and low, with windows that looked oat in front over a wide stretch of the Campagna towards the Eternal City, and at the back into the pontifical garden, of which the centre piece and chief glory was a stiff box-bordered flower-bed in the form of the papal tiara surmounted with the keys.

The house belonged to an old priest, a native of Corsica, whose birth was nearly contemporaneous with that of the great Napoleon, and whose mind was an unlocked cabinet of treasured anecdotes concerning the great man. We lived on the second story, with the priest, in a simple apartment with whitewashed walls. The first floor, the so-called piano nobile, on which our host had been more lavish of decoration, was let to a Polish lady of cultivated musical tastes, who had her piano in the salon, a quaint room hung with ancient tapestry representing the fasts and feast of the prodigal son. Our apartment boasted no musical instrument, and as I had begun to take lessons the Polish lady very kindly offered to let me practice on her piano every day during the hour of her afternoon drive.

Then I had sole possession of the tapestried room, and I confess that more dreaming than work went on there, under the eyes of the prodigal son and his kin. I used to study their history, my favorite picture being the banquet, where a man was inserting a knife into a large pie, revealing what looked like plump pigeons under the crust ; and I remember that on one occasion, when the cook upstairs had spoiled the dinner, the sight of that pie was almost too much for a hungry child. I delighted in the piano, too, and sat playing by ear airs out of operas, and little songs such as seem to float in the very air of Italy, when I ought to have practiced my scales and five-finger exercises. But I was proud of being allowed to learn some little pieces, particularly a duet from Lucia di Lammermoor, which I looked upon as a masterpiece of subtlety and execution.

I was thumping away at that morsel one afternoon, with my eight-year-old hands stretched at last to the full extent of an octave, and my eight-year-old mind happy in the thought of having mastered all the technical difficulties of the composition, when the door opened softly and closed again, and I looked up to see a white-haired man, with a handsome, kindly, and to me very venerable countenance, standing beside me. I stopped playing in alarm, but he motioned me not to move, and said gently, in Italian : “Go on, my little girl ; never mind me. I should like to hear that piece over again.” Half reassured by the kindness of his manner, I began again nervously at Lucia, and somehow managed to get through it. “ It is not bad,” said my listener. He took hold of my band, and showed me how the notes should be struck, and what I must aim at in practicing. “ And now, if you like, I will play to you,” and he sat down and played Lucia to show me how it should be done. From that he went on to other music, very different, but which seemed to me wonderfully grand, and so on and on, till, stopping at last, he saw me standing there, with eyes big with wonder and full of tears.

“ You have a soul for music, child,” he said ; “study hard, and you will get on.”

At this moment my father’s voice called me from the stairway. I gathered up my books to go. The old gentleman patted me on the head as I thanked him shyly, and I ran away full of wonder and excitement.

Afterwards I heard, and later still I understood, that the musical treat of that afternoon was a privilege which many would have envied me ; that the piano in the tapestried salon had vibrated under the touch of genius ; that I had been listening to the great pianist, the Abbé Liszt, and, what is appalling to think of, had been playing to him.