estimation, many regarding him as the greatest of all quartet-players. We were always
quite at our ease in those lower rooms, but on ceremonial occasions we were invited up-
stairs to the drawing-room, where Liszt had his favourite Erard. We were thus enjoying
the best music, played by the best artists. In addition to this there were the symphony
concerts and the opera with occasional attendance at rehearsal. Liszt took it for granted
that his pupils would appreciate these remarkable advantages and opportunities and their
usefulness, and it think we did.
Liszt’s private studio, where he wrote and composed, was at the back of the main
building in a lower wing, and may easily be distinguishable in the picture by the awnings
over the windows. I was not in this room more than half a dozen times during my stay in
Weimar, and one of these I remember as the occasion of Liszt’s playing the Kreutzer
Sonata with Reményi, the Hungarian violinist, and giving him a lesson in conception and
style of performance.
In the nearest corner of the building were the two large rooms on the ground floor to
which reference has already been made, of which we boys had the freedom at all times,
and where strangers were unceremoniously received. The Furstin Sayn-Wittgenstein had
apartments, I think, on the bel étage with her daughter, the Prinzessin Marie. Any one
who was to be honored with an introduction to them was taken to a reception-room up-
stairs; adjoining this was the dining-room.
We boys saw little of the Wittgensteins, and I remember dining with them only once. I
sat next to the Princess Marie, who spoke English very well, and it may have been due to
her desire to exercise in the language that I was honored with a seat next to her.
Rubinstein met her when he was at Weimar (I shall have more to tell of this visit later),
and composed a nocturne which he dedicated to her. When he came to this country
[America] in 1873 he told me that he had met her again some years later at the palace in
Vienna, but that she had become haughty, and had not been inclined to pay so much
attention to him. There are many Wittgensteins in Russia. When I was in Wiesbaden in
1879-80 I saw half a dozen Russian princes of that name. There was but one Rubinstein.
Liszt had the pick of all the young musicians in Europe for his pupils, and I attribute his
acceptance of me somewhat to the fact that I came all the way from America, something
more of an undertaking in those days than it is now. I became very well acquainted with
those whom I have mentioned, especially with Klindworth and Raff, and before many
days we were all ‘Dutzbrüder’.
The first evening Raff, whom I had never previously heard of, struck me as being rather
conceited; but when I grew to know him better, and realized how talented he was, I was
quite ready to make allowance for his little touch of self-esteem. We became warm
friends, dining together every day at the table d’hôte, and after dinner walking for an hour
or so in the park. Nineteen years later I went abroad again and visited Raff at the
Conservatory in Frankfort. He interrupted his lessons the moment that he heard I was
there, came running down-stairs, threw his arms around my neck, and was so overjoyed
at seeing me that I felt as if we were boys once more at Weimar. Of the pupils and of the