omestic infelicities centring about
Liszt. The Comtesse d'Agoult loved him so ardently that she braved the
world for him, driving even her complacent husband to divorce her; but
even then, though they lived together, Liszt did not marry her. He even
brought George Sand, the ex-mistress of so many men, including Liszt
himself, to live at the house with the comtesse, who had borne him
three children out of wedlock. One of these children became the wife of
Hans von Buelow, who was driven to divorce her that she might marry his
teacher, Richard Wagner, whose first wife had endured twenty-five years
of his irregularities in everything, except poverty, and who separated
from him during the last five years of her life.

Shall we blame all this to music, and if so, shall we say that music
has atoned sufficiently in the devotion of Wagner and his second wife
to each other, and their lofty theories of art? And in any case, how
shall we explain the influence of music in the life of Wagner's rival
for supremacy, Johannes Brahms, a confirmed bachelor; or his other
contemporary, Tschaikovski, who, after a normal love affair with a
singer, Desiree Artot, who jilted him, eventually married a girl by
whom he seemed to have been deeply loved, without feeling any return?
He claimed to have explained to the enamoured girl that he would marry
her if she wished, but that he could not love her. On these terms she
accepted him, and the bridegroom endured all the agonies of heart
ordinarily ascribed to bartered brides. A burlesque honeymoon of a week
was soon followed by a separation. Tschaikovski regarded his wife with
a horror bordering on insanity, finding what little consolation life
had for him in the devotion of a widow, who furnished him liberally
with funds and admiration, with an affection which, for lack of better
information, we can only call, for lack of a better word, Platonic.

There are other musicians whose private affairs I need not repeat here,
and yet others' that I have not poked into. There is no lack of curious
entanglements, especially in the matter of the men and women who have
played upon the human voice, but we have surely collected enough
material for forming a judgment, especially when we have turned an
additional glance upon the life of one other composer.

Now, the influence of music might be modified beyond recognition by the
fact that one of the lovers might not be musical; but surely, when both
man and woman a