Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein

From Memoirs of a Princess, Marie von Thurn und Taxis

Another unforgettable person who used to frequent our house at that time was Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, Liszt�s great friend and patroness. The Cardinal used to refer to her as �la Carolüna" : her daughter Maria had married his brother, our Uncle Constantin Hohenlohe. As soon as we heard the piercing tones of her voice, we used to rush into the drawing-room, for we did not want to miss a minute of her company. She burst into the house like a hurricane, chattering to the footmen, to the abbé, to us, rushed at Mamma, to whom she had taken a violently eccentric liking, fell at her feet and kissed her hand, her dress, anything she could get hold of, and my mother hardly knew how to restrain these exaggerated manifestations of her affection. At last the Princess rose to her feet, kissed the bewildered Therese on both cheeks, then adjusted her pince-nez and looked her up and down ; finally she threw herself into a chair, untied the ribbons of her bonnet (which was always bedecked like a frigate in full sail), threw back her burnous and launched into an incessant spate o words. She had just talked to an Italian bishop for two hours about her book Christianity and Buddhism ; the maestro (namely Liszt) had had a tummy-ache during the night ; the Pope had sent her flowers ; the Cardinal ought not to call himself Gustav-Adolf ; her daughter Maria was not really living according to the principles of true piety, but she herself resembled St Monica—a mother should never despair ; the Empress Eugenie had invented a new fashion of hairdressing because her own hair was falling out ; Father Hyacinth was going to preach at San Luigi dei Francesi. . . . Finally she declared that my mother was the most enchanting woman she had ever met, quizzed the abbé and Therese, both of whom she secretly disliked, through her eyeglasses, rose to her feet, kissed all those present in great haste and left us as suddenly as she had arrived.

�Misericordia !" murmured Mamma with a sigh of relief.

�Pare una saetta," grumbled Felicitas, who had not been able to resist her curiosity when this strange phenomenon appeared, and had poked her head through the door.

Princess Carolyne's face was long and sallow, her cheek-bones protruded, her eyes small and very prominent and her large mouth full of bad teeth. Yet her remarkably ugly face was alive with intelligence. She inhabited the third floor of a house in the Via Babuino and always complained of her extreme poverty, although she possessed a considerable fortune and magnificent jewellery. She knew everybody, and everybody came to see her, so she was informed of all the gossip that was going round. She wrote incomparable letters, and theological books which were abysmally tedious (but imbued with profound scholarship, so her adherents said). Besides compiling these works, Christianity and Buddhism, The Innocence of the Dove and the Cunning of the Serpent, etc., each of which ran to two or three volumes, she still found time to be �a bath of steel and milk for the maestro", as she told my mother in one of her letters.

One day it happened that a theological work of hers was placed on the Index, for the good Princess occasionally flavoured her mystical fare with a piquant sauce. In tears, "la Carolüna" rushed to consult Cardinal Hohenlohe, whom she numbered among her confidential friends, frightening all the secretaries, candidates and others present out of their wits. The Cardinal hastened to beg Pius IX to revoke his stern edict—he knew that there would be no peace for him until he had done so. "Ma Padre Sancto," he is supposed to have said, "questi benedetti libri . . . se nessuno non li legge mai. . . ." In other words, what did it matter, as nobody ever read those books anyway?

Unfortunately, I don't know whether His Holiness was convinced by the irrefutable logic of this argument.

Translated and compiled by Nora Wydenbruck
London : Hogarth Press, 1959, pages 51 - 53.

http://www.classicalarchives.com/info/woro.txt

http://www.d-vista.com/OTHER/Liszttime.html

Berlioz, Hector, 1803-1869. Title Lettres ?la princesse / Hector Berlioz ; pr�sent�es et comment�es par Christian Wasselin. Publisher Paris : L'Herne, c2003. Description 190 p. : ill. ; 21 cm. Series L'envers ISBN 2851977601 Language French Note Letters from Berlioz to Carolyne de Sayn-Wittgenstein.

Ollivier, Emile, 1825-1913. Title Emile Ollivier et Carolyne de Sayn-Wittgenstein : correspondance, 1858-1887 / Anne Troisier de Diaz. Publisher Paris : Presses Universitaires de France, 1984. Description 378 p., 4 p. of plates : facsims., ports. ; 25 cm. ISBN 2130384811 Language French Note At head of title: Centre de Recherche, d'Etude et d'Edition de Correspondances du XIXe sie�cle de l'Universite?Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV) Includes indexes. Note Bibliography: p. [31]-34.

Mar�chal, Henri, 1842-1924. Title Rome : souvenirs d'un musicien / Henri Mar�chal ; avec une pr�face de Jules Claretie. Publisher Paris : Hachette, 1904. Description xiii, 306 p. ; 19 cm. Language French Note "Le concours, interm�de sombre, Le voyage, La villa M�dicis, La vie romaine, H�bert, Liszt, Hors les murs, Sac au dos, Madame la Princesse de Wittgenstein, A Paris."