Wagner as I Knew Him
by Ferdinand Praeger · English · Gutenberg #42875 · 644,525 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Wagner as I Knew Him
Author: Ferdinand Praeger
Release date: June 4, 2013 [eBook #42875]
Language: English
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Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)
Transcriber’s note: The etext attempts to replicate the printed book as
closely as possible. Obvious errors in spelling and punctuation have
been corrected. Only a few of the spellings of names, places and German
or French words used by the author have been corrected by the etext
transcriber. A list follows the etext. Footnotes have been moved to the
end of the text body.
WAGNER AS I KNEW HIM
WAGNER
AS I KNEW HIM
BY
FERDINAND PRAEGER
NEW YORK
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
15 EAST SIXTEENTH STREET
1892
COPYRIGHT, 1892,
BY CHARLES J. MILLS.
TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
THE EARL OF DYSART,
PRESIDENT OF THE LONDON BRANCH OF THE UNITED RICHARD WAGNER SOCIETY.
[Sidenote: _THE EARL OF DYSART._]
MY LORD:--
If an intimacy, an uninterrupted friendship, of close upon half a
century during which early associations, ambitions, failures, successes,
and their results were frankly discussed, entitles one to speak with
authority on Richard Wagner, the man, the artist, his mental workings,
and the doctrine he strove to preach, then am I fully entitled so to
speak of my late friend.
To vindicate Wagner in all things is not my intention. He was but
mortal, and no ordinary mortal, and had his failings, which will be
fearlessly dealt with. My sole purpose is to set Richard Wagner before
the world as I knew him; to help to an honest understanding of the man
and his motives as he so often laid them bare to me; and I
unhesitatingly affirm that, when seen in his true character, many a
hostile, plausible, and unsparing criticism, begotten of inadequate
knowledge or malice, will shrivel and crumble away when exposed to the
sunlight of truth.
The daring originality of Wagner’s work could not help provoking violent
opposition. Revolution in art as in aught else has ever been wedded to
storm and tumult.
Of all things, Wagner was a thinker. The plot, construction, and logical
development of his dramas, the employment of those wondrous
character-descriptive tone-themes, their marvellous combination, his ten
volumes of serious matter, especially “The Work and Mission of my Life,”
emphatically testify to his deliberate studied thinking, and friend and
foe alike readily acknowledge the _originality_ of his thought.
Here then entered the art world, in the person of Richard Wagner, a
quite natural subject for discussion. Here was a thinker, an original
thinker, and Carlyle says that “the great event, parent of all others,
in every epoch of the world, is the arrival of a thinker, an _original_
thinker.” No matter for marvel, then, that the air thickened with
criticism as soon as the Thinker proclaimed himself.
The persistency and vigour with which Wagner pursued the end,--an end to
which, primarily, he was unconsciously impelled by instinctive
genius,--the emphatic enforcement of the Gospel it was the sole purpose
of his thinking manhood to inculcate, led him to reject worldly
advancement, to endure painful privation, to utter fierce denunciation
against pseudo-prophets, and to be the victim of malignant insult and
scornful vituperation. And why? Because his mission was to preach
_Truth_.
Wagner was “terribly in earnest.” His earnestness forces itself home to
us through all his works; and in his strenuous striving to accomplish
his task, he involuntarily said and did things seemingly opposed to the
very principles he had so dogmatically enunciated. But on investigating
the why of such apparent contradictions, it will be found that they are
but paradoxical after all, and that never has Wagner swerved from the
direct pursuit of his ideal. Thus he says, “I had a dislike, nay, a
positive contempt, for the stage, its rouge and tawdry tinsel,” and yet
within its precincts he was spell-bound. He was chained to it by
indissoluble links. It was the pulpit from which he was to expound his
gospel. Again, he accepted from friends the most reckless sacrifices
without the simplest acknowledgment or gratitude, yet it was not
ingratitude as is commonly understood; he accepted the service not as
done to himself, but for the glorification of true art, and in that
consummation he felt they were richly recompensed. He, when he felt it
his duty to speak plainly, spared the feelings of none by an incisive
criticism which cut to the core, and yet an over-sensitiveness made him
writhe under the slightest censure.
Towards Jews and Judaism he had a most pronounced antipathy, and yet
this did not prevent him from numbering many Hebrews among his most
devoted friends. Pursued with the wildest ambition, he steadfastly
refused all proffered titles and decorations. He formulated most
positive rules for the music-drama, and then referring to “Tristan and
Isolde,” states: “There I entirely forgot all theory, and became
conscious how far I had gone beyond my own system.”[1] With Meyerbeer in
view, he emphatically insisted that after sixty no composer should
write, as being incapacitated by age and consequent failure of brain
power, and then when long past this period he not only writes one of his
greatest works, but when seventy and within the shadow of death, was
engaged upon another of engrossing interest, viz. on the Hindoo
religion. Lastly, whilst vehemently protesting the inseparability of his
music from its related stage representation and scenic accessories,
compelled by fate, he traversed Europe from London to St. Petersburg to
produce in the concert room orchestral excerpts from the very works upon
whose inviolability he had in such unequivocal terms insisted,--selections
too, though arranged by himself, which give but the most incomplete
conception of the dramas themselves.
This seeming jarring between theory and practice in so powerful a
thinker requires explanation, and in due course I shall exhaustively
treat the same.
Wagner and I were born in the same town, Leipzic, and within two years
of each other. This was a bond of friendship between us never severed,
Wagner ever fondly delighting to talk about his early surroundings and
associations. His references to Leipzic and prominent local characters
were coloured with strong affection, and to discuss with one who could
reciprocate his deep love for the charmed city of his birth, was for him
a certain source of happiness.
Wagner’s first music-master, properly so called, was Cantor Weinlig of
Leipzic. From him he received his first serious theoretical instruction.
Weinlig, too, was well known to me. He was an intimate friend of my
father, Henry Aloysius Praeger, director of the Stadttheater and
conductor of the famous Gewandhaus concerts, the latter post being
subsequently filled by Mendelssohn among other celebrities. Between
Weinlig and my father, whom the history of music has celebrated as a
violinist of exceptional skill and as a sound contrapuntist, constant
communications passed, and I was very often the bearer of such.
Common points of interest like this--striking Leipzic individualities,
the house at Gohlis, a suburb of Leipzic where poor Schiller spent part
of his time, the masters of St. Nicolas’ School, where we both attended,
though at different periods--I could multiply without end, each topic of
absorbing interest to us both, and productive of much mutual expansion
of the heart, but I will here refer to one only--that connected with
Carl Maria von Weber.
“Der Freischütz” was first performed at Dresden, the composer
conducting, on the 22d January, 1822. Wagner, then in his ninth year,
was living at Dresden with his family. In his letter to Frederick
Villot, he says of Weber: “His melodies filled me with an earnestness,
which came to me as a bright vision from above. His personality
attracted me with enthusiastic fascination; from him I received my first
musical baptism. His death in a distant land filled my childish heart
with sorrowful awe.” “Der Freischütz” was almost immediately produced at
Leipzic, and Weber came to Leipzic personally to supervise the
rehearsals and to acquaint my father, then the conductor of the theatre,
as to the special reading of certain parts. The work excited the utmost
enthusiasm in Leipzic, and was performed there innumerable times. I, the
son of the conductor, having free entry to the theatre, went nightly,
and acquired thus early a thoroughly intimate acquaintance with the
work, such as Wagner also had gained by his frequent visits to the
Dresden theatre through his family’s connection with the stage. In
after-life we found that Weber and his works had exercised over both of
us the same fascination. In 1844, the remains of the loved idol, Weber,
were removed from Moorfields Chapel, London, to Dresden. At that time I
was residing in London, and, in conjunction with Max von Weber, the
composer’s eldest son, and others, obtained the necessary authority and
carried out the removal. Wagner was in Germany. There he received the
body, and on its final interment pronounced the funeral oration over the
adored artist.
In this country, where I have now lived for an unbroken period of
fifty-one years, I was Wagner’s first and sole champion, and,
notwithstanding all the calumny with which he was persistently assailed
(which even now has not entirely ceased), stood firmly by him.
It was through my sole exertions that the Philharmonic Society in 1855
offered Wagner the post of conductor. His acceptance and retention of
the post for one season are now matters of history.
Wagner returned to London in 1877 to conduct the “Wagner Festival”
concerts at the Albert Hall. As his sixty-fourth birthday fell during
these concerts, some ardent friends promoted a banquet in his honour at
the Cannon Street Hotel on the 23d May. To that banquet I was invited,
and great was my amazement when Wagner, the applauded of all,
spontaneously and without the least hint to me, warmly and
affectionately said:--
“It is now twenty-two years ago since I came to this country,
unacknowledged as a composer and attacked on all sides by a hostile
press. Then I had but one friend, one support, one who acknowledged and
boldly defended me, one who has clung to me ever since with unchanging
affection; this is my friend Ferdinand Praeger.”
My Lord, I have felt it desirable to address these preliminary remarks
to you as indicative of the manner in which I propose to treat my
friend’s life and work. Wagner was extremely voluble, and, with his
intimate friends, most unreserved. He was a man of strong affections and
strong memory, and to those he loved he freely spoke of those whom he
loved, and thus I believe I am the sole recipient of many of his early
impressions and reminiscences, of his thoughts and ambitions in
after-life. Therefore shall I tell the story of his life and work, as he
made me see it and as I knew him, keeping back nothing, believing as I
do that the world has a right to know how its great men live: their
lives are its lawful inheritance.
It is with deep affection that I undertake a work prompted by your
Lordship’s love for the true in art, and it is to you that I dedicate
the result of my labour.
FERDINAND PRAEGER.
LONDON, 15th June, 1885.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
1813-1821
.....PAGE
“The child is father to the man”--Musician, poet, and dramatist--Stage
reformer--His grandfather a customs officer--His father, Frederick
Wagner, an officer of police, student, and amateur actor--Death of
Frederick, 1813--His mother--Eldest brother, Albert, a tenor
singer--Sisters Rosalie, Louisa, and Clara, actresses of repute--Ludwig
Geyer, a Leipzic actor--Marries Widow Wagner--Family removes to
Dresden--Affection of his step-father and mother for him--The girls
receive piano-forte lessons--Richard receives a few lessons in drawing
from Geyer--Beyond this, up to his ninth year, no regular education is
attempted with him--Geyer not of a robust constitution--Wagner plays the
bridal chorus from “Der Freischütz” by ear--Geyer’s prediction and
death.....1
CHAPTER II.
1822-1827.
His visit to an uncle Geyer at Eisleben--The Kreuzschule, Dresden--His
facility for languages--His modesty--Wagner a small man--Personal
appearance described--Wonder of school professors at unusual mental
activity of the delicate small boy--A prey to erysipelas--Love of
practical joking--Incident of the Kreuzschule roof--An adept in all
bodily exercises--His acrobatic feats--Love for his mother--Affection
for animals.....10
CHAPTER III.
1822-1827. _Continued._
Richard Wagner enters the Kreuzschule, Dresden, December,
1822--Translation of part of the “Odyssey” by private work--Begins to
learn English to read Shakespeare--Writes prize elegy in Germany at
eleven years of age--Theodore Körner, pupil of the Kreuzschule and poet
of freedom--Metrical translation of Romeo’s monologue--His first lessons
on the piano--Hatred of finger exercises--Berlioz--Up to fourteen his
aspirations distinctly musical.....20
CHAPTER IV.
LEIPZIC, 1827-1831.
Return to Leipzic--The Stadttheater; Rosalie and Louise--Jews, their
treatment by Leipzic townspeople--Wagner’s attitude towards them--His
first love a Jewess--At the St. Nicolas school three years, St. Thomas
school and the University a few months each--Describes himself during
his Leipzic school-days as “wild, negligent, and idle”--Reprehensible
gambling of his mother’s pension--Crisis of his life--Haydn’s symphonies
at the theatres and Beethoven’s symphonies in the concert-room--Beethoven
a pessimist--Haydn and Mozart optimists--Resolve to become a
musician--Private study of theory--His first overture, 1830, laughed
at--His marvellously neat penmanship--Takes lessons from Cantor
Weinlig--Writes a sonata without one original idea or one phrase of more
than common interest--Beethoven his daily study--Weber and Beethoven his
models--Combines in himself the special gifts of both, the idealism of
the former and the reasoned working of the latter.....26
CHAPTER V.
1832-1836.
Revolution and romanticism at the beginning of the nineteenth
century--Its effect on Wagner--First grand symphony for
orchestra--Mendelssohn and Wagner--Wondrous dual gift of music and
poesy--Portion of an opera, “The Wedding,” engaged at Würzburg--Albert
Wagner--Life at Würzburg--First opera, “The Fairies”--Schroeder-Devrient
and “The Novice of Palermo”--Stage manager at Magdeburg, 1834--Views
upon German National drama and national life.....44
CHAPTER VI.
1836-1839.
Life and troubles at Magdeburg--Wagner marries--Minna Planer: the woman,
her home, her trustful love--Reflections on his life at Magdeburg--His
ability as a conductor of the orchestra and singers--Popularity of Auber
and Rossini--Renewed trials at Königsberg, 1837--Success of
Meyerbeer--Paris the ruler of German taste--Wagner’s ambition of going
to Paris--Sends sketch of new libretto to Scribe--No answer--Writes an
overture on “Rule Britannia,” and sends it to Sir George Smart--Not
noticed--Wagner’s impressions of stage life after his experience at
Würzburg, Magdeburg, and Königsberg--Visit to Dresden and
“Rienzi”--Conductor at Riga, 1839--His difficulties increase--Paris the
sole hope of relief--Resolves to go to Paris--Sets sail for London--“The
Champagne Mill”--Arrival in London.....55
CHAPTER VII.
EIGHT DAYS IN LONDON, 1839.
First impression--Puts up at cheap hotel in Old Compton Street,
Soho--Loss and return of the dog--Visit to a house in Great Portland
Street where Weber died--Thoughts on English character and London
sights--Visit to Greenwich Hospital--Leaves by boat for Boulogne.....69
CHAPTER VIII.
BOULOGNE, 1839.
Passage to Boulogne--The Mansons, friends of Meyerbeer--Wagner’s visit
to Meyerbeer--Character of Meyerbeer--Interests himself in the youthful
Wagner--The reading of “Rienzi” libretto--Eulogium of Meyerbeer and
promises of help--Meyerbeer feels his way to the purchase of the
“Rienzi” book--Wishes Scribe to write one for him similarly
spectacular--Wagner and his wife at a restaurant; champagne the
“perfection of terrestrial enjoyment”--The Mansons advise him to stay in
Boulogne--The “Rienzi” music pleases Meyerbeer, who also, to Wagner’s
annoyance, praises his neat writing--The “Das Liebesverbot” draws
further laudation from Meyerbeer, and the success of Wagner is
prophesied--“Le petit homme avec le grand chien” leaves Boulogne for
Paris.....78
CHAPTER IX.
PARIS, 1839-1842.
The sanguine Wagner boldly invades Paris--Later reflections of the
bitter sufferings he underwent there--Why he went to Paris--Germany
offers no encouragement to native talent--Wagner has but a slight
acquaintance with the French tongue--Seeks out Monsieur Louis, who
becomes and remains his most devoted friend--With assistance of Louis,
engages modest apartments--Endeavours to deliver his letters of
introduction--Unsuccessful--Without occupation--His poverty--Help from
Germany for a short time--Their sadly straitened circumstances--In
absolute want--Writes for the press; Schlesinger--“A pilgrimage to
Beethoven,” imaginary--He composes three romances, imaginary--Still in
want, forced to the uncongenial task of “arranging” popular Italian
operas for all kinds of instruments--Minna Wagner: her golden qualities
and admiration of Wagner--Minna performs all the menial household
duties--Bright and cheerful temperament soothes the disappointed,
passionate Wagner--His birthday tribute--His subsequent acknowledgment
of her womanly devotion--The artists he met in Paris--Heinrich Laube, an
old Leipzic friend, introduces him to Heine--Meeting of the trio--Laube
and Heine as workers--Schlesinger, music-publisher, becomes his
friend--Schlesinger upon Meyerbeer--Wagner and Berlioz in Paris and
London--The two compared--Wagner’s opinion of Berlioz and his agreement
with Heine--Halévy--Vieuxtemps--Scribe--Kietz.....83
CHAPTER X.
PARIS, 1839-1842. _Continued._
The Paris sojourn the crucial epoch of Wagner’s career--The grand opera
the hothouse of spurious art--Concessions to anti-artistic
influences--Realism of the historic opera irreconcilable with his own
poetic idealism: why?--Is infected with the revolutionary spirit of the
age--From now we date the wondrous change in his art work--Protests
through the “Gazette Musicale” against Italian composers dominating the
French stage to the exclusion of native worth--Rebuked by
Schlesinger--The Conservatoire de Musique; its performances solid food
to Wagner--“Music a blessed reality”--Probability that the unrealities
of the French stage brought Richard Wagner to a quicker knowledge of
himself--Wagner’s estimate of French character--Their poesy--His
tact--Feeling of aversion towards the military and police--His
compositions--A year of non-productivity--Assertion of the
poet--Proposal by Schlesinger that he should write a light work for a
boulevard theatre--Refuses--Is put to bed with an attack of erysipelas
which lasts a week--“Overture to Faust”: “the subjects not music, but
the soul’s sorrows transformed into sounds”--Minna and his dog--Wagner’s
lugubrious forebodings and short novel, “End of a German Musician in
Paris”--Completes “Rienzi,” which is sent to Germany--The “Flying
Dutchman”--How the subject came to be adopted--Heine’s treatment of
Fitzball’s version--The original story as told by Fitzball--Libretto
completed, delivered to the director of the grand opera, who bargains
for it--Superiority of legend over history for musical treatment--Wagner
and his meaning of the “Dutchman” anecdote related at Munich, 1866--The
one of his music-dramas that occupied the shortest time in
composition--It is sent to Meyerbeer--News from Dresden--“Rienzi”
accepted, leaves for Germany.....99
CHAPTER XI.
DRESDEN, 1842-1843.
New and hopeful prospect--Feels assured of “Rienzi” proving
successful--Ignored by Paris, received with open arms by Dresden, the
hallowed scene of Weber’s labours--Joy at returning home a conqueror--A
new life for Minna--Reissiger, chief conductor of the Royal
Opera--Fischer, the manager and chorus director, his friend--His
“Rienzi” and “Adriano”--First performance of “Rienzi”--Unmistakable
success--Wagner appointed co-chief conductor with Reissiger--My own
first acquaintance with Richard Wagner--August Roeckel, the man, friend,
and musician--His letter describing Wagner--Intimacy and political sway
over Wagner--Visit of Berlioz to Dresden--His opinion of the “Dutchman”
and “Rienzi”--The father of Roeckel tutored by Beethoven in the part of
Florestan--Meetings of Richard Wagner and Hector Berlioz--Cold bearing
of the latter.....114
CHAPTER XII.
1843-1844.
Hostility of the Dresden press--Wagner’s energy and good humour when at
the conductor’s desk--A born disciplinarian--Unflagging efforts to
improve the spiritless performances of master works--Interest evinced by
Spohr, who stigmatizes Beethoven’s third period as barbarous
music--Wagner affects to ignore and despise criticism--In reality is
abnormally affected by it--Attacks on his personal attire, home
comforts, and manner of living--Wagner in seclusion--His tribute to the
constancy and devotion of August Roeckel--Wagner’s opinion of Marschner
and Mendelssohn’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream”--The “Faust” overture
unsuccessful--Spontini and the “Vestal”--Visit of Wagner and Roeckel to
Spontini--Weber obsequies--Max von Weber with me in London--Reception of
the body in Germany--Funeral oration delivered by Richard
Wagner--Comparison between Wagner’s public and private manner of
utterance.....124
CHAPTER XIII.
1845.
“Tannhäuser”: story of its composition, poem and music--Its performance,
1845--First mention of Richard Wagner’s name in the London press--The
criticisms (?) of 1845--An instance of the thoroughness of Richard
Wagner--Dawn of the 1848 revolution and Wagner’s relation thereto--The
follower of August Roeckel expresses regret at his heated
language--Performance of the Choral Symphony under Wagner--Unusual
activity displayed in the preparations--The way he set to work--Part
explanation why I came to induce the London Philharmonic to invite him
to this country--His grasp of detail--Forethought displayed in writing
an analytical programme to acquaint audience with the meaning of the
work--Successful performance--Characteristics of Richard Wagner--His
opinion of Italian opera and dictum that an art work to endure must be
founded in reason and reflection--“Lohengrin”: its popularity--“Music is
love”--The network of connection between Wagner’s operas--Thoughts about
“Lohengrin” remaining on earth--Wagner never able to control his
finances--His position becomes embarrassed--At enmity with the
world--Composition of “Lohengrin”--Letter to his mother--Passionate
nature of Wagner--Complete identification of himself with his art--The
manner of his accepting services--His courage inspires our
admiration--The publication by himself of “Rienzi,” “Dutchman,” and
“Tannhäuser”--A failure--“Tannhäuser” offered to the firm of Cramer,
Beale, & Co. by me for nothing--Refused.....136
CHAPTER XIV.
1848.
Wagner significantly silent as to his participation in the Saxon
Revolution, 1848-49--Wagner an active worker--Conclusive proof--A member
of the “Fatherland Union”--Paper read by Wagner before the Union--His
character--Charge of ingratitude towards his king absurd--Deputation to
king of Saxony--The four demands of the people--Refused--Leipzic
determines to march _en masse_ on Dresden--Reforms promised--Founding of
the “Fatherland Union”--Political leaflets printed and
distributed--Wagner reads his paper June 16, 1848: “What is the relation
that our republican efforts bear to the monarchy?”--Printed by the
Union--Copy forwarded to me at the time--Reproduced here--It is omitted
from Wagner’s “Collected Writings”--An important document, since it
forms part of the official indictment against Wagner--The paper treats
of (1) relation of republic to monarchy; (2) nobility appealed to and
urged to join in the commonwealth; (3) abolition of first chamber; (4)
manhood suffrage advocated; (5) creation of national armies; (6)
communism a senseless theory and its reign impossible; (7) appeal to
improve the impoverished condition of the masses by timely concessions;
(8) founding of colonies; (9) the greatest and most far-reaching reforms
only possible under a republic of which the monarch is the head; (10)
the king logically the first republican; (11) “subjects” converted
into “free citizens”; (12) war against the office of king and not
against the person; (13) laudation of the Saxon potentate; (14) Wagner’s
fidelity to the king; (15) advocates the abolition of the
monarchy--National armies--Roeckel, Wagner’s assistant conductor,
dismissed, autumn, 1848--Founds a political paper; Wagner
contributes--Roeckel imprisoned for three days--The elections--Triumph
of the democratic party--Roeckel elected a deputy--Revision of taxation
and civil list--Subsidy to the theatre: Wagner defends it in paper
delivered to minister; Roeckel to defend it in the chamber--Details of
the paper.....151
CHAPTER XV.
1849-1851.
The new Chamber of Deputies--The king of Saxony refuses to accept the
constitution formulated by the federated German parliament--The chambers
dissolved by the king--Wagner urges Roeckel to leave Dresden for fear of
arrest--Roeckel leaves for Prague--Hainberger, Bakunin, and Semper--The
outbreak--Wagner’s incriminating note to Roeckel--Return of
Roeckel--Wagner in charge of convoys--Characteristic incident--Roeckel
taken prisoner--Origin of the revolt--Its character--Source of the
government charge against Wagner--Heubner, Bakunin, and Roeckel
imprisoned--Sentenced to death--Commuted--Actual part played by
Wagner--He carries a musket; heads a barricade--Wagner not personally
brave--His flight to Weimar--Liszt and the police official--Wagner in
Paris--Naturalized at Zurich--Proclamation by Saxon government, June,
1853, directing the arrest of Wagner--The government indictment
summarized--Richard Wagner amnestied, March, 1862--Important letter from
Wagner, March 15, 1851, to Edward Roeckel of Bath, detailing his own
share in the Revolution--Attempts of biographers to gloss over Wagner’s
participation in Revolution--Wagner to blame--Conflicting extracts from
Wagner’s early and later writings as to his precise share--The case
summarized.....170
CHAPTER XVI.
1850-1854.
Wagner seeks an asylum in Paris--His reception disappointing--Leaves for
Switzerland--A second time within the year he returns to Paris--Again
vexed at the little recognition he meets with--Finally settles in Zurich
and becomes a naturalized subject--Reflections on the French and their
attitude towards art--His abruptness of speech, impatience of
incapacity, and vehement declamation wear the air of rudeness--Episode
at Bordeaux--He possesses the very failings of amorousness, Hebraic
shrewdness, and Gallic love of enjoyment denounced by him in others--At
Zurich unable to settle to work for some time--His exile the grandest
part of his life as regards art--Period of repose--For five years not
one single bar of music did he compose--Describes his Zurich life as
spent in “walking, reading, and literary work”--His literary
activity--Writes “Art and Revolution,” “The Art Work of the Future,”
“Art and Climate,” “Judaism in Music,” and “Opera and Drama”--The period
of his banishment the cradle of nearly all his great music-dramas: the
“Nibelung’s Ring,” “Tristan and Isolde,” the “Mastersingers,” and a
fragment of “Parsifal”--His pretty chalet, “The Retreat,” at Zurich. The
Wesendoncks--Compares himself to the philosopher Hegel--The first
printing of the Nibelung poem, 1853--Resents allusion to it as a work of
literary merit--Recites portions of the lied--At Zurich conducts the
opera house--Hans von Bülow his pupil--Wagner’s festival week at
Zurich--Chapelmaster Lachner’s prize symphony--His health always bad:
dyspepsia and erysipelas--At hydropathic establishments--His love for
the animal kingdom--Anecdote of “Peps,” the Tannhäuser dog.....194
CHAPTER XVII.
“JUDAISM IN MUSIC.”
The importance attached to the question--The paper said to have been
prompted by personal jealousy--Absurdity of the accusation--The London
press hostile because of his Jewish criticisms upon Mendelssohn and
Meyerbeer--The “Sunday Times” asserts that “the most ordinary English
ballad writer would shame him in the creation of melody, and no English
harmonist would pen such vile things”--The words he uttered in 1852 in
the Judaism paper lay deep in his heart, and he adhered to them in 1855
and 1869--Wagner of opinion that his ostracism and suppression for many
years were due alone to the power of the Jews--Publication of the
article--Attempt to dismiss Brendel from his professional office at the
Leipzic conservatoire--Wagner asserts an involuntary revulsion of
feeling towards the Jews--The Jew always a foreigner--Wagner’s Semitic
antipathy partly inherited--Cannot understand the natural humane
treatment of the Jews by the English--Admits the glorious history of the
Jews compared with the annals of the German barbarians--A Jew actor as a
hero or lover “ridiculous”--This assertion contradicted by
instances--The Jew offensive to Wagner in his speech, as regards
intonation and manner--Their absence of passion--Incapable of artistic
speech, the Jew is more incapable of artistic song--His unreasoned
attack on the lack of Jewish plastic artists--Further indulges in the
vulgar charge of usury--Attacks the cultivated Jew--The Jew incapable of
fathoming the heart of our civilized life--Cannot compose for those
whose feelings he does not understand--The synagogue the legitimate
sphere for the Hebraic composer--Outside this the Jewish musician can
only imitate Gentile composers--Criticism upon Mendelssohn--Criticism
upon Meyerbeer severe and unsparing--Meyerbeer’s attitude towards the
critics--Cordially hated by Wagner--Wagner’s own attitude towards the
London critics.....205
CHAPTER XVIII.
1855.
How Wagner came to be invited to London--I appear before the directors
of the Old Philharmonic--I find that they either know very little of him
or nothing at all--Richard Wagner visited at Zurich by a director--The
New York “Musical Gazette”--The London press upon Wagner--Condemned
before he is heard--The cause, “Judaism in Music”--Wagner’s agreement
with the Philharmonic directors--Imposes two conditions: (1) a second
conductor; (2) several rehearsals--Gives way as to the first, but
insists on the second--Will not lend himself to anything
unworthy--Letter of 18th January--In accepting the Philharmonic
engagement Wagner “makes a sacrifice,” but feels he must do this or
renounce forever all relations with the public--Projects a whole concert
of his works--The directors refuse--Irritation of Wagner--Letter of the
1st February--No special plan for his London expedition except what can
be done with a celebrated orchestra--States he does not know English and
is entirely without gift for modern languages--Enmity of the editor of
the “Musical World” (London), who confesses that Wagner is a “God in his
books, but he shall have no chance here”--Richard Wagner’s arrival,
midnight, Sunday, 5th March, 1855--His head-gear--Objects to change his
felt hat--His democratic principles of 1849 now modified--Visit to Mr.
Anderson--The Lachner symphony proposed--Volcanic explosion of
Wagner--Would cancel his engagement rather than conduct Kapellmeister
music--Wagner’s objection acceded to--Visit to Sainton and Costa--Wagner
refuses to call on any critics or pay any other visits of etiquette--At
dinner--Wagner dainty--Quick though moderate eater--His
workroom--Self-denial not his characteristic--His intrepidity borders
close upon the reckless--Introduction to the Philharmonic
orchestra--Briefly addresses them--Diplomatic, but his will law--The
concert--Programme--His conducting--The “Times” abuses him--After the
concert, at Wagner’s rooms--His playing the piano--His singing like the
barking or howling of a Newfoundland dog--Well pleased with his first
introduction to an English audience--His volubility--Abuse of fashion
and white kid gloves for a conductor--The second concert--“Lohengrin”
prelude, overture to “Der Freischütz,” “Ninth Symphony”--Overture
encored--Wagner objects to encores, but enthusiasm of audience demands
the repetition--“Lohengrin” prelude a surprise, as Wagner’s music had
been described “noise and fury”.....218
CHAPTER XIX.
1855. _Continued._
The “Ninth Symphony” rehearsed--Surprise of the orchestra--Guildhall,
Fafner, and Falsolt--The mint and his projected theatre--Daily promenade
of Richard Wagner with dog to Regent’s Park to feed the ducks--Wagner
and the introduction of the animal kingdom upon the stage--Unlimited
means the key to his passion for realism--Unlimited means the dream of
his life--The third concert; “Euryanthe”--Wagner’s habit of snuff-taking
while at the piano--His smoking--His irritability--Love for silks and
velvets partly due to physical causes--Anger at shams--“Punch” on
Wagner--Fourth concert; Wagner insists on leaving England next morning
and breaking his engagement--Dissuaded--Fifth concert; success of the
“Tannhäuser” overture--Wagner’s forty-second birthday; violet velvet
dressing-gown--Signs himself “Conductor of the Philharmonic omnibus,” in
allusion to the “full” programmes--Cyprian Potter--The Queen, Prince
Consort, and Richard Wagner--Repetition of “Tannhäuser”
overture--Berlioz and Wagner--The press and anonymous articles--Anxiety
of Wagner to serve Berlioz--The last concert and departure from London,
26th June--A few quotations from the contemporary press.....241
CHAPTER XX.
1855-1856.
Letters of Wagner--In Paris--Home at Zurich--Domestic pets--“Cries
constantly” at the death of “Peps”--Buries the dog--Minna ill--Wagner on
a sick-bed--His acquaintance with the French language--The French of
Berlioz and Wagner compared--Letter in French from Wagner--He is “more
luxurious than Sardanapalus and all the old Roman emperors”--His frame
of mind during the composition of the Walküre--Study of Schopenhauer and
request for London snuff.....268
CHAPTER XXI.
ZURICH, 1856.
A picture of Minna--Wagner an early riser--His acquaintance with
Schopenhauer--Wagner a pessimist?--The first promptings of “Tristan and
Isolde”--How did Richard Wagner compose?--The manner of Beethoven,
Haydn, and Wagner compared--Wagner’s thumping--Admits he is not at his
best when improvising--Schaffhausen--The lions--Wagner’s
extravagance--Duke of Coburg’s offer--The Wesendoncks.....288
CHAPTER XXII.
1857-1861.
His health “shattered”--Goes to Venice--Returns to Paris--Resides in
Octave Feuillet’s house--The strong opposition of the press--The origin
of the performance of “Tannhäuser”--The story of the cabal and
disaster.....300
CHAPTER XXIII.
LETTERS FROM 1861-1865.
Letters from Wagner.....309
CHAPTER XXIV.
1865-1883.
Munich--Wagner in low spirits--His relations with the young king of
Bavaria--His house--Fearlessness of speech--Presence of mind--Intrigues
against him--Leaves for Geneva--Return to Munich--Treatment of the
king--Approaching change in Wagner’s life--Madame von Bülow--Wagner’s
second marriage--Letters from him--Under a new light--His love for
home--“Siegfried”--Lucerne--Wagner at home--Peace--His
autobiography--His opinion of Liszt--The end--Wagner’s work and
character.....317
WAGNER AS I KNEW HIM.
CHAPTER I.
1813-1821.
Seldom has the proverb “The child is father to the man” been more
completely verified in the life of any prominent brain-worker than in
that of Richard Wagner. The serious thinker of threescore, with his soul
deep in his work, is the developed school-boy of thirteen lauded by his
masters for unusual application and earnestness. All his defects and
virtues, his affections and antipathies, can be traced to their original
sources in his childhood. No great individuality was ever less
influenced by misfortune or success in after-life than Wagner. The
mission he felt within him and which he resolutely set himself to
accomplish, he unswervingly pursued throughout the varied phases of his
eventful career. Beyond contention, Richard Wagner is, I think, the
greatest art personality of this century,--unequalled as a musician,
great as a poet as regards the matter, moral, and mode of expression,
whilst in dramatic construction a very Shakespeare. With an ardent
desire to reform the stage, he has succeeded beyond his hopes; and well
was he fitted to undertake such a gigantic task. His family--father,
step-father, eldest brother, and three sisters--and early surroundings
were all connected with the stage. Cradled in a theatrical atmosphere,
nurtured on theatrical traditions, with free access to the best theatres
from the first days his intellect permitted him to enjoy stage
representations, himself a born actor, and with earnestness as the rule
of his life, it is no matter for surprise that he stands foremost among
the great stage reformers of modern times.
By birth he belonged to the middle class. A son of the people he always
felt himself; and throughout his career he strove to soften the hard
toil of their lot by inspiring in them a love for art, the power to
enjoy which he considered the goal of all education and civilization. To
him the people represented the true and natural, untainted by the
artificiality that characterized the wealthy classes.
[Sidenote: _HIS FATHER, FREDERICK WAGNER._]
Painstaking, energy, and ability seem to have been the attributes of
Wagner’s ancestors. His paternal grandfather held an appointment under
the customs at Leipzic as “thorschreiber,” _i.e._ an officer who levied
toll upon all supplies that entered the town. Family tradition describes
him as a man of attainments in advance of his station, a characteristic
which also distinguished his son Frederick (Richard’s father). Frederick
Wagner, born in 1770, also held an appointment under the Saxon
government. A sort of superintendent of the Leipzic police, he spent his
leisure time in studying French. Although unaided, he must have attained
some degree of proficiency; as subsequently he was called upon to make
use of it, and it proved of great service to him. He was a man of
literary tastes, and was famed in Leipzic for his great reading and
knowledge. Goethe and Schiller were then the beacon-lights of young
German poetry. Their pregnant philosophical reasoning, clothed in so
attractive, new, and beautiful a garb, fascinated Frederick Wagner, and
he made them his serious study--a love which was inherited by his son
Richard, who oft in his literary works refers to Goethe and Schiller as
the two greatest German poets.
Like all natives of Leipzic he was passionately fond of the stage. The
enthusiasm of all classes of society in Leipzic for matters theatrical
is historic. Frederick Wagner attached himself to a company of amateur
actors, and threw himself with such zest into the study of the
histrionic art as to achieve considerable distinction and court
patronage. The performances of this company were not unfrequently open
to the public; indeed, at one time, when the town theatre was
temporarily closed, the amateurs replaced the regular professionals, the
Elector of Saxony evincing enough interest in the troupe to pay the hire
of the building specially engaged for their performances.
When the peace of Europe was disturbed by the wild, ambitious plottings
of Napoleon, a body of French troops were quartered at Leipzic under
Marshal Davoust. It was now that Frederick Wagner’s self-taught French
was turned to account, as he was appointed to carry on communications
between the German and the French soldiers. The Saxon Elector submitting
to the French conqueror, the government of the town passed into French
hands. Davoust, with the shrewd perspicacity of an officer of Napoleon’s
army, saw the solid qualities of Frederick, and directed him to
reorganize the town police, at the same time nominating him
superintendent-in-chief. He did not retain this appointment many months,
as he died of typhoid fever, caught from the French soldiers, on the 22d
of November, 1813.
Of his “dear little mother” Wagner often spoke to me, and always in
terms of the fondest affection. He described her as a woman of small
stature, active frame, self-possessed, with a large amount of common
sense, thrifty and of a very affectionate nature.
The Wagner family consisted of nine children, four boys and five girls.
Richard, the youngest of all, was born on the 22d May, 1813, at Leipzic.
At the time of his father’s death he was therefore but six months old.
The eldest of the children, Albert, was born in 1799. He went on the
stage as a singer at an early age, having a somewhat high tenor voice.
In 1833 we find him stage manager and singer at Wurtzburg, engaging his
brother Richard as chorus director. He afterwards became stage manager
at Dresden and Berlin, dying in 1874.
[Sidenote: _LUDWIG GEYER._]
Three of Wagner’s sisters, Rosalie, born 1803, Louisa, born 1805, and
Clara, born 1807, were also induced to choose the stage as a profession,
each being endowed with unmistakable histrionic talent. Although not
great they were actresses of decided merit. Laube, an eminent German art
critic and writer, has given it as his opinion that Rosalie was to be
preferred to Wilhelmina Schroeder, afterwards the celebrated
Schroeder-Devrient, but this praise Wagner considered excessive,
attributing it to the critic’s friendly relations with the family.
The unexpected death of Frederick Wagner threw the family into great
tribulation. A small pension was allowed the widow by government, but
with eight young children (one, Karl, born some time before, had died),
the eldest but fourteen years of age, the struggle was severe and likely
to have terminated disastrously, notwithstanding the watchful thrift of
Frau Wagner, had not Ludwig Geyer, a friend of the dead Frederick,
generously helped the widow. Geyer was a favourite actor at Leipzic. A
man of versatile gifts, he was poet, portrait-painter, and successful
playwright. For two years he continuously identified himself with the
Wagner household, after which, in 1815, he assumed the whole
responsibility by marrying his friend’s widow. Shortly after his
marriage Geyer was offered an engagement at the Royal Theatre, Dresden,
which would confer on him the highly coveted title of “Hofschauspieler,”
or court actor. He accepted the appointment, and the whole family
removed with him to the Saxon capital. At this time Richard was two
years old. Frederick Wagner, as a thorough Leipzic citizen, had already
interested his family in theatrical matters; now by Geyer becoming the
head of the household, the stage and its doings became the every-day
topic, and therefore the next consequence was its adoption by the eldest
children, Albert, Rosalie, Louisa, and Clara. What wonder then that
Richard was influenced by the theatrical atmosphere in which he was
trained.
From the first Geyer displayed the tenderest affection towards the small
and delicately fragile baby. Throughout his life Wagner was a spoilt
child, and the spoiling dates from his infancy. Both step-father and
mother took every means of petting him. His mother particularly idolized
him, and seems, so Wagner told me, to have often built castles in the
air as to his future. They were drawn towards the boy, first, because of
his sickly, frail constitution; and secondly, owing to his bright powers
of observation, which made his childish remarks peculiarly winning. As
the boy grew up he remained delicate. He was affected with an irritating
form of erysipelas, which constantly troubled him up to the time of his
death.
[Sidenote: _BOYHOOD AT DRESDEN._]
Ludwig Geyer’s income from all sources,--acting, portrait-painting, and
play-writing--did not amount to a sum sufficient to admit of luxuries.
Poor Madame Geyer, with her large, growing family, had still to keep a
watchful eye over household expenditure. Portrait-painting was not a
lucrative occupation, and play-writing less so, yet she contrived that
the girls should receive pianoforte lessons. It was customary for needy
students of the public schools to eke out their existence by giving
lessons in music, languages, or sciences; indeed, it was not uncommon to
find some students wholly dependent on such gains for the payment of
their own school fees. The fees usually paid in such instances were
sadly small, and not unfrequently did the remuneration take the form of
a “free table.” At that time there was scarcely a family in Germany that
had not its piano. A piano was then obtainable at a cost incredibly
small compared with the sums paid to-day. True, the cases were but
coloured deal or some common stained wood, whilst the mechanism was of
the least expensive kind. In shape they were square, with the plainest
unturned legs. Upright instruments had not then been introduced.
The Wagner family went to Dresden in 1815, and from that time, up to the
date of his entering the town school at the end of 1822, Richard
received either at school or at home no regular tuition. The boy was
sickly and his mother was content to let him live and develop without
forcing him to any systematic school work. It would seem that he
received irregular lessons in drawing from his step-father, as Wagner
told me that Geyer had hoped to discover some talent in him for the
pencil, and on finding he had not the slightest gift, he was very much
disappointed. As a boy, he continued to be a pet with Geyer,
accompanying his step-father in his rambles during the day or attending
with him the rehearsals at the theatre. Such home education as he did
receive was of the most fragmentary kind, a little help here and there
from his sisters or attention from Geyer or his mother. Music lessons he
had none. All he remembered in after-life was having listened to his
sisters’ playing, and only by degrees taking interest in their work. His
own reminiscences of his boyhood were plain in one point--he certainly
was not a musical prodigy. He fingered and thumbed the keyboard like a
boy, but such scraps as he played were always by ear.
Anxieties for a second time now began to thicken round the Wagner
family. The court actor Geyer was laid on a sick-bed. He was not of a
robust constitution, and conscious of failing health and apprehensive of
death, sought anxiously to find some indication in young Richard of any
decided talent which might help him to suggest as to the boy’s future
career. He had tried, as I have said, to find whether his step-son
possessed any skill with the pencil, and sorrowfully perceived he had
none. In other directions, of course, it was difficult for Geyer to
determine as to any particular gift, if we remember the tender years of
the boy. As to music, it would have been nothing short of divination to
have predicted that there lay his future, since up to that time Richard
had not even been taught his notes. But the court actor was an artist,
and with unerring instinct detected in a simple melody played by Richard
from memory that in music “he might become something.”
[Sidenote: _THE WAGNER HOUSEHOLD._]
Richard had been fascinated by a snatch of melody which was constantly
played by his sisters. He caught it by ear, and was one day strumming it
softly on the piano when alone. His mother overheard him. Surprised and
pleased at the boy’s unsuspected accomplishment, Geyer was told, and the
melody was repeated in a louder tone for the benefit of the invalid in
the next room. It was the bridal chorus from “Der Freischütz.” Although
a very simple melody and of easy execution, it must have been played
with unusual feeling for a child to prompt Geyer almost to the prophetic
utterance, “Has he perhaps talent for music?” Wagner heard this, and
told me how deeply he was impressed by it. On the next day Geyer died,
13th September, 1821. Richard was then eight years and four months old,
and preserved the most vivid remembrance of his mother coming from the
death chamber weeping, but calm, and walking straight to him, saying,
“He wished to make something of you, Richard.” These words, Wagner
said, remained with him ever after, and he boyishly resolved “to be
something.” But he had not then the faintest notion in what direction
that something was going to be. Certainly music was not forecast as the
arena of his future triumphs, since in his letter to F. Villot, dated
September, 1860, he tells us that it was not until after his efforts in
the poetical art, and subsequent to the death of Beethoven, 1827, _i.e_.
six years after Geyer’s death, that he seriously began to study music.
For a second time was the family thrown into comparative adversity. But
the embarrassment was less serious than in 1813, since the three eldest
children were now at an age to contribute materially to the general
support. A trifling annuity was again awarded to the widow, and with
careful thrift she resumed her sway of the household. The family at this
time consisted of the widow; Albert, twenty-two years; Rosalie,
eighteen; Julius, seventeen, apprenticed to a goldsmith; Louisa,
sixteen; Clara, fourteen; Ottilie, ten; Richard, eight and four months;
and Cecilia Geyer, six, the only child of Frau Wagner’s second marriage.
The two eldest girls and Albert had already embraced the theatrical
profession. Family circumstances were therefore not so pinched as at the
death of Frederick Wagner.
No plan having yet been devised as to the future of Richard, he was sent
on a visit to an uncle Geyer at Eisleben, between which place and his
mother’s home at Dresden, he spent the next fifteen months, when it was
decided to enter him at the Kreuzschule (the Cross School), Dresden.
CHAPTER II.
1822-1827.
His first visit to Eisleben--the going among strange people, new
scenery, and for the first time sleeping away from his mother’s
home--was the first great event of his life, and left an indelible
impression on him. The details he remembered in connection with this
early visit, at a time when he was not nine years old, point to the
vividness of the picture of the whole journey in his mind and his strong
retentive memory.
The story I had from Wagner in one of our rambles at Zurich in 1856.
[Sidenote: _HIS VISIT TO EISLEBEN._]
“My first journey to Eisleben,” said Wagner to me, “was in the beginning
of 1822. Can one ever forget a first impression? And my first long
journey was such an event! Why, I seem even to remember the physiognomy
of the poor lean horses that drew the jolting ‘postkarre.’ They were
being changed at some intermediate station, the name of which I have now
forgotten, when all the passengers had to alight. I stood outside the
inn eating the ‘butterbrod,’ with which my dear little mother (‘mein
liebes Mütterchen’ was the term of endearment invariably used by Wagner,
when referring to his mother) had provided me, and as the horses were
about to be led away, I caressed them affectionately for having brought
me so far. How every cloud seemed to me different from those of the
Dresden sky! How I scrutinized every tree to find some new
characteristic! How I looked around in all directions to discover
something I had not yet seen in my short life! How grand I felt when the
heavy car rolled into the town of Eisleben! Even then Eisleben had a
halo of something great for my boyish imagination, since I knew it to be
the birthplace of Luther, one of the heroes of my youth, and one that
has not grown less with my increasing years. Nor was it without a reason
that, at so early a period, religion should occupy the attention of a
boy of my age. It was forced upon my family when we came to Dresden. The
court was Roman Catholic, and in consequence, no inconsiderable pressure
was brought to bear upon all families who were connected in any manner
with the government to compel them to embrace the court-religion. My
family had been among the staunchest of Lutherans for generations. What
attracted me most in the great reformer’s character, was his dauntless
energy and fearlessness. Since then I have often ruminated on the true
instinct of children, for I, had I not also to preach a new Gospel of
Art? Have I not also had to bear every insult in its defence, and have I
not too said, ‘Here I stand, God help me, I cannot be otherwise!’
“My good uncle tried his best to put me through some regular educational
training. It was intended that he should prepare me as far as he could
for school, as the famous Kreuzschule was talked of for me. Yet, I must
confess I did not profit much by his instruction. I preferred rambling
about the little country town and its environs to learning the rules of
grammar. That I profited little was, I fear, my own fault. Legends and
fables then had an immense fascination over me, and I often beguiled my
uncle into reading me a story that I might avoid working. But what
always drew me towards him was his strong affection for my own loved
step-father. Whenever he spoke of him, and he did so very often, he
always referred to his loving good-nature, his amiability, and his gifts
as an artist, and then would murmur with a tearful sigh ‘that he had to
die so young!’
“It was arranged that I should enter the Dresden school in December,
1822, just at a time when my sisters were busy with the exciting
preparations for the family Christmas-tree. How good it was of my mother
then to let us have a tree, poor as we were! I was not pleased to go to
school just three days before Christmas Day, and probably would have
revolted had not my mother talked me over and made me see the advantages
of entering so celebrated an academy as the Kreuzschule, pacifying my
disappointment by allowing me to rise at early dawn to do my part to the
tree. Now I cannot see a lighted Christmas-tree without thinking of the
kind woman, nor prevent the tears starting to my eyes, when I think of
the unceasing activity of that little creature for the comfort and
welfare of her children.”
[Sidenote: _MENTAL ACTIVITY.--STATURE._]
Wagner was deeply moved when, on Christmas Day, he found amongst the
usual gifts, such as “Pfefferkuchen” (ginger-bread) and “Stolle” (butter
cake), a new suit of clothes for himself, a present from his thoughtful
mother for him to go to school with. Throughout his life Wagner was
always remarkably prim and neatly dressed, caring much for his personal
appearance. The low state of the widow’s exchequer was well known to
Richard, and he could appreciate the effort made for him. He was no
sooner at school than he attracted to himself a few of the cleverest
boys by his early developed gift of ready speech and sarcasm. “Die
Dummer haben mich immer gehasst” (the stupid have ever hated me) was a
favourite saying of his in after-life. The study of the dead languages,
his principal subject, was a delight to him. He had a facility for
languages. It was one of his gifts. History and geography also attracted
him. He was an omnivorous reader, and his precise knowledge on any
subject was always a matter of surprise to the most intimate. It could
never be said what he had read or what he had not read, and here perhaps
is the place to note a remarkable feature in Wagner’s disposition, viz.
his modesty. Did he require information on any subject, his manner of
asking was childlike in its simplicity. He was patient in learning and
in mastering the point. But it should be observed that nothing short of
the most complete and satisfactory explanation would satisfy him. And
then would the thinking-power of the man declare itself. The information
he had newly acquired would be thoroughly assimilated and then given
forth under a new light with a force truly remarkable.
In stature Wagner was below the middle size, and like most undersized
men always held himself strictly erect. He had an unusually wiry,
muscular frame, small feet, an aristocratic feature which did not extend
to his hands. It was his head, however, that could not fail to strike
even the least inquiring that there he had to do with no ordinary
mortal. The development of the frontal part, which a phrenologist would
class at a glance amongst those belonging only to the master-minds,
impressed every one. His eyes had a piercing power, but were kindly
withal, and were ready to smile at a witty remark. Richard Wagner lacked
eyebrows, but nature, as if to make up for this deficiency, bestowed on
him a most abundant crop of bushy hair, which he carefully kept brushed
back, thereby exposing the whole of his really Jupiter-like brow. His
mouth was very small. He had thin lips and small teeth, signs of a
determined character. The nose was large and in after-life somewhat
disfigured by the early-acquired habit of snuff-taking. The back of his
head was fully developed. These were according to phrenological
principles power and energy. Its shape was very similar to that of
Luther, with whom, indeed, he had more than one point of character in
common.
In answer to my inquiries about his school period at Dresden, he told me
that he was remarkably small, a circumstance not unattended with good
fortune, since it served to increase the favour of his school
professors, who looked upon his unusual mental energy in comparison with
his pigmy frame as nothing short of wonderful.
As a boy he was passionate and strong-headed. His violent temper and
obstinate determination were not to be thwarted in anything he had set
his mind to. Among boys such wilfulness of character was the cause of
frequent dissensions. He rarely, however, came to blows, for he had a
shrewd wit and was winningly entreating in speech, and with much
adroitness would bend them to his whims.
[Sidenote: _HIS YOUTHFUL ESCAPADES._]
Erysipelas sorely tried the boy during his school life. Every change in
the weather was a trouble to him. As regards the loss of his eyebrows,
an affliction which ever caused him some regret, Wagner attributed it to
a violent attack of St. Anthony’s fire, as this painful malady is also
called. An attack would be preceded by depression of spirits and
irritability of temper. Conscious of his growing peevishness, he sought
refuge in solitude. As soon as the attack was subdued, his bright animal
spirits returned and none would recognize in the daring little fellow
the previous taciturn misanthrope.
Practical joking was a favourite sport with him, but only indulged in
when harm could befall no one, and incident offered some funny
situation. To hurt one willingly was, I think, impossible in Wagner. He
was ever kind and would never have attempted anything that might result
in real pain.
His superabundance of animal spirits, well-seconded by his active frame,
led him often into hairbrained escapades which threatened to terminate
fatally. But his fearless intrepidity was tempered and dominated by a
strong self-reliance, which always came to the rescue at the critical
moment.
On one occasion when the boys of the Kreuzschule were assembled in class
for daily work, an unexpected holiday was announced for that day. A
chance like that was a rare thing at schools on the continent. The boys,
wild with excitement, rushed pell mell from the building, and showed
their delight in the usual tumultuous manner of school-boys freed from
restraint. Caps were thrown in the air, when Wagner, seizing that of one
of his companions, threw it with an unusual effort on to the roof of
the school-house, a feat loudly applauded by the rest of the scholars.
But there was one dissentient, the unlucky boy whose cap had been thus
ruthlessly snatched. He burst into tears. Wagner could never bear to see
any one cry, and with that prompt decision so characteristic of him at
all periods of his life, decided at once to mount the roof for the cap.
He re-entered the school-house, rushed up the stairs to the cock-loft,
climbed out on the roof through a ventilator, and gazed down on the
applauding boys. He then set himself to crawl along the steep incline
towards the cap. The boys ceased cheering at the sight and drew back in
fear and terror. Some hurriedly ran to the “custodes.” A ladder was
brought and carried up stairs to the loft, the boys eagerly crowding
behind. Meanwhile Wagner had secured the cap, safely returned to the
opening, and slid back into the dark loft just in time to hear excited
talking on the stairs. He hid himself in a corner behind some boxes,
waited for the placing of the ladder, and “custodes” ascending it, when
he came from his hiding-place, and in an innocent tone inquired what
they were looking for, a bird, perhaps? “Ja, ein Galenvogel” (yes, a
gallows bird), was the angry answer of the infuriated “custodes,” who,
after all, were glad to see the boy safe, their general favourite. He
did not go unrebuked by the masters this time, and was threatened with
severe chastisement the next time he ventured on such a foolhardy
expedition.
[Sidenote: _HIS ACROBATIC FEATS._]
Wagner told me that whilst on the roof, which, like all roofs of old
houses in Germany, was extremely steep, he felt giddy, and was seized
with a dread of falling. Bathed in a fever of perspiration, he uttered
aloud, “liebe mütterchen,” upon which he felt transformed. It acted on
his frame with the power of magic, and helped him to retrace his steps
from a position which would appall a practised gymnast. Many years after
this, Wagner’s eldest brother, Albert, when referring to Richard having
taken part in the rising of the people of Saxony in 1849, which he
personally strongly deprecated, told me the above story in illustration
of Richard’s extreme foolhardiness. The episode was fully confirmed by
Wagner, who then told me of his fears on the roof.
It was not in climbing only that Richard excelled. He was known as the
best tumbler and somersault-turner of the large Dresden school. Indeed,
he was an adept in every form of bodily exercise; and as his animal
spirits never left him, he still performed boyish tricks even when
nearing threescore and ten. The roof of the Kreuzschule was not
infrequently referred to by me, and when Wagner proposed some
venturesome undertaking, I would say, “You are on the roof again.”
“Ah, but I shall get safely down again, too,” was the answer,
accompanied with his pleasant boyish laugh.
Richard early began to exhibit his love of acrobatic feats. When as
young as seven, he would frighten his mother by sliding down the
banisters with daring rapidity and jumping down stairs. As he always
succeeded in his feats, his mother and the other children took it for
granted that he would not come to grief, and sometimes he would be asked
to exhibit his unwonted skill to visitors. This no doubt increased the
boy’s confidence in himself--a self-reliance which never left him to the
time of his death.
Wagner’s affection for his mother was of the tenderest. It was the love
of a poet infused with all his noblest ideality. The dear name, whenever
uttered by Richard Wagner, was spoken in tones so soft and tender as to
bespeak at once the sympathy and affection existing between the two. A
halo of glory ever encircled “mein leibe mütterchen.” Nothing can give a
better idea of this gentle love than the passages in “Seigfried,” the
child of the forest, where the hero demands of the ugly dwarf, Mime, who
had brought him up, “Who was my mother?” an inquiry he repeated after he
had killed the hideous dragon, Fafner, and thereby became able to
understand the song of the birds. If ever music could give an idea of
love, here in these passages we have it. In what touching accents comes,
“How may my mother have looked? Surely her eyes must have shone with the
radiant sparkle of the hind, but much more beautiful!” Every allusion to
his mother in this scene is expressed in the orchestra with an ethereal
refinement and originality of conception to which one finds no parallel
in the whole range of music of the past. I verily believe that Richard
Wagner never loved any one so deeply as his “liebe mütterchen.” All his
references to her of his childhood period were of affection, amounting
almost to idolatry. With that instinctive power of unreasoned yet
unerring perception possessed by women, she from his childhood felt the
gigantic brain-power of the boy, and his love for her was not unmixed
with gratitude for her tacit acknowledgment of his genius.
[Sidenote: _HIS LOVE FOR ANIMALS._]
One of his early developed affections was a strong love for animals. On
this point, and what I know of its strong sway with him in his dramas,
I shall have something to say hereafter. Now I shall confine myself to
the recital of an incident of his boyhood. To see a helpless beast
ill-treated was to rouse all the strong passion within him. Anger would
overcome all reason, and he would as a child fly at the offender.
One of his first impressions was a chance visit he paid with some of his
school-fellows to a slaughter yard. An ox was about to be killed. The
butcher, stripped, stood with uplifted axe. The horrible implement
descended on the head of the stately animal, who gave a low, deep moan.
The blows and moans were repeated. The boy grew wild, and would have
rushed at the butcher had not his companions forcibly held him back and
taken him away from the scene. For some time after he could not touch
meat, and it was only when other impressions effaced this scene that he
became reconciled by his mother reasoning that animals must be killed,
and that it was perhaps preferable to dying slowly by sickness and old
age. When a man, he could not refer to this incident without a shudder.
In after-life he rarely missed an opportunity of pleading for better
treatment of animals, drawing the attention of the municipal authorities
to the prevention of wanton cruelty, and arguing that animals, to be
killed for human food, should be despatched with the minimum of pain.
CHAPTER III.
1822-1827. _Continued._
From the record of the Kreuzschule it appears that Wagner entered that
famous training college on the 22d December, 1822, as Richard Wilhelm
Geyer, son of the late court actor of that name. He would then be nearly
ten years old.
[Sidenote: _AT THE KREUZSCHULE, DRESDEN._]
He told me that he well remembered the eager delight with which he
looked forward to the prospect of enjoying systematic instruction. He
hoped to be placed high in the school, yet dreaded the entrance
examination, conscious how very patched was _then_ his store of
information. During his first seven years’ residence in Dresden, from
1815-1822, the Kreuzschule, had been an every-day object to him, and yet
on entering the building for the first time as an intending student, a
feeling of awe took possession of him. The unsuspected majesty of the
building, the echo of his footfall on the stone steps, made his young
heart beat with expectant wonder. The result of the examination was to
place him in the first form, his bright, quick, intelligent replies
proving more valuable than his disconnected knowledge. For the masters
of the Kreuzschule he ever retained an affection, their genial bearing
and friendly tuition comparing favourably with the pedantic overbearing
demeanour of the masters of the St. Nicholas school in Leipzic, where
he went later on, men who represented a past and effete dogmatic German
pedantry.
The direction of his school studies was almost entirely classic. For
Greek he evinced a strong affection. Many a time has he told me that he
was drawn towards the history of the Greeks by their refined sense of
beauty, and the didactic nature of their drama, embodying as it did
their religion, politics, and social existence.
Wagner never lost an opportunity of dilating upon, by speech and pen,
what might accurately be described as the basis of all his art work. The
drama of a nation, he persistently contended, was a faithful mirror of
its people. Where the tone of the drama was base the people would be
found degraded either through their own acts or the superior force of
others. Where the mission of the national drama was the inculcation of
high moral lessons, patriotism, and love, there the people were thrice
blessed. This idea of a national drama for his fatherland possessed him.
He longed to lift the German drama from its “miserable” condition, and
his model was “the noble, perfect, grand, and heroic tragedy of the
Hellenes.” These words I have quoted from a pamphlet, “The Work and
Mission of my Life,” written less than ten years ago by Wagner. Their
meaning is so clear and they summarize so accurately what Wagner in his
younger days oft discussed with me that I am glad to add my testimony to
what I know was the ambition of his life.
In his ardent struggles to found a national drama we clearly trace the
young Dresden student. Here, indeed, is a plain incontestable instance
of the boy as the father of the man. His school studies were
pre-eminently Greek language and literature, and it was this which
dominated almost the whole of his future career. Hellenic history
permeated his entire being, and he gave it forth in the form and model
of his immortal music-dramas, in the mode of their development, and in
their close union between the stage story and the life of the people.
At school, translations of Æschylus by Apel, a German writer of
mediocrity, constituted his chief textbooks. The tragedies suited so
well the boy’s nature that he soon became possessed with a longing to
read them in the original. So real and fruitful was his earnestness,
that by the time he was thirteen he had translated at home, and entirely
for his own gratification, several books of the “Odyssey.” This private
home work was, he remembered, greatly encouraged by his mother, who,
although untutored herself, revered, with a divination characteristic of
women of the people, his efforts after a knowledge which she felt would
surely be productive of future greatness. This piece of diligent extra
school work is another of the many examples of the boy Wagner, “father
to the man.” Hard worker he always was. Persistency of application
characterized him throughout his life, and when it is stated that during
this very period of the “Odyssey” translation, he was also privately
studying English to read Shakespeare, who is not amazed at the
extraordinary energy of the boy? No wonder that the school professors
spoke flatteringly of him, and looked for great things from him, and no
wonder that the fond mother felt confirmed in her belief that Richard
“would become something,” and that Geyer’s dying utterance would not be
falsified.
[Sidenote: _EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS._]
Wagner’s nature was that of a poet. The metrical skill of the Hellenes
fascinated him and fostered his strongly marked sense of rhythm.
As regards mathematics, I never remember him in all our discussions to
have uttered anything which might lead me to suppose he had ever any
special liking for that branch of education, but at the same time I
should add that his power of reasoning was at all times strong and
lucid, as if based upon the precision acquired by close mathematical
study. In all he did he was eminently logical.
His effort as a poet dates from a very early period. The incident, the
death of a fellow-scholar, was just that which would touch a sensitive
nature like Richard’s. A school prize was offered for an elegy, and
Wagner, eleven years old, competed. The presence of death to him was at
all times terrible in its awful annihilation of all consciousness.
Whether in man or beast, it was sure to set him pondering on the
“whither?” a question to which at a later period of his life he devoted
much labour to satisfactorily answer. Although not twelve years old,
death had robbed him of his father and step-father, and their dark
shadows flitted before him, reviving sad memories which time had paled.
It was under this spell that the elegy was written, and it is not
astonishing that the prize was adjudged to him. The poem was printed,
but, unhappily, not preserved. In telling me of this early creative
effort, and in reply to a naturally expressed desire to hear his own
opinion about it, he said that beyond the incident he had not the
faintest remembrance of the style or wording of the poem, jocularly
adding that he would himself much like to see his “Opus I.”
There was a halo of poetry about the Dresden school. Theodore Körner,
the poet of freedom, was a pupil at the Kreuzschule up to 1808. His
inspiriting songs were sung by old and young. Loved by all, his death,
at the early age of twenty-two on the battle-field fighting for German
freedom, made him the idol of his countrymen. The boys of his own school
were intensely proud of him. To emulate Körner was the eager wish of
every one of them, and into Wagner’s poetic nature the poetry of the man
and the cause he sung sank deeper than with the rest. The battle-songs
of the fiery young patriot received an immortal setting by Wagner’s
idol, Weber.
[Sidenote: _FIRST LESSONS ON THE PIANO._]
The admiration of the future poet of “Tristan” for the genius of
Shakespeare impelled him, as soon as he had sufficiently mastered
English, to produce a metrical translation of Romeo’s famous soliloquy.
This was done when he had hardly completed his fourteenth year. Up to
this period, poetry unquestionably dominated him. All his essays had
been literary. Nothing had been done in music. It was now, however, that
his latent music forced itself out of him. Up to the time that he
entered the Dresden school, in his ninth year, he had received
absolutely no instruction in music, and during his five years of school
life a few desultory piano lessons from a young tutor, who used to help
him at home with his school exercises, embraced the whole of his musical
tuition up to the age of fourteen. For the technical part of his music
lessons he had a decided dislike. The dry study of fingering he greatly
objected to, and to the last never acquired any rational finger method.
When joked about his ridiculous clumsy fingering, he would reply with
characteristic waggishness, “I play a great deal better than Berlioz,”
who, it should be stated, could not play at all.
CHAPTER IV.
LEIPZIC, 1827-1831.
For some time Rosalie and Louisa, Richard’s two sisters, had been
engaged at the Leipzic theatre, where they were very popular. Madame
Geyer, desirous of being near her daughters and within easy reach of
assistance, returned to Leipzic with the younger children and Richard
with them. For ten years, from about 1818 to 1828, my father held the
post of Kapellmeister at the Stadttheater, under the management of
Küstner, a celebrated director. The period of Küstner’s management is
famous in the annals of the German stage for the high intellectual tone
that pervaded the performances under his direction. The names of some of
the artists who appeared there are now historic. So high was the
standard of excellence reached in these truly model performances, that
the whole character of German stage representations was influenced and
elevated by it. This was the theatre at which Rosalie and Louisa were
engaged. These were the high artistic performances which the youthful
poet Richard witnessed, and which deeply affected the impressionable
embryo dramatist.
[Sidenote: _ROSALIE AND LOUISA WAGNER._]
Of this period, actors, plays, and incidents, I had the most vivid
remembrance from the close connection of my father with the theatre and
the friendly intercourse of my family with the actors. Wagner would
take great delight in discussing the performances and actors. He was
fond, too, of hearing what I, in my boyhood, thought of the acting of
his sisters, and from our frequent and intimate conversations, bearing
on his youthful impressions of the stage, he uttered many striking and
original remarks which will appear later on. A popular piece then was
Weber’s “Sylvana,” in which Louisa performed the part of the forest
child. This part apparently won the youthful admiration of both of us.
Wagner’s remembrance of certain incidents connected with it was
marvellous to me.
On his return to Leipzic, his first impulse drove him to visit the house
in the Brühl in which he was born. Is it not possible that even at that
early stage of his life his extraordinary ambition of “becoming
something great” might have foreshadowed to him that the humble
habitation of his childhood would later on bear the proud inscription,
“Richard Wagner was born here”? What struck him at once as very strange
was the foreign aspect of that part of the town where the Jews
congregated. It was continually recruited by an increasing immigration
of the nomadic Polish Jews, who seemed to have consecrated the Brühl
their “Jerusalem,” as Wagner christened it and ever referred to it when
speaking to me. The Polish Jews of that quarter traded principally in
furs, from the cheapest fur-lined “Schlafrock” to the finest and most
costly furs used by royalty. Their strange appearance with their
all-covering gabardine, high boots, and large fur caps, worn over long
curls, their enormous beards, struck Wagner as it did every one, and
does still, as something very unpleasant and disagreeable. Their
peculiarly strange pronunciation of the German language, their
extravagantly wild gesticulations when speaking, seemed to his aesthetic
mind like the repulsive movements of a galvanized corpse.
[Sidenote: _HIS FIRST ATTACHMENT._]
I was sorry to find that Wagner, although generally averse to acts of
violence and oppression, was but little shocked at the unreasoned hatred
and contempt of the Leipzic populace (especially the lower classes) for
the Jews. Their innate thrift, frugality, and skill in trading, were
regarded as avarice and dishonesty. Tales of unmitigated cruelty and
horror perpetrated by the Jews floated in the brains of the lower
Christian (?) populace. The murder of Christian infants for the sake of
their blood, to be used in sacrifice of Jewish rites, was a commonplace
rejoinder in justification of the suspicion and hatred against this
unfortunate race. Crying babes were speedily silenced by the threat,
“The Polish Jew is coming.” What wonder, then, to see what was almost a
daily occurrence,--a number of Christian boys rush upon an unprotected,
inoffensive Jew boy and mercilessly beat him to revenge the imaginary
wrongs which the Jews were said to have done to Christian infants. Nor,
I am sorry to add, did the fully grown Christian burgher interfere in
such brutal scenes; the poor wretched victim, beaten by overwhelming
numbers and rolled howling in the mud, was but a Jew boy! Strange to
say, Wagner had imbibed some intuitive dislike to the Egyptian type of
Hebrew, and never entirely overcame that feeling. No amount of reasoning
could obliterate it at any period of his life, although he counted among
his most devoted friends and admirers a great many of the oppressed
race. Still considerably more odd is it that Wagner’s first attachment
was for one of the black-eyed daughters of Judah. When passing in review
our earliest impressions of school life, we naturally came to that
never-to-be-forgotten period of the earliest blossoms of first love,
which then revealed to me this remarkably strange episode. Events of
everyday occurrence, which in the lives of ordinary mortals scarcely
deserve mentioning, are invested with a significance in the lives of men
whose destiny points to immortality. When Wagner came to this curious
incident of his school life, amazed, I ejaculated, “a Jewess?” in a tone
of “impossible!”
It was after a discussion of Jew-hating, and my pointing to the many
friends and adherents he had among the Jews, he with his joyous outbreak
of humor said, “After all, it was the dog’s fault,” referring to
“Faust,” where Mephisto, as a large dog, lies “unter dem Ofen.” Then
followed the story.
He had called at his sister Louisa’s house (by the way, he had an
affection for this sister which, in our intimate converse, he likened to
that which Goethe in his case speaks of as having for its basis the
frontier where love of kin ends and love of sex commences), went to her
room, where he found an enormous dog which attracted his attention. Any
one acquainted with Wagner knew of his devoted attachment to dogs, of
which I shall have more to say hereafter. Not many could understand an
affection which included every dog in creation. Wagner would engage in
long conversations with dogs, and in supplying their answers would
infuse into them much of that caustic wit which philosophers of all ages
and countries have so often and powerfully put into the mouth of
animals. Richard Wagner delighted to make dumb pets speak scornfully of
the boasted superiority of man, thinking that after all the animal’s
quiet obedience to the prescribed laws of instinct was a surer guide
than man’s vaunted free will and reasoning power. He was fond, too, of
quoting Weber on such occasions, who, when _his_ dog became disobedient,
used to remark, “If you go on like that, you will at last become as
silly and bad as a human being.”
The dog so wholly engrossed Richard’s attention that he failed to notice
a visitor, Fräulein Leah David, who had come to fetch her dog, left at
her friend’s house whilst paying visits in the neighbourhood. The young
Jewess was of the same age as Richard, tall, and possessed that superior
type of Oriental beauty more frequently found among the Portuguese Jews.
She was on intimate terms with Louisa Wagner, who shortly after married
one of the celebrated book publishers of Germany. Leah David made an
immediate conquest of Richard. “I had never before been so close to so
richly attired and beautiful a girl, nor addressed with such an animated
eastern profusion of polite verbiage. It took me by surprise, and for
the first time in my life I felt that indescribable bursting forth of
first love.”
[Sidenote: _FRÄULEIN LEAH DAVID._]
Wagner was invited to the house of her father, who, like most wealthy
Jews, surrounded himself with artists of every kind. Indeed, it was
there that Richard made many acquaintances which subsequently proved
useful to him. There was an extravagant luxury in the ostentatious house
of Herr David, which made the ambitious young student poignantly feel
the frugal economy practised in his own home. Wagner’s imaginative
brain always made him yearn for all the enjoyments that life could
supply. Unlimited means was the roseate cloud that incessantly hovered
before his longing fancy. In this respect he differs largely from most
other creative great minds, who, by force of inventive genius, have
conjured up worlds of power and riches, and yet have lived contentedly
on the most modest fare and in the lowliest of habitations.
Richard’s new-found friend was an only daughter, and having lost her
mother, she was free to do as she willed; the enthusiastic young
musician was allowed to visit the house and proved a very genial
companion, fond of her dog, and adoring art. Wagner did not declare his
passion, feeling that in the sympathetic, friendly treatment he received
it was divined and accepted. But he was regarded more in the light of a
boy than as a lover, small and slight in stature, dreamy and absorbed as
he was then. If the young lady chanced to be out when he called, he
either went to the piano or occupied himself with the dog, Iago, if at
home. The visits becoming frequent, the attachment ripened into an
intimacy. At such a house, with a daughter fond of music, _soirées
musicales_ were constantly occurring. At one of them a young Dutchman,
nephew of Herr David, was present. He was a pianist, and had just that
gift which Wagner lacked, dexterity of fingering. Flatteringly
applauded, the jealous Wagner intemperately and injudiciously launched
out about absence of soul and similar expressions. Taunted into playing,
his clumsy, defective manipulation provoked a sneer from the Dutchman
and a titter from the assembly. Wagner lost his temper. Stung in his
tenderest feelings before the Hebrew maiden, with the headlong
impetuosity of an unthinking youth he replied in such violent, rude
language that a dead silence fell upon the guests. Then Wagner rushed
out of the room, sought his cap, took leave of Iago, and vowed revenge.
He waited two days, upon which, having received no communication, he
returned to the scene of the quarrel. To his indignation he was refused
admittance. The next morning he received a note in the handwriting of
the young Jewess. He opened it feverishly. It was as a death-blow.
Fräulein Leah was shortly going to be married to the hated young
Dutchman, Herr Meyers, and henceforth she and Richard were to be as
strangers.
“It was my first love-sorrow, and I thought I should never forget it,
but after all,” said Wagner, with his wonted audacity, “I think I cared
more for the dog than for the Jewess. Whilst under the love-spell I had
paid little heed to much that soon after, in pondering over the episode,
revolted me. The strange characteristics of the Jews were unpleasant to
me. Then it was that I first perceived that impassable barrier which
must always rise up between Jews and Christians in their dealings with
the world. One cannot help an instinctive feeling of repulsion against
this strange element, which has been gradually creeping into our midst,
growing like mistletoe upon the oak tree, a parasite taking root
wherever it can fasten but the smallest fibre, and clinging with a
tenacity entirely its own, drawing in all nutriment within reach, and
yet remaining, notwithstanding, a parasite. Such is the Jew in the midst
of Christian civilization.”
[Sidenote: _AT SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY._]
His entrance to the St. Nicolas school in 1827, where he remained three
years, was as the passing through a dark cloud. The whole training here
differed vitally from that at the Kreuzschule. The masters and their
mode of tuition was unsympathetic to him. I did not wonder at this when
he told me. I had been at the school, too, and experienced similar
feelings of resentment. The Martinet system of discipline was irksome to
high-spirited boys. No attempt was made to develop individuality of
character. This was unfortunate for Wagner. He was just then at an age
when personal interest and sympathetic guidance would have been
invaluable. Filled with wild dreams of a glorious future that was to
follow his self-dedication to the drama, he threw himself with ardour
into the completion of a play he had begun to work at. Ambition had
prompted him to base it on the model of Shakespeare’s tragedies. The
plot was as wild and impossible as the unrestricted exuberance of so
extravagant a fancy might suggest. It occupied him for upwards of two
years, and greatly interfered with his legitimate school work. When in
later life he surveyed this period he describes himself as “wild,
negligent, and idle,” absorbed with one thought, his great drama.
[Sidenote: _HIS ARTISTIC CRISIS._]
From the St. Nicolas school he passed to St. Thomas’s school, where he
stayed but a few months, leaving it for the University. At the
University he attended occasional lectures only, showing none of that
assiduity which distinguished him at the Kreuzschule. His University
days were marked by a profligacy to which he afterwards referred with
regret and even disgust. He was young and wild, and had determined with
his insatiable nature to drain to the dregs the cup of dissoluted
frivolity. I should not be performing the duty of an honest biographer
were I to omit an incident which occurred at this period, regrettable as
it might seem. His mother still received her modest pension. On one
occasion Richard was commissioned to receive it for her. Returning home
with the money in his pocket he chanced to pass a public gambling house.
_There_ was one sensation he had not yet experienced. At that moment he
felt that in the throw of the fascinating dice lay the fateful omen of
his future. The money was not his, yet he entered and risked the hazard
of the dice. He was unfortunate; lost all but a small sum he had kept
back. Yet he could not resist the alluring excitement. He staked this
too. Fortune, happily for the wide world of art, befriended him, and he
left the debasing den with more than he had entered, “But,” inquired I,
“what would you have done had you lost all?” “Lord!” he replied, “before
going into the house I had firmly resolved that should I lose I would
accept the omen and seek my end in the river.” A man in years calmly
telling me this so long after the incident had occurred urged me again
to ask, “Would you really have done that?” “I would,” was the short
determined answer. He was unable to keep the story back from his mother,
and at once on his return told her all. “Instead of upbraiding me,”
Wagner said, “she fell with passionate love around my neck, exclaiming,
‘You are saved. Your free confession tells me that never again will you
commit so wicked a wrong.’” This Wagner related to me when I was staying
with him at Zurich in 1856. This hazardous throw of the dice was not the
only occasion on which he had boldly defied fate. He was ever buoyed up
with an implicit faith in his destiny, which sustained him through many
trials, though at the same time it urged him to act in a manner where
more thoughtful minds would have hesitated.
I now come to what was undoubtedly the crisis of Wagner’s artistic
career. It was the practice at German theatres, between the acts, for
the orchestra to play movements of Haydn’s symphonies or similar
excerpts by other masters. The rule was to hurry through them in the
most indifferent manner. Not the slightest attention was paid to
expression, and if it happened that the manager’s bell rang while the
“playing” was going on, the performance would terminate with a jerk,
each artist seemingly anxious not to play a note more, and heedless of
finishing the “phrase” together.
At Leipzic, the entire music was particularly slovenly, played under the
cynical Matthey. And yet the very men who played so reprehensibly in the
stage orchestra, when performing at the famous Gewandhaus concerts
seemed to be moved by feelings of reverence for their work, unknown to
them in the theatre. It would be an interesting investigation to
discover why this was. The symphonies of Beethoven in the concert-room
compelled their whole worship; the symphonies of Haydn in the theatre
were treated like “dinner” music. Perhaps the explanation is, that the
symphonic movements played in the theatre bore no relation to the drama
enacted, whereas music played for itself went with a verve and spirit,
and attention to its meaning quite unknown to thestop-gap-music-scrambling
of the theatre.
[Sidenote: _RESOLVE TO BECOME A MUSICIAN._]
From the unsatisfying scrambling performances of the theatre, Wagner,
fifteen years old, went to the Gewandhaus concerts. There he heard
Beethoven’s symphonies. What a revelation were they to him, played with
the artistic perfection for which that orchestra was so justly
celebrated, although there was room for improvement. They forced open in
him the floodgates of a torrent of emotion. A new world dawned upon him.
Music that had hitherto lain dormant, suddenly awakened into a vigorous
existence truly electrifying. His future career was decided. Henceforth
he, too, would be a musician. And what was there in Beethoven that
should so startle him into new life? He had heard Haydn, Mozart, and
earlier masters without being so completely awed and fascinated. What
was there in these symphonies that should exercise such a determining
influence over him? It was the overpowering earnestness of the unhappy
composer. Beethoven dealt with life problems according to the spirit of
his age--the demand for freedom of thought and liberty of the person.
Beethoven had been baptized in that mighty wave, the struggle for
freedom, which rolled over Germany at the beginning of this century. He
could not help being eloquently earnest. He was the creature of his
time, and when called upon to declare himself, was not found wanting in
rugged, bold earnestness. Yet although Haydn and Mozart, I too, were
earnest, their utterances were of a subjective character. The world to
them presented none of the doubts and philosophic speculations which
convulsed Beethoven’s period. Their view of life was pure optimism. A
vein of bright joyousness runs through all their works, aye, even their
most serious. But Beethoven was a pessimist, and his works betray him.
When he has a sunshiny moment it serves only to show how deep is his
prevailing gloom. Wagner at fifteen was a poet, and the energetic,
suggestive music of Beethoven was mentally transformed into living
personalities. He has said that he felt as if Beethoven addressed him
“personally.” Every movement formed itself into a story, glowed with
life, and assumed a clear, distinct shape. I do not forget the earlier
influence of Weber over him, but then that was more due to emotion than
to reason. The novelty of “Der Freischütz,” the freshness of its melodic
stream, and the wild imaginative treatment of the romantic story
captivated his first affection and enchained it to the last. The whole
of his impressions of Beethoven (whom, by the way, Wagner never saw)
were embodied by him in a sketch written for a periodical and entitled,
“A Pilgrimage to Beethoven.” Although the incidents painted there are
not to be taken as having happened to the pilgrim, Wagner, yet the story
is clear on one point--the unbounded spell Beethoven exercised over him.
As he was now determined to become a musician, and seeing the necessity
of acquiring some theoretical knowledge of his new art, with his usual
perseverance he began studying alone. His progress was so disappointing
that he made arrangements with a local organist, with whom, too, he
advanced but little. However, he was resolved. Music he wanted for his
own play; without music he felt it was incomplete, and although he
worked assiduously, theory seemed a long, dreary road which, instead of
helping him to the goal he yearned to reach, presented innumerable
obstacles in the path. He wanted to compose, yet all the grammarian’s
rules were so many caution-boards, warning him against doing this or
that, impediments that prevented him accomplishing what he strove to
perform. It was always what should _not_ be done instead of what should
be done. With youthful impetuosity he then revolted against all
grammarianism, and to the end of his life maintained an attitude of
derisive defiance towards all who fought behind the shield inscribed
fugue, canon and counterpoint.
Although conscious of how unsatisfactory his theoretical progress had
been, ambition prompted him to write an overture for the orchestra. The
young composer was seventeen. The overture is characterized by Wagner’s
besetting sin--extravagance of means. Through his sister’s connection
with the stage he became acquainted with the music director of the
Leipzic theatre, a young man, Heinrich Dorn, a few years older than
Wagner. I knew Dorn as a friendly, easy-going, good-tempered fellow.
Impressed with the unusual enthusiasm of the youth, Dorn kindly offered
to perform his overture at the theatre. It was performed. The audience
laughed at it, and Wagner was not slow to admit the justice of its
reception.
[Sidenote: _A PUPIL OF CANTOR WEINLIG._]
Of the caligraphy displayed in this work I must say a few words. The
score was written in different-coloured inks, the groups of strings,
wood, and brass, being distinguished by special colours. His extreme
neatness and care at all times of his life, when using the pen, was
wonderful. Before putting word or note to paper every thought had been
so fully digested that there was never any need of erasure or
correction. In strange contrast with Richard Wagner’s clean, neat,
distinct writing, stand Beethoven’s hieroglyphics, whole lines of which
were sometimes smudged out with the finger.
Wagner accepted the judgment upon his overture, though not without a
painful feeling of disappointment. But as he was determined to be a
musician, his family now encouraged him, and for that purpose placed him
under Cantor Weinlig of Leipzic. The Cantor was on intimate terms with
my father, and therefore was well known to me. He had a great name as a
skilled contrapuntist. Gentle and persuasive in demeanour, he soon won
the affection of his pupil, and although his tuition lasted for about
six months only, it was sufficient to cause Wagner to refer with
affection to this, his only real master.
The immediate result of Weinlig’s tuition was the production of a sonata
for the pianoforte. It is in strict form, but Wagner’s conscientious
adherence to the dogmatic principles he had learned seem to have dried
up all sources of inspiration. He was evidently in a straight jacket,
for the sonata does not contain one original idea, not one phrase of
more than common interest. It is just the kind of music that any average
pupil without gift might have written. Time was wanting before the
careful, orthodox training of Weinlig could thoroughly assimilate itself
to the peculiarity of Wagner’s genius.
It is curious that he should have produced such a very inferior work as
regards ideas and development while he was at the same time a most
ardent student of Beethoven. It can only be explained by regarding the
period as one of transition and receptivity. He was not full grown nor
strong enough to wing himself to independent flight.
Beethoven was his daily study. He was carefully storing up all the grand
thoughts of the great master, but his fiery enthusiasm had not yet come
to that burning-point when it should ignite his own latent powers. His
acquaintance with the scores of Beethoven has never been equalled. It
was extraordinary. He had them so much by heart that he could play on
the piano, with his own awkward fingering, whole movements. Indeed,
beyond Weber, the idol of his boyhood, and Beethoven, there was no
master whose works interested him at that period. His family considered
him Beethoven-mad. His eldest brother, Albert, then engaged actively in
the profession, and more of a practical business man, particularly
condemned the exclusive hero-worship of a master not then understood or
acknowledged by the general public. But Richard persevered with his
study, and as a testimony of his affection for Beethoven it may be
mentioned that, at eighteen, he produced a pianoforte arrangement of the
whole of the “Ninth Symphony.”
[Sidenote: _WEBER AND BEETHOVEN HIS MODELS._]
In the school of Weber and Beethoven did Wagner form himself. The
musical utterances of both his models were in harmony with their time.
Weber was romantic, Beethoven pessimistic. The cry for liberty which ran
throughout Europe at the end of the eighteenth century affected the
republic of letters sooner than the world of music. It was Wagner’s
“idol,” his “adored” master, who first musically portrayed the
revolutionary spirit of the dawn of this century. It was he who founded
the romantic school of musicians. His ideality, his “romantic” genius,
taking that word in its highest and noblest sense, place him in an
entirely separate niche of the temple of art. His inventive faculty, the
irresistible charm of his melody, his entirely new delineation and
orchestral colouring of character, are immeasurably superior to anything
of the kind which preceded him. He was the basis, the starting-point of
a new phase in the art of music. And yet, with it all, the great Weber
fell short in one important feature of his art--the consequential
development of his themes. All his chamber music testifies to this. Even
in his three great overtures, “Der Freischütz,” “Euryanthe,” and
“Oberon,” the “working-out” of the subjects is feeble and unskilful, and
only compensated for by the ever gushing forth of new and potent ideas.
Weber had not passed through the crucible of a serious study of the
classical school. In his early period he had treated music more as an
amateur than as an earnest-thinking musician. Nor was he gifted with the
brain power of Beethoven. It was the latter master’s causal strength of
brain, combined with his deep, serious studies and his incessant
striving to express exactly what he felt, which have secured for him
that exceptional position in modern tonal art.
[Sidenote: _STUDY OF INSTRUMENTATION._]
Coming now to Wagner, we find him possessing, to a truly remarkable
degree, the special powers of both. His wondrous inventive genius was
controlled by a brain power as solid as rare. It enabled him to fuse in
his own work the gifts of the idealist, Weber, and of the thinker,
Beethoven. The latter’s mastery of workmanship, his reasoned sequence of
ideas, are vastly surpassed in Wagner’s dialectic treatment. As an
instrumental colourist Weber was superior to Beethoven. The deafness of
the latter sometimes led him to mark the wrong instrument in his scores.
He could not hear, and therefore was not fully able to comprehend the
qualities of every instrument, like Weber. The greatness of his power as
an orchestral writer is undeniable, yet many instances could be quoted
where he has misapplied a particular instrument of whose character,
through his deafness, he had lost the exact knowledge. Wagner based his
instrumentation on that of Weber. In spite of an almost unlimited
admiration of Beethoven, Wagner has not refrained from pointing to
certain defects of scoring in him. He shows that whilst Beethoven
modelled his orchestra after Haydn and Mozart, his conceptions went
immeasurably beyond them and clashed with the somewhat inadequate means
of their orchestra. Beethoven had neither the modern keyed brass
instruments to support the wood-wind against the doubled and trebled
strings, nor did he dare to venture beyond the then supposed range of
the wood, brass, and string instruments. Often when reaching what was
thought to be the topmost note on either, he suddenly jumps in an almost
childishly anxious manner to an octave below, interrupting the melody
and producing an irritating effect. Wagner has asserted that had
Beethoven heard the tonal effect of portions of his marking, he would
unquestionably have rewritten them or altered the instruments. But
whilst deploring his great predecessor’s deafness as the cause of
certain defective instrumentation he renders unstinted homage to the
general orchestration of the symphonies. The enormous amplification of
deeply reasoned detail in those nine grand works demands from each
individual of the orchestra an attention and refinement of expression
to be expected only from an orchestra composed of virtuosi.
It was shortly after his return to Leipzic that Wagner began to study
instrumentation. The Gewandhaus concerts and Beethoven’s symphonies had
stirred him. He thumped the piano, was conscious of his lack of skill,
but nevertheless bought the scores of the symphonies and studied them
with heart and soul. The magnificent colouring charmed him. To work the
score at the piano, and see where the secret lay, was his careful study,
and then, when he found it, he saw how necessary was individual
excellence of performance. Even the Gewandhaus performances failed to
completely satisfy him. The members of the orchestra were familiar with
the works, yet was the performance far from conveying that lasting
impression which the delineation of the intensely grand ideas were
capable of, and which from his piano-reading he expected. The
dissatisfaction he experienced induced him to seek further for the
explanation, and after careful thought he fixed the blame on the
shortcomings of the conductor. The head of an orchestra, he asserted,
should study the work to be played under him until every phrase, its
meaning, and bearing to the whole composition were thoroughly
assimilated by him. He should, further, have a perfect acquaintance with
the capabilities of every instrument, and an excellent memory. Works
performed under conductors not possessing these qualifications never
produce their legitimate effect. “It was only when I had conducted
Mozart’s works myself,” says Wagner, “and had made the orchestra execute
every detail as I felt it, that I took real pleasure in their
performance.”
CHAPTER V.
1832-1836.
[Sidenote: _THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD._]
Had Wagner’s youthful enthusiasm been fired at the Dresden Kreuzschule
with love for Germany and hatred of the French oppressor, a feeling
which flew through the land like lightning, had the songs of Körner’s
“Lyre and Sword,” set to vigorous music by Weber, inspired him, his
patriotism was intensified tenfold when, returning to his native city,
he came into the midst of a population that had suffered all the horrors
and privations of actual war. His study of modern literature,
assimilated with surprising facility in a brain where all was order and
consecutiveness, gave him an insight into the deplorable state of his
beloved country, whilst indicating the direction in which future efforts
should be directed. He found that the revolutionary spasm of the end of
the eighteenth century had shattered time-honoured traditions, roughly
shaken the creeds of the past, and indeed had left nothing untouched,
infiltrating itself into every great and small item of human existence.
The impetus of the time was “revolution!” To throw down the trammels of
moral and physical slavery, to free man and raise him to the throne of
humanity, was the desire of all European peoples. All worked towards one
common goal; there was not one movement of importance then that was not
influenced by the revolution. In literature the tendency was to make
letters a concrete part of the national mind, just as the great French
revolution called into existence the first notion of national life by
investing the people with the controlling power of their country’s
interests. All the master-minds of the time of Louis the Fourteenth were
an some measure connected with the king; but with the nineteenth century
revolution a third state was developed, which enriched national life,
and, acting upon literature, drove the hitherto secluded savants and
their works into the vortex of popular life. Before this upheaval,
literature had been the exclusive property of the professional savant
and his high-born protector. The tendency of modern social life was to
enthrone mind and genius. The third state was actually breaking down
social barriers, the line of demarcation between them and so-called
“good society,” the monarch and aristocracy. That such a violent change
at the beginning of the century should have unsettled and bewildered
some otherwise remarkably gifted men is not surprising. The turbulent
state of society, and the confused investigation and awkward handling of
important moral questions, led to doubt and despair. Men like the
brothers Schlegel became Roman Catholics, hoping by so doing to cast the
responsibility of their life on a religion which closes every aperture
to the reasoning powers. Ludwig Tieck, another German savant, followed
their example, whilst men like Zacharias Werner, after having given
proofs of the highest capability, destroyed their mental being by
pursuing a most dissolute and reprehensible course; or, like Hoffman, by
an over-indulgence in wine, helped to create an unæsthetic phase in
German literature which, alas, serves only to show how sadly distorted
gifted brains can become. Kleist was driven to commit suicide. I could
cite more unhappy victims of that troublous epoch, existences blighted
by the powerful wave of romanticism and freedom that swept over the
land. The only man who remained unaffected by the movement was Goethe.
In his striving for plastic beauty and classicism, he never became
enthusiastic for the romantic school. He even stood somewhat aloof from
Shakespeare; nor would he, in his cold simplicity and placid grandeur,
see in all the romantic movement aught but a remnant of revolution
against his “legitimate” supremacy.
Those early years of Wagner were passed in a scene of unusual activity
and excitement. His native city a great battle-field the year of his
birth, people hardly recovered from the shock of the 1793 revolution,
when again they are startled by its reverberation in July, 1830. Then
Wagner was seventeen, of an age and thoughtful enough to be impressed by
the struggle carried on around him, or, to quote his own words, “all
that acted more and more on my mind, on my imagination and reason.” This
was the spirit which he brought to bear on his study of
orchestration,--ideality controlled by strong reasoning power. He had
studied under the first professor of Leipzic, had had an overture
performed in public, and now, in 1832, he essayed a grand symphony for
orchestra, which ever remained a pleasing work to him, and to which he
would refer with evident satisfaction. Its history is a curious one.
[Sidenote: _HIS ONLY SYMPHONY._]
Though not twenty, he, with his usual self-reliance, boldly took the
score and parts to Vienna. He wanted his work to be heard. His daring
ambition was not satisfied with a lesser centre than the Austrian
capital. Vienna was then, as it is now, the city of pleasure and light
Italian music. As Beethoven himself could command but a small section of
adherents among the pleasure-seeking Viennese, it is not surprising that
the untried and unknown young composer was ignored. But undaunted, he
took his treasure to Prague, where Dionys Weber, conductor of the
Conservatorium, performed it to Wagner’s unbounded delight. Returning
home, he had the proud satisfaction of hearing it played at the
classical Gewandhaus concerts and also at its rival but lesser
institution, the “Euterpe.” This was a promising augury, and to Wagner
amply sufficient for assuming that later his work would be repeated.
Therefore, when in 1834 Mendelssohn was appointed conductor at the
Gewandhaus, Wagner unhesitatingly took the symphony to him. For a long
time nothing was heard of it. Wagner became anxious, and applied to
Mendelssohn, when to his indignation he was informed that the score had
unfortunately been lost. Wagner never alluded to this incident without
indulging in one of those bitter ironical attacks upon Mendelssohn in
which he was such an adept. The incident rankled in the memory of the
over-sensitive composer, and no amount of external amiability at a later
period from Mendelssohn was ever able to efface it. This symphony was
Wagner’s first acknowledged work and acknowledged, too, by men of
weight, whose commendation had, not unnaturally, elated him. “My first
symphony!” How often have I heard that phrase? and spoken with such
satisfaction that on several occasions I tried to induce Wagner to play
some reminiscences of it to me. He could not; he had lost all
remembrance of it. Accident or fate willed it that shortly before his
death the orchestral parts were discovered at Dresden. A score was
arranged and the fifty-year-old work performed _en famille_ in 1882,
under the revered old man’s bâton at Venice.
[Sidenote: _DIRECTOR OF A CHORUS._]
Though proud of his success as a musician, the poetic side of his nature
was not repressed. He was a poet as well as musician. Suddenly the poesy
within him leaped forth and impelled him to write words already wedded
in his own heart to sounds. Its appearance was as a revelation
disclosing an allied power which was to exalt him to a pinnacle to which
no other composer in the whole history of art could possibly lay claim.
He wrote a libretto to “The Wedding.” This was to be his first opera,
and the same year, 1833, in which he wrote the words he also began the
music. However, he composed but three numbers, still in existence, the
introduction, a chorus, a sextet, and then was dissuaded by his sister
from proceeding further with it. The story and its treatment were both
pronounced ill-adapted for stage representation. The book was the
veriest hyper-romantic scum, a mixture of the gloomy fatalist Werner and
the wildly extravagant Hoffman. The opera was abandoned with regret, and
a living was sought in any form of musical drudgery. He was willing to
“arrange,” to “correct proofs,” or do anything but teaching, to which he
always had the strongest antipathy. To my knowledge, he never gave a
lesson in his life. When, therefore, the post of chorus master at the
Würzburg theatre was offered to him, he readily accepted it. His eldest
brother, Albert, was then engaged at Würzburg as singer, actor, and
stage manager. It was the practice of Albert all through life to assume
the rôle of mentor to his younger brother, but against this Richard
strongly rebelled, though at the same time readily admitting his
brother’s abilities as a manager and singer. Possessed of a remarkably
high tenor voice, Albert was unfortunately subject to intermittent
attacks of total loss of vocal power. But the singer’s loss was the
actor’s gain, for to compensate for this defect he exerted himself and
succeeded in shining as an actor.
This Würzburg engagement was Richard Wagner’s first real active
participation in stage life. He had entered upon his new duties but a
short time when an opportunity presented itself wherein he could exhibit
his practical skill as a musician. Albert was cast for the tenor part in
Marschner’s “Vampyre.” According to his notion, his chief solo finished
unsatisfactorily. Richard’s aid was invoked, and the result was
additional words, some forty lines and music, too, which enabled Albert
to display his unusually fine high tones.
The life to Wagner was novel, attractive, and full of bright promise.
The friendly relations that existed between the chorus and their
director, the habitual banter of the players, their studied posing,
their concealing home miseries beneath a simulated gaiety, attracted and
charmed the inexperienced neophyte. He was yet blind to all the wiles,
trickeries, and petty infamies that seem inseparable from stage life. In
the theatre the meannesses and jealousies that clog human existence
under all forms are focused and exposed to the glare of publicity,
whereas in the wide world they are lost among the crowd. It was not
long before Wagner began to hate the shams and petty meannesses of the
stage with ten-fold the intensity he had at first been bewitched by it.
During his stay at Würzburg, urged by his brother he again thought of
composing an opera. Casting about for a fitting subject, he alighted
upon a volume of legends by Gozzi. One, “La Donna Serpente,” attracted
him, and seemed to invite operatic treatment. He resolved to write his
own text, and within the year produced what was his first complete
opera, which he called “The Fairies.” The musical treatment was entirely
in the romantic style of Weber and Marschner, but Wagner frankly
confesses it did not realize his expectations. He had thought himself
capable of greater things than his powers were yet equal to.
Nevertheless, he strove to obtain a hearing for it, but without success.
French and Italian opera ruled the German stage, and native productions
were not encouraged. However, an ardent aspirant for fame like Wagner
was not to be discouraged by the cold slights offered to his first stage
work. He returned to Leipzic, 1834, again energetically endeavouring to
get it accepted, but only to be disappointed once more.
[Sidenote: “_DAS LIEBESVERBOT._”]
It was during this visit to Leipzic that an event occurred which was
destined to strongly influence his future career. He heard that great
dramatic artist, Schroeder-Devrient. The effect of her performance upon
him was startling, although the operas in which she appeared, “Romeo”
and “Norma” of Bellini, were of the weakest. He saw what a striking
impression could be produced by careful attention to dramatic detail.
The poorest work was elevated into the realms of high art by the grand
style of the inspired artist. For the first time he realized the immense
value of perfection of “style.” The lesson was not lost, and the high
point to which Wagner artists have subsequently carried it by the
master’s imperative insistence upon the most thorough and exhaustive
attention to every detail of art, has formed the undying Wagner school.
Fired by enthusiasm, he began the composition of a new opera, in which
he ambitiously hoped the great actress would perform the principal rôle.
This was his second music-dramatic work, “Das Liebesverbot” (“The Novice
of Palermo”), founded upon Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure.” It took
him about two years to write it. To Wagner this period was one of
transition, alternately dominated by the serious Beethoven, the
“romantic” Weber, Auber, and even the popular Italian school. He was as
a tree through whose branches the winds rushed from all quarters, only
the more firmly to consolidate the roots. He, too, was young, and a not
unnatural desire to acquire some of the world’s riches induced him to
write his new work in a “popular” vein. The “Novice of Palermo” has but
very faint indications of the Wagner of after-life, and in the
composer’s own judgment was but an indifferent work, although comparing
favourably with the operas of its day.
[Sidenote: _ART AND NATIONALITY._]
After the termination of his Würzburg engagement Wagner went to
Magdeburg, 1834, where he was appointed music director, a post he held
for nearly two years, steadily working, meanwhile, at the “Novice of
Palermo.” The Magdeburg company was above the usual level of provincial
troupes. The conductor was young and energetic, and soon secured the
good will of his subordinates. But the Magdeburghers were apathetic in
musical matters, and in the spring of 1836 the theatre announced its
final performances. The “Novice of Palermo” was not then completed.
After some discussion it was decided to perform it. Wagner hurried on
his work, battling with innumerable difficulties which presented
themselves thick and fast. First the theatre was threatened with
bankruptcy. To escape this it was arranged to close the building a month
earlier than the time originally announced. It left Wagner ten days for
rehearsals. His book had not been submitted to the censor, and as it was
now the Lenten season, there was a dread that the title might subject
the libretto to vexatious pruning. The opera was given out as founded on
one of the serious plays of Shakespeare, and by this means escaped all
maltreatment. But what could be done in ten days? Little even where
friendly will was engaged. However, after rehearsal upon rehearsal, the
work was performed. Its reception was moderate. The tenor singer had
been unable to learn his part in the short time and resorted to
unlimited “gag.” Perhaps hardly one was perfect in his rôle, and the
whole work went badly enough. In after-life Wagner could afford to laugh
at this makeshift performance, but at that time it was terribly real. He
once gave me a representation of the tenor singer and other
impersonators in a manner so ludicrous and mirth-provoking that he said,
“You laugh now, but listen! A second performance was promised for my
benefit. We were assembled and about to begin, when suddenly a
hand-to-hand fight sprung up between two of the characters, and the
performance had to be given up.” This put him in sad straits. He had
hoped to receive such a sum of money from this “benefit” as would free
him from all monetary difficulties, but no performance taking place he
was worried in a most uncomfortable manner.
I suppose that if there be any feature in Wagner’s character about which
there is no difference of opinion it is his love for his native land. At
critical junctures, he has not hesitated, by speech or action, to
declare his pronounced feelings. At present, however, my purpose is not
to illustrate this point, but to emphasize a phase of thought in
Wagner’s early manhood, which, boldly proclaimed at the time, gathered
strength with increasing years, and forms one of the most important
factors in his art-workings. He contended that the national life of a
people was intimately entwined with their art productions. “The stage,”
said Wagner, “is the noblest arena of a nation’s mind.” This was a very
favourite theme of his. He would descant on it unceasingly. The stage
was the mirror of a people. Shakespeare he worshipped, and gloried that
such an intellect was counted in the republic of letters. England should
be proud of her great man. He thought Carlyle right when he said
Shakespeare was worth more to a nation than ten Indias. But poor
Germany! What could she show? Where was her race of literary giants? The
war of liberation had fired every German heart with the intensest
patriotism. Young Germany had fought with unexampled ardour, and the
hateful Napoleonic yoke was victoriously cast off. Liberty, patriotism,
and fraternity were the watchwords of every German, and they found
their art expression in the inspiriting strains of the soldier-poet,
Körner, and the vigorous melodies of the patriotic Weber. And German
potentates looked on bewildered. Where would this torrent of enthusiasm
end? Were they themselves secure on their thrones? Would it not sap the
foundations of their own rule? And, as history too sadly shows, fear
developed into despotism. The princes turned, and with the iron heel
trampled upon the very men who had valiantly defended them against the
ruthless invader. They were fearful of the German mind awakening to a
sense of its political and social shortcomings. They argued that this
uncontrolled enthusiasm for liberty of speech and person was a menace to
their thrones; therefore they strove to crush it out. Their conduct
Wagner later stigmatized as “replete with the blackest ingratitude,” and
their treatment of national art as dictated by “cold, calculating
cruelty.” For the stage, alien productions were imported. French
frivolity reigned supreme. Rossini’s operas, licentious ballets, were
patronized to the exclusion of Beethoven’s works, and now, though half a
century has elapsed, the baneful influence is still discernible. Such
feelings greatly agitated Wagner’s early manhood. By 1840 they had
assumed definite shape, and we find him through the public journals
deploring the want of a German national drama. It was his effort to
supply this want. He went to work with a fixed purpose. How far he has
succeeded posterity will judge.
CHAPTER VI.
1836-1839.
For nine months, from the Easter of 1836 to the opening of the new year,
1837, Wagner was without engagement. It was a period of hardship and
suffering. In a most miserable plight he went to Leipzic and Berlin,
energetically exerting himself to get his opera, “The Novice of Palermo”
accepted. He met with plenty of promises but no performances. His needs
became more pressing. Debts had been incurred and the prospect of paying
them was of the gloomiest. An ordinary mortal would have sunk under such
overwhelming trouble, but Wagner was made of sterner stuff. His
indomitable self-reliance and pluck, based upon an abnormal self-esteem,
ever kept alight the lamp of hope within him, and sustained him through
sadder times than this. True, he had not proved to the world that he was
a genius, but he, himself, was fully convinced of it. He had written two
operas, a symphony, and other works, and though they did not surpass or
even equal what had been accomplished by other artists, yet for all that
he was strongly imbued with a consciousness of the greatness of his own
power in the tonal and poetic arts. He was convinced that he had a
mission to fulfil, a new art gospel to preach, and, too, that he would
succeed. The death-bed prediction of his step-father that he would be
“something” would be fulfilled.
As far as his art creations show, this was a period of non-productivity.
But it is impossible to suppose that Wagner was idle. Genius is never
inactive. If not visibly at work the reflective faculties are certain to
be actively employed. Though beset with every conceivable worldly
trouble, depending for daily wants on what he could borrow, he, with
alarming temerity, married.
It was on the 24th November, 1836; the bride, Fräulein Wilhelmina
Planer, leading actress of the Magdeburg company. She was the daughter
of a working spindle-maker. It was not the known possession of any
histrionic gift that caused her to become a professional actress, but a
very natural desire, as the eldest of the family, to increase the
resources of the household. Spindle-making was not a profitable calling,
and with a family, other help was gladly welcomed. But, as necessity has
oft discovered and forced to the front many a talent that would have
lain hidden from the world, so now was Magdeburg astonished by the
presence of an unquestionably gifted artist. Minna Planer played the
leading characters in tragedy and comedy. When off the stage her bearing
was quiet and unobtrusive. No theatrical trick or display indicated the
actress. And, after she had finally quitted stage life, it had been
impossible to suppose that the soft-spoken, retiring, shy little woman
had ever successfully impersonated important tragic rôles.
[Sidenote: _MINNA A HOUSE-WIFE._]
Minna was handsome, but not strikingly so. Of medium height, slim
figure, she had a pair of soft gazelle-like eyes which were a faithful
index of a tender heart. Her look seemed to bespeak your clemency, and
her gentle speech secured at once your good-will. Her movements in the
house were devoid of everything approaching bustle. Quick to anticipate
your thoughts, your wish was complied with before it had been expressed.
Her bearing was that of the gentle nurse in the sick-chamber. It was joy
to be tended by her. She was full of heart’s affection, and Wagner let
himself be loved. Her nature was the opposite of his. He was passionate,
strong-willed, and ambitious: she was gentle, docile, and contented. He
yearned for conquest, to have the world at his feet: she was happy in
her German home, and desired no more than permission to minister to him.
From the first she followed him with bowed head. To his exuberant
speech, his constant discourses on art, and his position in the future,
she lent a willing, attentive ear. She could not follow him, she was not
able to reason his incipient revolutionary art notions, to combat his
seemingly extravagant theories; but to all she was sympathetic,
sanguine, and consoling,--“a perfect woman, nobly planned,” as
Wordsworth sweetly sings. As years rolled by and the genius of Wagner
assumed more definite shape and grew in strength, she was less able to
comprehend the might of his intellect. To have written “The Novice of
Palermo” at twenty-three, and to have been received so cordially was to
her unambitious heart the zenith of success. More than that she could
not understand, nor did she ever realize the extent of the wondrous
gifts of her husband. After twenty years of wedded life it was much the
same. We were sitting at lunch in the trimly kept Swiss chalet at Zurich
in the summer of 1856, waiting for the composer of the then completed
“Rienzi,” “Dutchman,” “Tannhäuser,” and “Lohengrin” to come down from
his scoring of the “Nibelungen,” when in full innocence she asked me,
“Now, honestly, is Richard such a great genius?” On another occasion,
when he was bitterly animadverting on his treatment by the public, she
said, “Well, Richard, why don’t you write something for the gallery?”
And yet, notwithstanding her inaptitude, Wagner was ever considerate,
tender, and affectionate towards her. He was not long in discovering her
inability to understand him, but her many good qualities and domestic
virtues endeared her greatly to him. She had one quality of surpassing
value in any household presided over by a man of Wagner’s thoughtless
extravagance. She was thrifty and economical. At all periods of his life
Wagner could not control his expenditure. He was heedless, relying
always upon good fortune. But Minna was a skilled financier, and he knew
this. For years their lot was uphill, sometimes a hard struggle for bare
existence, and through all the devotion and homely love of the woman
soothed and cheered the nervous, irritable Wagner. When their means
enabled them to enjoy the comforts of life without first anxiously
counting the cost, Minna was possessed of one thought, her husband and
his happiness. And Wagner knew it and gratefully appreciated the heart’s
devotion of the worshipping woman. Home was her paradise, her husband
the king. Love, simple, trusting love, was her religion, and no greater
testimony to the noble work of a genuine woman could be offered than
that of the poet Milton in his “Paradise Lost”:--
Nothing lovelier can be found
In woman, than to study household good.
[Sidenote: _DIRECTOR AT KÖNIGSBERG._]
Throughout his career Wagner shook off the troubles of daily life with
an elasticity truly remarkable. But now he must do something. He had
incurred the most sacred of all obligations, to provide for his wife,
and employment of some description was a pressing necessity. Viewed from
an artistic point, his lost appointment had been a success. He had
acquired all the skill of an efficient conductor and had familiarized
himself with a large number of opera scores. But what had he done with
his own gifts? The miserable finale of the Magdeburg episode, and his
increased responsibilities, made him seriously reflect on this past year
and a half. True he had composed an entire opera. But of what material
was it made? He had regretfully to acknowledge that it was not as he
would wish it. He had thrown over his household gods to worship Baal. He
had rejected Weber and Beethoven, “his adored idols,” to dress his
thoughts in attractive, showy, French attire. He had forsaken heartfelt
truth for a graceful exterior. And what had he gained by imitating Auber
and Rossini? Not even the satisfaction of public success. And why? His
models spoke as they felt, whilst he clothed his thoughts in a borrowed
garb. He was now conscious that he had but to express himself in his own
language to convince others of the truth of his art gospel.
Some such similar post as at Magdeburg was what he now desired. There he
would be Wagner himself. But in these early years smiling fortune was
not always his happy companion. Nearly a year elapses before he again
finds himself directing an operatic company. This time it is at
Königsberg.
[Sidenote: _CONDUCTS ORCHESTRAL CONCERTS._]
But before accompanying the weary artist to his new home some mature
reflections of Wagner on his Magdeburg period are worthy of notice. His
elevation to the post of music director of the Magdeburg theatre was a
joyful moment. For the first time he would be sole controller of
operatic performances. When a youth he had been revolted by the
slatternly manner in which theatre conductors had led the performances.
Even the Gewandhaus concerts had not been altogether satisfactory.
Something then was lacking in the ensemble. Now was his opportunity. The
mechanical time-beating prevalent among conductors of opera houses would
find no place with the ardent youthful composer. He first secured the
affection of the singers by evincing a personal interest in their public
success. His born actor’s skill enabled him to illustrate how such a
character should move, whilst with the orchestra he would sing passages
and rehearse one phrase incessantly until he was satisfied. He was
indefatigable. The secret of his success was his earnestness. He knew
what he wanted, which was half-way to securing it. The company seems to
have been fairly intelligent and to have responded freely to his wishes,
but the audiences were phlegmatic. Magdeburg was a garrison city, and
the audiences were domineered by the cold reserve observed by the
military. Wagner thought of all publics the worst was a military one.
Effusive exhibitions of joy they regard as indecorous and unseemly, and
the absence of spontaneous enthusiasm exercises a depressing effect on
artists. Among the operas he conducted were Auber’s “Masaniello” and
Rossini’s “William Tell.” Both of them were favourites of his. At that
period, 1836, they stood out in bold relief from modern and ancient
operas. Their melodies were fresh and graceful, and a dramatic
truthfulness pervaded them which to the embryo imitator of the Greek
tragedy was a strong recommendation. Further, the revolutionary subjects
were congenial to the outlaw of 1848. But Auber and Rossini were soon to
be eclipsed by the clever Hebrew, Meyerbeer, and it is this last writer
who in a couple of years impels Wagner to leave his fatherland for
Paris. It is Meyerbeer’s works that he is now about to conduct at
Königsberg, where we shall at once follow him.
The time he spent in Königsberg was a prolongation of the miserable
existence which had followed the breaking up of the Magdeburg company,
intensified now, alas, by anxiety for his young wife. It was unenlivened
by any gleam of even passing sunlight. The time dragged heavily, and was
never referred to without a shudder. In later years, in the presence of
his first wife, he has compassionately remarked, “Yes, poor Minna had a
hard time of it then, and after the first few months of drudgery no
doubt repented of her bargain.” To which the gentle Minna would reply by
a look full of tender affection. Wagner’s references to the devotion and
untiring energy of his wife during the Königsberg year of distress
always affected him.
He began his public life at Königsberg by conducting orchestral concerts
in the town theatre. This led to his appointment as music director of
the theatre. The operatic stage was then governed almost entirely by
Meyerbeer, “Robert le Diable” and “Le Prophète,” both recent novelties,
being the great attraction. They met with an enormous success
everywhere. Meyerbeer was in Paris, the idol of the populace. A man
possessed of undeniable genuine merit, he bartered it away for gold.
The real merit was over-laden with a thick coat of meretricious glitter.
Attractive and dazzling show was what he set before the light-hearted
public of the French capital, and they mistook the tinsel for pure gold.
But, for all that, Meyerbeer was the hero of the hour, and what was
fashionable in Paris was immediately reproduced in the fatherland towns
and cities. In matters of art Paris was the acknowledged leader of
Germany. From afar, the young ambitious music director of Königsberg
heard of the fabulous sums which Meyerbeer received for his works. He
was in the direst distress. The troubles of Magdeburg had followed him
to his new home, and he looked with longing eyes towards Paris, the El
Dorado of his dreams. He became haunted with visions of luxurious
independence, startling in their contrast to his present penurious
position. He looked about him and bestirred himself. With his accustomed
boldness, not to say audacity, he promptly wrote to Scribe, hoping by
one effort to emerge from all his trouble. What he sent to the famous
French librettist was a plan he had sketched of a grand five-act opera
based on a novel by König, “Die Hohe Braut” (“The Noble Bride”). He was
anxious for the collaboration of Scribe, since in that he saw the _open
sesame_ of the Grand Opera House, Paris. The French writer did not
reply. Wagner felt the slight. This was the second time the assistance
of an acknowledged litterateur had been solicited, and it was the last.
Laube did not satisfy him. Scribe did not notice him. Henceforth he
would rely on himself.
[Sidenote: _THE LOST OVERTURE._]
His stay at Königsberg is marked by an event of peculiar interest to
Englishmen. Wagner had heard “Rule Britannia.” He gave me his
impressions of it. He thought the whole song wonderfully descriptive of
the resolute, self-reliant character of the English people. The opening,
ascending passage, which he vigorously shouted in illustration, was, he
thought, unequalled for fearless assertiveness. The dauntless
expressiveness of its themes seemed admirably adapted for orchestral
treatment, and he therefore wrote an overture upon it. This he sent to
Sir George Smart, one of the most prominent of English musicians, justly
appreciated, among other things, for having introduced Mendelssohn’s
“Elijah” to England at the Liverpool festival of 1836. When Wagner
related this incident to me in 1855, on his visit to London, he said
that, having received no reply, he inquired and ascertained that the
score seemed to have been insufficiently prepaid for transmission, and
that Sir George Smart had refused to pay the balance, “and for all I
know,” continued Wagner, “it must still be lying in the dead-letter
office.”
A digest of Wagner’s impressions of the world beyond the footlights,
after his intimate connection with the provincial theatres of Würzburg,
Magdeburg, and Königsberg, will explain how so serious a thinker could
adapt himself to the slipshod existence of thoughtless, light-hearted
play-actors. Among modern stage reformers Richard Wagner stands in the
front rank. He was earnest. He was practical. He had experienced all
evils arising from the shortcomings of the theatre, and he knew where to
place his finger on the plague spot. His drawings and prescriptions were
those of the practical worker; and he was enabled to make them so
through the knowledge acquired during his early life behind the scenes.
What a curious medley stage life introduces one to! “My first contact
with the theatre seems like the fantastic recollection of a masked
ball,” was Wagner’s vivid description of his early stage experiences.
The stage in Germany has too frequently, for the advance of dramatic
art, been the last resort for gaining a livelihood. People of all ranks,
highly educated, or with no more than the thinnest smattering of
education, as soon as they find themselves without the means of
existence, fly to the stage. To one individual endowed by nature for the
histrionic vocation who thus adopts the profession, there are ten with
absolutely no gifts and whose appearance is due to failure in other
walks of life, or to want. All this motley group is, by the restricted
stage precincts, brought _nolens volens_ into daily contact and cannot
avoid constantly elbowing each other. Their private affairs, their
friendships, are an open secret. A special jargon is current coin among
them. Cant phrases abound and their very occupation familiarizes them
with sententious quotations on almost every subject. In no profession is
there such an ardent catering for momentary praise. It is the food, the
absolute nourishment of the actor; hence jealousy and envy exist
stronger here than anywhere else, and Byron does not exaggerate when he
speaks of “hate found only on the stage!”
[Sidenote: _READS BULWER’S “RIENZI.”_]
To Wagner’s impressionable and pageant-loving nature, the stage
possessed fascinating attractions. The free and easy intercourse that
existed between all the members of the company, actors, singers, and
orchestral performers, the existence of a sort of masonic equality, and
the general light-hearted exterior, was in accordance with the jocular
temperament of the chorus master. He was familiarly joking and laughing
with all his surroundings, a habit he retained to the day of his death.
His self-esteem would at all times insist on a certain deference to his
opinion, nor would he brook with equanimity any infraction of his ruling
as music director. From the age of twenty, when he first ruled the
chorus girls at Würzburg, down to the Bayreuth rehearsals for
“Parsifal,” at which he would illustrate his intention by gesture,
speech, and song, he was eminently the commander of his company. His
lively temperament, his love of fun, and remarkable mimetic gifts made
him a general favourite. In the supervision of operas, musically
distasteful to him, he was earnest and energetic, attending to detail
and appropriate gesture in a manner that demanded the respectful
admiration of all under his bâton. Respect and submission to his rule he
exacted as due to his office, and he rarely had difficulty in securing
it.
From Königsberg he paid a flying visit to Dresden, the city of his
school-boy days. With his accustomed omnivorous reading, scanning every
book within reach, he fell upon Bulwer Lytton’s “Rienzi.” Here was a
subject inviting treatment on a large scale. Here was a hero of the
style of William Tell and Masaniello. The spirit was revolution and
moral regeneration of the people. It was a happy chance which led him to
this story, the sentiment of which harmonized so perfectly with his own
aspirations. Visions of Paris and its grand opera house had never left
him. “Rienzi” offered the very situations calculated to impress an
audience accustomed to the gorgeous splendour of the grand opera.
Although his eyes were turned towards the French capital, and his
immediate hope the conquest of the Parisians, it was not his sole nor
ultimate desire. Paris was a means only. He saw that Paris governed
German art, and he felt that only through Paris lay his hope of success
in his fatherland. It was while under such influences that he began to
formulate “Rienzi.”
His stay in Königsberg was cut short owing to the company becoming
bankrupt. This was the second experience of the kind he had met with in
the provinces, and it helped to intensify his contempt for stage life.
He was again in money troubles. Fortunately, his old friend Dorn was
well placed at Riga and able to secure for him the post of conductor of
the opera there. The company was a good one, and its director, Hotter,
an intelligent and well-known playwright, who understood Wagner’s
artistic ambition. The young conductor was very exacting in his demands
at rehearsals. To appeal to him was useless. He was earnest and
inflexible. And yet, notwithstanding his earnestness and the trouble he
took in producing uncongenial operas, he became weary of their flimsy
material. Within him the sap of the future music-drama was beginning to
rise. His own genius and artistic tendencies were in conflict with what
was enacted before him. It was the difference between simulated and real
feeling. What he was forced to conduct was stage sentiment, what he
yearned for was life-blood. And this latter he strove to infuse into his
“Rienzi,” which was now assuming definite shape, words and part of the
music being written.
[Sidenote: _STARTS FOR PARIS._]
When two acts were finished to his satisfaction, there was no longer any
peace for him. Paris was the only fitting place where it could be
adequately represented. But how to get to Paris? At Riga, as elsewhere,
he lived beyond his means. I have before remarked on his incapability of
controlling his expenses and living within a fixed income. Minna was
thrifty and anxious, but her will was not strong enough to restrain her
self-willed husband. She was in a constant state of nervous worry, but
her devotion to Wagner prevented her making serious resistance. Now
funds were wanting for the projected Paris trip, he had none. However,
such a trivial item was not likely to thwart his ambition and to stand
in his way. He borrowed again. He was without any letters of
recommendation to Paris, spoke but very little French, and yet was full
of buoyancy and hope of the success that awaited him when there. It was
a bold, not to say reckless, venture. But it is characteristic of
Wagner. At all great junctures of his life he risked the whole of his
stakes on one card. His determination to leave Riga, and to turn his
back on the irritating miseries of a provincial theatre, led him to
embark with his wife and an enormous dog, in a small merchant vessel
_Pillau_ for London. Totally unprovided with any convenience for
passengers, badly provisioned and undermanned, the frail trading-craft
took the surprisingly long period of three weeks and a half to reach
London. It encountered severe weather and on two occasions narrowly
escaped foundering. The three passengers, Richard Wagner, his wife, and
dog, were miserably ill. On one occasion the bark was driven into a
Norwegian fiord; the crew and its passengers--there were no others on
board beside the Wagner trio--landed at a point where an old mill stood.
The poor wretches, snatched from the jaws of death, were hospitably
received by the owner, a poor man. He produced his only bottle of rum
and struck joy into all their hearts by brewing a bowl of punch. It was
evidently appreciated by the hapless ship’s company, as Wagner was
hilarious when he spoke of what he humorously called his “Adventures at
the Champagne Mill.” When the weather had cleared sufficiently the ship
set sail for London and arrived without any further mishap.
CHAPTER VII.
EIGHT DAYS IN LONDON.
1839.
[Sidenote: _LONDON IS TOO LARGE._]
His first impression of London was not a pleasant one. The day was
wretched, raining heavily, and the streets were thick with mud. At the
Custom House Wagner was helped through the vexatious passport annoyance
by a German Jew--one of those odd men always to be found about the
stations and docks ready to perform any service for a trifling
consideration. He recommended Wagner to a small, uninviting hotel in Old
Compton Street, Soho, much resorted to by needy travellers from the
continent. The hotel, considerably improved, still exists. It is
situated a dozen doors or so from Wardour Street, and is opposite to a
public house known then, as now, as the “King’s Arms.” Wagner would have
gone straight away to a first-class hotel, but this time, feeling how
very uncertain the immediate future was, he asked to be recommended to a
cheap inn. He hired a cab, one of those curious old two-wheeled
vehicles, where the driver was perilously perched at the side, and with
his big dog, carefully sheltered from the weather under the large apron
which protected the forepart of the vehicle, they started for Old
Compton Street. Arrived there without incident, such of their luggage
as they had been able to bring with them at once was carried upstairs,
and Wagner and his wife sat down gloomily regarding each other. The room
was dingy and poorly furnished, and not of a kind to brighten weary,
seasick travellers. Wagner called his dog. No response. He opened the
door, rushed down the narrow, dark staircase to the street. Alas!
Neither dog nor cab were to be seen. He inquired of every one in broken
English, but could learn nothing hopeful or certain about his dumb
friend, the companion of his journey, and silent receiver of much of his
exuberant talk. Returning to Minna, they came to the conclusion that the
dog had leaped down from underneath the covering while the luggage was
being transported upstairs. But where was he now? They had not the
faintest clue, and knew not in which direction to seek for him. That
evening, their first in London, was one of sorrow and discomfort. The
next morning Wagner went back to the docks and gleaned tidings
sufficient only to dishearten him the more. The dog had been seen the
previous evening. Back to Old Compton Street, disconsolate; he had
scarcely ascended the first flight of stairs when, his step recognised,
loud barks of welcome greeted him from above. The dog was there. It had
found its way into the room where his wife had remained during his
absence. The poor beast was bespattered with mud, but this did not
prevent Wagner affectionately fondling him. To Wagner the return of the
dog was wonderful. How a dumb brute, that had seen absolutely nothing
during the journey from the docks to Old Compton Street, could find its
way back to the old starting-place, and then retrace its steps was a
marvellous instance of canine instinct, and one which endeared the race
to him deeper than ever, a love that endured to the last.
Wagner remained in London about eight days, time to look round and to
arrange for passage to Boulogne, where Meyerbeer was staying, and from
whom he hoped to receive introductions to Paris. Although Wagner could
read English he was not sufficient master of it to understand it when
spoken. This in some degree accounts for the slight interest he felt in
his London visit. But he made the best use of his time. He was living
within a quarter of an hour’s walk of the house in Great Portland Street
where his “adored idol,” Weber, had died. To that shrine he made his
first pilgrimage, to reverently gaze upon the hallowed house. He
traversed all London, determining to see everything. The vastness of the
metropolis with its boundless sea of houses oppressed him. He had
strong, decided opinions as to what the dimensions of a town should be,
attributing much of the poverty and misery of large towns to their
overgrowth, and felt that when a township exceeded certain limits it was
beyond the control of a governing body, and that neglect in some form or
another would soon make itself felt. No city, he used to argue, should
be larger than Dresden then was.
[Sidenote: _FASCINATED BY SHIPS._]
He was amazed and most disagreeably surprised with the bustle of the
city. It bewildered him, and, as he expressed it, “fretted his artistic
soul out of him.” The great extremes of poverty and riches, dwelling in
close proximity to each other, were a sad, unsolvable enigma. His
lodgings were perhaps in one of the worst neighbourhoods of London. Old
Compton Street abutted on the Seven Dials. There he saw misery under
some of its saddest aspects, and then, but a few minutes’ walk and he
found himself amidst the luxury of Oxford Street and Regent Street. The
feelings engendered by this glaring inequality in his radical spirit
were never effaced. He thought that the English in their character,
their institutions, and habits were strangely contradictory, and the
impressions of 1839 were confirmed on his subsequent visits to this
country. The grand, extensive parks, open to all, delighted him. In
Germany he had seen no parks, and where public walks or gardens had been
laid out, walking on the grass was prohibited, whilst here no officious
guardian attempted to interfere with the free perambulation of the
visitor. The bearing of the police, too, equally surprised him. Here
they were ready with information, acting as protectors of the public,
whereas in Germany at that period they were aggressive and bureaucratic.
It is curious, but at no time do I remember Wagner speaking of having
visited any of the London theatres in 1839, whilst in 1855, when he was
here for the second time, he went to almost every place of amusement
then open, even those of third-rate order. But if in London he fell upon
“sunny places,” compared with his German home, he also was sorely tried.
As I have remarked, his rooms were in a very unaristocratic quarter. The
bane of all studious Englishmen, especially musicians--the imported
organ-grinder, unknown in Germany--worried the excitable composer out of
all patience. The Seven Dials was a favourite haunt of the wandering
minstrel, and the man who retired at night, full of wild imaginings as
to his “Rienzi,” was worked into a state of frenzy by two rival organ
men grinding away, one at each end of the street.
The immensity of the shipping below London Bridge was a wonderful sight
to him. He had come into dock in a tiny, frail sailing craft, the cradle
of “The Flying Dutchman,” after a hazardous passage across the North
Sea. The size and number of the trading vessels appealed direct to his
largely developed imaginative faculty. He pictured the mysterious
Vanderdecken in this and that vessel, and was full of strange fancies of
the spectral crew. The sea of sail so fascinated him that he took a
special river trip to Greenwich, the closer to inspect the shipping, and
with the further intent to visit the Naval Pensioners’ hospital.
When it was known at the hotel in Old Compton Street that he was about
starting for Greenwich, he was advised to go over the _Dreadnought_
hospital-ship, then lying in the river just above Greenwich. He seized
at the suggestion. The _Dreadnought_ was one of the vessels of Nelson’s
conquering fleet in the famous battle of Trafalgar, in the year 1805.
Wagner was a devoted worshipper of great men. An opportunity now
presented itself to inspect one of the wooden walls of England. It is a
widely known fact that hero-worship was a salient feature of Wagner’s
character. He always referred to Weber as his “adored idol” or “adored
master,” and for Beethoven he was equally enthusiastic. The “Dutchman,”
that weird story of the sea, had taken possession of him, and a visit to
so celebrated a ship as the _Dreadnought_ was an occasion of some
importance. In his maturer age, when closer acquaintance with the
English people had given him the right to express an opinion as to
their nature, he said that in his judgment they were the most poetic of
European nations. Poetry, with them, lay not on the surface as with the
impetuous Gauls, nor was it sought after and cultivated as with the
Germans; but with the English it was deep in their hearts and associated
with their national institutions in a manner unknown among any other
modern people. No nation has produced such a galaxy of poetic
luminaries. The employment of the disabled battle-ship as a refuge for
worn-out seamen, men who had fought their country’s battles, was, he
thought, an incontestable proof of a poetic sentiment founded in the
heart of a nation and fostered by natural love. I am aware how much this
is in opposition to the judgment of the English by a man who enjoyed a
high social standing and intimate acquaintance with the best of Albion’s
intellect, viz. Lord Beaconsfield, whose famous dictum it was that the
“English people care for nothing but religion, politics, and commerce,”
but the thoughtful opinion of a poet of acknowledged celebrity, Wagner
himself, I have deemed it advisable to set forth.
[Sidenote: _IN POETS’ CORNER._]
The visit to the _Dreadnought_ left an indelible impression upon Wagner.
Arrived at the ship, he was in the act of ascending the pilot ladder put
over the side of the vessel, by which passengers came on board, when his
snuff-box fell out of his pocket into the water. The snuff-box was the
gift of Schroeder-Devrient. He prized it highly and attempted to clutch
it in its fall. In so doing, it seems he lost his hold of the ladder and
was himself only saved from immersion by his presence of mind and
gymnastic ability. The precious snuff-box was lost, but the composer of
“Parsifal” was saved. From the _Dreadnought_ he went with the nervous
Minna to the Greenwich hospital. Wagner had the habit of talking loudly
in public, and while walking about the building, seeing a pensioner
taking snuff, he said to Minna, “Could I speak English, I would ask him
for a pinch.” Wagner was an inveterate snuff-taker from early manhood.
Imagine Wagner’s surprise and delight when the Greenwich snuff-taker
accosted him with, “Here you are, my friend,” in good German. The
pensioner proved to be a Saxon by birth, and, delighted to hear his
native tongue, was soon at home with his interlocutor. He told him that
he was perfectly contented with his lot, but that his companions, the
English, were dissatisfied and were “a grumbling lot.”
Wagner was filled with admiration at the generosity and beneficence
displayed in the bounteous provision for the comfort of the pensioners.
He told me his thoughts sped back to the German sailors on the East
Prussian coast, their miserably poor and scanty food, their ill-clothed
forms, and the general poverty of their position, when he saw the
apparently unlimited supplies of good, wholesome provisions and
substantial clothing; and yet, he said, the poor Germans are contented,
while the Greenwich pensioners complain.
Wagner had been but two days in London in 1855, when he took me off to
Westminster. This was not his first visit to the national mausoleum; he
had been there in 1839, and recollections of that occasion induced him
at once to revisit the Abbey. We went specially to pay homage to the
great men in Poets’ Corner, Shakespeare’s monument being the main
attraction. It will be remembered that his first effort in English had
been a translation from Shakespeare, and I found that with increasing
years such an enthusiasm for the great dramatist had been developed as
was only possible in the ardent brain of an earnest poet. While
contemplating the Shakespeare monument on his first visit, it seems he
was led to a train of thought, the substance of which he related to me
in our 1855 visit. At the time I considered it noteworthy as an
important psychological feature and now relate it here. In reflecting
over the work done by the British genius, and its far-reaching influence
in creating a new form, he was carried back to the classic school of
ancient Greece and its Roman imitator.
The ancient classic and the modern romantic schools were opposed to each
other. The English founder of the modern school had cast aside all the
rigid rules of the classical writers, which even the powerful efforts of
the three Frenchmen, Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire, had been unable to
revivify. In these reflections, referring to an antecedent period of
sixteen years, I have often thought I could discern the germ of his
daring revolution in musical form. Turning from the serious to the gay,
as was his wont at all times, he added that his reverie had a
commonplace ending. Minna plucked his sleeve, saying, “Komm, Lieber
Richard, du standst hier zwanzig minuten wie eine Bildsaule, ohne ein
Wort zusprechen” (Come, dear Richard, you have been standing here for
twenty minutes like one of these statues, and not uttered a word), and
when he repeated to her the substance of his meditations, he found as
usual she understood but little the serious import of his speech.
[Sidenote: _MINNA LIKES LONDON._]
Wagner’s anxiety to reach the goal of his ambition left him no peace,
and on the eighth day after his arrival in London he left by steamer for
Boulogne.
The London visit charmed Minna. The quiet, unobtrusive manner of the
English pleased her, but annoyed Wagner. He was irritated by their
stolidity, and complained always of a want of expansiveness in them.
Their stiff politeness he thought angular, and the impression did not
wear off during his second visit. These first eight days were not wholly
pleasant to him. He was anxious to get to Paris, and all his thoughts
were turned towards the city of the grand opera. Minna carried away
pleasant recollections, but Wagner thought his dog was the happiest of
all, for in London he had been provided daily with special dog’s fare,
an institution unknown in Germany.
CHAPTER VIII.
BOULOGNE, 1839.
[Sidenote: _MEETING WITH MEYERBEER._]
The passage to Boulogne began pleasantly, but a bad sailor at all times,
he did not escape the invariable discomforts of a channel journey. His
large Newfoundland dog, for whom he had an affection almost parental,
was on board, and excited general interest. Two Jewish ladies, named
Manson, mother and daughter, hearing Wagner speak German to his wife and
dog, soon entered into conversation with him through the medium of the
dog. Speaking a vitiated German with a facility which seems to be the
heirloom of the tribe of Judah, they discussed music, and with a
familiarity also characteristic of the race they told Wagner they were
going to spend a few days in Boulogne before proceeding to Paris.
Interested in music, they at once blundered into the delusion, common to
all the race, that every great composer was a Jew, supporting their
assertion by naming Mendelssohn, Halévy, Rossini, and their personal
intimate, Meyerbeer, including also Haydn, Mozart, and Weber. Wagner
seized with such eagerness at the name of Meyerbeer that he did not stop
to disprove the supposed Israelitic descent of Haydn, Mozart, and Weber.
As the ladies were going to call on Meyerbeer, they promised to apprise
him of Wagner’s intended visit. In this opportune meeting, Wagner
thought fate seemed to be stretching out a helping hand to the young
German, he who had abandoned in disgust his post of conductor at Riga,
to compel the admiration of Paris for his genius. With Meyerbeer at
Boulogne and a friendly introduction to the ruler of the Paris Grand
Opera, the future seemed promising. Notwithstanding his wife’s
misgivings he did not hesitate to accompany his travelling companions to
their hotel. The expenses were so great, and out of all proportion to
his scanty funds, that in a few days he sought a more humble abode.
He saw Meyerbeer, and though he was received amicably enough, yet were
his first impressions not altogether agreeable. The ever-present smile
of the composer of the “Huguenots” seemed studied and insincere, as
though it was rather the outcome of simulated affability than of natural
good feeling. Meyerbeer was a polished courtier, his manners bland and
his speech unctuous. Diplomatic, committing himself to nothing, he
seemingly promised everything. The impassioned language of the young
idealist, his fervid outpourings on art, surprised and startled the
worldly-wise Meyerbeer. The earnest expression of honest conviction
rarely fails to excite interest even in the shrewd business man of the
world. Meyerbeer listened attentively to Wagner’s story of his early
struggles, and of his hopes for the future, ending by fixing a meeting
for the next day, when the “Rienzi” poem might be read. The subject and
treatment pleased Meyerbeer greatly. From all that is known of him, it
is clear that his great and only gift lay in the treatment of spectacle.
The stage effects which “Rienzi” offered were many, and the situations
powerful. Both features were then adjudged imperative for a successful
grand opera in Paris, and in proportion as the “Rienzi” book promised
spectacular display, so Meyerbeer grew eulogistic and generous in his
promises of help. Wagner was strongly of opinion that Meyerbeer’s first
friendly feeling was won entirely by the striking tableaux of the story.
Meyerbeer discussed with Wagner kindred scenes and situations in “Les
Huguenots,” and such comparison was made between the two books, that
Wagner was forced to the conclusion that effect was the chief aim of
Meyerbeer, and truth a subordinate consideration.
[Sidenote: _MEYERBEER HEARS “RIENZI.”_]
But to have won the unstinted praise of the enormously popular opera
composer seemed to promise immediate and certain success. It unduly
elated him, so that when he experienced the difficulties of getting his
work accepted at the Paris Grand Opera House, the shock was more severe
and harder to bear. But in Boulogne everything augured well. Indeed,
Meyerbeer expressed himself so strongly on the libretto as to request
Scribe to write one for him in imitation of it. When talking over this
incident with me, Wagner said that he believed Meyerbeer’s lavish praise
of the book was uttered partly with a view to its purchase, but that
Wagner’s enthusiasm for his own work prevented Meyerbeer making a direct
offer. However this may have been, from Wagner’s plain language to me
there is no doubt at all in my mind that Meyerbeer did feel his way to
purchase the “Rienzi” text for his own purpose. Another meeting was
arranged for trying the music. On leaving Meyerbeer, he went direct to
relate all to the expectant Minna. As was his wont at all times after an
event of unusual import, he made this a cause of festivity. With Minna
he went to dine at a restaurant, and with juvenile exultation ordered
his favourite beverage, a half bottle of champagne. To Wagner champagne
represented the perfection of “terrestrial enjoyment,” as he often
phrased it. While sipping their wine they met their newly made
acquaintances, the Mansons. Flushed with his recent success, he
recounted the whole of the morning episode. The Mansons advised him to
stay in Boulogne as long as he could whilst Meyerbeer was there, arguing
that he was such an amiable man, and since his good-will had been won
was sure to do all he could to promote Wagner’s success; and they added
significantly, “He has the power to do all.”
The trying over of the “Rienzi” music with Meyerbeer was as successful
as the reading of the book. Two acts only were then completed, but with
these Meyerbeer expressed himself perfectly satisfied. It was just the
music to be successful in Paris, and he prognosticated for Wagner a
triumph with the Parisians. In discussing the incident with me, Wagner
said he believed Meyerbeer’s laudation of the music was perfectly
sincere, “for,” he cynically added, “the first two acts are just the
very part of the opera which please me least, and which I should like to
disown.” It means that Meyerbeer committed the unpardonable fault in
Wagner’s eyes of praising the careful and neat writing of the composer
when the score was opened. On all occasions Wagner would become
irritated if his really remarkably neat writing were praised. He would
say it was like praising the frame at the expense of the picture, and a
slight on the intelligence of the composer.
Wagner took his place at the piano without being asked, and impetuously
attacked the score in his own rough-and-ready manner. Meyerbeer was
astonished at the rough handling of his piano. He was himself a highly
finished performer on the instrument, having begun his public artistic
career as a pianist. Wagner supplied as well as he could the vocal parts
(with as little technical perfection as his piano-playing), whilst
Meyerbeer carefully studied the score over the performer’s shoulder. The
opinion of Meyerbeer was most flattering, his admiration for Wagner
intensifying greatly when at a subsequent meeting he went through the
only complete work Wagner had brought with him to conquer Paris--“Das
Liebesverbot.” Before such lavish and warm praise Wagner’s first
distrust of Meyerbeer melted as snow before the sun’s rays. Meyerbeer
pointed to what he considered many admirable stage effects in the “Das
Liebesverbot” libretto, and thought that a man so young who could write
that and the “Rienzi” text was sure of future celebrity as a dramatist.
Meyerbeer was profuse in his promises of help, and proposed at once to
recommend him to the director of a small Paris theatre and opera house,
though he pointed out to Wagner that letters of recommendation were of
little avail compared to personal introduction. But buoyed with such
testimonials and a letter from the Mansons, he left Boulogne, where he
was known as “le petit homme avec le grand chien,” for Paris, again
accompanied by his wife and dumb friend.
CHAPTER IX.
PARIS, 1839-1842.
That a young artist but six and twenty years of age, with a wife
dependent on him for existence, unknown to fame, almost penniless, and
even without art works that he could show in evidence of his ability,
should boldly assault the stronghold of European musical criticism,
confident of success, often flitted before Wagner’s mind in after-life
as an act of temerity closely allied to insanity. “And ah!” he has added
in tones of bitter pain, “I had to pay for it dearly: my privations and
sufferings were as the tortures in Dante’s ‘Purgatorio.’” “But why did
you undertake such a seemingly Quixotic expedition?” I asked. “Because
at that time Paris was the resort of almost every artist of note,
whether painter, sculptor, poet, or musician, and even statesmen, when
all Europe clothed itself with the livery of Paris fashion.” He felt
within him a power which urged him forward without fear of failure, and
so he came to Paris.
Germany offered no encouragement to native talent. Paris was the gate to
the fatherland. First achieve success in Paris, and then his German
countrymen would receive him with open arms. It is true, that even a
short residence in Paris invested an artist with a certain superiority
over his confrères.
As Wagner had but a very imperfect acquaintance with the French
language, he at once sought out the relative of the Mansons to whom he
had been recommended. I have been unable to recall the surname of
Wagner’s new friend, but do remember well that he was spoken of as
Louis. This Monsieur Louis was a Jew and a German. He proved an
exceedingly faithful and constant companion of Wagner’s during his stay
in Paris, indeed played the part of factotum to the Wagner household. He
must have been quite an exceptional friend, for on one occasion, when
Wagner and I were discussing Judaism _per se_, he turned to me and with
unusual warmth even for him, said, “How can I feel any prejudice against
the Jews as men, when I sincerely believe that it was excess of
friendship of poor Louis for me that killed him,--running about in all
weathers, exerting himself everywhere, undertaking most unpleasant
missions to find me work, and all whilst suffering from consumption. He
did it too from pure love of me without any thought of self.” Through
the aid of Louis he found a modest lodging in a dingy house. The future
was so much an uncertainty that with the remembrance of the first days
of the Boulogne expensive hotel before him, he yielded to Minna’s
persuasiveness and reconciled himself to the new abode. He was told that
Molière was born there; indeed, a bust of the great Frenchman did, I
believe, adorn the front of the house, and this helped to make him
accept his new quarters with a little more contentment than his own
ambitious notions would have admitted.
[Sidenote: _TROUBLES IN PARIS._]
Settled in his scantily furnished rooms, with ready business habits, so
unusual in a genius, he made it his first duty to call wherever he had
been recommended. Difficult as it may be in any European city to gain
access to the houses of prominent men, in Paris the troubles are
greater, if only on account of that terrible Cerberus, the concierge,
who instinctively divines an applicant for favours, and as skilfully
throws obstacles in the way while angling for pourboires.
Disappointment upon disappointment met Wagner. Nowhere was he
successful. In speech at all times he uttered himself _en prince_, and
for a man seeking the favour and patronage of others this feature
militated against him. Meyerbeer had told him in Boulogne that letters
of introduction would avail him little or nothing, and that only by
personal introduction could he hope to make headway. But though
unsuccessful in every direction, he was not the man to give up without
desperate efforts. In a few months his funds were entirely exhausted.
Where to turn for the necessary money to provide the daily sustenance
was the exciting trouble of the moment. His family in Germany had helped
him at first, but material help soon gave place to sage advice. Barren
criticism on his “mad” Parisian visit, and admonition on his present
mode of existence, Wagner would not brook, and so communications soon
ceased between him and Germany. But how to live was the harrowing
question. It is with feelings of acute pain that I am forced to recall
the deep distress that overwhelmed this mighty genius, and the
humiliating acts to which cruel necessity drove him. After one more
wretched day than the last he suggested to Minna the raising of
temporary loans upon her trinkets. Let the reader try and realize the
proud Wagner’s misery and anguish, when Minna confessed that such as she
had were already so disposed of, Louis having performed the wretched
office.
[Sidenote: _ARRANGING POPULAR MUSIC._]
This state of sad absolute poverty lasted for months. He could gain no
access to theatres or opera house. He offered himself as chorus master,
he would have taken the meanest appointment, but everything failed him.
With no prospect of succeeding as a musician, he turned to the press. As
he possessed a facile pen and a wide acquaintance with current
literature, he sought for existence as a newspaper hack. Here he
succeeded, and deemed himself fortunate to obtain even that thankless
work. The one man to whom he owed the chief means of existence during
this wretched Paris sojourn was a Jew, Maurice Schlesinger, the great
music publisher and proprietor of the “Gazette Musicale,” a weekly
periodical. It is curious to note how again he finds a kind friend in a
Jew. For Schlesinger he wrote critical notices and feuilletons upon art
topics, one, now famous in Wagner’s collected writings as “A Pilgrimage
to Beethoven.” The pilgrimage is wholly imaginary for as I have already
stated Wagner never saw Beethoven. The paper itself contains some
remarkable foreshadowings of the matured, thinking Wagner and his
revolutionary art principles. He also wrote for other papers, Schumann’s
“Die Neue Zeitschrift,” for a Dresden journal, and the “Europa,” a
fashionable art publication which occasionally printed original tonal
compositions. For this last paper he wrote three romances, “Dors mon
enfant,” “Attente,” and “Mignonne.” He hoped by these to gain some entry
into the Paris fashionable world, but, though he tried to assimilate his
style to the popular drawing-room ballad of the day, his songs were
pronounced “too serious,” and met with no success.
But alas! his literary work was not financially productive enough, and
dire necessity drove him to very uncongenial musical drudgery. For the
same music-seller, Schlesinger, he made “arrangements” from popular
Italian operas, for every kind of instrument. He told me that “La
Favorita” had been arranged by him from the first note to the last. The
whole of this occupation, to a man as intimate with the orchestra as he,
was an easy task, yet very uninteresting and to him humiliating. But
though suffering actual privation, he would not give lessons in music.
Teaching was an occupation which, even in the darkest days, he would not
entertain for a moment.
Such were the means by which Richard Wagner gained an existence during
his Paris sojourn. But they were not productive enough. Often he was in
absolute want. It was then in this hour of tribulation that the golden
qualities of Minna were proved. Sorrow, the touch-stone of man’s worth,
tried her and she was not found wanting. The hitherto quiet and gentle
housewife was transformed into a heroine. Her placid disposition was
healing comfort to the disappointed, wearied musician. The whole of the
Paris period is “a gem of purest ray serene” in the diadem of Minna
Wagner. Thoughts of what the self-denying, devoted little woman did then
has many a time brought tears to Wagner’s eyes. The most menial house
duties were performed by her with willing cheerfulness. She cleaned the
house, stood at the wash-tub, did the mending and the cooking. She hid
from the husband as much of the discomforts attaching to their poor
home as was possible. She never complained, and always strove to present
a bright, cheerful face, consoling and upholding him at all times. In
the evening she and his dog, the same that was temporarily lost in
London, were his regular companions on the boulevards. The bustle of
life and the Parisians diverted him from more anxious thoughts, whilst
supplying him with constant food for his ever-ready wit.
In dress Wagner was at all times scrupulously neat. After nearly a
year’s residence in Paris, the clothes he had brought with him from
Germany were showing sad signs of wear. The year had been fruitless from
a money point, and his wardrobe had not been replenished. His
sensitiveness on this topic was of course well known to Minna. To give
him pleasure she hunted Paris to find, if possible, some German tailor
in a small way of business who, swayed by the blandishments of Minna,
provided her with a suit of clothes for her husband for his birthday,
22d May, 1840, agreeing to wait for payment until more favourable times.
This delicate and thoughtful attention on the part of Minna deeply
touched Wagner, and he related the incident to me in illustration of the
loving affection she bore him. He said that during those three years of
pinching poverty and bitter disappointments his temperament was variable
and trying. It was hard to bear with him. Vexed and worn with fruitless
trials to secure a hearing for his “Rienzi,” angered at witnessing the
lavish expenditure at the opera house upon works inferior to his own, he
has admitted that his already passionate nature was intensified, and yet
all his outbursts were met by Minna in an uncomplaining, soothing
spirit, which, the first fury over, he was not slow to acknowledge. Her
sacrifices for him and all she did became only known years after, when
their worldly position had changed vastly for the better. He never
forgot her devotion, nor did he ever hide his indebtedness and gratitude
to her from his friends.
[Sidenote: _FRIENDSHIP WITH JEWS._]
During the three years that Wagner was in Paris, he was brought into
communication with several prominent men in the world of art, men
eminent in literature, in music, both as composers and as executants, in
painting, and other phases of art. Of the dozen or so of men with whom
he thus became more intimately acquainted, the greater portion were his
own countrymen and about half were Jews. This constant close intimacy of
Wagner with the descendants of Judah is a curious feature in his life,
and shows that when he wrote as strongly as he did of Jews and their art
work, his judgments were based upon close personal knowledge of the
question. As may be supposed, the acquaintance of a young man between
twenty-six and thirty years of age with these several thinkers and
writers, could not fail to influence, more or less, an impressionable
and receptive nature.
It was an odd freak of fortune that almost immediately after Wagner had
settled in Paris, he should, by accident, meet in the streets an old
friend from Leipzic, Heinrich Laube. It was in a paper edited by Laube
that Richard Wagner’s first printed article on the non-existence of
German opera had appeared. That was when Wagner was about one and
twenty. Laube was a political revolutionist who underwent several terms
of imprisonment for daring to utter his thoughts about Germany and its
government through his paper. But prison confinement never controlled
the dauntless courage of the patriot. He was a man of considerable and
varied gifts. It is not only as a political demagogue that he will be
known in future times, but as a philosopher, novelist, and playwright.
In Leipzic he had shown himself very friendly to Wagner, whose sound,
vigorous judgment attracted him, and now after hearing of Wagner’s
precarious situation, offered to introduce him to Heine. Such an
opportunity could not be lost, and so the cultured Hebrew poet and
Richard Wagner met.
[Sidenote: _MEETS HEINRICH HEINE._]
A curious trio this: Laube, hard-featured and unpleasant to look upon,
with a weirdness begotten possibly of frequent incarcerations,--a
strange contrast to the handsome, regular-featured, soft-spoken Heine;
and then the pale, slim, young Wagner, short in stature, but with
piercing eyes and voluble speech which surprised and amazed the cynical
Heine. When Heinrich Heine heard that Meyerbeer had given Wagner
introductions, he doubted the abilities of the newcomer. Heine was
strongly biassed against Meyerbeer and distrusted his sincerity.
Although the meeting with Laube was a delight to Wagner, as it brought
back to him all his youthful enthusiasm and hope, yet his appreciation
of the accomplished writer, which in Leipzic amounted almost to
reverence, had been by time and events considerably lessened. Wagner’s
greatest majesty, earnestness, was wanting in Laube. The litterateur in
Wagner’s estimation had no fixed purpose, no ideal. He frittered away
considerable gifts in innumerable directions. Incongruities the most
glaring not unfrequently appeared in his writings. A paragraph of sound
philosophical reasoning would be followed by a page of the merest
bombastic phraseology. In his dramatic efforts tragedy and farce were
placed in amazing juxtaposition. He wrote a large number of novels, but
not one proved entirely satisfactory. “Reisenovellen” was an imitation
of Heine, but it fell immeasurably below the standard attained by his
model. His best literary production was, without doubt, the history of
his life in prison, which interests and touches us by its simplicity.
However, Wagner could not resist the attraction which Laube’s
peculiarities possessed for him. The litterateur’s unprepossessing
pedantic exterior contrasted strangely with his voluptuous and
imaginative mind. Possessed of a brain specially fitted for the
conception of the noblest schemes for the freedom of human thought, he
often childishly indulged in a roguish _plaisanterie_. From a thoughtful
disquisition on the philosophy of Hegel he glides into the description
of such unworthy topics as a ball-room, love behind the scenes,
coffee-room conversation, etc. But, curiously, his revolutionary
tendencies in all other matters were in strange contrast to his
tenacious clinging to the then existing opera form, and Wagner’s
outspoken notions about the regeneration of the opera into that of the
musical drama were vehemently opposed by him.
In Heinrich Heine Wagner found a more congenial listener to his advanced
theories. Although Heine’s appreciation of music was not based on any
more solid ground than that of a general acquaintance with the operas
then in vogue, he was far more affected, and was a greater critic on the
tonal art than his contemporary, Laube. Heine had resided in Paris since
1830, and was thoroughly acclimatized to Parisian taste. He was accepted
as the representative of modern German poetry, and his works,
particularly “Les deux Grenadiers,” “Les Polonais de la vraie Pologne,”
were popular amongst all classes. Heine was pre-eminently spiritual, a
quality exceedingly appreciated by the French; hence his popularity.
However serious or painful the topic, Heine could enliven it by his
clever Jewish antithetic wit. Heine received Wagner with a certain
amount of reserve. His respect for musicians was not great. He had found
many who, with the exception of their musical knowledge, were
uncultured. Wagner’s thorough acquaintance with literature, especially
that of the earlier writers, agreeably surprised him, and the composer’s
elevated idea of the sacred mission of music touched the nobler chords
of the poet’s nature. His opinion on Wagner, as quoted by Laube,
presents an interesting example of Heine’s perspicacity. As a specimen
of unaffected appreciation from a critic like Heine, who rarely sat in
judgment without giving vent to a vitiated vein of sarcasm, it is most
interesting.
“I cannot help feeling a lively interest in Wagner. He is endowed with
an inexhaustible, productive mind, kept almost uninterruptedly in
activity by a vivacious temperament. From an individuality so replete
with modern culture, it is possible to expect the development of a solid
and powerful modern music.” Heine could never refrain from employing a
degenerated imitation of irony, called persiflage, as a weapon for the
purpose of mockery, and for the production of effect. Heine’s
imagination is bold, and his language idiosyncratic, though not
affected. His sentiment is deep, but his fault is the want of an ideal
outside the circle of his own ideas. In his poems, effeminate tenderness
is contrasted by a vigorous boldness, the purest sentiment by sensual
frivolity, noble thought by the meanest vulgarity, and lofty aspirations
by painful indifference. Whilst overturning all existing theories and
institutions, he failed to establish any one salutary doctrine.
[Sidenote: _SCHLESINGER’S ADMIRATION._]
It was a happy chance for Wagner that a man in the prominent position of
Schlesinger should have interested himself in a young musician, whose
nature was the opposite of his own. A shrewd music-seller, with an eye
always to the main chance, and an art enthusiast in close intimacy, was
a strange spectacle, only to be accounted for by the fact that opposite
natures attract, whereas similar characters repel each other.
Schlesinger admired in Wagner the very qualities of earnestness and
enthusiasm which were lacking in his own being. Meyerbeer was his deity.
It was one day in a mail coach that I found myself the travelling-companion
of Schlesinger. He talked the whole day, of Meyerbeer principally. He
said that Meyerbeer showed a commercial sagacity in composing his works
which was remarkable. Behind the stage he was as painstaking with
artists and the _mise-en scène_ as he was careful in the comfortable
seating of critics. Not the smallest journalist, nor even their
relations, failed to be seated well. Meyerbeer was the embodiment of the
art of _savoir faire_. It seemed to me, then, a curious contradiction in
my companion’s character, that he could regard such phases in a man’s
character as wonderful, and at the same time have listened to the
intemperate outpourings of the earnest Wagner. But it was so.
At the back of Schlesinger’s music shop was a room where artists
casually met for conversation. Wagner, owing to the “musical
arrangements” for the firm and being writer for Schlesinger’s “Gazette
Musicale,” was a frequent visitor. He met many known men and noted their
speech. It all tended one way. The French were light-hearted, persiflage
was a principal subject of their composition, and for such a public only
light dainties were to be provided. They wanted the semblance and not
the reality. Amusement first and truth after. His own romances, penned,
as he hoped, in a fittingly light manner, were not light enough and as a
consequence were not pleasing enough.
[Sidenote: _WAGNER AND BERLIOZ._]
With Berlioz his relations were less happy. The two men met often, but
were mutually antagonistic. They admired each other always. Both were
serious and earnest, but their friendship was never intimate. In
after-life the same strained bearing towards each other was maintained.
From close observation of the two men under my roof, at the same table,
and under circumstances when they were open heart with each other, I
should say however that the constraint arose purely from their
antagonistic individualities. Berlioz was reserved, self-possessed, and
dignified. His clear, transparent delivery was as the rhythmic cadence
of a fountain. Wagner was boisterous, effusive, and his words leaped
forth as the rushing of a mountain torrent. Wagner undoubtedly in Paris
learned much from Berlioz. The new and refined orchestration taught, or
perhaps I should rather say indicated, to Wagner what could be done with
the orchestra. Indeed, Wagner has said that the instrumentation of
Berlioz influenced him, but disagrees with the use to which the
orchestra was put. To Berlioz it was the end: to Wagner, a means.
Berlioz expended his ideas in special colouristic effects, whilst
Wagner’s pre-eminent desire was truthfulness of situation, the orchestra
serving as the medium for the delineation of his ideas. Wagner paid
Berlioz a tribute in Paris by declaring that he was distinguished from
his Parisian colleagues, that he did not compose for money, and then in
the same breath sarcastically asserts that “he lacks all sense of
beauty.” This I think unfair, nor do I consider it as representing what
Wagner really wished to convey. Berlioz was undoubtedly possessed of
ideality, his intentions were noble and earnest, but in their execution
he fell short of his conceptions. However, he towers above all French
composers for earnestness of purpose and strength of intellect.
Although Wagner often and strongly disagreed with Heine’s judgment in
matters of art, yet with one, the poet’s racy notice dated April, 1840,
published in “Lutèce,” a miscellaneous collection of letters upon
artistic and social life in Paris, he felt that the pungent criticism
was not altogether wide of the truth. Wagner kept the notice, and when
he and Berlioz were in this country together in 1855, he gave it to me,
remarking that though grotesque it was in the main faithful. As it is
very interesting I reproduce it:--
We will begin to-day by Berlioz, whose first concert has served as
the début of the musical season, as the overture, so to speak. His
productions, more or less new, which have been performed, found a
just tribute of applause, and even the most indolent present were
aroused by the force of his genius, which revels in creations of
the “grand master.” There is a flapping of wings, but it is not of
an ordinary bird, it is a colossal nightingale, a skylark of the
grandeur of the eagle, as it existed, it is said, in the primitive
world. Yes, the music of Berlioz, in general, has for me something
primitive, if not antediluvian, and it makes me think of extinct
gigantic beasts, of mammoths, of fabulous worlds, and of fabulous
sins; indeed, of impossibilities piled one upon another. His magic
accents recall to us Babylon, the suspended gardens of Semiramis,
the marvels of Nineveh, the bold edifices of Mizraim, such as are
seen in the pictures of the Englishman, Martin. Indeed, if we seek
for analogous productions in the realms of the painter’s art, we
find a perfect resemblance with the elective Berlioz and the
eccentric Englishman. The same outrageous sentiment of the
prodigious, of the excessive, of material immensity. With one
brilliant effect of light and darkness, with the other thundery
instrumentation: with one little melody, with the other little
colour, in both a perfect absence of beauty and of naïveté. Their
works are neither antique nor romantic, they recall to us neither
the Greek pagan, nor the mediæval catholic, but seem to lift us to
the highest point of Assyrico-Babylonio-Egyptian architecture, and
bear us back to those poems in stone which trace in the pyramids
the passion of humanity, the eternal mystery of the world.
[Sidenote: _A NATIONAL DRAMA._]
Of the other notabilities in the art world with whom Richard Wagner came
into contact in Paris, the chief were Halévy, Vieuxtemps, Scribe, and
Kietz. For Halévy he had great admiration. His music was honest. It had
a national flavour in it. It was of the French, French. There was a
visible effort to reflect in tones the mind and sentiment of a people
which was highly meritorious. He was the legitimate descendant of Auber,
the founder of a really national French opera. If conventionality proved
too strong for Auber, Halévy made less effort to throw off the thraldom.
The latter was wholly in the hands of opera directors, singers, ballet
masters, etc. Had he been a strong man, an artist of determination,
governed more with the noble desire to elevate his glorious art than of
pleasing popular favourites, he might have done great things. Opera
comique represented truly the national taste of the Gauls. Auber and
Halévy were the men who, assisted by Boildieu, could have laid a sure
foundation, but conventionality proved too powerful for all three.
It is not difficult to understand why Wagner so constantly made a
“national music-drama” the subject of discourse. In his judgment a drama
reflecting the culture and life of a people was the noblest teacher of
men. It appeals direct to the heart and understanding. It is the mirror
of themselves, purified, idealized, and as such cannot fail to be the
most powerful and effective moral instructor. “National drama” was an
undying subject with Wagner. His constant effort was the founding of a
national art for his own compatriots. It was the ambition of his life,
so that after the first and so grandly successful festival performance
of the “Nibelungen” in the Bayreuth theatre, 1876, his address to the
spectators began, “My children, you have here a really German art.” No
wonder, then, that he spoke in Paris with such earnestness of the
absence of a true national opera, and of the destruction of such as
there promised to be through the attention lavished on Rossini and
Donizetti. Halévy’s “La Juive,” a grand opera, Wagner considered a
particularly praiseworthy work, and thought it promised great things. So
much did he consider it worthy of notice, that when later on he became
conductor of the Dresden Opera House, he devoted great attention to its
production and adequate rendering.
Vieuxtemps, Wagner met occasionally, but was on less intimate terms with
him. He admired him as a virtuoso on the violin; he had a grand style,
but in his conversation and writings he was without any distinguishing
or attractive ability, adhering so steadfastly to the rigid classical
form that there was little sympathy between them. In Scribe he admired
the skill and esprit of his stage works. He saw that the Frenchman most
accurately gauged the taste of his public and was dexterous in the
manipulation of his matter. Scribe was not then at anything like the
zenith of his power, yet was possessed of a finish and delicacy in
writing that Wagner admired. Lastly, Kietz, a painter from Germany, of a
certain merit, was perhaps one of his most intimate friends. He painted
a portrait of Richard Wagner which is now regarded as very excellent.
Full of fun, his jocularity harmonized completely with Wagner’s own
humour, and, united with Louis, the three were ever at their most
comfortable and happy ease.
CHAPTER X.
PARIS, 1839-1842. _Continued._
Viewed from an art standpoint, those dreary years of misery, spent in
the centre of European gaity, were the crucial epoch of Richard Wagner’s
career. Then, for the first time, was he filled with the consciousness
of the complete impossibility of the French operatic stage and its
kindred institutions outside France, ever becoming the platform from
which he could preach his doctrine of earnestness and truth. The Paris
grand opera was the hothouse of spurious art. The master who would
succeed there must abandon his inspiration and make concessions to
artists and to managers. He found the so-called grand opera tainted, an
unreal thing which dealt not with verities, but was the handmaid of
fashion. It had no heart, no living, free-flowing blood, but was a
patchwork of false sentiment rendered attractive by its gorgeous
spectacular frame.
But it was not at one bound that Wagner arrived at this conclusion. The
turning-point was not reached until after he had himself essayed a grand
opera success, and found how inadequate and imperfect fettered
utterances were to free thoughts. Indeed, by degrees he discovered that
realism, the prime element of the grand historic opera, was completely
antagonistic to the tenderness of his own poetic instinct, idealism. He
looked too, to the grand opera for expression of the feelings of a
people, and found works manacled by a rigid conventionality.
He had come to Paris with the “Das Liebesverbot” (the manuscript of
which, by the by, I believe passed into the possession of King Ludwig of
Bavaria: it would be interesting to see the score of this early work
written in 1834) and a portion of “Rienzi.” His aspirations were to
complete this latter in a manner worthy of the Paris stage. He attended
much the productions of the opera house. He heard Auber, Halévy,
Meyerbeer, Rossini, and Donizetti, and, as the months rolled by he grew
sick in heart at seeing the sumptuous settings devoted to works that
were paltry, mean, and artificial compared with his own.
[Sidenote: _A CHAMPION OF AUBER._]
Wagner was now a young man rapidly nearing thirty winters of life. He
was in a foreign land, earning a bare existence, but withal full of
earnest enthusiasm and vigorous work. A thinker always, he set himself
the problem in the midst of pinching poverty, why was it that an
unmistakable and growing aversion for the grand opera had been awakened
in him? He pondered over it. For months it exercised his mind and then,
suddenly, the revolutionary spirit of the age took possession of him,
and he threw over once for all preconceived operatic notions, and
resolved to be no longer the slave of a form walled in by
conventionality, nor the puppet of an institution like the grand opera
house, controlled by innumerable anti-artistic influences. It is from
this time that we date that glorious change in his art work which has
made music an articulate language understood by all, whereas hitherto it
had been but a lisping speech, with occasional beautiful moments
undoubtedly, but for all that, an imperfect art.
Poor Wagner, what sorrows did he not pass through in 1840 and 1841! Now
he has stolen into the opera house to listen to the sensuous melodies of
Rossini and Meyerbeer, and afterwards wended his way home dejected and
disconsolate, with his heart a prey to the bitterest pangs. He could
vent a little of his imprisoned indignation in the “Gazette Musicale,”
and availed himself of this channel of publicity. He fell upon Rossini
and Donizetti. Why should they, aliens, dominate the French stage to the
exclusion of superior native worth and pure national sentiment? In his
opinion Auber was badly treated by the Parisians, “La Muette de
Porticci” (Masaniello), contained germs of a real national French opera.
It was a work of excellence and merited a better reception at the hands
of the composer’s countrymen. “Poor Wagner!” I feel myself again and
again unconsciously uttering, when I remember that his championship of
Auber nearly cost him the little emolument his newspaper articles
brought him, for Schlesinger administered a sharp rebuke, and told him
that if he wished to enter the political arena he must write for a
political and not a musical journal. That Wagner’s attitude toward Auber
was based on purely artistic grounds will be admitted, I think, when it
is known that during these three years of Paris life the two men never
met.
But if the grand opera procured him no pleasure he was compensated by
the orchestral performances at the Conservatoire de Musique. Wagner has
often related an incident connected with one of his visits to the
miserable rooms of the Conservatoire in the Rue Bergère, that will never
fail to make affection’s chords vibrate with compassionate sympathy for
the beloved master. I remember well Wagner telling the story to me. It
was during his worst hours of poverty. Disappointments had fallen thick
around him. For two whole days his food had been almost nothing.
Hungered and wearied, he silently and unobtrusively entered the
Conservatoire. The orchestra were playing the “Ninth Symphony.” What
thoughts did it not recall! It was more than ten years since he had
heard the symphonies of Beethoven. Then he was in his Leipzic home. How
changed were all things now! But the music was the same! The old
enchantment overcame him. The genius of Beethoven again dazzled his
senses, and he left the concert-room broken down with grief, but more
determined and with a fixity of purpose more resolute than he had had at
any time during the Paris period. “It was,” he says, “as a blessed
reality in the midst of a maze
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