WAGNER AS I KNEW HIM

WAGNER
A S I K N E W H I M

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

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.

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 the stop-gap-music-scrambling of the theatre.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 of shifting, gloomy dreams.” He went home invigorated with the healthy, refreshing draughts of the “Ninth Symphony,” bent upon pouring out the feelings of his early manhood, but falling sick, his original intentions were abandoned.

HIS OPINION OF THE FRENCH.

The concerts at the Conservatoire afforded him genuine pleasure. The director, Habeneck, seems to have been a zealous, painstaking artist, all works conducted evidencing the very careful study they had received at his hands. It was at the Conservatoire that Wagner’s soul of music was fed, his heart and mind satisfied, the eye was gratified by the magnificent mise-en-scene of the grand opera. These two institutions exercised a vast and wholesome influence over him, though he rebelled wholly against the dicta of the grand opera. Perhaps had it not been for the violent antagonism the Paris opera excited within him, and the deep feeling of revulsion that it engendered, Richard Wagner would not so soon have come to that invaluable knowledge of himself, nor the art-fire within have glowed with such clearness and intensity.

To Wagner the Gallic character was at once the source of attraction and repulsion. He admired the light-hearted gaiety, the racy wit, and agreeable tact which seems to be the birthright of even the lowest and least educated. Such qualities were akin to his own being. At all times he sparkled with witty remarks, and as for tact, the times are without number when I have seen him display a discretion and dexterity of tact which belong only to the born diplomat. It was not tact in the common understanding of the term, but a keen sense of perceiving when to conciliate, when to hit hard, and when to stop. I have been present on occasions when his language has been so intemperate and severely sarcastic that I have expected as the only possible consequence an unpleasant dénouement; but his fine discernment, aided by undoubted skill and adroitness of speech, have produced a marvellous change, and I am convinced that the happy termination was only arrived at because of the tone of conviction in which he expressed himself. His words bore so plainly the stamp of unadulterated truth, that those who could not agree with him were captivated by his enthusiasm and earnestness. On the other hand, he was repelled by the frivolous tone with which the Parisians characteristically treated serious topics. There was a want of causality in them. His conception of the world with its duties and obligations was in complete contrast to theirs. Moreover, he felt they lacked true poetic sentiment. Their poesy was superficial. It was replete with grace and charm, nor was beauty occasionally wanting. But it did not well up from their hearts. They associated it closely with every action of life but it was more often the veneer than the thing itself that shone. And again, their proclivities were in favour of realism, whereas his own sentiments were entwined round a poetic ideal. It was during this Paris period that the aspiration for the ideal burst forth with an intensity that never afterwards dimmed. The longing for the ideal was no new sensation. Flashes had been observed earlier at Leipzic when under the fascination of Beethoven’s symphonies, but, ambition, love of fame, and a not unnatural youthful desire to acquire wealth had diverted him from the ideal to the real, and it was not till saddened with disappointments and sorely tried in the crucible of misfortune that he emerged purified, with a vision of his ideal beautified and enthroned on high, resolved henceforth never to tire in his efforts to achieve his purpose.

THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT.

I should not omit to refer to certain observations Wagner made upon the military and police element in these early Paris years. He was a keen scrutinizer of men and manners, and failed not to observe the power wielded by the army. The French were a pageant-loving people, but were heavily burdened to maintain their large military force. Poverty was a natural result, and bitter feelings were engendered towards a government which employed the army as an awe-inspiring power towards peaceful citizens. Though the soldier was drawn from the people, yet as the unit of an army he came to be regarded as an enemy of his class. Nor was Wagner more satisfied with the police. He said he never could be brought to regard them as custodians of the peace and protectors of the rights of citizens. Instead of being well-disposed, they assumed a hostile attitude towards civilians. Perhaps these may seem items of no great importance, but to me the shrewd, perceptive Wagner of 1840-41, with his revolt against an overbearing military and police is the father of the revolutionist of 1848. It is but a short space of seven years.

With all its attendant suffering and weariness Wagner was accustomed to regard his first sojourn in Paris as the most eventful period of his life in the cause of art. There he burnt the ships of the youthful aspirant for public renown. Worldly tribulation tried and proved him, and the art genius emerged from the conflict purified and strengthened. As he says in his short autobiographical sketch, “The spirit of revolution took possession of me once forever.” As it is not an uncommon fact in history that great events have often been brought about by most trifling incidents, so now did the first step in this wondrous development arise out of an apparently unimportant conversation to which I shall shortly refer. He had come to Paris sustained by an over-sanguine conviction of compelling French admiration by a rich display of its own art proclivities. Omitting for the moment his “Faust” overture, he first completed “Rienzi,” in the all-spectacular spirit suited to the grand opera house. Then, as far as actual production went, ensued nearly a year of sterility, only to be followed by the advent of the poetic ideal which, when once cherished, was never afterwards cast aside. It was the poet who was now asserting his power. Poesy was claiming its birthright with the tonal art, and as the holy union of the twin arts manifested itself before his seer-like vision, so the artist, Wagner, the creator of a music whose every phase glows with the blood of life, so the poet-musician clearly perceiving his ideal, strove towards its attainment and never abated his efforts to realize his object, nor turned aside from its pursuit.

It is a matter of vast interest to learn how he was led in this direction. Some months after he had been in Paris, with little prospect of obtaining a hearing at the grand opera house, and suffering the keenest pangs of poverty, he heard the “Ninth Symphony” at the Conservatoire. He had heard it years ago, but now its story, its “programme,” was clear before him. He too would write a symphony. He would speak the feelings within him, and music should be a “reality” and not the language of mysticism.

“EINE FAUST” OVERTURE.

Overburdened with such feelings as these, a few days later he entered the music shop of Schlesinger. There was news for him. The publisher had a proposition which he thought promised well for Wagner. Deeply interested in his penniless, enthusiastic compatriot, he had almost brought to a successful conclusion an arrangement by which Wagner was to write a piece for a boulevard theatre. The conditions were that the trifle should be light and showy, nothing serious, but attractive. Such an offer at any other period prior to this, Wagner said he would have gladly welcomed. The time, however, was inopportune. Unfortunately for him, but to the incalculable gain of the art, just now he was under the magnetic influence of the “Ninth Symphony.” He seems to have burst into an uncontrollable onslaught upon the trivialities that ruled the French stage. He would have none of them. Music now for him was a “blessed reality,” and the hollow fictions of the boulevard theatres were unworthy of a true artist. Schlesinger reasoned with him, urged the wisdom of accepting the offer, though at the same time uncompromising in his demand that the proposed piece must not be serious, and must be written to suit the tastes of the uneducated public. But Wagner was not to be won over, quoting the dictum of Schiller, a great favourite with him, that “the artist should not be the bantling of his period, but its teacher.” No arrangement come to, Wagner went home. It was raining heavily. Excited and wet through, he talked wildly to Minna, the result being that he was put to bed with a severe attack of erysipelas. Brooding over his position, angered with the world and himself, caring not for life, his thoughts reverted to the “Ninth Symphony,” and he, with the energy of a sick, strong-willed man, resolved to write forthwith that which should be the expression of his pent-up rage with the world, and, as by magic, he fell upon the story of Faust. To Wagner, then, as to the aged student, “Life was a burden, and death a desired consummation.” And so he plunged with his woes thick upon him into the composition, superscribing his work with the words of Faust:—

Thou God, who reigns within my heart,
Alone can touch my soul.

HEINE’S “FLYING DUTCHMAN.”

While writing this, Wagner told me, that then for the first time did music speak to him in plain language. The subjects poured hot out of his heart as molten metal from a furnace. It was not music he wrote, but the sorrows of his soul that transformed themselves into sounds. His illness lasted for about a week, the erysipelas attacking his face and head. The forced reflection upon the past that his confinement induced was bitter, but his floating ideas about the poetic drama were cemented. That sick-chamber was the hothouse of the “romantic” Wagner. There the revolutionary views first gathered strength and the germs of the “art of the future” consolidated themselves. All his thoughts and feelings upon the future he communicated to his gentle nurse, Minna, who was always a ready listener to his seemingly random talk. This quality of “a good listener,” of always lending a sympathetic ear, was perhaps more soothing and valuable than a criticising, discerning companion might have been to him, especially during his days of sickness. He had also another ever-ready and attentive auditor, his dog, the companion of his voyage from Riga to London and thence to Paris. How fond he was of that dumb brute! The innumerable times he addressed it as if it were a human being! And Wagner was not forgetful of its memory. During the worst hours of want he wrote for a newspaper a short story entitled, “The end of a German Musician in Paris”; in that one sees with what affection he regarded his devoted friend. The principal character in this realistic romance is himself, whom he causes to die through starvation. In that the sorrow and suffering endured by Wagner are set forth in a manner that touches one to the quick. As soon as he was sufficiently recovered, he did not, as the majority of natures would have done, rest from all active mental work, but at once vigorously attacked his unfinished “Rienzi,” the remaining acts of which were completed by the end of the year 1840. A curious fate Wagner’s. He had embarked upon a hazardous voyage to the French capital with the view of producing “Rienzi” there, and yet no sooner was the work quite finished than he despatched it to Germany, hoping to get it performed at Dresden. A glance at the music reveals the gulf that separates the Wagner of the first two acts—composed before he came to Paris—from the writer of the remaining three. Yet another composition, a complete opera, was given to the world in Paris in the end of 1841. It has the unique distinction of being the work of Wagner that occupied the shortest time in writing. From the time of its inception—I am now speaking only of the music—to its completion, about seven weeks sufficed for the work. The poem had been completed some months earlier. He had submitted “Rienzi” to the director of the grand opera, who gave him no tangible hope of its being accepted, but promised to do his best in producing a shorter opera by him. This engagement on the part of the director, though not couched in unequivocal terms, was not to be allowed to drop. Wagner went to Heine and discussed the situation. Among the subjects proposed for an opera was Heine’s own treatment of the romantic legend of “The Flying Dutchman” and his spectral crew. The story was not new to Wagner. He had heard it for the first time from the lips of the sailors on his voyage to London. Then it had impressed him. Now it took hold of him.

How this legend of the ill-fated mariner came to form the basis of an opera text is curious and interesting. There are few, perhaps, who have any notions from what crude material the significant “Dutchman,” as we know it, was fashioned.

There existed in England, and a copy can still be obtained from French, the Strand theatrical publisher, a melodramatic burlesque by Fitzball, a prolific writer for the English stage, entitled “Vanderdecken, or The Phantom Ship.” To mention the names of three of the original dramatis personae, Captain Peppersal, the father of the Senta, Von Swiggs, a drunken Dutchman in love with Senta, and Smutta, a black servant, the character and mode of treatment of the story will be at once perceived. Vanderdecken retains much of the legendary lore with which we are accustomed to surround him, except that Fitzball causes him occasionally to appear and disappear in blue and red fire. Vanderdecken too is under a spell; the utterance of a single word though it be joy at his acceptance by Senta, will consign him again to his terrible fate for another thousand years.

WAGNER’S “FLYING DUTCHMAN.”

It was a perusal of this medley, of the spectral and burlesque, which led Heine to treat the story after his own heart, and it was the discussion with the poet that determined Wagner in his choice of subject. The libretto was finished and delivered to the director, who, whilst expressing entire satisfaction at the work, only asked its price so that he might deliver it to a composer to whom a text had been promised, and whose opera had the next right of being accepted. The poem was not sold, and Wagner turned again to his “arranging” drudgery. Later, however, he retook his text. The subject-legend was in the highest manner adapted for musical treatment. Whilst writing the poem he had felt in a very different mood than when writing the “Rienzi” text. In the latter, his object was a story so arranged as would admit of the then orthodox operatic treatment with its set forms of solos, choruses, ensembles, etc., etc. Wagner was a man of thought. He did not perform things in a haphazard manner. He saw his mark and flew to it. The historic opera, he reasoned, demanded a precise and careful treatment of detail incidents. This was not the province of music. The tonal art was a medium for the expression of feelings, to illustrate the workings of the heart. Now with legend the conditions are entirely opposite to those demanded by the historic opera. It is of no consequence among what people a particular legend originated. Place and period are equally unimportant. Romantic legends possess this superlative advantage over historical subjects; no matter when the period, or where the place, or who the people, the legends are invested with none of the trammelling conditions of nationality or epoch, but treat exclusively of that which is human. This is an immense gain to both poet and musician. By this process of reasoning, Wagner gradually came to exclude word-repetition. In the “Dutchman” much verbal reiteration is still indulged in; but the story and treatment show us the real Wagner of the future.

As to the composition of the music, I have heard so much from Wagner on this particular opera, to convince me that, though it occupied but a few weeks, it was not done without much careful thought. The scaffolding upon which it was constructed is very clear. Indeed, the “make” of the whole work is most transparent. There are three chief subjects. (1) Senta’s song, (2) Sailor’s and (3) Spinning chorus, and those have been woven into an organic whole by thoughtful work.

In the summer of 1866, I was sitting with Wagner at dinner in his house at Munich. It chanced that the conversation turned upon the weary mariner, his yearning for land and love, and Wagner’s own longing for his fatherland at the time he composed the “Dutchman,” when going to a piano that stood near him, he said, “The pent-up anguish, the homesickness that then held complete possession of me, were poured out in this phrase,”—playing the short cadence of two bars thrice repeated that preludes Vanderdecken’s recital to Daland of his woeful wanderings. “At the end of the phrase, on the diminished seventh, in my mind I paused and brooded over the past, the repetitions, each higher, interpreting the increased intensity of my sufferings,” and, Wagner went on, that with each note he originally intended that Vanderdecken should move but one step, and move only in time with the music. Now this careful premeditated tonal working in the young man of twenty-eight is indicative, as much as any portion of Wagner is, of his style, a word of pregnant meaning when used in relation to Wagner’s works.

HE LEAVES PARIS.

The “Dutchman” was written at Mendon, a village about five miles from Paris. It was composed at the piano. This incident is of importance, since for several months he had not written a note, and knew not whether he still possessed the power of composing. He had left Paris because of the noise and bustle, and to his horror discovered that his new landlord was a collector of musical instruments, so there was little likelihood of securing the quietude he so much desired. When the work was finished, conscious that realistic France was not the place where he could produce his poetic ideal, he despatched it to Meyerbeer, then in Germany, whose aid he solicited in getting it performed. Replies were not encouraging. Meanwhile, sorely harassed how to provide life’s necessities, he sold, under pressure, his manuscript of the poem for £20.

The sole ray of hope, the one chance of rescue from this sad plight, lay in “Rienzi.” It had been accepted at Dresden and in the spring of 1842 he was informed that it was about to be put into preparation and his presence would be desirable. He therefore left Paris for Germany after nearly three years of absence.

CHAPTER XI.
DRESDEN, 1842-1843.

FROM now begins a new epoch in Wagner’s life. The call he had received from Dresden filled him with delirious joy. The world was not large enough to hold him. He trod on air. That Dresden, the hallowed scene of Weber’s labours, possessing the then first theatre in Germany, famed alike for its productions, style, and artists, should accept his work, and request his presence to supervise the rehearsals, was an acknowledgment which transformed, as by magic, a sombre, cruel outlook into a gloriously bright and warm future.

He was very sanguine of succeeding with “Rienzi.” It was completely in the style of the foreign operas then in vogue among his countrymen. Germany had no opera of her own. Mozart and Gluck both composed in the French and Italian style, and Meyerbeer, the then ruler of the German operatic stage, fashioned his popular works on the spectacular style of the grand French opera. “Rienzi” was spectacular, with plenty of the same description of material as “Les Huguenots.” So Wagner’s hopes ran high, and a vista of happiness spread itself before him as an enchanted fairy-land.

THE CHOSEN OF DRESDEN.

With joy he took leave of Schlesinger and his few Parisian intimates, and set out for Germany, his fatherland. His fatherland! what a sea of tumultuous feelings did that thought of returning home produce in him. He was going back a conqueror. The creative artist was at last recognized; he was rescued from desperate distress at the very moment it seemed as if he were going to succumb to the conflict. It is difficult to at all thoroughly understand what Wagner went through after he had been summoned to Germany. The transformation scene in his life’s drama was taking place. Again and again has he expatiated upon it with an honesty characteristic of him, and with a volubility that laid bare all his heart’s hopes and emotions at the time.

Paris had not accepted him. He came, he saw, but had not conquered. His soul had swelled with artistic ambition; he was enthusiastic, desiring a platform from which to expound his cherished tenets; and Paris ignored him, treated his projects and himself as nought, and for all it cared, he might have perished unheeded, with none but his dog to mourn his loss. And now, from an unacknowledged artist, he was the chosen of celebrated Dresden, still warm with the inspired accents of his “beloved” Weber. Well might he become delirious with joy.

His homeward journey was full of happy incident and profit. He heard his native language again as the common tongue. Of German as a language Wagner was always enamoured. He possessed a large vocabulary himself, was a poet of no mean rank, and had always a wealth of illustration ready at command. Now to hear German spoken about him was delight. He was in a happy frame, ready to be touched with whatever he saw. The Rhine unusually excited him. In later years, when writing of the period, he tells us that at sight of the Rhine he vowed eternal fidelity to his country. He remarked to me, in his poetic language, that its eddying wavelets seemed to be telling him its legends, and dolefully inquiring, Why did you leave us? He was happy to come home. His escape from feverish, sensuous Paris, to his healthy, honest fatherland, was, to use his own graphic analogy, as Tannhäuser emerging from the Venus grotto to breathe the invigorating, bracing atmosphere of the German mountains. It was the awakening from an oppressive nightmare. The unvarnished straightforwardness of the German character welcomed him with the affection of fond parents. With all its rude plainness and stolidity, he loved the German mind. It was sincere, true, and made the French courteous polish, which he had just quitted, seem as a thing unreal, a lacquer, an affection that became offensive.

The return of Wagner and his wife to Dresden was particularly agreeable to the latter. In Dresden, she had a reputation as an actress, though not in the first rank, yet she was somebody, and would be so recognized. Besides, there she could have the respect paid to her due to the wife of the composer of “Rienzi.” Poor Minna! what a patient and gentle woman she was. To hear her unaffected talk of the change in her own position, on their coming to live in Dresden, was touching, indeed. In Paris she had been a drudge, and no one knew but Wagner the half of her heroism, self-denial, and suffering. Now for her, too, the horizon was clearing, and it was with difficulty that she endeavoured to restrain the overflowing hopefulness of Richard. But he would not be repressed, and on nearing Dresden the two who had suffered together consoled and encouraged each other with visions of prospective prosperity.

A VISIT TO REISSIGER.

A change of scene was always conducive to happiness in Wagner. For the first few days he visited well-remembered spots. He had a veritable passion for at once setting off to see familiar places. The joy of Dresden homely life contrasted with the Paris mode of living, acted like a charm on him. His spirits were at their best, his health good, and the kindly greetings he met everywhere worked together to make him thoroughly enjoy life. His sister Rosalie, the actress, was dead, so that all that was really known of him when he came to Dresden was that he was born at Leipzic, had been educated at the Dresden Schule, and had wholly written and composed two operas, and was the brother of the late Rosalie Wagner.

One of his first visits was to Reissiger, chief conductor at the Royal Opera (where Wagner’s “Rienzi” was to be performed), and of the Royal Chapel. Reissiger was some fifteen years older than Richard Wagner. He had been trained in the school of strict fugue and counterpoint at Leipzic, and as a musician was prolific and clever, but lacked poetical inspiration and intellectual power. He was eminently a professor. He received Wagner politely, praised the “Rienzi,” the score of which he knew, but with it all maintained an attitude of reserve. Wagner, who was on the best terms with himself and the world, ready to embrace everybody, was cooled by his reception, and felt that he could never be intimate with Reissiger, who occupied the greater part of their first interview with complaints about his own non-success on the operatic stage, all of which he peevishly attributed to the shortcomings of the libretti.

If, however, Wagner was disappointed with his probable standing with Reissiger, he was amply compensated by the warmth and spontaneity of Fischer’s greeting. Fischer was stage manager and chorus director. He was a musician of superior attainments, a man of sound reflection, and felt that theirs was to be a friendship for life. He was enthusiastic about “Rienzi,” foretold a certain success, and showed his earnestness by untiring activity in training the chorus, so important in the new work. He proved of invaluable service to Wagner by describing the character and temperament of the many individuals connected with the theatre with whom he would come into contact.

There was yet another friend who affectionately greeted Wagner. Tichatschek, the “Rienzi” of the forthcoming performance. Tichatschek was of heroic stature, finely proportioned, and dignified in bearing. He was enraptured with his part. He saw in it one which fitted him to perfection, both as to physical appearance and vocal powers, which, in his case, were strong and enduring.

A passing cloud was the absence of the “Adriano,” his womanly ideal, Schroeder-Devrient. But she soon came to Dresden and was present at the “Rienzi” rehearsals. Wagner related to her the episode of the Dreadnought, and the fate of her precious gift, the snuff-box, when she pleasantly rejoined that “Rienzi” would produce him a shower of golden snuff-boxes from all the potentates of Germany, so convinced was she of its success.

PRODUCTION OF “RIENZI.”

“Rienzi” was performed at the end of 1842. An unquestioned success, everybody enthusiastic, the orchestra played with an energy that went quite beyond the phlegmatic Reissiger who conducted. Apart from the effective situations, the well-treated story and verve with which the chief characters worked, there is no doubt that a great portion of the success was due to the splendid appearance of Tichatschek. Commanding in stature and clad in glittering armour, possessing a powerful voice which he used to advantage, the audience were enraptured with the hero and cheered him lustily. The processions, the conflagrations, and all those stage effects so skilfully calculated by Wagner and intended for the grand opera house, Paris, appealed to the spectacle-loving portion of the playgoers. The plot, the revolt of an oppressed people, was unquestionably in harmony with the spirit of the period, for revolution was in the air; all over Germany there were disquieting signs. It has often been suggested that “Rienzi” was a confession of faith of Wagner’s political, so-called revolutionary, principles, and was a forecast of the democratic storm of 1848, but it need scarcely be said that it was mere coincidence.

I have now arrived at the time when my own acquaintance with Richard Wagner began. It was in the beginning of the spring of 1843. Wagner had been appointed in January of that year co-chief conductor at the opera with Reissiger, but the superiority of his intellectual and artistic abilities over the homespun plebeian Reissiger soon gave him the first position in Dresden. Their second in command was August Roeckel. Roeckel was my most intimate friend. We were of the same age, and had but one judgment upon music. He was the nephew of Nepomuck Hummel and possessed much of the talent of that celebrated pianist. He was also a composer of merit; indeed, it was by reason of the sound musicianly skill displayed in his opera “Farinelli” that he was appointed second music director at Dresden, similarly as Wagner had been appointed chief director through the success of “Rienzi.” The director of the opera had accepted “Farinelli” and announced a performance, but so dazzled was Roeckel by the brilliancy of Wagner’s genius that he withdrew “Farinelli” and would under no circumstances permit its production. This act of self-effacement accurately paints the character of the over-modest man. Between Wagner and Roeckel the closest intimacy sprang up. Through all that stormy period of the revolution, Wagner thought and spoke of none other as he did of Roeckel. They were twin souls. For range of knowledge, active intelligence, and similarity of thought, Wagner had met with no one more congenial to him, and, I must add, none worshipped Wagner as August Roeckel did. He had resided in London and Paris, and the literature of both countries was as familiar to him as that of his native land. The first description I had of Richard Wagner was from August Roeckel. I had such complete confidence in his perception and judgment that I was at once won over to Wagner’s side by the tone of hero-worship that pervaded the letter. Happily it has been preserved and I now reproduce it:—

INFLUENCE OF ROECKEL.

At last fortune smiles on me. Think, I have been appointed Sachsischer music director, at the head of the most celebrated orchestra of Germany, no longer doomed to give lessons, my horror and abomination. “Farinelli,” after all, was the right thing, but what chiefly reminds me of your perspicacity was the encouragement in regard to my pianoforte playing. Now that is of the greatest importance in helping me to establishing a name here. It was but natural that I doubted my gift as a pianist, when Edward (his brother) was the favourite of uncle “Hummel,” but when at Vienna, I remembered your prophecy, and worked at the piano harder than ever, and now it stands me in good stead. Henceforth, I drop myself into a well, because I am going to speak of the man whose greatness overshadows that of all other men I have met, either in France or England,—our new friend, Richard Wagner. I say advisedly, our friend, for he knows you from my description as well as I do. You cannot imagine how the daily intercourse with him develops my admiration for his genius. His earnestness in art is religious; he looks upon the drama as the pulpit from which the people should be taught, and his views on a combination of the different arts for that purpose opens up an exciting theory, as new as it is ideal. You would love him, aye, worship him as I do, for to gigantic powers of intellect he unites the sportive playfulness of a child. I have a great advantage over him in piano-playing. It seems strange, but his playing is ludicrously defective; so much so, that when anything is to be tried I take the piano and my sight-reading seems to please him vastly.

Dresden, March, 1843.

My correspondence with August Roeckel was at this period a large one. He had a religious reverence for the gift, intellectual attainments, and eloquence of his new friend, topics which constitute the main theme of his letters. That Roeckel had an equal sway over Wagner in another direction, viz. politics, arose, too, from that same earnest enthusiasm, the parent of Wagner’s own successful art efforts. It is necessary that I should explain that Roeckel was Wagner’s shadow. They were inseparable, visiting each other during the day and at the theatre together at night. They had, so Wagner told me afterwards, a life in common. He was as much fired by Roeckel’s wealth of literary lore, his heroic notions of life and duty, and the claim of a people to be well governed, as Roeckel was sympathetic and appreciative of those art theories which, according to Wagner, formed the upper stratum of man’s existence. Roeckel’s view is therefore the judgment of Wagner’s other self, and as such has a right of existence here. It is full of warm interest about Wagner, who, in later years, greatly enjoyed the perusal of the correspondence. The absolute worship of Roeckel for his chief shows itself in the following letter written under the influence of early relations:—

I have the most affectionate letter from Bamberg. They want me back there, offer me greater advantages, urging that I was the first and only conductor there, whilst at Dresden I am but second. But can they understand to whom I am second? Such a man as Richard Wagner I never yet met, and you know I am not inclined to Caesar’s maxim, that it were better to be the first in a village than the second in Rome. I have begun to rescore my opera under Wagner’s supervision; his frank criticism has opened my eyes to some very important instrumental defects. His notions of scoring are most novel, most daring, and altogether marvellous; but not more so than his elevated notions about the high purpose of the dramatic art; indeed, they foreshadow a new era in the history of art.

Dresden.

BERLIOZ AND WAGNER.

An incident of interest in the first part of 1843 was a visit of Hector Berlioz to Wagner. The great Frenchman came to hear “Rienzi.” Satisfied he was not; about the only number that he thought meritorious was the prayer. With the “Dutchman,” which he also heard, he was even still less contented. He complained of the excess of instrumentation. This is curious, to put it gently, that a composer who employs four orchestras with twelve kettledrums in one work, whose own scoring is noted for excessive employment of means, should make such a charge. It is inexplicable. The truth is, Berlioz was jealous of Wagner. Roeckel had been intimate with Berlioz in Paris. The father of Roeckel was the impressario who introduced the first complete German opera troupe to Paris and London. He had been an intimate friend of Beethoven, had impersonated “Florestan” in “Fidelio,” and, indeed, had been tutored by the composer for the tenor part. The elder Roeckel’s company included Schroeder-Devrient when he went to Paris. August Roeckel was therefore well known to Berlioz, and Schroeder-Devrient, having travelled with Roeckel’s father, and being known intimately by August, was also a link between Wagner and himself. When, therefore, Berlioz came to Dresden, August was delighted, and was always present at the friendly meetings of the two composers. He wrote to me that their meetings were embarrassed. Wagner was first attracted, but the cold, austere, though always polished demeanour of Berlioz checked Wagner’s enthusiasm. He had the air of patronizing Wagner; his speech was bitter, freezing the boisterous expansiveness of Wagner. At times the conversation was so strained that Roeckel was of opinion that Berlioz intentionally slighted Wagner. The more they were together, the less they appeared to understand each other; and yet, notwithstanding the fastidious criticism, the constant fault-finding of Berlioz, he took pains to arrange meetings with Wagner, naturally fascinated by the vigour with which Wagner discussed art.

CHAPTER XII.
1843-1844.

A TOUCH OF HIS HUMOUR.

However inclined the Dresden musical press may have been to be captious and antagonistic towards Wagner, there were certain decided evidences of gifts whose existence they could not deny, and which they were reluctantly compelled to acknowledge, in spite of their openly pronounced hostility. The rehearsing and conducting of “Rienzi” and the “Dutchman” had established Wagner’s reputation as a conductor of unusual ability. “But,” said his censorious critics, “that proves nothing, for he worked with heart and soul to secure success, just because the operas were his own. Wait until he is called upon to produce a classic; then we shall see.” They had not to wait long. Within a month, Gluck’s “Armide” and Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” were performed under his bâton. His reading of both was original. He had, first, his individual conception of the opera as an organic art work, and then very pronounced views as to the manner in which each should be studied and performed. He spared not the orchestra. This not unnaturally created among the less intelligent some amount of irritation. Custom had sanctioned a certain slovenly rendering, and they revolted at the revolutionary spirit of the new conductor. But the openly expressed appreciation of the unquestioned abilities of the conductor by the leading members of the orchestra, was not without effect upon the malcontents. The friction did not last long; a marked improvement was felt by all, and Wagner’s irrepressible animal spirits and jocularity won over even the drudges. I have it from August Roeckel, his colleague at the desk, that the intelligent members of the orchestra idolized Wagner, and never wearied under his bâton.

Wagner was possessed of a keen sense of euphonic balance. The predominance of one section of the orchestra over another, except where specially required to produce certain effects, he would not tolerate, be the defaulting instrument ever so difficult to control. On one occasion the trombones were excessively noisy at a “Rienzi” rehearsal in the overture, where they should accompany the violins piano. Their braying aroused Wagner’s anger; however, with ready wit, instead of a reproof, a joke, and turning good-humouredly to the culprits, he laughingly said, “Gentlemen, if I mistake not, we are in Dresden, and not marching round Jericho, where your ancestors, strong of lung, blew down the city walls.” The humour of the admonition was not lost, and after a moment’s general hilarity Wagner obtained the desired effect.

SPOHR’S KINDLY DEED.

Wagner was a born disciplinarian. He held the orchestra completely in the palm of his hand. The members were so many pawns which he moved at will, responding to his slightest expressed wish. The rigid enforcement of his will upon the players became talked of outside the doors of the theatre. The critics could not understand why he should wish to change the order of things, have a greater number and longer rehearsals than any one else, and have the works performed in his heterodox way; and so, they first ridiculed him, and then uncompromisingly attacked him, attacks which, it is regrettable to add, lasted all the years he remained in Dresden. But for all this, he was not to be deterred from his purpose. He knew what he wanted, and meant to have it, and in this Wagner has again and again acknowledged to me his indebtedness to August Roeckel, who so ably seconded his chief. According to Wagner’s notions the masterpieces of German musicians could never be properly understood by the music-loving public, owing to their imperfect and faulty rendering under conductors who were so many automaton time-beaters. Great works of all descriptions were produced in a styleless manner, no regard, indeed, but very little effort, being made to discover the intention of the composer. All were rendered in the same pointless manner. This was revolting to his sense of artistic probity, therefore when he held the office of conductor he altered this almost dishonest state of things, for it was dishonest not to seek to reproduce a composer’s intention. Thus the works of all masters suffered. Therefore Wagner made it a rule that whatever he conducted should be, when possible, entirely committed to memory. His earnestness became infectious, until players and singers became animated by one feeling. They felt that he, at the desk, was as much a worker as any of them, and the result was a performance hitherto unknown for perfection. It happened, therefore, that when “Don Giovanni” was given, according to his feelings and as he willed it, the critics fell upon him fiercely, going so far even as to declare he did not understand Mozart, so unexpectedly new did they find his conception. The contest waged hotly. A large and important body of directors of art opinion selected the phlegmatic Reissiger as their idol, and lauded him indiscriminately. It is, to say the least, strange that there should have been found any one to prefer a man of the diminutive talents of Reissiger to Richard Wagner. The former was a pure mechanic, respectable in his way, but completely overshadowed by the mighty genius of Wagner. This study of conductors and conducting was a phase of his art to which Wagner devoted much careful thought, embodying at a later period his views in a pamphlet on the subject, which will be found invaluable by orchestral conductors of every degree.

An incident of this year, 1843, his first at Dresden, to which Wagner referred with pleasure, was the performance of the “Dutchman” at Cassel by Spohr. It was done entirely on its merits, without any solicitation from Wagner, the pleasure being intensified by reason of the ripe age of the conductor and his well-known reverence for the orthodox. Spohr was sixty-nine, and Richard Wagner thirty. Wagner felt and expressed himself as deeply touched at the interest a musician of such opposite tendencies should take in his work, particularly, too, on receiving later a letter from Spohr expressing the delight he experienced on making the acquaintance of a young artist who showed in all he did such earnestness and striving after truth. When Wagner related this to me, wondering at the curious contradiction in Spohr’s character, I remarked that the solution seemed to lie in the gentle, almost effeminate nature of Spohr, which found its completion in the robust, manly vigour of Wagner’s own conceptions.

How Spohr could have been attracted by Wagner, and repulsed by the “last period” of Beethoven, is a contradiction difficult to account for; but that it existed is beyond doubt, for the last time he was in London, about 1850-51, I put the question direct to him whether it was true, as asserted, that he had stigmatized the third period of Beethoven as “barbarous music,” to which he promptly and emphatically replied, “Yes, I do think it barbarous music.” After the performance at Cassel, Wagner endeavoured to get the “Dutchman” accepted elsewhere, but signally failed; from Munich, where a quarter of a century later he was to be the ruling spirit, came the discouraging response that “it was not German enough,” though the composer thought this its distinguishing merit.

HIS PECULIAR DRESS.

The acrimoniously bitter attacks that were made upon Wagner, during his first year at Dresden, increased in poignancy, as he showed himself uncontrolled by custom’s laws. He affected a careless, defiant attitude towards all criticism, whereas he was abnormally sensitive to journalistic opinion. He could scoff, play the cynic, treat his opponent with derisive scorn, but it was all simulated; the iron entered into his soul, and he chafed and grew irritable under it. It was as though he suffered a bodily castigation. He brooded over the attacks, and there can be no doubt that they caused him moments of acute pain. It is true that in combat he could parry and thrust with as much vigour as his opponents; that the sting of his reproof was as torturing as any he suffered; perhaps even that his assaults were more annihilating than the occasion demanded; yet with it all, though he emerged from the contest victorious, he suffered deeply, acutely. There can be no doubt that the genesis of this hostile criticism was directed more against the man than his art work, and that wounded personality played an important part in it. Richard Wagner was seen to be a man of artistic taste, with proclivities which were exhibited in his domestic surroundings, novel, perhaps, to the somewhat heavy Dresdenites. First, Wagner’s attire was different from that of the ordinary individual. He persisted in wearing in the house a velvet dressing-gown and a biretta, truly an uncommon head-gear. His apartments were asserted to be upholstered luxuriously. And in these things the art critics (?) saw a target for ridicule and sarcasm. Now that his apartments were furnished in a costly manner is absolutely untrue. Wagner had a keen appreciation of the beautiful, and loved tasty decoration, but it was secured at the minimum of cost. The thrifty Minna contrived and invented, to gratify Wagner’s fancies, at an outlay which does credit to German thrift. And yet there were found Dresden journals that went so far as to discuss his mode of living, attributing all the apparent extravagance to gratification of an over-rated self-esteem, the appeasing of an inordinate vanity.

A year of vexation! a year of consolidation was 1844! From Wagner I have often heard it: “My failures were the stepping-stones to success”; and this year, when the hot blood of ambition coursed violently through his youthful veins, when he aimed as high as the heavens, and met with failures everywhere, when directors of German opera houses returned his scores “unopened” or pronounced them unripe and lacking in melody, truly, it was an epoch of bitter disappointment. Attacked relentlessly by journalistic hacks, imbued with the bitter feeling that he was the rejected of his countrymen; that for him there was not a glimmer of hope of success on the German stage, and yet convinced of his own exceptional gifts, and the living truth of the mission he was destined to accomplish, he, broken down in spirit, angered with the world, and fractious with himself, retired from all intercourse with his fellow-men, shunned society as the plague, appeared at the Dresden theatre only when absolutely necessary, and went into seclusion, accessible to none except August Roeckel. Of this gloomy period, and the devotion of his friend, Wagner has left it on record. “I left the world, retired from public life, and lived in the closest communion with one intimate companion only, one friend, who was so full of sympathy for me, so wholly engrossed in my artistic development, that he ignored his own unquestioned talents, artistic instinct, and inventive powers, and cast to the winds his own chances of worldly success. This companion of my gloom was Roeckel.” In referring to his friend’s self-abnegation, Wagner evidently alludes to Roeckel’s opera, “Farinelli,” which the composer had withdrawn from the Dresden repertoire through excess of modesty, over-awed, as he was, by his conception of Richard Wagner’s genius.

HE PRODUCES “ARMIDE.”

This tribute to the constancy and humble workship of August Roeckel is not a whit too much. Roeckel idolized Wagner. The two men were the complement of each other; whilst the vivacious imagination of Wagner inspired admiration in Roeckel, the latter’s placid, closely-reasoned logic soothed the excitable poet-musician. All Roeckel’s letters to me of this period—and he was an excellent correspondent—might be summed up in the word “Wagner.” The minutest incidents of work and details of their conversations are related. This poor Roeckel suffered thirteen years imprisonment, from May, 1849, when his friend Wagner escaped. At the termination of his confinement, the two friends met with a warmth of affection difficult to describe. Seeing, then, the intimacy of the men during this year of retirement, it is the letters of August Roeckel which will supply the faithfullest record of Wagner’s life and work.

He tells me that Wagner spoke of himself as “one crying in the desert.” But few sympathized with him, his breaking away from the “Rienzi” period being frowned upon, but that through all disappointment Wagner’s inexhaustible animal spirits never left him. The following letter is dated March, 1844:—

Wagner has returned from Berlin, very morose in temper; the “Flying Dutchman” did not touch the scoffing Berliners, who certainly have less poetical feeling than most Germans; they only saw in Schroeder-Devrient a star, and in the touching drama an opera like other operas; yet they pose as profound art critics. Bah! they are simply stupid!

Since then we have had “Hans Heiling” and “Vampyr.” Wagner thinks much of Marschner’s natural gifts, but finds that his general intelligence is not on a level with his musical gifts, and that this is often painfully evident in his recourse to commonplace padding.... I wish you could have witnessed the work of the old Gluck “Armide,” most tenderly cared for by Wagner. I doubt that it ever was rendered with such reverence,—nay, not even in Paris. We have also had what Wagner considers the masterwork of Mendelssohn, “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” with which he also took considerable pains, although fully aware of the composer’s unfriendly feeling towards himself.