Cosima who went over the rôle with her, sometimes repeating a single
phrase a hundred times in order to assure the correct pronunciation of
one word. It taxed the singer to the utmost; but she found Wagner's
widow willing to work as long and as hard as she herself would. The
performance established Mme. Nordica as a Wagner singer. Despite the
criticisms that have been heaped upon Frau Wagner for assuming to set
herself up as the great conservator of Wagnerian traditions, it is
significant that when, some years later, Mme. Nordica decided to add
"Sieglinde" to her repertoire, but with no special purpose of singing it
at Bayreuth, she arranged with Frau Cosima to go over the rôle with her,
and in order to do so made a trip to Switzerland, where the former was
staying. So far as adding to her reputation was concerned, there was not
the slightest reason for Mme. Nordica to do this. That the American
prima donna elected to study with Frau Cosima shows that she must have
found Wagner's widow a woman of rare temperament.
Cosima was not Wagner's first love, nor even his first wife. For in
November, 1836, he had married Wilhelmina Planer, the leading actress of
the theatre in Magdeburg where he was musical director of opera. Her
father was a spindle-maker. It is said that her desire to earn money for
the household, rather than the impetus of a well-defined histrionic gift,
led her to go on the stage; but, once on the stage, she discovered that
she had unquestionable talent, and played leading characters in tragedy
and comedy with success.
Minna is described as handsome, but not strikingly so; of medium height
and slim figure, with "soft, gazelle-like eyes which were a faithful
index of a tender heart." Later, however, the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein
wrote to Liszt that she was too stout, but praised her management of the
household and her excellent cuisine. Her nature was the very opposite of
Wagner's. Where he was passionate, strong-willed and ambitious, she was
gentle, affectionate and retiring. Where he yearned for conquest, she
wanted only a well-regulated home. But she could not follow him in his
art theories, and as they assumed more definite shape she became less and
less able to comprehend them and, finally, they became almost a sealed
book to her.
[Illustration: Richard and Cosima Wagner.]
Doubtless, the ill success of "The Flying Dutchman" and "Tannhäuser,"
works which, after "Rienzi," puzzled people, engendered her first
misunderstanding of Wagner's genius. Some may be surprised that this
lack of appreciation did not bring about a separation sooner, instead of
after nearly a quarter of a century of married life. But when a man is
struggling with poverty, the woman who unobtrusively aids him in bearing
it is regarded by him as an angel of light, and the question as to
whether she appreciates his genius or not becomes a secondary one in the
struggle for existence.
But when at last there is some promise of success, some relief from
drudgery, and with it a little leisure for companionship--then, too,
there is opportunity for an estimate of intellectual quality. Then it is
that the man of genius discovers that the woman who has stood by him
through his poverty lacks the graces of mind necessary to his complete
happiness, and the self-sacrificing wife who has been his drudge, in
order that he might the better meet want, and who has perhaps lost her
youth and her looks in his service, is forgotten for some one else. The
worst of it is that the world forgets her and all she has done for the
great man in her quiet, uncomplaining way. The drudge never finds a page
in the "Loves of the Poets." The woman who comes in and reaps where the
other has sown, does.
Wagner's friend, Ferdinand Praeger, has much to say of Minna's fine
qualities. But he also tells several anecdotes which completely
illustrate how absolutely she failed to comprehend Wagner's genius and
ambition. Praeger visited them in their "trimly kept Swiss chalet" in
Zurich in the summer of 1856. One day when Praeger and Minna were seated
at the luncheon table waiting for Wagner, who was scoring the "Nibelung,"
to come down from his study, she asked: "Now, honestly, is Richard really
such a great genius?" Remember that this question was asked about the
composer of "The Flying Dutchman," "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin." If she
was unable to discover his genius in these, how could she be expected to
follow its loftier flights in his later works?
On another occasion when Wagner was complaining that the public did not
understand him, she said: "Well, Richard, why don't you write something
for the gallery?" So little did she understand the man whose genius was
founded upon unswerving devotion to artistic truth.
During Praeger's visit, a former singer at the Magdeburg opera and her
two daughters called on Wagner. They sang the music of the
Rhine-daughters from "Rheingold." When they finished singing, Minna
asked Praeger: "Is it really as beautiful as you say? It does not seem
so to me, and I'm afraid it would not sound so to others."
While, as can be shown from passages in his correspondence, Wagner
appreciated the homely virtues of his first wife, and never, even after
they had separated, allowed a word to be spoken against her, the last
years of their married life were stormy. She had been tried beyond her
strength, and, not sharing her husband's enormous confidence in his
artistic powers, she had not the stimulus of his faith in his ultimate
success to sustain her. Moreover a heart trouble with which she was
afflicted resulted, through the strain to which their uncertain material
condition subjected her, in a growing irritability which was accentuated
by jealousy of women who entered the growing circle of Wagner's admirers
as his genius began to be appreciated.
The crisis came in 1858, when they separated, Minna retiring to Dresden.
Two years later, when Wagner was ill in Paris, she went there and nursed
him, but they separated again. An interesting fact, not generally known,
is that, in 1862, when Wagner was in Biebrich on the Rhine composing his
"Meistersinger," Minna came from Dresden as a surprise to pay him a
visit--evidently an effort to effect a reconciliation. Wendelin
Weissheimer, a conductor at the opera in Mayeuse on the opposite bank of
the river and a close friend of Wagner's at that time, has left an
enlightening record of the episode.
Wagner, he says, "the heaven-storming genius, who knew no bounds, tried
to play the rôle of Hausvater--of loving husband and comforter. He had
some cold edibles brought in from the hotel, made tea, and himself boiled
half a dozen eggs. [What a picture! The composer of 'Tristan' boiling
eggs!] Afterwards he put on one of his familiar velvet dressing-gowns and
a fitting barretta, and proceeded to read aloud the book of 'Die
Meistersinger.'
"The first act passed off without mishap save for some unnecessary
questions from Minna. But at the beginning of the second act, when he
had described the stage-setting--'to the right the cobbler shop of Hans
Sachs; to the left,' etc.,--Minna exclaimed:
"'And here sits the audience!' at the same time letting a bread-ball roll
over Wagner's manuscript. That ended the reading."
The visit of course was futile. Minna returned to Dresden, where she
died in 1866. Poor Minna! A good cook, but she did not appreciate his
genius, would seem to sum up her story. Yet it is but just that we
should pay at least a passing salute to this woman who was the love of
Wagner's youth and the drudge of his middle life, and who, from the
distance of her lonely separation, saw him basking in the favor of the
king, who, too late for her, had become his munificent patron.--What a
contrast between her fate and Cosima's!
[Illustration: Richard and Cosima Wagner entertaining in their home
Wahnfried, Liszt, and Hans von Wolzogen. Painting by W. Beckmann.]
Were it not for Liszt's letters, meagre would be the information
regarding Cosima before her marriage to Wagner. But by going over his
voluminous correspondence and picking out references to her here and
there, I am able to give at least some idea of her earlier life.
This extraordinary woman, who brought Wagner so much happiness and of
whom it may be said that no other woman ever played so important a part
in the history of music, came to her many graces and accomplishments by
right of birth. She was the daughter of Liszt and the Countess d'Agoult,
a French author, better known under her pen name of "Daniel Stern." Thus
she had genius on one side of her parentage and distinguished talent on
the other; and, on both sides, rare personal charm and tact.
The Countess d'Agoult's father, Viscount Flavigny, was an old Royalist
nobleman. While an émigré during the revolution, he had married the
beautiful daughter of the Frankfort banker, Bethman. After the Flavignys
returned to France, their daughter, an extremely beautiful blonde, was
brought up, partly at the Flavigny château, partly at the Sacré Coeur de
Marie, in Paris. Talented beyond her years, her wit and beauty won her
much admiration. At an early age she married Count Charles d'Agoult, a
French officer, a member of the old aristocracy and twenty years her
senior.
When she first met Liszt she was twenty-nine years old, had been married
six years and was the mother of three children. She still was beautiful,
and in her salon she gathered around her men and women of rank, _esprit_
and fame. In 1835 Liszt left Paris after the concert season there. The
Countess followed him, and the next heard of them they were in
Switzerland. They remained together six years, Cosima, born in 1837,
being one of the three children resulting from the union. In the
Countess's relations with Liszt there appears to have been a curious
mingling of _la grande passion_ and hauteur. For when, soon after she
had joined him in Switzerland, he urged her to secure a divorce in order
that they might marry, she drew herself up and replied: "_Madame la
Comtesse d'Agoult ne sera jamais Madame Liszt_!" Certainly none but a
Frenchwoman would have been capable of such a reply under the same
circumstances. Equally French was her husband's remark when, the
Countess's support having been assumed by Liszt, he expressed the opinion
that throughout the whole affair the pianist had behaved like a man of
honor.
After the separation of Liszt and Countess d'Agoult, he entrusted the
care of the three children to his mother. During a brief sojourn in
Paris, Wagner met Cosima, then a girl of sixteen, for the first time.
She formed with Liszt, Von Bülow, Berlioz and a few others the very
small, but extremely select, audience which, at the house of Liszt's
mother, heard Wagner read selections from his "Nibelung" dramas. In
1855, the burden of the care of the children falling too heavily upon
Liszt's mother, the duty of looking after the daughters was cheerfully
undertaken by the mother of Hans von Bülow, who resided in Berlin.
In a letter written by Von Bülow in June, 1856, he speaks of them in
these interesting terms: "These wonderful girls bear their name with
right--full of talent, cleverness and life, they are interesting
personalities, such as I have rarely met. Another than I would be happy
in their companionship. But their evident superiority annoys me, and the
impossibility to appear sufficiently interesting to them prevents my
appreciating the pleasure of their society as much as I would like
to--there you have a confession, the candor of which you will not deny.
It is not very flattering for a young man, but it is absolutely true."
Yet, a year later, he married Cosima, one of the girls whose
"superiority" so annoyed him.
How strange, in view of what happened later, that Von Bülow so planned
his wedding trip that its main objective was a visit to Zurich in order
that he might present Cosima to Wagner, who had not seen her since she
had formed one of his audience at the "Rheingold" reading in Paris. It
is in a letter to his friend, Richard Pohl, written the day before his
wedding, that Von Bülow mentions the "Wagnerstadt," Zurich, as the aim of
his wedding journey. Was it Fate--or fatality--that led him thither with
Cosima? The daughter of Liszt, the bride of Von Bülow, being conducted
on her honeymoon to the very lair of the great composer for whom she was,
within a few years, to leave her husband! What wonderful musical links
destiny wove in the life of this woman who herself was not a musician!
Hans and Cosima arrived at Zurich early in September. "For the last
fortnight," writes Von Bülow, under date of September 19, 1857, "I and my
wife have been living in Wagner's house, and I do not know anything else
that could have afforded me such benefit, such refreshment as being
together with this wonderful, unique man, whom one should worship as a
god."
On his side Wagner was charmed with the Von Bülows. In one of his
letters he speaks of their visit as his most delightful experience of the
summer. "They spent three weeks in our little house; I have rarely been
so pleasantly and delightfully affected as by their informal visit. In
the mornings they had to keep quiet, for I was writing my 'Tristan,' of
which I read them an act aloud every week. If you knew Cosima, you would
agree with me when I conclude that this young pair is wonderfully well
mated. With all their great intelligence and real artistic sympathy,
there is something so light and buoyant in the two young people that one
was obliged to feel perfectly at home with them."
Wagner allowed them to depart only under promise that they would return
next year, which they did, to find a household on the verge of disruption
and to be unwilling witnesses to some of the closing scenes of Wagner's
first marriage.
During her childhood in Paris Cosima was frail and delicate. Liszt, in
one of his letters, confesses that this caused him to regard her with a
deeper affection than he bestowed on her elder sister. Later he speaks
of her as a rare and beautiful nature of great and spontaneous charm. A
friend of Liszt's who saw her at the Altenburg in 1860 writes that she
was pale, slender, wan and thin to a degree, and that she crept through
the room like a shadow. Liszt was greatly concerned about her, for the
year previous her brother Daniel had died of consumption, and he feared
she might be stricken with the same malady.
Daniel's death was a sad experience through which they passed together,
and which strengthened the ties of tenderness that drew Liszt to his
younger daughter. The son died in his father's arms and in her presence.
She had nursed him devotedly in his last illness. "Cosima tells me,"
Liszt wrote, before he had seen Daniel on his sick-bed, "that the color
of his beard and of his hair has taken on a touch of brownish red, and
that he looks like a Christ by Correggio." Together, after Daniel's
death, they knelt beside his bed "praying to God that His will be
done--and that He reconcile us to that Divine will, in according us the
grace on our part to accept it without a murmur."
Such a scene was a memory for a lifetime. Cosima herself, in one of her
letters, gives a beautiful description of her brother's passage from
life. "He fell back into the arms of death as into those of a guardian
angel, for whom he had been waiting a long time. There was no struggle;
without a distaste for life, he seemed, nevertheless, to have aspired
ardently toward eternity."
With a pretty touch Liszt gives an idea of Cosima's interest in others.
It seems that a certain Frau Stilke was anxious to possess a gray dress
of moiré antique, and Liszt had persuaded the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein
to place the necessary sum for buying it at his daughter's disposal. "In
order to estimate the cost," he writes, "Cosette has devised this
excellent formula: It should be a dress such as one would give to persons
who want a dress--only it is necessary that it should be gray and of
moiré antique to satisfy the ideal of taste of the person in question."
Wagner does not seem to have seen Cosima after the Von Bülows' second
visit to him at Zurich until they came to him for a visit at Biebrich
during the summer of 1862. What a contrast Cosima must have seemed to
poor Minna who, in the same house and but a short time before, had
desecrated the manuscript of "Die Meistersinger" by allowing a bread-ball
to roll over it! Wagner's favorable opinion of Hans and Cosima underwent
a great change during their sojourn with him. In a letter, after
speaking of Von Bülow's depression owing to poor health, he writes: "Add
to this a tragic marriage; a young woman of extraordinary, quite
unprecedented, endowment, Liszt's wonderful image, but of superior
intellect."
That this woman who so impressed Wagner was in her turn filled with
admiration for his gifts appears from two letters which, during the
summer of 1862, she wrote from Biebrich to her father. In one of these
she speaks enthusiastically of some of the "Tristan" music. The other
letter concerns "Die Meistersinger:"
"The 'Meistersinger' is to Wagner's other conceptions what the 'Winter's
Tale' is to Shakespeare's other works. Its fantasy is founded on gayety
and drollery, and it has called up the Nuremberg of the Middle Ages, with
its guilds, its poet-artisans, its pedants, its cavaliers, to draw forth
the freshest laughter in the midst of the highest, the most ideal poetry."
It is evident that two souls so sympathetic could not long remain in
proximity without craving a closer union. "Coming events cast their
shadows before," remarks one who often was present during the Biebrich
visit of the Von Bülows to Wagner.
How deeply Cosima sympathized with Wagner's aims even then is shown by
another episode of this visit. One evening the composer outlined to his
friends his plans for "Parsifal," adding that it probably would be his
last work. The little circle was deeply affected, and Cosima wept.
Strange prescience! "Parsifal" was not produced until twenty years
later, yet it proved to be the finale of Wagner's life's labors.
The incident has interest from another point of view. It shows that
Wagner had his plans for "Parsifal" fairly matured in 1862, and that it
was not, as some critics, who see in it a decadence of his powers, claim,
a late afterthought, designed to give to Bayreuth a curiosity somewhat
after the _façon_ of the Oberammergau "Passion Play." Decadence? Henry
T. Finck, the most consistent and eloquent champion Wagner has had in
America, sees in it no falling off in the composer's genius; nor do I.
Wagner's scores always fully voice his dramas,--"Parsifal" as completely
as any. The subject simply required different musical treatment from the
heroic "Ring of the Nibelung" and the impassioned "Tristan."
In a letter written by Wagner in June, 1864, occurs this significant
sentence: "There is one good being who brightens my household." The
"good being" was Cosima, who from now on was destined to fill his life
with the sunshine of love and of devotion to his art.
"Since I last saw you in Munich," Wagner writes to a friend, "I have not
again left my asylum, which in the meanwhile also has become the refuge
of her who was destined to prove that I could well be helped, and that
the axiom of my many friends, that 'I could not be helped,' was false!
She knew that I could be helped, and has helped me: she has defied every
disapprobation and taken upon herself every condemnation."
This was written in June, 1870, a year after Cosima had borne him
Siegfried, and two months before their marriage. For in August, 1870,
the following announcement was sent out:
"We have the honor to announce our marriage, which took place on the 25th
of August of this year in the Protestant Church in Lucerne.
Richard Wagner.
Cosima Wagner, née Liszt.
"August 25, 1870."
When, in 1882, I attended the first performance of "Parsifal" in
Bayreuth, I had frequent opportunity of seeing Wagner and Frau Cosima.
Probably the best view I had of them together, and of Franz Liszt at the
same time, was at a dinner given by Wagner to the artists who took part
in the performances. It was in one of the restaurants near the theatre
on the hill overlooking Bayreuth. Wagner's entrance upon the scene was
highly theatrical. All the singers and a few other guests had been
seated, and Liszt, Frau Cosima and Siegfried Wagner were in their places
when the door opened and in shot Wagner. It was as well calculated as
the entrance of the star in a play. On his way to his seat he stopped
and chatted a few moments with this one and that one. Instead of Wagner
sitting at the head of the table and his wife at the foot, they sat
together in the middle. It seemed impossible for him, though, to remain
seated more than a few minutes at a time, and he was jumping up and down
and running about the table all through the banquet. On the other side
of Wagner sat Liszt; on the other side of Frau Cosima, Siegfried Wagner,
then still a boy. Among the four there were two pairs of likenesses.
Liszt was gray; but, although Frau Cosima's hair was blonde, and her face
smooth and fair as compared with her father's, which was furrowed with
age and boldly aquiline, she was his child in every lineament. Moreover,
the quick, responsive lighting up of the features, her graceful bearing,
her tact--that these were inherited from him a brief surveillance of the
two sufficed to disclose. Combined with these fascinating, but after all
more or less superficial characteristics was the stamp of a rare
intellectual force on both faces. No one seeing them together needed to
be told that Cosima was a Liszt.
Nor did any one need to be told that Siegfried was a Wagner. The boy was
as much like his father as his mother was like hers. Feature for
feature, Wagner was reproduced in his son. That there should be no trace
of the mother, and such a mother, in the boy's face struck me as
remarkable; but there was none. Siegfried Wagner was a veritable pocket
edition of his famous father. His later photographs as a young man show
that much of this likeness has disappeared. After dinner, there were
speeches. Wagner, his hand resting affectionately on Liszt's shoulder,
paid a feeling tribute to the man who had befriended him early in his
career and who had given him the precious wife at his side. I remember
as if it had been but last night the tenderness with which he spoke the
words _die theure Gattin_.
It was a wonderful two or three hours, that banquet, with the numerous
notabilities present, and at least two great men, Liszt and Wagner, and
one great woman, the daughter of Liszt and the wife of Wagner; and the
experience is to be treasured all the more, because few of those present
saw Wagner again. Early in the following year he died at Venice. He is
buried in the garden back of Wahnfried, his Bayreuth villa. He was a
great lover of animals, and at his burial his two favorite dogs, Wotan
and Mark, burst through the bushes that surround the grave and joined the
mourners. One of these pets is buried near him, and on the slab is the
inscription: "Here lies in peace Wahnfried's faithful watcher and
friend--the good and handsome Mark."
What Cosima was to Wagner is best told in Liszt's words, written to a
friend after a visit to Bayreuth, in 1872, when his favorite child had
been married to Wagner two years. "Cosima still is my terrible daughter,
as I used to call her,--an extraordinary woman and of the highest merit,
far above vulgar judgment, and worthy of the admiring sentiments which
she has inspired in all who have known her. She is devoted to Wagner
with an all-absorbing enthusiasm, like Senta to the Flying Dutchman--and
she will prove his salvation, because he listens to her and follows her
with keen perception."
That Bayreuth with Wagner's death did not become a mere tradition, that
the Wagner performances still continue there, is due to Frau Cosima. She
is Bayreuth. No woman has made such an impression on the music of her
time as she. Yet she is not a musician!