PART I

1813-1842

I was born at Leipzig on the 22nd of May 1813, in a room on the second

floor of the ‘Red and White Lion,’ and two days later was baptized at

St. Thomas’s Church, and christened Wilhelm Richard.

My father, Friedrich Wagner, was at the time of my birth a clerk in the

police service at Leipzig, and hoped to get the post of Chief Constable

in that town, but he died in the October of that same year. His death

was partly due to the great exertions imposed upon him by the stress of

police work during the war troubles and the battle of Leipzig, and

partly to the fact that he fell a victim to the nervous fever which was

raging at that time. As regards his father’s position in life, I learnt

later that he had held a small civil appointment as toll collector at

the Ranstädt Gate, but had distinguished himself from those in the same

station by giving his two sons a superior education, my father,

Friedrich, studying law, and the younger son, Adolph, theology.

My uncle subsequently exercised no small influence on my development;

we shall meet him again at a critical turning-point in the story of my

youth.

My father, whom I had lost so early, was, as I discovered afterwards, a

great lover of poetry and literature in general, and possessed in

particular an almost passionate affection for the drama, which was at

that time much in vogue among the educated classes. My mother told me,

among other things, that he took her to Lauchstadt for the first

performance of the _Braut von Messina_, and that on the promenade he

pointed out Schiller and Goethe to her, and reproved her warmly for

never having heard of these great men. He is said to have been not

altogether free from a gallant interest in actresses. My mother used to

complain jokingly that she often had to keep lunch waiting for him

while he was paying court to a certain famous actress of the day.[1]

When she scolded him, he vowed that he had been delayed by papers that

had to be attended to, and as a proof of his assertion pointed to his

fingers, which were supposed to be stained with ink, but on closer

inspection were found to be quite clean. His great fondness for the

theatre was further shown by his choice of the actor, Ludwig Geyer, as

one of his intimate friends. Although his choice of this friend was no

doubt mainly due to his love for the theatre, he at the same time

introduced into his family the noblest of benefactors; for this modest

artist, prompted by a warm interest in the lot of his friend’s large

family, so unexpectedly left destitute, devoted the remainder of his

life to making strenuous efforts to maintain and educate the orphans.

Even when the police official was spending his evenings at the theatre,

the worthy actor generally filled his place in the family circle, and

it seems had frequently to appease my mother, who, rightly or wrongly,

complained of the frivolity of her husband.

[1] Madame Hartwig.

How deeply the homeless artist, hard pressed by life and tossed to and

fro, longed to feel himself at home in a sympathetic family circle, was

proved by the fact that a year after his friend’s death he married his

widow, and from that time forward became a most loving father to the

seven children that had been left behind.

In this onerous undertaking he was favoured by an unexpected

improvement in his position, for he obtained a remunerative,

respectable, and permanent engagement, as a character actor, at the

newly established Court Theatre in Dresden. His talent for painting,

which had already helped him to earn a livelihood when forced by

extreme poverty to break off his university studies, again stood him in

good stead in his position at Dresden. True, he complained even more

than his critics that he had been kept from a regular and systematic

study of this art, yet his extraordinary aptitude, for portrait

painting in particular, secured him such important commissions that he

unfortunately exhausted his strength prematurely by his twofold

exertions as painter and actor. Once, when he was invited to Munich to

fulfil a temporary engagement at the Court Theatre, he received,

through the distinguished recommendation of the Saxon Court, such

pressing commissions from the Bavarian Court for portraits of the royal

family that he thought it wise to cancel his contract altogether. He

also had a turn for poetry. Besides fragments—often in very dainty

verse—he wrote several comedies, one of which, _Der Bethlehemitische

Kindermord_, in rhymed Alexandrines, was often performed; it was

published and received the warmest praise from Goethe.

This excellent man, under whose care our family moved to Dresden when I

was two years old, and by whom my mother had another daughter, Cecilia,

now also took my education in hand with the greatest care and

affection. He wished to adopt me altogether, and accordingly, when I

was sent to my first school, he gave me his own name, so that till the

age of fourteen I was known to my Dresden schoolfellows as Richard

Geyer; and it was not until some years after my stepfather’s death, and

on my family’s return to Leipzig, the home of my own kith and kin, that

I resumed the name of Wagner.

The earliest recollections of my childhood are associated with my

stepfather, and passed from him to the theatre. I well remember that he

would have liked to see me develop a talent for painting; and his

studio, with the easel and the pictures upon it, did not fail to

impress me. I remember in particular that I tried, with a childish love

of imitation, to copy a portrait of King Frederick Augustus of Saxony;

but when this simple daubing had to give place to a serious study of

drawing, I could not stand it, possibly because I was discouraged by

the pedantic technique of my teacher, a cousin of mine, who was rather

a bore. At one time during my early boyhood I became so weak after some

childish ailment that my mother told me later she used almost to wish

me dead, for it seemed as though I should never get well. However, my

subsequent good health apparently astonished my parents. I afterwards

learnt the noble part played by my excellent stepfather on this

occasion also; he never gave way to despair, in spite of the cares and

troubles of so large a family, but remained patient throughout, and

never lost the hope of pulling me through safely.

My imagination at this time was deeply impressed by my acquaintance

with the theatre, with which I was brought into contact, not only as a

childish spectator from the mysterious stagebox, with its access to the

stage, and by visits to the wardrobe with its fantastic costumes, wigs

and other disguises, but also by taking a part in the performances

myself. After I had been filled with fear by seeing my father play the

villain’s part in such tragedies as _Die Waise und der Mörder, Die

beiden Galeerensklaven_, I occasionally took part in comedy. I remember

that I appeared in _Der Weinberg an der Elbe_, a piece specially

written to welcome the King of Saxony on his return from captivity,

with music by the conductor, C. M. von Weber. In this I figured in a

_tableau vivant_ as an angel, sewn up in tights with wings on my back,

in a graceful pose which I had laboriously practised. I also remember

on this occasion being given a big iced cake, which I was assured the

King had intended for me personally. Lastly, I can recall taking a

child’s part in which I had a few words to speak in Kotzebue’s

_Menschenhass und Reue_[2], which furnished me with an excuse at school

for not having learnt my lessons. I said I had too much to do, as I had

to learn by heart an important part in _Den Menschen ausser der

Reihe_.[3]

[2] ‘Misanthropy and Remorse.’

[3] ‘The Man out of the Rank or Row.’ In the German this is a simple

phonetic corruption of Kotzebue’s title, which might easily occur to a

child who had only heard, and not read, that title.—EDITOR.

On the other hand, to show how seriously my father regarded my

education, when I was six years old he took me to a clergyman in the

country at Possendorf, near Dresden, where I was to be given a sound

and healthy training with other boys of my own class. In the evening,

the vicar, whose name was Wetzel, used to tell us the story of Robinson

Crusoe, and discuss it with us in a highly instructive manner. I was,

moreover, much impressed by a biography of Mozart which was read aloud;

and the newspaper accounts and monthly reports of the events of the

Greek War of Independence stirred my imagination deeply. My love for

Greece, which afterwards made me turn with enthusiasm to the mythology

and history of ancient Hellas, was thus the natural outcome of the

intense and painful interest I took in the events of this period. In

after years the story of the struggle of the Greeks against the

Persians always revived my impressions of this modern revolt of Greece

against the Turks.

One day, when I had been in this country home scarcely a year, a

messenger came from town to ask the vicar to take me to my parents’

house in Dresden, as my father was dying.

We did the three hours’ journey on foot; and as I was very exhausted

when I arrived, I scarcely understood why my mother was crying. The

next day I was taken to my father’s bedside; the extreme weakness with

which he spoke to me, combined with all the precautions taken in the

last desperate treatment of his complaint—acute hydrothorax—made the

whole scene appear like a dream to me, and I think I was too frightened

and surprised to cry.

In the next room my mother asked me to show her what I could play on

the piano, wisely hoping to divert my father’s thoughts by the sound. I

played Ueb’ immer Treu und Redlichkeit, and my father said to her, ‘Is

it possible he has musical talent?’

In the early hours of the next morning my mother came into the great

night nursery, and, standing by the bedside of each of us in turn, told

us, with sobs, that our father was dead, and gave us each a message

with his blessing. To me she said, ‘He hoped to make something of you.’

In the afternoon my schoolmaster, Wetzel, came to take me back to the

country. We walked the whole way to Possendorf, arriving at nightfall.

On the way I asked him many questions about the stars, of which he gave

me my first intelligent idea.

A week later my stepfather’s brother arrived from Eisleben for the

funeral. He promised, as far as he was able, to support the family,

which was now once more destitute, and undertook to provide for my

future education.

I took leave of my companions and of the kind-hearted clergyman, and it

was for his funeral that I paid my next visit to Possendorf a few years

later. I did not go to the place again till long afterwards, when I

visited it on an excursion such as I often made, far into the country,

at the time when I was conducting the orchestra in Dresden. I was much

grieved not to find the old parsonage still there, but in its place a

more pretentious modern structure, which so turned me against the

locality, that thenceforward my excursions were always made in another

direction.

This time my uncle brought me back to Dresden in the carriage. I found

my mother and sister in the deepest mourning, and remember being

received for the first time with a tenderness not usual in our family;

and I noticed that the same tenderness marked our leave-taking, when, a

few days later, my uncle took me with him to Eisleben.

This uncle, who was a younger brother of my stepfather, had settled

there as a goldsmith, and Julius, one of my elder brothers, had already

been apprenticed to him. Our old grandmother also lived with this

bachelor son, and as it was evident that she could not live long, she

was not informed of the death of her eldest son, which I, too, was

bidden to keep to myself. The servant carefully removed the crape from

my coat, telling me she would keep it until my grandmother died, which

was likely to be soon.

I was now often called upon to tell her about my father, and it was no

great difficulty for me to keep the secret of his death, as I had

scarcely realised it myself. She lived in a dark back room looking out

upon a narrow courtyard, and took a great delight in watching the

robins that fluttered freely about her, and for which she always kept

fresh green boughs by the stove. When some of these robins were killed

by the cat, I managed to catch others for her in the neighbourhood,

which pleased her very much, and, in return, she kept me tidy and

clean. Her death, as had been expected, took place before long, and the

crape that had been put away was now openly worn in Eisleben.

The back room, with its robins and green branches, now knew me no more,

but I soon made myself at home with a soap-boiler’s family, to whom the

house belonged, and became popular with them on account of the stories

I told them.

I was sent to a private school kept by a man called Weiss, who left an

impression of gravity and dignity upon my mind.

Towards the end of the fifties I was greatly moved at reading in a

musical paper the account of a concert at Eisleben, consisting of parts

of Tannhäuser, at which my former master, who had not forgotten his

young pupil, had been present.

The little old town with Luther’s house, and the numberless memorials

it contained of his stay there, has often, in later days, come back to

me in dreams. I have always wished to revisit it and verify the

clearness of my recollections, but, strange to say, it has never been

my fate to do so. We lived in the market-place, where I was often

entertained by strange sights, such, for instance, as performances by a

troupe of acrobats, in which a man walked a rope stretched from tower

to tower across the square, an achievement which long inspired me with

a passion for such feats of daring. Indeed, I got so far as to walk a

rope fairly easily myself with the help of a balancing-pole. I had made

the rope out of cords twisted together and stretched across the

courtyard, and even now I still feel a desire to gratify my acrobatic

instincts. The thing that attracted me most, however, was the brass

band of a Hussar regiment quartered at Eisleben. It often played a

certain piece which had just come out, and which was making a great

sensation, I mean the ‘Huntsmen’s Chorus’ out of the Freischutz, that

had been recently performed at the Opera in Berlin. My uncle and

brother asked me eagerly about its composer, Weber, whom I must have

seen at my parents’ house in Dresden, when he was conductor of the

orchestra there.

About the same time the Jungfernkranz was zealously played and sung by

some friends who lived near us. These two pieces cured me of my

weakness for the ‘Ypsilanti’ Waltz, which till that time I had regarded

as the most wonderful of compositions.

I have recollections of frequent tussles with the town boys, who were

constantly mocking at me for my ‘square’ cap; and I remember, too, that

I was very fond of rambles of adventure among the rocky banks of the

Unstrut.

My uncle’s marriage late in life, and the starting of his new home,

brought about a marked alteration in his relations to my family.

After a lapse of a year I was taken by him to Leipzig, and handed over

for some days to the Wagners, my own father’s relatives, consisting of

my uncle Adolph and his sister Friederike Wagner. This extraordinarily

interesting man, whose influence afterwards became ever more

stimulating to me, now for the first time brought himself and his

singular environment into my life.

He and my aunt were very close friends of Jeannette Thome, a queer old

maid who shared with them a large house in the market-place, in which,

if I am not mistaken, the Electoral family of Saxony had, ever since

the days of Augustus the Strong, hired and furnished the two principal

storeys for their own use whenever they were in Leipzig.

So far as I know, Jeannette Thome really owned the second storey, of

which she inhabited only a modest apartment looking out on the

courtyard. As, however, the King merely occupied the hired rooms for a

few days in the year, Jeannette and her circle generally made use of

his splendid apartments, and one of these staterooms was made into a

bedroom for me.

The decorations and fittings of these rooms also dated from the days of

Augustus the Strong. They were luxurious with heavy silk and rich

rococo furniture, all of which were much soiled with age. As a matter

of fact, I was delighted by these large strange rooms, looking out upon

the bustling Leipzig market-place, where I loved above all to watch the

students in the crowd making their way along in their old-fashioned

‘Club’ attire, and filling up the whole width of the street.

There was only one portion of the decorations of the rooms that I

thoroughly disliked, and this consisted of the various portraits, but

particularly those of high-born dames in hooped petticoats, with

youthful faces and powdered hair. These appeared to me exactly like

ghosts, who, when I was alone in the room, seemed to come back to life,

and filled me with the most abject fear. To sleep alone in this distant

chamber, in that old-fashioned bed of state, beneath those unearthly

pictures, was a constant terror to me. It is true I tried to hide my

fear from my aunt when she lighted me to bed in the evening with her

candle, but never a night passed in which I was not a prey to the most

horrible ghostly visions, my dread of which would leave me in a bath of

perspiration.

The personality of the three chief occupants of this storey was

admirably adapted to materialise the ghostly impressions of the house

into a reality that resembled some strange fairy-tale.

Jeannette Thome was very small and stout; she wore a fair Titus wig,

and seemed to hug to herself the consciousness of vanished beauty. My

aunt, her faithful friend and guardian, who was also an old maid, was

remarkable for the height and extreme leanness of her person. The

oddity of her otherwise very pleasant face was increased by an

exceedingly pointed chin.

My uncle Adolph had chosen as his permanent study a dark room in the

courtyard. There it was that I saw him for the first time, surrounded

by a great wilderness of books, and attired in an unpretentious indoor

costume, the most striking feature of which was a tall, pointed felt

cap, such as I had seen worn by the clown who belonged to the troupe of

rope-dancers at Eisleben. A great love of independence had driven him

to this strange retreat. He had been originally destined for the

Church, but he soon gave that up, in order to devote himself entirely

to philological studies. But as he had the greatest dislike of acting

as a professor and teacher in a regular post, he soon tried to make a

meagre livelihood by literary work. He had certain social gifts, and

especially a fine tenor voice, and appears in his youth to have been

welcome as a man of letters among a fairly wide circle of friends at

Leipzig.

On a trip to Jena, during which he and a companion seem to have found

their way into various musical and oratorical associations, he paid a

visit to Schiller. With this object in view, he had come armed with a

request from the management of the Leipzig Theatre, who wanted to

secure the rights of Wallenstein, which was just finished. He told me

later of the magic impression made upon him by Schiller, with his tall

slight figure and irresistibly attractive blue eyes. His only complaint

was that, owing to a well-meant trick played on him by his friend, he

had been placed in a most trying position; for the latter had managed

to send Schiller a small volume of Adolph Wagner’s poems in advance.

The young poet was much embarrassed to hear Schiller address him in

flattering terms on the subject of his poetry, but was convinced that

the great man was merely encouraging him out of kindness. Afterwards he

devoted himself entirely to philological studios—one of his best-known

publications in that department being his Parnasso Italiano, which he

dedicated to Goethe in an Italian poem. True, I have heard experts say

that the latter was written in unusually pompous Italian; but Goethe

sent him a letter full of praise, as well as a silver cup from his own

household plate. The impression that I, as a boy of eight, conceived of

Adolph Wagner, amid the surroundings of his own home, was that he was a

peculiarly puzzling character.

I soon had to leave the influence of this environment and was brought

back to my people at Dresden. Meanwhile my family, under the guidance

of my bereaved mother, had been obliged to settle down as well as they

could under the circumstances. My eldest brother Albert, who originally

intended to study medicine, had, upon the advice of Weber, who had much

admired his beautiful tenor voice, started his theatrical career in

Breslau. My second sister Louisa soon followed his example, and became

an actress. My eldest sister Rosalie had obtained an excellent

engagement at the Dresden Court Theatre, and the younger members of the

family all looked up to her; for she was now the main support of our

poor sorrowing mother. My family still occupied the same comfortable

home which my father had made for them. Some of the spare rooms were

occasionally let to strangers, and Spohr was among those who at one

time lodged with us. Thanks to her great energy, and to help received

from various sources (among which the continued generosity of the

Court, out of respect to the memory of my late stepfather, must not be

forgotten), my mother managed so well in making both ends meet, that

even my education did not suffer.

After it had been decided that my sister Clara, owing to her

exceedingly beautiful voice, should also go on the stage, my mother

took the greatest care to prevent me from developing any taste whatever

for the theatre. She never ceased to reproach herself for having

consented to the theatrical career of my eldest brother, and as my

second brother showed no greater talents than those which were useful

to him as a goldsmith, it was now her chief desire to see some progress

made towards the fulfilment of the hopes and wishes of my step-father,

‘who hoped to make something of me.’ On the completion of my eighth

year I was sent to the Kreuz Grammar School in Dresden, where it was

hoped I would study! There I was placed at the bottom of the lowest

class, and started my education under the most unassuming auspices.

My mother noted with much interest the slightest signs I might show of

a growing love and ability for my work. She herself, though not highly

educated, always created a lasting impression on all who really learnt

to know her, and displayed a peculiar combination of practical domestic

efficiency and keen intellectual animation. She never gave one of her

children any definite information concerning her antecedents. She came

from Weissenfels, and admitted that her parents had been bakers[4]

there. Even in regard to her maiden name she always spoke with some

embarrassment, and intimated that it was ‘Perthes,’ though, as we

afterwards ascertained, it was in reality ‘Bertz.’ Strange to say, she

had been placed in a high-class boarding-school in Leipzig, where she

had enjoyed the advantage of the care and interest of one of ‘her

father’s influential friends,’ to whom she afterwards referred as being

a Weimar prince who had been very kind to her family in Weissenfels.

Her education in that establishment seems to have been interrupted on

account of the sudden death of this ‘friend.’ She became acquainted

with my father at a very early age, and married him in the first bloom

of her youth, he also being very young, though he already held an

appointment. Her chief characteristics seem to have been a keen sense

of humour and an amiable temper, so we need not suppose that it was

merely a sense of duty towards the family of a departed comrade that

afterwards induced the admirable Ludwig Geyer to enter into matrimony

with her when she was no longer youthful, but rather that he was

impelled to that step by a sincere and warm regard for the widow of his

friend. A portrait of her, painted by Geyer during the lifetime of my

father, gives one a very favourable impression of what she must have

been. Even from the time when my recollection of her is quite distinct,

she always had to wear a cap owing to some slight affection of the

head, so that I have no recollection of her as a young and pretty

mother. Her trying position at the head of a numerous family (of which

I was the seventh surviving member), the difficulty of obtaining the

wherewithal to rear them, and of keeping up appearances on very limited

resources, did not conduce to evolve that tender sweetness and

solicitude which are usually associated with motherhood. I hardly ever

recollect her having fondled me. Indeed, demonstrations of affection

were not common in our family, although a certain impetuous, almost

passionate and boisterous manner always characterised our dealings.

This being so, it naturally seemed to me quite a great event when one

night I, fretful with sleepiness, looked up at her with tearful eyes as

she was taking me to bed, and saw her gaze back at me proudly and

fondly, and speak of me to a visitor then present with a certain amount

of tenderness.

[4] According to more recent information—mill owners.

What struck me more particularly about her was the strange enthusiasm

and almost pathetic manner with which she spoke of the great and of the

beautiful in Art. Under this heading, however, she would never have let

me suppose that she included dramatic art, but only Poetry, Music, and

Painting. Consequently, she often even threatened me with her curse

should I ever express a desire to go on the stage. Moreover, she was

very religiously inclined. With intense fervour she would often give us

long sermons about God and the divine quality in man, during which, now

and again, suddenly lowering her voice in a rather funny way, she would

interrupt herself in order to rebuke one of us. After the death of our

stepfather she used to assemble us all round her bed every morning,

when one of us would read out a hymn or a part of the Church service

from the prayer-book before she took her coffee. Sometimes the choice

of the part to be read was hardly appropriate, as, for instance, when

my sister Clara on one occasion thoughtlessly read the ‘Prayer to be

said in time of War,’ and delivered it with so much expression that my

mother interrupted her, saying: ‘Oh, stop! Good gracious me! Things are

not quite so bad as that. There’s no war on at present!’

In spite of our limited means we had lively and—as they appeared to my

boyish imagination—even brilliant evening parties sometimes. After the

death of my stepfather, who, thanks to his success as a portrait

painter, in the later years of his life had raised his income to what

for those days was a really decent total, many agreeable acquaintances

of very good social position whom he had made during this flourishing

period still remained on friendly terms with us, and would occasionally

join us at our evening gatherings. Amongst those who came were the

members of the Court Theatre, who at that time gave very charming and

highly entertaining parties of their own, which, on my return to

Dresden later on, I found had been altogether given up.

Very delightful, too, were the picnics arranged between us and our

friends at some of the beautiful spots around Dresden, for these

excursions were always brightened by a certain artistic spirit and

general good cheer. I remember one such outing we arranged to

Loschwitz, where we made a kind of gypsy camp, in which Carl Maria von

Weber played his part in the character of cook. At home we also had

some music. My sister Rosalie played the piano, and Clara was beginning

to sing. Of the various theatrical performances we organised in those

early days, often after elaborate preparation, with the view of amusing

ourselves on the birthdays of our elders, I can hardly remember one,

save a parody on the romantic play of Sappho, by Grillparzer, in which

I took part as one of the singers in the crowd that preceded Phaon’s

triumphal car. I endeavoured to revive these memories by means of a

fine puppet show, which I found among the effects of my late

stepfather, and for which he himself had painted some beautiful

scenery. It was my intention to surprise my people by means of a

brilliant performance on this little stage. After I had very clumsily

made several puppets, and had provided them with a scanty wardrobe made

from cuttings of material purloined from my sisters, I started to

compose a chivalric drama, in which I proposed to rehearse my puppets.

When I had drafted the first scene, my sisters happened to discover the

MS. and literally laughed it to scorn, and, to my great annoyance, for

a long time afterwards they chaffed me by repeating one particular

sentence which I had put into the mouth of the heroine, and which

was—Ich hore schon den Ritter trapsen (‘I hear his knightly footsteps

falling’). I now returned with renewed ardour to the theatre, with

which, even at this time, my family was in close touch. Den Freischutz

in particular appealed very strongly to my imagination, mainly on

account of its ghostly theme. The emotions of terror and the dread of

ghosts formed quite an important factor in the development of my mind.

From my earliest childhood certain mysterious and uncanny things

exercised an enormous influence over me. If I were left alone in a room

for long, I remember that, when gazing at lifeless objects such as

pieces of furniture, and concentrating my attention upon them, I would

suddenly shriek out with fright, because they seemed to me alive. Even

during the latest years of my boyhood, not a night passed without my

waking out of some ghostly dream and uttering the most frightful

shrieks, which subsided only at the sound of some human voice. The most

severe rebuke or even chastisement seemed to me at those times no more

than a blessed release. None of my brothers or sisters would sleep

anywhere near me. They put me to sleep as far as possible away from the

others, without thinking that my cries for help would only be louder

and longer; but in the end they got used even to this nightly

disturbance.

In connection with this childish terror, what attracted me so strongly

to the theatre—by which I mean also the stage, the rooms behind the

scenes, and the dressing-rooms—was not so much the desire for

entertainment and amusement such as that which impels the present-day

theatre-goers, but the fascinating pleasure of finding myself in an

entirely different atmosphere, in a world that was purely fantastic and

often gruesomely attractive. Thus to me a scene, even a wing,

representing a bush, or some costume or characteristic part of it,

seemed to come from another world, to be in some way as attractive as

an apparition, and I felt that contact with it might serve as a lever

to lift me from the dull reality of daily routine to that delightful

region of spirits. Everything connected with a theatrical performance

had for me the charm of mystery, it both bewitched and fascinated me,

and while I was trying, with the help of a few playmates, to imitate

the performance of Der Freischutz, and to devote myself energetically

to reproducing the needful costumes and masks in my grotesque style of

painting, the more elegant contents of my sisters’ wardrobes, in the

beautifying of which I had often seen the family occupied, exercised a

subtle charm over my imagination; nay, my heart would beat madly at the

very touch of one of their dresses.

In spite of the fact that, as I already mentioned, our family was not

given to outward manifestations of affection, yet the fact that I was

brought up entirely among feminine surroundings must necessarily have

influenced the development of the sensitive side of my nature. Perhaps

it was precisely because my immediate circle was generally rough and

impetuous, that the opposite characteristics of womanhood, especially

such as were connected with the imaginary world of the theatre, created

a feeling of such tender longing in me.

Luckily these fantastic humours, merging from the gruesome into the

mawkish, were counteracted and balanced by more serious influences

undergone at school at the hands of my teachers and schoolfellows. Even

there, it was chiefly the weird that aroused my keenest interest. I can

hardly judge whether I had what would be called a good head for study.

I think that, in general, what I really liked I was soon able to grasp

without much effort, whereas I hardly exerted myself at all in the

study of subjects that were uncongenial. This characteristic was most

marked in regard to arithmetic and, later on, mathematics. In neither

of these subjects did I ever succeed in bringing my mind seriously to

bear upon the tasks that were set me. In the matter of the Classics,

too, I paid only just as much attention as was absolutely necessary to

enable me to get a grasp of them; for I was stimulated by the desire to

reproduce them to myself dramatically. In this way Greek particularly

attracted me, because the stories from Greek mythology so seized upon

my fancy that I tried to imagine their heroes as speaking to me in

their native tongue, so as to satisfy my longing for complete

familiarity with them. In these circumstances it will be readily

understood that the grammar of the language seemed to me merely a

tiresome obstacle, and by no means in itself an interesting branch of

knowledge.

The fact that my study of languages was never very thorough, perhaps

best explains the fact that I was afterwards so ready to cease

troubling about them altogether. Not until much later did this study

really begin to interest me again, and that was only when I learnt to

understand its physiological and philosophical side, as it was revealed

to our modern Germanists by the pioneer work of Jakob Grimm. Then, when

it was too late to apply myself thoroughly to a study which at last I

had learned to appreciate, I regretted that this newer conception of

the study of languages had not yet found acceptance in our colleges

when I was younger.

Nevertheless, by my successes in philological work I managed to attract

the attention of a young teacher at the Kreuz Grammar School, a Master

of Arts named Sillig, who proved very helpful to me. He often permitted

me to visit him and show him my work, consisting of metric translations

and a few original poems, and he always seemed very pleased with my

efforts in recitation. What he thought of me may best be judged perhaps

from the fact that he made me, as a boy of about twelve, recite not

only ‘Hector’s Farewell’ from the Iliad, but even Hamlet’s celebrated

monologue. On one occasion, when I was in the fourth form of the

school, one of my schoolfellows, a boy named Starke, suddenly fell

dead, and the tragic event aroused so much sympathy, that not only did

the whole school attend the funeral, but the headmaster also ordered

that a poem should be written in commemoration of the ceremony, and

that this poem should be published. Of the various poems submitted,

among which there was one by myself, prepared very hurriedly, none

seemed to the master worthy of the honour which he had promised, and he

therefore announced his intention of substituting one of his own

speeches in the place of our rejected attempts. Much distressed by this

decision, I quickly sought out Professor Sillig, with the view of

urging him to intervene on behalf of my poem. We thereupon went through

it together. Its well-constructed and well-rhymed verses, written in

stanzas of eight lines, determined him to revise the whole of it

carefully. Much of its imagery was bombastic, and far beyond the

conception of a boy of my age. I recollect that in one part I had drawn

extensively from the monologue in Addison’s Cato, spoken by Cato just

before his suicide. I had met with this passage in an English grammar,

and it had made a deep impression upon me. The words: ‘The stars shall

fade away, the sun himself grow dim with age, and nature sink in

years,’ which, at all events, were a direct plagiarism, made Sillig

laugh—a thing at which I was a little offended. However, I felt very

grateful to him, for, thanks to the care and rapidity with which he

cleared my poem of these extravagances, it was eventually accepted by

the headmaster, printed, and widely circulated.

The effect of this success was extraordinary, both on my schoolfellows

and on my own family. My mother devoutly folded her hands in

thankfulness, and in my own mind my vocation seemed quite a settled

thing. It was clear, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that I was

destined to be a poet. Professor Sillig wished me to compose a grand

epic, and suggested as a subject ‘The Battle of Parnassus,’ as

described by Pausanias. His reasons for this choice were based upon the

legend related by Pausanias, viz., that in the second century B.C. the

Muses from Parnassus aided the combined Greek armies against the

destructive invasion of the Gauls by provoking a panic among the

latter. I actually began my heroic poem in hexameter verse, but could

not get through the first canto.

Not being far enough advanced in the language to understand the Greek

tragedies thoroughly in the original, my own attempts to construct a

tragedy in the Greek form were greatly influenced by the fact that

quite by accident I came across August Apel’s clever imitation of this

style in his striking poems ‘Polyidos’ and ‘Aitolier.’ For my theme I

selected the death of Ulysses, from a fable of Hyginus, according to

which the aged hero is killed by his son, the offspring of his union

with Calypso. But I did not get very far with this work either, before

I gave it up.

My mind became so bent upon this sort of thing, that duller studies

naturally ceased to interest me. The mythology, legends, and, at last,

the history of Greece alone attracted me.

I was fond of life, merry with my companions, and always ready for a

joke or an adventure. Moreover, I was constantly forming friendships,

almost passionate in their ardour, with one or the other of my

comrades, and in choosing my associates I was mainly influenced by the

extent to which my new acquaintance appealed to my eccentric

imagination. At one time it would be poetising and versifying that

decided my choice of a friend; at another, theatrical enterprises,

while now and then it would be a longing for rambling and mischief.

Furthermore, when I reached my thirteenth year, a great change came

over our family affairs. My sister Rosalie, who had become the chief

support of our household, obtained an advantageous engagement at the

theatre in Prague, whither mother and children removed in 1820, thus

giving up the Dresden home altogether. I was left behind in Dresden, so

that I might continue to attend the Kreuz Grammar School until I was

ready to go up to the university. I was therefore sent to board and

lodge with a family named Bohme, whose sons I had known at school, and

in whose house I already felt quite at home. With my residence in this

somewhat rough, poor, and not particularly well-conducted family, my

years of dissipation began. I no longer enjoyed the quiet retirement

necessary for work, nor the gentle, spiritual influence of my sisters’

companionship. On the contrary, I was plunged into a busy, restless

life, full of rough horseplay and of quarrels. Nevertheless, it was

there that I began to experience the influence of the gentler sex in a

manner hitherto unknown to me, as the grown-up daughters of the family

and their friends often filled the scanty and narrow rooms of the

house. Indeed, my first recollections of boyish love date from this

period. I remember a very beautiful young girl, whose name, if I am not

mistaken, was Amalie Hoffmann, coming to call at the house one Sunday.

She was charmingly dressed, and her appearance as she came into the

room literally struck me dumb with amazement. On other occasions I

recollect pretending to be too helplessly sleepy to move, so that I

might be carried up to bed by the girls, that being, as they thought,

the only remedy for my condition. And I repeated this, because I found,

to my surprise, that their attention under these circumstances brought

me into closer and more gratifying proximity with them.

The most important event during this year of separation from my family

was, however, a short visit I paid to them in Prague. In the middle of

the winter my mother came to Dresden, and took me hack with her to

Prague for a week. Her way of travelling was quite unique. To the end

of her days she preferred the more dangerous mode of travelling in a

hackney carriage to the quicker journey by mail-coach, so that we spent

three whole days in the bitter cold on the road from Dresden to Prague.

The journey over the Bohemian mountains often seemed to be beset with

the greatest dangers, but happily we survived our thrilling adventures

and at last arrived in Prague, where I was suddenly plunged into

entirely new surroundings.

For a long time the thought of leaving Saxony on another visit to

Bohemia, and especially Prague, had had quite a romantic attraction for

me. The foreign nationality, the broken German of the people, the

peculiar headgear of the women, the native wines, the harp-girls and

musicians, and finally, the ever present signs of Catholicism, its

numerous chapels and shrines, all produced on me a strangely

exhilarating impression. This was probably due to my craze for

everything theatrical and spectacular, as distinguished from simple

bourgeois customs. Above all, the antique splendour and beauty of the

incomparable city of Prague became indelibly stamped on my fancy. Even

in my own family surroundings I found attractions to which I had

hitherto been a stranger. For instance, my sister Ottilie, only two

years older than myself, had won the devoted friendship of a noble

family, that of Count Pachta, two of whose daughters, Jenny and

Auguste, who had long been famed as the leading beauties of Prague, had

become fondly attached to her. To me, such people and such a connection

were something quite novel and enchanting. Besides these, certain beaux

esprits of Prague, among them W. Marsano, a strikingly handsome and

charming man, were frequent visitors at our house. They often earnestly

discussed the tales of Hoffmann, which at that date were comparatively

new, and had created some sensation. It was now that I made my first

though rather superficial acquaintance with this romantic visionary,

and so received a stimulus which influenced me for many years even to

the point of infatuation, and gave me very peculiar ideas of the world.

In the following spring, 1827, I repeated this journey from Dresden to

Prague, but this time on foot, and accompanied by my friend Rudolf

Bohme. Our tour was full of adventure. We got to within an hour of

Teplitz the first night, and next day we had to get a lift in a wagon,

as we had walked our feet sore; yet this only took us as far as

Lowositz, as our funds had quite run out. Under a scorching sun, hungry

and half-fainting, we wandered along bypaths through absolutely unknown

country, until at sundown we happened to reach the main road just as an

elegant travelling coach came in sight. I humbled my pride so far as to

pretend I was a travelling journeyman, and begged the distinguished

travellers for alms, while my friend timidly hid himself in the ditch

by the roadside. Luckily we decided to seek shelter for the night in an

inn, where we took counsel whether we should spend the alms just

received on a supper or a bed. We decided for the supper, proposing to

spend the night under the open sky. While we were refreshing ourselves,

a strange-looking wayfarer entered. He wore a black velvet skull-cap,

to which a metal lyre was attached like a cockade, and on his back he

bore a harp. Very cheerfully he set down his instrument, made himself

comfortable, and called for a good meal. He intended to stay the night,

and to continue his way next day to Prague, where he lived, and whither

he was returning from Hanover.

My good spirits and courage were stimulated by the jovial manners of

this merry fellow, who constantly repeated his favourite motto, ‘non

plus ultra.’ We soon struck up an acquaintance, and in return for my

confidence, the strolling player’s attitude to me was one of almost

touching sympathy. It was agreed that we should continue our journey

together next day on foot. He lent me two twenty-kreutzer pieces (about

ninepence), and allowed me to write my Prague address in his

pocket-book. I was highly delighted at this personal success. My

harpist grew extravagantly merry; a good deal of Czernosek wine was

drunk; he sang and played on his harp like a madman, continually

reiterating his ‘non plus ultra’ till at last, overcome with wine, he

fell down on the straw, which had been spread out on the floor for our

common bed. When the sun once more peeped in, we could not rouse him,

and we had to make up our minds to set off in the freshness of the

early morning without him, feeling convinced that the sturdy fellow

would overtake us during the day. But it was in vain that we looked out

for him on the road and during our subsequent stay in Prague. Indeed,

it was not until several weeks later that the extraordinary fellow

turned up at my mother’s, not so much to collect payment of his loan,

as to inquire about the welfare of the young friend to whom that loan

had been made.

The remainder of our journey was very fatiguing, and the joy I felt

when I at last beheld Prague from the summit of a hill, at about an

hour’s distance, simply beggars description. Approaching the suburbs,

we were for the second time met by a splendid carriage, from which my

sister Ottilie’s two lovely friends called out to me in astonishment.

They had recognised me immediately, in spite of my terribly sunburnt

face, blue linen blouse, and bright red cotton cap. Overwhelmed with

shame, and with my heart beating like mad, I could hardly utter a word,

and hurried away to my mother’s to attend at once to the restoration of

my sunburnt complexion. To this task I devoted two whole days, during

which I swathed my face in parsley poultices; and not till then did I

seek the pleasures of society. When, on the return journey, I looked

back once more on Prague from the same hilltop, I burst into tears,

flung myself on the earth, and for a long time could not be induced by

my astonished companion to pursue the journey. I was downcast for the

rest of the way, and we arrived home in Dresden without any further

adventures.

During the same year I again gratified my fancy for long excursions on

foot by joining a numerous company of grammar school boys, consisting

of pupils of several classes and of various ages, who had decided to

spend their summer holidays in a tour to Leipzig. This journey also

stands out among the memories of my youth, by reason of the strong

impressions it left behind. The characteristic feature of our party was

that we all aped the student, by behaving and dressing extravagantly in

the most approved student fashion. After going as far as Meissen on the

market-boat, our path lay off the main road, through villages with

which I was as yet unfamiliar. We spent the night in the vast barn of a

village inn, and our adventures were of the wildest description. There

we saw a large marionette show, with almost life-sized figures. Our

entire party settled themselves in the auditorium, where their presence

was a source of some anxiety to the managers, who had only reckoned on

an audience of peasants. Genovefa was the play given. The ceaseless

silly jests, and constant interpolations and jeering interruptions, in

which our corps of embryo-students indulged, finally aroused the anger

even of the peasants, who had come prepared to weep. I believe I was

the only one of our party who was pained by these impertinences, and in

spite of involuntary laughter at some of my comrades’ jokes, I not only

defended the play itself, but also its original, simple-minded

audience. A popular catch-phrase which occurred in the piece has ever

since remained stamped on my memory. ‘Golo’ instructs the inevitable

Kaspar that, when the Count Palatine returns home, he must ‘tickle him

behind, so that he should feel it in front’ (hinten zu kitzeln, dass er

es vorne fuhle). Kaspar conveys Golo’s order verbatim to the Count, and

the latter reproaches the unmasked rogue in the following terms,

uttered with the greatest pathos: ‘O Golo, Golo! thou hast told Kaspar

to tickle me behind, so that I shall feel it in front!’

From Grimma our party rode into Leipzig in open carriages, but not

until we had first carefully removed all the outward emblems of the

undergraduate, lest the local students we were likely to meet might

make us rue our presumption.

Since my first visit, when I was eight years old, I had only once

returned to Leipzig, and then for a very brief stay, and under

circumstances very similar to those of the earlier visit. I now renewed

my fantastic impressions of the Thome house, but this time, owing to my

more advanced education, I looked forward to more intelligent

intercourse with my uncle Adolph. An opening for this was soon provided

by my joyous astonishment on learning that a bookcase in the large

anteroom, containing a goodly collection of books, was my property,

having been left me by my father. I went through the books with my

uncle, selected at once a number of Latin authors in the handsome

Zweibruck edition, along with sundry attractive looking works of poetry

and belles-lettres, and arranged for them to be sent to Dresden. During

this visit I was very much interested in the life of the students. In

addition to my impressions of the theatre and of Prague, now came those

of the so-called swaggering undergraduate. A great change had taken

place in this class. When, as a lad of eight, I had my first glimpse of

students, their long hair, their old German costume with the black

velvet skull-cap and the shirt collar turned back from the bare neck,

had quite taken my fancy. But since that time the old student

‘associations’ which affected this fashion had disappeared in the face

of police prosecutions. On the other hand, the national student clubs,

no less peculiar to Germans, had become conspicuous. These clubs

adopted, more or less, the fashion of the day, but with some little

exaggeration. Albeit, their dress was clearly distinguishable from that

of other classes, owing to its picturesqueness, and especially its

display of the various club-colours. The ‘Comment,’ that compendium of

pedantic rules of conduct for the preservation of a defiant and

exclusive esprit de corps, as opposed to the bourgeois classes, had its

fantastic side, just as the most philistine peculiarities of the

Germans have, if you probe them deeply enough. To me it represented the

idea of emancipation from the yoke of school and family. The longing to

become a student coincided unfortunately with my growing dislike for

drier studies and with my ever-increasing fondness for cultivating

romantic poetry. The results of this soon showed themselves in my

resolute attempts to make a change.

At the time of my confirmation, at Easter, 1827, I had considerable

doubt about this ceremony, and I already felt a serious falling off of

my reverence for religious observances. The boy who, not many years

before, had gazed with agonised sympathy on the altarpiece in the Kreuz

Kirche (Church of the Holy Cross), and had yearned with ecstatic

fervour to hang upon the Cross in place of the Saviour, had now so far

lost his veneration for the clergyman, whose preparatory confirmation

classes he attended, as to be quite ready to make fun of him, and even

to join with his comrades in withholding part of his class fees, and

spending the money in sweets. How matters stood with me spiritually was

revealed to me, almost to my horror, at the Communion service, when I

walked in procession with my fellow-communicants to the altar to the

sound of organ and choir. The shudder with which I received the Bread

and Wine was so ineffaceably stamped on my memory, that I never again

partook of the Communion, lest I should do so with levity. To avoid

this was all the easier for me, seeing that among Protestants such

participation is not compulsory.

I soon, however, seized, or rather created, an opportunity of forcing a

breach with the Kreuz Grammar School, and thus compelled my family to

let me go to Leipzig. In self-defence against what I considered an

unjust punishment with which I was threatened by the assistant

headmaster, Baumgarten-Crusius, for whom I otherwise had great respect,

I asked to be discharged immediately from the school on the ground of

sudden summons to join my family in Leipzig. I had already left the

Bohme household three months before, and now lived alone in a small

garret, where I was waited on by the widow of a court plate-washer, who

at every meal served up the familiar thin Saxon coffee as almost my

sole nourishment. In this attic I did little else but write verses.

Here, too, I formed the first outlines of that stupendous tragedy which

afterwards filled my family with such consternation. The irregular

habits I acquired through this premature domestic independence induced

my anxious mother to consent very readily to my removal to Leipzig, the

more so as a part of our scattered family had already migrated there.

My longing for Leipzig, originally aroused by the fantastic impressions

I had gained there, and later by my enthusiasm for a student’s life,

had recently been still further stimulated. I had seen scarcely

anything of my sister Louisa, at that time a girl of about twenty-two,

as she had gone to the theatre of Breslau shortly after our

stepfather’s death. Quite recently she had been in Dresden for a few

days on her way to Leipzig, having accepted an engagement at the

theatre there. This meeting with my almost unknown sister, her hearty

manifestations of joy at seeing me again, as well as her sprightly,

merry disposition, quite won my heart. To live with her seemed an

alluring prospect, especially as my mother and Ottilie had joined her

for a while. For the first time a sister had treated me with some

tenderness. When at last I reached Leipzig at Christmas in the same

year (1827), and there found my mother with Ottilie and Cecilia (my

half-sister), I fancied myself in heaven. Great changes, however, had

already taken place. Louisa was betrothed to a respected and well-to-do

bookseller, Friedrich Brockhaus. This gathering together of the

relatives of the penniless bride-elect did not seem to trouble her

remarkably kind-hearted fiance. But my sister may have become uneasy on

the subject, for she soon gave me to understand that she was not taking

it quite in good part. Her desire to secure an entree into the higher

social circles of bourgeois life naturally produced a marked change in

her manner, at one time so full of fun, and of this I gradually became

so keenly sensible that finally we were estranged for a time. Moreover,

I unfortunately gave her good cause to reprove my conduct. After I got

to Leipzig I quite gave up my studies and all regular school work,

probably owing to the arbitrary and pedantic system in vogue at the

school there.

In Leipzig there were two higher-class schools, one called St. Thomas’s

School, and the other, and the more modern, St. Nicholas’s School. The

latter at that time enjoyed a better reputation than the former; so

there I had to go. But the council of teachers before whom I appeared

for my entrance examination at the New Year (1828) thought fit to

maintain the dignity of their school by placing me for a time in the

upper third form, whereas at the Kreuz Grammar School in Dresden I had

been in the second form. My disgust at having to lay aside my

Homer—from which I had already made written translations of twelve

songs—and take up the lighter Greek prose writers was indescribable. It

hurt my feelings so deeply, and so influenced my behaviour, that I

never made a friend of any teacher in the school. The unsympathetic

treatment I met with made me all the more obstinate, and various other

circumstances in my position only added to this feeling. While student

life, as I saw it day by day, inspired me ever more and more with its

rebellious spirit, I unexpectedly met with another cause for despising

the dry monotony of school regime. I refer to the influence of my

uncle, Adolph Wagner, which, though he was long unconscious of it, went

a long way towards moulding the growing stripling that I then was.

The fact that my romantic tastes were not based solely on a tendency to

superficial amusement was shown by my ardent attachment to this learned

relative. In his manner and conversation he was certainly very

attractive; the many-sidedness of his knowledge, which embraced not

only philology but also philosophy and general poetic literature,

rendered intercourse with him a most entertaining pastime, as all those

who knew him used to admit. On the other hand, the fact that he was

denied the gift of writing with equal charm, or clearness, was a

singular defect which seriously lessened his influence upon the

literary world, and, in fact, often made him appear ridiculous, as in a

written argument he would perpetrate the most pompous and involved

sentences. This weakness could not have alarmed me, because in the hazy

period of my youth the more incomprehensible any literary extravagance

was, the more I admired it; besides which, I had more experience of his

conversation than of his writings. He also seemed to find pleasure in

associating with the lad who could listen with so much heart and soul.

Yet unfortunately, possibly in the fervour of his discourses, of which

he was not a little proud, he forgot that their substance, as well as

their form, was far above my youthful powers of comprehension. I called

daily to accompany him on his constitutional walk beyond the city

gates, and I shrewdly suspect that we often provoked the smiles of

those passers-by who overheard the profound and often earnest

discussions between us. The subjects generally ranged over everything

serious or sublime throughout the whole realm of knowledge. I took the

most enthusiastic interest in his copious library, and tasted eagerly

of almost all branches of literature, without really grounding myself

in any one of them.

My uncle was delighted to find in me a very willing listener to his

recital of classic tragedies. He had made a translation of Oedipus,

and, according to his intimate friend Tieck, justly flattered himself

on being an excellent reader.

I remember once, when he was sitting at his desk reading out a Greek

tragedy to me, it did not annoy him when I fell fast asleep, and he

afterwards pretended he had not noticed it. I was also induced to spend

my evenings with him, owing to the friendly and genial hospitality his

wife showed me. A very great change had come over my uncle’s life since

my first acquaintance with him at Jeannette Thome’s. The home which he,

together with his sister Friederike, had found in his friend’s house

seemed, as time went on, to have brought in its train duties that were

irksome. As his literary work assured him a modest income, he

eventually deemed it more in accordance with his dignity to make a home

of his own. A friend of his, of the same age as himself, the sister of

the aesthete Wendt of Leipzig, who afterwards became famous, was chosen

by him to keep house for him. Without saying a word to Jeannette,

instead of going for his usual afternoon walk he went to the church

with his chosen bride, and got through the marriage ceremonies as

quickly as possible; and it was only on his return that he informed us

he was leaving, and would have his things removed that very day. He

managed to meet the consternation, perhaps also the reproaches, of his

elderly friend with quiet composure; and to the end of his life he

continued his regular daily visits to ‘Mam’selle Thome,’ who at times

would coyly pretend to sulk. It was only poor Friederike who seemed

obliged at times to atone for her brother’s sudden unfaithfulness.

What attracted me in my uncle most strongly was his blunt contempt of

the modern pedantry in State, Church, and School, to which he gave vent

with some humour. Despite the great moderation of his usual views on

life, he yet produced on me the effect of a thorough free-thinker. I

was highly delighted by his contempt for the pedantry of the schools.

Once, when I had come into serious conflict with all the teachers of

the Nicolai School, and the rector of the school had approached my

uncle, as the only male representative of my family, with a serious

complaint about my behaviour, my uncle asked me during a stroll round

the town, with a calm smile as though he were speaking to one of his

own age, what I had been up to with the people at school. I explained

the whole affair to him, and described the punishment to which I had

been subjected, and which seemed to me unjust. He pacified me, and

exhorted me to be patient, telling me to comfort myself with the

Spanish proverb, un rey no puede morir, which he explained as meaning

that the ruler of a school must of necessity always be in the right.

He could not, of course, help noticing, to his alarm, the effect upon

me of this kind of conversation, which I was far too young to

appreciate. Although it annoyed me one day, when I wanted to begin

reading Goethe’s Faust, to hear him say quietly that I was too young to

understand it, yet, according to my thinking, his other conversations

about our own great poets, and even about Shakespeare and Dante, had

made me so familiar with these sublime figures that I had now for some

time been secretly busy working out the great tragedy I had already

conceived in Dresden. Since my trouble at school I had devoted all my

energies, which ought by rights to have been exclusively directed to my

school duties, to the accomplishment of this task. In this secret work

I had only one confidante, my sister Ottilie, who now lived with me at

my mother’s. I can remember the misgivings and alarm which the first

confidential communication of my great poetic enterprise aroused in my

good sister; yet she affectionately suffered the tortures I sometimes

inflicted on her by reciting to her in secret, but not without emotion,

portions of my work as it progressed. Once, when I was reciting to her

one of the most gruesome scenes, a heavy thunderstorm came on. When the

lightning flashed quite close to us, and the thunder rolled, my sister

felt bound to implore me to stop; but she soon found it was hopeless,

and continued to endure it with touching devotion.

But a more significant storm was brewing on the horizon of my life. My

neglect of school reached such a point that it could not but lead to a

rupture. Whilst my dear mother had no presentiment of this, I awaited

the catastrophe with longing rather than with fear.

In order to meet this crisis with dignity I at length decided to

surprise my family by disclosing to them the secret of my tragedy,

which was now completed. They were to be informed of this great event

by my uncle. I thought I could rely upon his hearty recognition of my

vocation as a great poet on account of the deep harmony between us on

all other questions of life, science, and art. I therefore sent him my

voluminous manuscript, with a long letter which I thought would please

him immensely. In this I communicated to him first my ideas with regard

to the St. Nicholas’s School, and then my firm determination from that

time forward not to allow any mere school pedantry to check my free

development. But the event turned out very different from what I had

expected. It was a great shock to them. My uncle, quite conscious that

he had been indiscreet, paid a visit to my mother and brother-in-law,

in order to report the misfortune that had befallen the family,

reproaching himself for the fact that his influence over me had not

always, perhaps, been for my good. To me he wrote a serious letter of

discouragement; and to this day I cannot understand why he showed so

small a sense of humour in understanding my bad behaviour. To my

surprise he merely said that he reproached himself for having corrupted

me by conversations unsuited to my years, but he made no attempt to

explain to me good-naturedly the error of my ways.

The crime this boy of fifteen had committed was, as I said before, to

have written a great tragedy, entitled Leubald und Adelaïde.

The manuscript of this drama has unfortunately been lost, but I can

still see it clearly in my mind’s eye. The handwriting was most

affected, and the backward-sloping tall letters with which I had aimed

at giving it an air of distinction had already been compared by one of

my teachers to Persian hieroglyphics. In this composition I had

constructed a drama in which I had drawn largely upon Shakespeare’s

Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, and Goethe’s Götz van Berlichingen. The

plot was really based on a modification of Hamlet, the difference

consisting in the fact that my hero is so completely carried away by

the appearance of the ghost of his father, who has been murdered under

similar circumstances, and demands vengeance, that he is driven to

fearful deeds of violence; and, with a series of murders on his

conscience, he eventually goes mad. Leubald, whose character is a

mixture of Hamlet and Harry Hotspur, had promised his father’s ghost to

wipe from the face of the earth the whole race of Roderick, as the

ruthless murderer of the best of fathers was named. After having slain

Roderick himself in mortal combat, and subsequently all his sons and

other relations who supported him, there was only one obstacle that

prevented Leubald from fulfilling the dearest wish of his heart, which

was to be united in death with the shade of his father: a child of

Roderick’s was still alive. During the storming of his castle the

murderer’s daughter had been carried away into safety by a faithful

suitor, whom she, however, detested. I had an irresistible impulse to

call this maiden ‘Adelaïde.’ As even at that early age I was a great

enthusiast for everything really German, I can only account for the

obviously un-German name of my heroine by my infatuation for

Beethoven’s Adelaïde, whose tender refrain seemed to me the symbol of

all loving appeals. The course of my drama was now characterised by the

strange delays which took place in the accomplishment of this last

murder of vengeance, the chief obstacle to which lay in the sudden

passionate love which arose between Leubald and Adelaïde. I succeeded

in representing the birth and avowal of this love by means of

extraordinary adventures. Adelaïde was once more stolen away by a

robber-knight from the lover who had been sheltering her. After Leubald

had thereupon sacrificed the lover and all his relations, he hastened

to the robber’s castle, driven thither less by a thirst for blood than

by a longing for death. For this reason he regrets his inability to

storm the robber’s castle forthwith, because it is well defended, and,

moreover, night is fast falling; he is therefore obliged to pitch his

tent. After raving for a while he sinks down for the first time

exhausted, but being urged, like his prototype Hamlet, by the spirit of

his father to complete his vow of vengeance, he himself suddenly falls

into the power of the enemy during a night assault. In the subterranean

dungeons of the castle he meets Roderick’s daughter for the first time.

She is a prisoner like himself, and is craftily devising flight. Under

circumstances in which she produces on him the impression of a heavenly

vision, she makes her appearance before him. They fall in love, and fly

together into the wilderness, where they realise that they are deadly

enemies. The incipient insanity which was already noticeable in Leubald

breaks out more violently after this discovery, and everything that can

be done to intensify it is contributed by the ghost of his father,

which continually comes between the advances of the lovers. But this

ghost is not the only disturber of the conciliating love of Leubald and

Adelaïde. The ghost of Roderick also appears, and according to the

method followed by Shakespeare in Richard III., he is joined by the

ghosts of all the other members of Adelaïde’s family whom Leubald has

slain. From the incessant importunities of these ghosts Leubald seeks

to free himself by means of sorcery, and calls to his aid a rascal

named Flamming. One of Macbeth’s witches is summoned to lay the ghosts;

as she is unable to do this efficiently, the furious Leubald sends her

also to the devil; but with her dying breath she despatches the whole

crowd of spirits who serve her to join the ghosts of those already

pursuing him. Leubald, tormented beyond endurance, and now at last

raving mad, turns against his beloved, who is the apparent cause of all

his misery. He stabs her in his fury; then finding himself suddenly at

peace, he sinks his head into her lap, and accepts her last caresses as

her life-blood streams over his own dying body.

I had not omitted the smallest detail that could give this plot its

proper colouring, and had drawn on all my knowledge of the tales of the

old knights, and my acquaintance with Lear and Macbeth, to furnish my

drama with the most vivid situations. But one of the chief

characteristics of its poetical form I took from the pathetic,

humorous, and powerful language of Shakespeare. The boldness of my

grandiloquent and bombastic expressions roused my uncle Adolph’s alarm

and astonishment. He was unable to understand how I could have selected

and used with inconceivable exaggeration precisely the most extravagant

forms of speech to be found in Lear and Götz von Berlichingen.

Nevertheless, even after everybody had deafened me with their laments

over my lost time and perverted talents, I was still conscious of a

wonderful secret solace in the face of the calamity that had befallen

me. I knew, a fact that no one else could know, namely, that my work

could only be rightly judged when set to the music which I had resolved

to write for it, and which I intended to start composing immediately.

I must now explain my position with respect to music hitherto. For this

purpose I must go back to my earliest attempts in the art. In my family

two of my sisters were musical; the elder one, Rosalie, played the

piano, without, however, displaying any marked talent. Clara was more

gifted; in addition to a great deal of musical feeling, and a fine rich

touch on the piano, she possessed a particularly sympathetic voice, the

development of which was so premature and remarkable that, under the

tuition of Mieksch, her singing master, who was famous at that time,

she was apparently ready for the role of a prima donna as early as her

sixteenth year, and made her debut at Dresden in Italian opera as

‘Cenerentola’ in Rossini’s opera of that name. Incidentally I may

remark that this premature development proved injurious to Clara’s

voice, and was detrimental to her whole career. As I have said, music

was represented in our family by these two sisters. It was chiefly

owing to Clara’s career that the musical conductor C. M. von Weber

often came to our house. His visits were varied by those of the great

male-soprano Sassaroli; and in addition to these two representatives of

German and Italian music, we also had the company of Mieksch, her

singing master. It was on these occasions that I as a child first heard

German and Italian music discussed, and learnt that any one who wished

to ingratiate himself with the Court must show a preference for Italian

music, a fact which led to very practical results in our family

council. Clara’s talent, while her voice was still sound, was the

object of competition between the representatives of Italian and German

opera. I can remember quite distinctly that from the very beginning I

declared myself in favour of German opera; my choice was determined by

the tremendous impression made on me by the two figures of Sassaroli

and Weber. The Italian male-soprano, a huge pot-bellied giant,

horrified me with his high effeminate voice, his astonishing

volubility, and his incessant screeching laughter. In spite of his

boundless good-nature and amiability, particularly to my family, I took

an uncanny dislike to him. On account of this dreadful person, the

sound of Italian, either spoken or sung, seemed to my ears almost

diabolical; and when, in consequence of my poor sister’s misfortune, I

heard them often talking about Italian intrigues and cabals, I

conceived so strong a dislike for everything connected with this nation

that even in much later years I used to feel myself carried away by an

impulse of utter detestation and abhorrence.

The less frequent visits of Weber, on the other hand, seemed to have

produced upon me those first sympathetic impressions which I have never

since lost. In contrast to Sassaroli’s repulsive figure, Weber’s really

refined, delicate, and intellectual appearance excited my ecstatic

admiration. His narrow face and finely-cut features, his vivacious

though often half-closed eyes, captivated and thrilled me; whilst even

the bad limp with which he walked, and which I often noticed from our

windows when the master was making his way home past our house from the

fatiguing rehearsals, stamped the great musician in my imagination as

an exceptional and almost superhuman being. When, as a boy of nine, my

mother introduced me to him, and he asked me what I was going to be,

whether I wanted perhaps to be a musician, my mother told him that,

though I was indeed quite mad on Freischutz, yet she had as yet seen

nothing in me which indicated any musical talent.

This showed correct observation on my mother’s part; nothing had made

so great an impression on me as the music of Freischutz, and I tried in

every possible way to procure a repetition of the impressions I had

received from it, but, strange to say, least of all by the study of

music itself. Instead of this, I contented myself with hearing bits

from Freischutz played by my sisters. Yet my passion for it gradually

grew so strong that I can remember taking a particular fancy for a

young man called Spiess, chiefly because he could play the overture to

Freischutz, which I used to ask him to do whenever I met him. It was

chiefly the introduction to this overture which at last led me to

attempt, without ever having received any instruction on the piano, to

play this piece in my own peculiar way, for, oddly enough, I was the

only child in our family who had not been given music lessons. This was

probably due to my mother’s anxiety to keep me away from any artistic

interests of this kind in case they might arouse in me a longing for

the theatre.

When I was about twelve years old, however, my mother engaged a tutor

for me named Humann, from whom I received regular music lessons, though

only of a very mediocre description. As soon as I had acquired a very

imperfect knowledge of fingering I begged to be allowed to play

overtures in the form of duets, always keeping Weber as the goal of my

ambition. When at length I had got so far as to be able to play the

overture to Freischutz myself, though in a very faulty manner, I felt

the object of my study had been attained, and I had no inclination to

devote any further attention to perfecting my technique.

Yet I had attained this much: I was no longer dependent for music on

the playing of others; from this time forth I used to try and play,

albeit very imperfectly, everything I wanted to know. I also tried

Mozart’s Don Juan, but was unable to get any pleasure out of it, mainly

because the Italian text in the arrangement for the piano placed the

music in a frivolous light in my eyes, and much in it seemed to me

trivial and unmanly. (I can remember that when my sister used to sing

Zerlinen’s ariette, Batti, batti, ben Masetto, the music repelled me,

as it seemed so mawkish and effeminate.)

On the other hand, my bent for music grew stronger and stronger, and I

now tried to possess myself of my favourite pieces by making my own

copies. I can remember the hesitation with which my mother for the

first time gave me the money to buy the scored paper on which I copied

out Weber’s Lutzow’s Jagd, which was the first piece of music I

transcribed.

Music was still a secondary occupation with me when the news of Weber’s

death and the longing to learn his music to Oberon fanned my enthusiasm

into flame again. This received fresh impetus from the afternoon

concerts in the Grosser Garten at Dresden, where I often heard my

favourite music played by Zillmann’s Town Band, as I thought,

exceedingly well. The mysterious joy I felt in hearing an orchestra

play quite close to me still remains one of my most pleasant memories.

The mere tuning up of the instruments put me in a state of mystic

excitement; even the striking of fifths on the violin seemed to me like

a greeting from the spirit world—which, I may mention incidentally, had

a very real meaning for me. When I was still almost a baby, the sound

of these fifths, which has always excited me, was closely associated in

my mind with ghosts and spirits. I remember that even much later in

life I could never pass the small palace of Prince Anthony, at the end

of the Ostra Allee in Dresden, without a shudder; for it was there I

had first heard the sound of a violin, a very common experience to me

afterwards. It was close by me, and seemed to my ears to come from the

stone figures with which this palace is adorned, some of which are

provided with musical instruments. When I took up my post as musical

conductor at Dresden, and had to pay my official visit to Morgenroth,

the President of the Concert Committee, an elderly gentleman who lived

for many years opposite that princely palace, it seemed odd to find

that the player of fifths who had so strongly impressed my musical

fancy as a boy was anything but a supernatural spectre. And when I saw

the well-known picture in which a skeleton plays on his violin to an

old man on his deathbed, the ghostly character of those very notes

impressed itself with particular force upon my childish imagination.

When at last, as a young man, I used to listen to the Zillmann

Orchestra in the Grosser Garten almost every afternoon, one may imagine

the rapturous thrill with which I drew in all the chaotic variety of

sound that I heard as the orchestra tuned up: the long drawn A of the

oboe, which seemed like a call from the dead to rouse the other

instruments, never failed to raise all my nerves to a feverish pitch of

tension, and when the swelling C in the overture to Freischutz told me

that I had stepped, as it were with both feet, right into the magic

realm of awe. Any one who had been watching me at that moment could

hardly have failed to see the state I was in, and this in spite of the

fact that I was such a bad performer on the piano.

Another work also exercised a great fascination over me, namely, the

overture to Fidelio in E major, the introduction to which affected me

deeply. I asked my sisters about Beethoven, and learned that the news

of his death had just arrived. Obsessed as I still was by the terrible

grief caused by Weber’s death, this fresh loss, due to the decease of

this great master of melody, who had only just entered my life, filled

me with strange anguish, a feeling nearly akin to my childish dread of

the ghostly fifths on the violin. It was now Beethoven’s music that I

longed to know more thoroughly; I came to Leipzig, and found his music

to Egmont on the piano at my sister Louisa’s. After that I tried to get

hold of his sonatas. At last, at a concert at the Gewandthaus, I heard

one of the master’s symphonies for the first time; it was the Symphony

in A major. The effect on me was indescribable. To this must be added

the impression produced on me by Beethoven’s features, which I saw in

the lithographs that were circulated everywhere at that time, and by

the fact that he was deaf, and lived a quiet secluded life. I soon

conceived an image of him in my mind as a sublime and unique

supernatural being, with whom none could compare. This image was

associated in my brain with that of Shakespeare; in ecstatic dreams I

met both of them, saw and spoke to them, and on awakening found myself

bathed in tears.

It was at this time that I came across Mozart’s Requiem, which formed

the starting-point of my enthusiastic absorption in the works of that

master. His second finale to Don Juan inspired me to include him in my

spirit world.

I was now filled with a desire to compose, as I had before been to

write verse. I had, however, in this case to master the technique of an

entirely separate and complicated subject. This presented greater

difficulties than I had met with in writing verse, which came to me

fairly easily. It was these difficulties that drove me to adopt a

career which bore some resemblance to that of a professional musician,

whose future distinction would be to win the titles of Conductor and

Writer of Opera.

I now wanted to set Leubald und Adelaïde to music, similar to that

which Beethoven wrote to Goethe’s Egmont; the various ghosts from the

spirit world, who were each to display different characteristics, were

to borrow their own distinctive colouring from appropriate musical

accompaniment. In order to acquire the necessary technique of

composition quickly I studied Logier’s Methode des Generalbasses, a

work which was specially recommended to me at a musical lending library

as a suitable text-book from which this art might be easily mastered. I

have distinct recollections that the financial difficulties with which

I was continually harassed throughout my life began at this time. I

borrowed Logier’s book on the weekly payment system, in the fond hope

of having to pay for it only during a few weeks out of the savings of

my weekly pocket-money. But the weeks ran on into months, and I was

still unable to compose as well as I wished. Mr. Frederick Wieck, whose

daughter afterwards married Robert Schumann, was at that time the

proprietor of that lending library. He kept sending me troublesome

reminders of the debt I owed him; and when my bill had almost reached

the price of Logier’s book I had to make a clean breast of the matter

to my family, who thus not only learnt of my financial difficulties in

general, but also of my latest transgression into the domain of music,

from which, of course, at the very most, they expected nothing better

than a repetition of Leubald und Adelaïde.

There was great consternation at home; my mother, sister, and

brother-in-law, with anxious faces, discussed how my studies should be

superintended in future, to prevent my having any further opportunity

for transgressing in this way. No one, however, yet knew the real state

of affairs at school, and they hoped I would soon see the error of my

ways in this case as I had in my former craze for poetry.

But other domestic changes were taking place which necessitated my

being for some little time alone in our house at Leipzig during the

summer of 1829, when I was left entirely to my own devices. It was

during this period that my passion for music rose to an extraordinary

degree. I had secretly been taking lessons in harmony from G. Muller,

afterwards organist at Altenburg, an excellent musician belonging to

the Leipzig orchestra. Although the payment of these lessons was also

destined to get me into hot water at home later on, I could not even

make up to my teacher for the delay in the payment of his fees by

giving him the pleasure of watching me improve in my studies. His

teaching and exercises soon filled me with the greatest disgust, as to

my mind it all seemed so dry. For me music was a spirit, a noble and

mystic monster, and any attempt to regulate it seemed to lower it in my

eyes. I gathered much more congenial instruction about it from

Hoffmann’s Phantasiestucken than from my Leipzig orchestra player; and

now came the time when I really lived and breathed in Hoffmann’s

artistic atmosphere of ghosts and spirits. With my head quite full of

Kreissler, Krespel, and other musical spectres from my favourite

author, I imagined that I had at last found in real life a creature who

resembled them: this ideal musician in whom for a time I fancied I had

discovered a second Kreissler was a man called Flachs. He was a tall,

exceedingly thin man, with a very narrow head and an extraordinary way

of walking, moving, and speaking, whom I had seen at all those open-air

concerts which formed my principal source of musical education. He was

always with the members of the orchestra, speaking exceedingly quickly,

first to one and then the other; for they all knew him, and seemed to

like him. The fact that they were making fun of him I only learned, to

my great confusion, much later. I remember having noticed this strange

figure from my earliest days in Dresden, and I gathered from the

conversations which I overheard that he was indeed well known to all

Dresden musicians. This circumstance alone was sufficient to make me

take a great interest in him; but the point about him which attracted

me more than anything was the manner in which he listened to the

various items in the programme: he used to give peculiar, convulsive

nods of his head, and blow out his cheeks as though with sighs. All

this I regarded as a sign of spiritual ecstasy. I noticed, moreover,

that he was quite alone, that he belonged to no party, and paid no

attention to anything in the garden save the music; whereupon my

identification of this curious being with the conductor Kreissler

seemed quite natural. I was determined to make his acquaintance, and I

succeeded in doing so. Who shall describe my delight when, on going to

call on him at his rooms for the first time, I found innumerable

bundles of scores! I had as yet never seen a score. It is true I

discovered, to my regret, that he possessed nothing either by

Beethoven, Mozart, or Weber; in fact, nothing but immense quantities of

works, masses, and cantatas by composers such as Staerkel, Stamitz,

Steibelt, etc., all of whom were entirely unknown to me. Yet Flachs was

able to tell me so much that was good about them that the respect which

I felt for scores in general helped me to overcome my regret at not

finding anything by my beloved masters. It is true I learnt later that

poor Flachs had only come into the possession of these particular

scores through unscrupulous dealers, who had traded on his weakness of

intellect and palmed off this worthless music on him for large sums of

money. At all events, they were scores, and that was quite enough for

me. Flachs and I became most intimate; we were always seen going about

together—I, a lanky boy of sixteen, and this weird, shaky flaxpole. The

doors of my deserted home were often opened for this strange guest, who

made me play my compositions to him while he ate bread and cheese. In

return, he once arranged one of my airs for wind instruments, and, to

my astonishment, it was actually accepted and played by the band in

Kintschy’s Swiss Chalet. That this man had not the smallest capacity to

teach me anything never once occurred to me; I was so firmly convinced

of his originality that there was no need for him to prove it further

than by listening patiently to my enthusiastic outpourings. But as, in

course of time, several of his own friends joined us, I could not help

noticing that the worthy Flachs was regarded by them all as a

half-witted fool. At first this merely pained me, but a strange

incident unexpectedly occurred which converted me to the general

opinion about him. Flachs was a man of some means, and had fallen into

the toils of a young lady of dubious character who he believed was

deeply in love with him. One day, without warning, I found his house

closed to me, and discovered, to my astonishment, that jealousy was the

cause. The unexpected discovery of this liaison, which was my first

experience of such a case, filled me with a strange horror. My friend

suddenly appeared to me even more mad than he really was. I felt so

ashamed of my persistent blindness that for some time to come I never

went to any of the garden concerts for fear I should meet my sham

Kreissler.

By this time I had composed my first Sonata in D minor. I had also

begun a pastoral play, and had worked it out in what I felt sure must

be an entirely unprecedented way.

I chose Goethe’s Laune der Verliebten as a model for the form and plot

of my work. I scarcely even drafted out the libretto, however, but

worked it out at the same time as the music and orchestration, so that,

while I was writing out one page of the score, I had not even thought

out the words for the next page. I remember distinctly that following

this extraordinary method, although I had not acquired the slightest

knowledge about writing for instruments, I actually worked out a fairly

long passage which finally resolved itself into a scene for three

female voices followed by the air for the tenor. My bent for writing

for the orchestra was so strong that I procured a score of Don Juan,

and set to work on what I then considered a very careful orchestration

of a fairly long air for soprano. I also wrote a quartette in D major

after I had myself sufficiently mastered the alto for the viola, my

ignorance of which had caused me great difficulty only a short time

before, when I was studying a quartette by Haydn.

Armed with these works, I set out in the summer on my first journey as

a musician. My sister Clara, who was married to the singer Wolfram, had

an engagement at the theatre at Magdeburg, whither, in characteristic

fashion, I set forth upon my adventure on foot.

My short stay with my relations provided me with many experiences of

musical life. It was there that I met a new freak, whose influence upon

me I have never been able to forget. He was a musical conductor of the

name of Kuhnlein, a most extraordinary person. Already advanced in

years, delicate and, unfortunately, given to drink, this man

nevertheless impressed one by something striking and vigorous in his

expression. His chief characteristics were an enthusiastic worship of

Mozart and a passionate depreciation of Weber. He had read only one

book—Goethe’s Faust—and in this work there was not a page in which he

had not underlined some passage, and made some remark in praise of

Mozart or in disparagement of Weber. It was to this man that my

brother-in-law confided the compositions which I had brought with me in

order to learn his opinion of my abilities. One evening, as we were

sitting comfortably in an inn, old Kuhnlein came in, and approached us

with a friendly, though serious manner.

I thought I read good news in his features, but when my brother-in-law

asked him what he thought of my work, he answered quietly and calmly,

‘There is not a single good note in it!’ My brother-in-law, who was

accustomed to Kuhnlein’s eccentricity, gave a loud laugh which

reassured me somewhat. It was impossible to get any advice or coherent

reasons for his opinion out of Kuhnlein; he merely renewed his abuse of

Weber and made some references to Mozart which, nevertheless, made a

deep impression upon me, as Kuhnlein’s language was always very heated

and emphatic.

On the other hand, this visit brought me a great treasure, which was

responsible for leading me in a very different direction from that

advised by Kuhnlein. This was the score of Beethoven’s great Quartette

in E flat major, which had only been fairly recently published, and of

which my brother-in-law had a copy made for me. Richer in experience,

and in the possession of this treasure, I returned to Leipzig to the

nursery of my queer musical studies. But my family had now returned

with my sister Rosalie, and I could no longer keep secret from them the

fact that my connection with the school had been entirely suspended,

for a notice was found saying that I had not attended the school for

the last six months. As a complaint addressed by the rector to my uncle

about me had not received adequate attention, the school authorities

had apparently made no further attempts to exercise any supervision

over me, which I had indeed rendered quite impossible by absenting

myself altogether.

A fresh council of war was held in the family to discuss what was to be

done with me. As I laid particular stress on my bent for music, my

relations thought that I ought, at any rate, to learn one instrument

thoroughly. My brother-in-law, Brockhaus, proposed to send me to

Hummel, at Weimar, to be trained as a pianist, but as I loudly

protested that by ‘music’ I meant ‘composing,’ and not ‘playing an

instrument,’ they gave way, and decided to let me have regular lessons

in harmony from Muller, the very musician from whom I had had

instruction on the sly some little while before, and who had not yet

been paid. In return for this I promised faithfully to go back to work

conscientiously at St. Nicholas’s School. I soon grew tired of both. I

could brook no control, and this unfortunately applied to my musical

instruction as well. The dry study of harmony disgusted me more and

more, though I continued to conceive fantasias, sonatas, and overtures,

and work them out by myself. On the other hand, I was spurred on by

ambition to show what I could do at school if I liked. When the Upper

School boys were set the task of writing a poem, I composed a chorus in

Greek, on the recent War of Liberation. I can well imagine that this

Greek poem had about as much resemblance to a real Greek oration and

poetry, as the sonatas and overtures I used to compose at that time had

to thoroughly professional music. My attempt was scornfully rejected as

a piece of impudence. After that I have no further recollections of my

school. My continued attendance was a pure sacrifice on my side, made

out of consideration for my family: I did not pay the slightest

attention to what was taught in the lessons, but secretly occupied

myself all the while with reading any book that happened to attract me.

As my musical instruction also did me no good, I continued in my wilful

process of self-education by copying out the scores of my beloved

masters, and in so doing acquired a neat handwriting, which in later

years has often been admired. I believe my copies of the C minor

Symphony and the Ninth Symphony by Beethoven are still preserved as

souvenirs.

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony became the mystical goal of all my strange

thoughts and desires about music. I was first attracted to it by the

opinion prevalent among musicians, not only in Leipzig but elsewhere,

that this work had been written by Beethoven when he was already half

mad. It was considered the ‘non plus ultra’ of all that was fantastic

and incomprehensible, and this was quite enough to rouse in me a

passionate desire to study this mysterious work. At the very first

glance at the score, of which I obtained possession with such

difficulty, I felt irresistibly attracted by the long-sustained pure

fifths with which the first phrase opens: these chords, which, as I

related above, had played such a supernatural part in my childish

impressions of music, seemed in this case to form the spiritual keynote

of my own life. This, I thought, must surely contain the secret of all

secrets, and accordingly the first thing to be done was to make the

score my own by a process of laborious copying. I well remember that on

one occasion the sudden appearance of the dawn made such an uncanny

impression on my excited nerves that I jumped into bed with a scream as

though I had seen a ghost. The symphony at that time had not yet been

arranged for the piano; it had found so little favour that the

publisher did not feel inclined to run the risk of producing it. I set

to work at it, and actually composed a complete piano solo, which I

tried to play to myself. I sent my work to Schott, the publisher of the

score, at Mainz. I received in reply a letter saying ‘that the

publishers had not yet decided to issue the Ninth Symphony for the

piano, but that they would gladly keep my laborious work,’ and offered

me remuneration in the shape of the score of the great Missa Solemnis

in D, which I accepted with great pleasure.

In addition to this work I practised the violin for some time, as my

harmony master very rightly considered that some knowledge of the

practical working of this instrument was indispensable for any one who

had the intention of composing for the orchestra. My mother, indeed,

paid the violinist Sipp (who was still playing in the Leipzig orchestra

in 1865) eight thalers for a violin (I do not know what became of it),

with which for quite three months I must have inflicted unutterable

torture upon my mother and sister by practising in my tiny little room.

I got so far as to play certain Variations in F sharp by Mayseder, but

only reached the second or third. After that I have no further

recollections of this practising, in which my family fortunately had

very good reasons of their own for not encouraging me.

But the time now arrived when my interest in the theatre again took a

passionate hold upon me. A new company had been formed in my birthplace

under very good auspices. The Board of Management of the Court Theatre

at Dresden had taken over the management of the Leipzig theatre for

three years. My sister Rosalie was a member of the company, and through

her I could always gain admittance to the performances; and that which

in my childhood had been merely the interest aroused by a strange

spirit of curiosity now became a more deep-seated and conscious

passion.

Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, the plays of Schiller, and to crown

all, Goethe’s Faust, excited and stirred me deeply. The Opera was

giving the first performances of Marschner’s Vampir and Templer und

Judin. The Italian company arrived from Dresden, and fascinated the

Leipzig audience by their consummate mastery of their art. Even I was

almost carried away by the enthusiasm with which the town was

over-whelmed, into forgetting the boyish impressions which Signor

Sassaroli had stamped upon my mind, when another miracle—which also

came to us from Dresden—suddenly gave a new direction to my artistic

feelings and exercised a decisive influence over my whole life. This

consisted of a special performance given by Wilhelmine

Schroder-Devrient, who at that time was at the zenith of her artistic

career, young, beautiful, and ardent, and whose like I have never again

seen on the stage. She made her appearance in Fidelio.

If I look back on my life as a whole, I can find no event that produced

so profound an impression upon me. Any one who can remember that

wonderful woman at this period of her life must to some extent have

experienced the almost Satanic ardour which the intensely human art of

this incomparable actress poured into his veins. After the performance

I rushed to a friend’s house and wrote a short note to the singer, in

which I briefly told her that from that moment my life had acquired its

true significance, and that if in days to come she should ever hear my

name praised in the world of Art, she must remember that she had that

evening made me what I then swore it was my destiny to become. This

note I left at her hotel, and ran out into the night as if I were mad.

In the year 1842, when I went to Dresden to make my debut with Rienzi,

I paid several visits to the kind-hearted singer, who startled me on

one occasion by repeating this letter word for word. It seemed to have

made an impression on her too, as she had actually kept it.

At this point I feel myself obliged to acknowledge that the great

confusion which now began to prevail in my life, and particularly in my

studies, was due to the inordinate effect this artistic interpretation

had upon me. I did not know where to turn, or how to set about

producing something myself which might place me in direct contact with

the impression I had received, while everything that could not be

brought into touch with it seemed to me so shallow and meaningless that

I could not possibly trouble myself with it. I should have liked to

compose a work worthy of a Schroder-Devrient; but as this was quite

beyond my power, in my head-long despair I let all artistic endeavour

slide, and as my work was also utterly insufficient to absorb me, I

flung myself recklessly into the life of the moment in the company of

strangely chosen associates, and indulged in all kinds of youthful

excesses.

I now entered into all the dissipations of raw manhood, the outward

ugliness and inward emptiness of which make me marvel to this day. My

intercourse with those of my own age had always been the result of pure

chance. I cannot remember that any special inclination or attraction

determined me in the choice of my young friends. While I can honestly

say that I was never in a position to stand aloof out of envy from any

one who was specially gifted, I can only explain my indifference in the

choice of my associates by the fact that through inexperience regarding

the sort of companionship that would be of advantage to me, I cared

only to have some one who would accompany me in my excursions, and to

whom I could pour out my feelings to my heart’s content without caring

what effect it might have upon him. The result of this was that after a

stream of confidences to which my own excitement was the only response,

I at length reached the point when I turned and looked at my friend; to

my astonishment I generally found that there was no question of

response at all, and as soon as I set my heart on drawing something

from him in return, and urged him to confide in me, when he really had

nothing to tell, the connection usually came to an end and left no

trace on my life. In a certain sense my strange relationship with

Flachs was typical of the great majority of my ties in after-life.

Consequently, as no lasting personal bond of friendship ever found its

way into my life, it is easy to understand how delight in the

dissipations of student life could become a passion of some duration,

because in it individual intercourse is entirely replaced by a common

circle of acquaintances. In the midst of rowdyism and ragging of the

most foolish description, I remained quite alone, and it is quite

possible that these frivolities formed a protecting hedge round my

inmost soul, which needed time to grow to its natural strength and not

be weakened by reaching maturity too soon.

My life seemed to break up in all directions; I had to leave St.

Nicholas’s School at Easter 1830, as I was too deeply in disgrace with

the staff of masters ever to hope for any promotion in the University

from that quarter. It was now determined that I should study privately

for six months and then go to St. Thomas’s School, where I should be in

fresh surroundings and be able to work up and qualify in a short time

for the University. My uncle Adolph, with whom I was constantly

renewing my friendship, and who also encouraged me about my music and

exercised a good influence over me in that respect, in spite of the

utter degradation of my life at that time, kept arousing in me an ever

fresh desire for scientific studies. I took private lessons in Greek

from a scholar, and read Sophocles with him. For a time I hoped this

noble poet would again inspire me to get a real hold on the language,

but the hope was vain. I had not chosen the right teacher, and,

moreover, his sitting-room in which we pursued our studies looked out

on a tanyard, the repulsive odour of which affected my nerves so

strongly that I became thoroughly disgusted both with Sophocles and

Greek. My brother-in-law, Brockhaus, who wanted to put me in the way of

earning some pocket-money, gave me the correcting of the proof-sheets

of a new edition he was bringing out of Becker’s Universal History,

revised by Lobell. This gave me a reason for improving by private study

the superficial general instruction on every subject which is given at

school, and I thus acquired the valuable knowledge which I was destined

to have in later life of most of the branches of learning so

uninterestingly taught in class. I must not forget to mention that, to

a certain extent, the attraction exercised over me by this first closer

study of history was due to the fact that it brought me in eightpence a

sheet, and I thus found myself in one of the rarest positions in my

life, actually earning money; yet I should be doing myself an injustice

if I did not bear in mind the vivid impressions I now for the first

time received upon turning my serious attention to those periods of

history with which I had hitherto had a very superficial acquaintance.

All I recollect about my school days in this connection is that I was

attracted by the classical period of Greek history; Marathon, Salamis,

and Thermopylae composed the canon of all that interested me in the

subject. Now for the first time I made an intimate acquaintance with

the Middle Ages and the French Revolution, as my work in correcting

dealt precisely with the two volumes which contained these two periods.

I remember in particular that the description of the Revolution filled

me with sincere hatred for its heroes; unfamiliar as I was with the

previous history of France, my human sympathy was horrified by the

cruelty of the men of that day, and this purely human impulse remained

so strong in me that I remember how even quite recently it cost me a

real struggle to give any weight to the true political significance of

those acts of violence.

How great, then, was my astonishment when one day the current political

events of the time enabled me, as it were, to gain a personal

experience of the sort of national upheavals with which I had come into

distant contact in the course of my proof-correcting. The special

editions of the Leipzig Gazette brought us the news of the July

Revolution in Paris. The King of France had been driven from his

throne; Lafayette, who a moment before had seemed a myth to me, was

again riding through a cheering crowd in the streets of Paris; the

Swiss Guards had once more been butchered in the Tuileries, and a new

King knew no better way of commending himself to the populace than by

declaring himself the embodiment of the Republic. Suddenly to become

conscious of living at a time in which such things took place could not

fail to have a startling effect on a boy of seventeen. The world as a

historic phenomenon began from that day in my eyes, and naturally my

sympathies were wholly on the side of the Revolution, which I regarded

in the light of a heroic popular struggle crowned with victory, and

free from the blemish of the terrible excesses that stained the first

French Revolution. As the whole of Europe, including some of the German

states, was soon plunged more or less violently into rebellion, I

remained for some time in a feverish state of suspense, and now first

turned my attention to the causes of these upheavals, which I regarded

as struggles of the young and hopeful against the old and effete

portion of mankind. Saxony also did not remain unscathed; in Dresden it

came to actual fighting in the streets, which immediately produced a

political change in the shape of the proclamation of the regency of the

future King Frederick, and the granting of a constitution. This event

filled me with such enthusiasm that I composed a political overture,

the prelude of which depicted dark oppression in the midst of which a

strain was at last heard under which, to make my meaning clearer, I

wrote the words Friedrich und Freiheil; this strain was intended to

develop gradually and majestically into the fullest triumph, which I

hoped shortly to see successfully performed at one of the Leipzig

Garden Concerts.

However, before I was able to develop my politico-musical conceptions

further, disorders broke out in Leipzig itself which summoned me from

the precincts of Art to take a direct share in national life. National

life in Leipzig at this time meant nothing more than antagonism between

the students and the police, the latter being the arch-enemy upon whom

the youthful love of liberty vented itself. Some students had been

arrested in a street broil who were now to be rescued. The

under-graduates, who had been restless for some days, assembled one

evening in the Market Place and the Clubs, mustered together, and made

a ring round their leaders. The whole proceeding was marked by a

certain measured solemnity, which impressed me deeply. They sang

Gaudeamus igitur, formed up into column, and picking up from the crowd

any young men who sympathised with them, marched gravely and resolutely

from the Market Place to the University buildings, to open the cells

and set free the students who had been arrested. My heart beat fast as

I marched with them to this ‘Taking of the Bastille,’ but things did

not turn out as we expected, for in the courtyard of the Paulinum the

solemn procession was stopped by Rector Krug, who had come down to meet

it with his grey head bared; his assurance that the captives had

already been released at his request was greeted with a thundering

cheer, and the matter seemed at an end.

But the tense expectation of a revolution had grown too great not to

demand some sacrifice. A summons was suddenly spread calling us to a

notorious alley in order to exercise popular justice upon a hated

magistrate who, it was rumoured, had unlawfully taken under his

protection a certain house of ill-fame in that quarter. When I reached

the spot with the tail-end of the crowd, I found the house had been

broken into and all sorts of violence had been committed. I recall with

horror the intoxicating effect this unreasoning fury had upon me, and

cannot deny that without the slightest personal provocation I shared,

like one possessed, in the frantic onslaught of the undergraduates, who

madly shattered furniture and crockery to bits. I do not believe that

the ostensible motive for this outrage, which, it is true, was to be

found in a fact that was a grave menace to public morality, had any

weight with me whatever; on the contrary, it was the purely devilish

fury of these popular outbursts that drew me, too, like a madman into

their vortex.

The fact that such fits of fury are not quick to abate, but, in

accordance with certain natural laws, reach their proper conclusion

only after they have degenerated into frenzy, I was to learn in my own

person. Scarcely did the summons ring out for us to march to another

resort of the same kind than I too found myself in the tide which set

towards the opposite end of the town. There the same exploits were

repeated, and the most ludicrous outrages perpetrated. I cannot

remember that the enjoyment of alcoholic drinks contributed to the

intoxication of myself and my immediate fellows. I only know that I

finally got into the state that usually succeeds a debauch, and upon

waking next morning, as if from a hideous nightmare, had to convince

myself that I had really taken part in the events of the previous night

by a trophy I possessed in the shape of a tattered red curtain, which I

had brought home as a token of my prowess. The thought that people

generally, and my own family in particular, were wont to put a lenient

construction upon youthful escapades was a great comfort to me;

outbursts of this kind on the part of the young were regarded as

righteous indignation against really serious scandals, and there was no

need for me to be afraid of owning up to having taken part in such

excesses.

The dangerous example, however, which had been set by the

undergraduates incited the lower classes and the mob to similar

excesses on the following nights, against employers and any who were

obnoxious to them. The matter at once assumed a more serious

complexion; property was threatened, and a conflict between rich and

poor stood grinning at our doors. As there were no soldiers in the

town, and the police were thoroughly disorganised, the students were

called in as a protection against the lower orders. An undergraduate’s

hour of glory now began, such as I could only have thirsted for in my

schoolboy dreams. The student became the tutelar deity of Leipzig,

called on by the authorities to arm and band together in defence of

property, and the same young men who two days before had yielded to a

rage for destruction, now mustered in the University courtyard. The

proscribed names of the students’ clubs and unions were shouted by the

mouths of town councillors and chief constables in order to summon

curiously equipped undergraduates, who thereupon, in simple mediaeval

array of war, scattered throughout the town, occupied the guard-rooms

at the gates, provided sentinels for the grounds of various wealthy

merchants, and, as occasion demanded, took places which seemed

threatened, more especially inns, under their permanent protection.

Though, unluckily, I was not yet a member of their body, I anticipated

the delights of academic citizenship by half-impudent, half-obsequious

solicitation of the leaders of the students whom I honoured most. I had

the good fortune to recommend myself particularly to these ‘cocks of

the walk,’ as they were styled, on account of my relationship to

Brockhaus, in whose grounds the main body of these champions were

encamped for some time. My brother-in-law was among those who had been

seriously threatened, and it was only owing to really great presence of

mind and assurance that he succeeded in saving his printing works, and

especially his steam presses, which were the chief object of attack,

from destruction. To protect his property against further assault,

detachments of students were told off to his grounds as well; the

excellent entertainment which the generous master of the house offered

his jovial guardians in his pleasant summer-house enticed the pick of

the students to him. My brother-in-law was for several weeks guarded

day and night against possible attacks by the populace, and on this

occasion, as the mediator of a flowing hospitality, I celebrated among

the most famous ‘bloods’ of the University the true saturnalia of my

scholarly ambition.

For a still longer period the guarding of the gates was entrusted to

the students; the unheard-of splendour which accordingly became

associated with this post drew fresh aspirants to the spot from far and

near. Every day huge chartered vehicles discharged at the Halle Gate

whole bands of the boldest sons of learning from Halle, Jena,

Gottingen, and the remotest regions. They got down close to the guards

at the gate, and for several weeks never set foot in an inn or any

other dwelling; they lived at the expense of the Council, drew vouchers

on the police for food and drink, and knew but one care, that the

possibility of a general quieting of men’s minds would make their

opportune guardianship superfluous. I never missed a day on guard or a

night either, alas! trying to impress on my family the urgent need for

my personal endurance. Of course, the quieter and really studious

spirits among us soon resigned these duties, and only the flower of the

flock of undergraduates remained so staunch that it became difficult

for the authorities to relieve them of their task. I held out to the

very last, and succeeded in making most astonishing friends for my age.

Many of the most audacious remained in Leipzig even when there was no

guard duty to fulfil, and peopled the place for some time with

champions of an extraordinarily desperate and dissipated type, who had

been repeatedly sent down from various universities for rowdyism or

debt, and who now, thanks to the exceptional circumstances of the day,

found a refuge in Leipzig, where at first they had been received with

open arms by the general enthusiasm of their comrades.

In the presence of all these phenomena I felt as if I were surrounded

by the results of an earthquake which had upset the usual order of

things. My brother-in-law, Friedrich Brockhaus, who could justly taunt

the former authorities of the place with their inability to maintain

peace and order, was carried away by the current of a formidable

movement of opposition. He made a daring speech at the Guildhall before

their worships the Town Council, which brought him popularity, and he

was appointed second-in-command of the newly constituted Leipzig

Municipal Guard. This body at length ousted my adored students from the

guard-rooms of the town gates, and we no longer had the right of

stopping travellers and inspecting their passes. On the other hand, I

flattered myself that I might regard my new position as a boy citizen

as equivalent to that of the French National Guard, and my

brother-in-law, Brockhaus, as a Saxon Lafayette, which, at all events,

succeeded in furnishing my soaring excitement with a healthy stimulant.

I now began to read the papers and cultivate politics enthusiastically;

however, the social intercourse of the civic world did not attract me

sufficiently to make me false to my beloved academic associates. I

followed them faithfully from the guard-rooms to the ordinary bars,

where their splendour as men of the literary world now sought

retirement.

My chief ambition was to become one of them as soon as possible. This,

however, could only be accomplished by being again entered at a grammar

school. St. Thomas’s, whose headmaster was a feeble old man, was the

place where my wishes could be most speedily attained.

I joined the school in the autumn of 1830 simply with the intention of

qualifying myself for the Leaving Examination by merely nominal

attendance there. The chief thing in connection with it was that I and

friends of the same bent succeeded in establishing a sham students’

association called the Freshman’s Club. It was formed with all possible

pedantry, the institution of the ‘Comment’ was introduced,

fencing-practice and sword-bouts were held, and an inaugural meeting to

which several prominent students were invited, and at which I presided

as ‘Vice’ in white buckskin trousers and great jack-boots, gave me a

foretaste of the delights awaiting me as a full-blown son of the Muses.

The masters of St. Thomas’s, however, were not quite so ready to fall

in with my aspirations to studentship; at the end of the half-year they

were of the opinion that I had not given a thought to their

institution, and nothing could persuade them that I had earned a title

to academic citizenship by any acquisition of knowledge. Some sort of

decision was necessary, so I accordingly informed my family that I had

made up my mind not to study for a profession at the University, but to

become a musician. There was nothing to prevent me matriculating as

‘Studiosus Musicae,’ and, without therefore troubling myself about the

pedantries of the authorities at St. Thomas’s, I defiantly quitted that

seat of learning from which I had derived small profit, and presented

myself forthwith to the rector of the University, whose acquaintance I

had made on the evening of the riot, to be enrolled as a student of

music. This was accordingly done without further ado, on the payment of

the usual fees.