I gave up the attempt to try and see Scribe on the mere ground of our

having had some correspondence, for my friends had made it clear to me,

in the light of their own experience, that it was out of the question

to expect this exceptionally busy author to occupy himself seriously

with a young and unknown musician. Anders was able to introduce me to

another acquaintance, however, a certain M. Dumersan. This grey-haired

gentleman had written some hundred vaudeville pieces, and would have

been glad to see one of them performed as an opera on a larger scale

before his death. He had no idea of standing on his dignity as an

author, and was quite willing to undertake the translation of an

existing libretto into French verse. We therefore entrusted him with

the writing of my Liebesverbot, with a view to a performance at the

Theatre de la Renaissance, as it was then called. (It was the third

existing theatre for lyric drama, the performances being given in the

new Salle Ventadour, which had been rebuilt after its destruction by

fire.) On the understanding that it was to be a literal translation, he

at once turned the three numbers of my opera, for which I hoped to

secure a hearing, into neat French verse. Besides this, he asked me to

compose a chorus for a vaudeville entitled La Descente de la Courtille,

which was to be played at the Varietes during the carnival.

This was a second opening. My friends now strongly advised me to write

something small in the way of songs, which I could offer to popular

singers for concert purposes. Both Lehrs and Anders produced words for

these. Anders brought a very innocent Dors, mon enfant, written by a

young poet of his acquaintance; this was the first thing I composed to

a French text. It was so successful that, when I had tried it over

softly several times on the piano, my wife, who was in bed, called out

to me that it was heavenly for sending one to sleep. I also set

L’Attente from Hugo’s Orientales, and Ronsard’s song, Mignonne, to

music. I have no reason to be ashamed of these small pieces, which I

published subsequently as a musical supplement to Europa (Lewald’s

publication) in 1841.

I next stumbled on the idea of writing a grand bass aria with a chorus,

for Lablache to introduce into his part of Orovist in Bellini’s Norma.

Lehrs had to hunt up an Italian political refugee to get the text out

of him. This was done, and I produced an effective composition a la

Bellini (which still exists among my manuscripts), and went off at once

to offer it to Lablache.

The friendly Moor, who received me in the great singer’s anteroom,

insisted upon admitting me straight into his master’s presence without

announcing me. As I had anticipated some difficulty in getting near

such a celebrity, I had written my request, as I thought this would be

simpler than explaining verbally.

The black servant’s pleasant manner made me feel very uncomfortable; I

entrusted my score and letter to him to give to Lablache, without

taking any notice of his kindly astonishment at my refusal of his

repeated invitation to go into his master’s room and have an interview,

and I left the house hurriedly, intending to call for my answer in a

few days. When I came back Lablache received me most kindly, and

assured me that my aria was excellent, though it was impossible to

introduce it into Bellini’s opera after the latter had already been

performed so very often. My relapse into the domain of Bellini’s style,

of which I had been guilty through the writing of this aria, was

therefore useless to me, and I soon became convinced of the

fruitlessness of my efforts in that direction. I saw that I should need

personal introductions to various singers in order to ensure the

production of one of my other compositions.

When Meyerbeer at last arrived in Paris, therefore, I was delighted. He

was not in the least astonished at the lack of success of his letters

of introduction; on the contrary, he made use of this opportunity to

impress upon me how difficult it was to get on in Paris, and how

necessary it was for me to look out for less pretentious work. With

this object he introduced me to Maurice Schlesinger, and leaving me at

the mercy of that monstrous person, went back to Germany.

At first Schlesinger did not know what to do with me; the acquaintances

I made through him (of whom the chief was the violinist Panofka) led to

nothing, and I therefore returned to my advisory board at home, through

whose influence I had recently received an order to compose the music

to the Two Grenadiers, by Heine, translated by a Parisian professor. I

wrote this song for baritone, and was very pleased with the result; on

Ander’s advice I now tried to find singers for my new compositions.

Mme. Pauline Viardot, on whom I first called, went through my songs

with me. She was very amiable, and praised them, but did not see why

SHE should sing them. I went through the same experience with a Mme.

Widmann, a grand contralto, who sang my Dors, mon enfant with great

feeling; all the same she had no further use for my composition. A

certain M. Dupont, third tenor at the grand opera, tried my setting of

the Ronsard poem, but declared that the language in which it was

written was no longer palatable to the Paris public. M. Geraldy, a

favourite concert singer and teacher, who allowed me to call and see

him frequently, told me that the Two Grenadiers was impossible, for the

simple reason that the accompaniment at the end of the song, which I

had modelled upon the Marseillaise, could only be sung in the streets

of Paris to the accompaniment of cannons and gunshots. Habeneck was the

only person who fulfilled his promise to conduct my Columbus Overture

at one of the rehearsals for the benefit of Anders and myself. As,

however, there was no question of producing this work even at one of

the celebrated Conservatoire concerts, I saw clearly that the old

gentleman was only moved by kindness and a desire to encourage me. It

could not lead to anything further, and I myself was convinced that

this extremely superficial work of my young days could only give the

orchestra a wrong impression of my talents. However, these rehearsals,

to my surprise, made such an unexpected impression on me in other ways

that they exercised a decisive influence in the crisis of my artistic

development. This was due to the fact that I listened repeatedly to

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which, by dint of untiring practice,

received such a marvellous interpretation at the hands of this

celebrated orchestra, that the picture I had had of it in my mind in

the enthusiastic days of my youth now stood before me almost tangibly

in brilliant colours, undimmed, as though it had never been effaced by

the Leipzig orchestra who had slaughtered it under Pohlenz’s baton.

Where formerly I had only seen mystic constellations and weird shapes

without meaning, I now found, flowing from innumerable sources, a

stream of the most touching and heavenly melodies which delighted my

heart.

The whole of that period of the deterioration of my musical tastes

which dated, practically speaking, from those selfsame confusing ideas

about Beethoven, and which had grown so much worse through my

acquaintance with that dreadful theatre—all these wrong views now sank

down as if into an abyss of shame and remorse.

This inner change had been gradually prepared by many painful

experiences during the last few years. I owed the recovery of my old

vigour and spirits to the deep impression the rendering of the Ninth

Symphony had made on me when performed in a way I had never dreamed of.

This important event in my life can only be compared to the upheaval

caused within me when, as a youth of sixteen, I saw Schroder-Devrient

act in Fidelio.

The direct result of this was my intense longing to compose something

that would give me a similar feeling of satisfaction, and this desire

grew in proportion to my anxiety about my unfortunate position in

Paris, which made me almost despair of success.

In this mood I sketched an overture to Faust which, according to my

original scheme, was only to form the first part of a whole Faust

Symphony, as I had already got the ‘Gretchen’ idea in my head for the

second movement. This is the same composition that I rewrote in several

parts fifteen years later; I had forgotten all about it, and I owed its

reconstruction to the advice of Liszt, who gave me many valuable hints.

This composition has been performed many times under the title of eine

Faust-ouverture, and has met with great appreciation. At the time of

which I am speaking, I hoped that the Conservatoire orchestra would

have been willing to give the work a hearing, but I was told they

thought they had done enough for me, and hoped to be rid of me for some

time.

Having failed everywhere, I now turned to Meyerbeer for more

introductions, especially to singers. I was very much surprised when,

in consequence of my request, Meyerbeer introduced me to a certain M.

Gouin, a post-office official, and Meyerbeer’s sole agent in Paris,

whom he instructed to do his utmost for me. Meyerbeer specially wished

me to know M. Antenor Joly, director of the Theatre de la Renaissance,

the musical theatre already mentioned. M. Gouin, with almost suspicious

levity, promised me to produce my opera Liebesverbot, which now only

required translation. There was a question of having a few numbers of

my opera sung to the committee of the theatre at a special audience.

When I suggested that some of the singers of this very theatre should

undertake to sing three of the numbers which had been already

translated by Dumersan, I was refused on the plea that all these

artists were far too busy. But Gouin saw a way out of the difficulty;

on the authority of Maître Meyerbeer, he won over to our cause several

singers who were under an obligation to Meyerbeer: Mme. Dorus-Gras, a

real primadonna of the Grand Opera, Mme. Widmann and M. Dupont (the two

last-named had previously refused to help me) now promised to sing for

me at this audience.

This much, then, did I achieve in six months. It was now nearly Easter

of the year 1840. Encouraged by Gouin’s negotiations, which seemed to

spell hope, I made up my mind to move from the obscure Quartier des

Innocents to a part of Paris nearer to the musical centre; and in this

I was encouraged by Lehrs’ foolhardy advice.

What this change meant to me, my readers will learn when they hear

under what circumstances we had dragged on our existence during our

stay in Paris.

Although we were living in the cheapest possible way, dining at a very

small restaurant for a franc a head, it was impossible to prevent the

rest of our money from melting away. Our friend Möller had given us to

understand that we could ask him if we were in need, as he would put

aside for us the first money that came in from any successful business

transaction. There was no alternative but to apply to him for money; in

the meantime we pawned all the trinkets we possessed that were of any

value. As I was too shy to make inquiries about a pawnshop, I looked up

the French equivalent in the dictionary in order to be able to

recognise such a place when I saw it. In my little pocket dictionary I

could not find any other word than ‘Lombard.’ On looking at a map of

Paris I found, situated in the middle of an inextricable maze of

streets, a very small lane called Rue des Lombards. Thither I wended my

way, but my expedition was fruitless. Often, on reading by the light of

the transparent lanterns the inscription ‘Mont de Piété,’ I became very

curious to know its meaning, and on consulting my advisory board at

home about this ‘Mount of Piety,’[9] I was told, to my great

delight, that it was precisely there that I should find salvation. To

this ‘Mont de Piété’ we now carried all we possessed in the way of

silver, namely, our wedding presents. After that followed my wife’s

trinkets and the rest of her former theatrical wardrobe, amongst which

was a beautiful silver-embroidered blue dress with a court train, once

the property of the Duchess of Dessau. Still we heard nothing from our

friend Möller, and we were obliged to wait on from day to day for the

sorely needed help from Königsberg, and at last, one dark day, we

pledged our wedding rings. When all hope of assistance seemed vain, I

heard that the pawn-tickets themselves were of some value, as they

could be sold to buyers, who thereby acquired the right to redeem the

pawned articles. I had to resort even to this, and thus the blue

court-dress, for instance, was lost for ever. Möller never wrote again.

When later on he called on me at the time of my conductorship in

Dresden, he admitted that he had been embittered against me owing to

humiliating and derogatory remarks we were said to have made about him

after we parted, and had resolved not to have anything further to do

with us. We were certain of our innocence in the matter, and very

grieved at having, through pure slander, lost the chance of such

assistance in our great need.

[9] This is the correct translation of the words _Berg der

Frömmigkeit_ used in the original.—Editor.

At the beginning of our pecuniary difficulties we sustained a loss

which we looked upon as providential, in spite of the grief it caused

us. This was our beautiful dog, which we had managed to bring across to

Paris with endless difficulty. As he was a very valuable animal, and

attracted much attention, he had probably been stolen. In spite of the

terrible state of the traffic in Paris, he had always found his way

home in the same clever manner in which he had mastered the

difficulties of the London streets. Quite at the beginning of our stay

in Paris he had often gone off by himself to the gardens of the Palais

Royal, where he used to meet many of his friends, and had returned safe

and sound after a brilliant exhibition of swimming and retrieving

before an audience of gutter children. At the Quai du Pont-neuf he

generally begged us to let him bathe; there he used to draw a large

crowd of spectators round him, who were so loud in their enthusiasm

about the way in which he dived for and brought to land various objects

of clothing, tools, etc., that the police begged us to put an end to

the obstruction. One morning I let him out for a little run as usual;

he never returned, and in spite of our most strenuous efforts to

recover him, no trace of him was to be found. This loss seemed to many

of our friends a piece of luck, for they could not understand how it

was possible for us to feed such a huge animal when we ourselves had

not enough to eat. About this time, the second month of our stay in

Paris, my sister Louisa came over from Leipzig to join her husband,

Friedrich Brockhaus, in Paris, where he had been waiting for her for

some time. They intended to go to Italy together, and Louisa made use

of this opportunity to buy all kinds of expensive things in Paris. I

did not expect them to feel any pity for us on account of our foolish

removal to Paris, and its attendant miseries, or that they should

consider themselves bound to help us in any way; but although we did

not try to conceal our position, we derived no benefit from the visit

of our rich relations. Minna was even kind enough to help my sister

with her luxurious shopping, and we were very anxious not to make them

think we wanted to rouse their pity. In return my sister introduced me

to an extraordinary friend of hers, who was destined to take a great

interest in me. This was the young painter, Ernst Kietz, from Dresden;

he was an exceptionally kind-hearted and unaffected young man, whose

talent for portrait painting (in a sort of coloured pastel style) had

made him such a favourite in his own town, that he had been induced by

his financial successes to come to Paris for a time to finish his art

studies. He had now been working in Delaroche’s studio for about a

year. He had a curious and almost childlike disposition, and his lack

of all serious education, combined with a certain weakness of

character, had made him choose a career in which he was destined, in

spite of all his talent, to fail hopelessly. I had every opportunity of

recognising this, as I saw a great deal of him. At the time, however,

the simple-hearted devotion and kindness of this young man were very

welcome both to myself and my wife, who often felt lonely, and his

friendship was a real source of help in our darkest hours of adversity.

He became almost a member of the family, and joined our home circle

every night, providing a strange contrast to nervous old Anders and the

grave-faced Lehrs. His good-nature and his quaint remarks soon made him

indispensable to us; he amused us tremendously with his French, into

which he would launch with the greatest confidence, although he could

not put together two consecutive sentences properly, in spite of having

lived in Paris for twenty years. With Delaroche he studied

oil-painting, and had obviously considerable talent in this direction,

although it was the very rock on which he stranded. The mixing of the

colours on his palette, and especially the cleaning of his brushes,

took up so much of his time that he rarely came to the actual painting.

As the days were very short in midwinter, he never had time to do any

work after he had finished washing his palette and brushes, and, as far

as I can remember, he never completed a single portrait. Strangers to

whom he had been introduced, and who had given him orders to paint

their portraits, were obliged to leave Paris without seeing them even

half done, and at last he even complained because some of his sitters

died before their portraits were completed. His landlord, to whom he

was always in debt for rent, was the only creature who succeeded in

getting a portrait of his ugly person from the painter, and, as far as

I know, this is the only finished portrait in existence by Kietz. On

the other hand, he was very clever at making little sketches of any

subject suggested by our conversation during the evening, and in these

he displayed both originality and delicacy of execution. During the

winter of that year he completed a good pencil portrait of me, which he

touched up two years afterwards when he knew me more intimately,

finishing it off as it now stands. It pleased him to sketch me in the

attitude I often assumed during our evening chats when I was in a

cheerful mood. No evening ever passed during which I did not succeed in

shaking off the depression caused by my vain endeavours, and by the

many worries I had gone through during the day, and in regaining my

natural cheerfulness, and Kietz was anxious to represent me to the

world as a man who, in spite of the hard times he had to face, had

confidence in his success, and rose smiling above the troubles of life.

Before the end of the year 1839, my youngest sister Cecilia also

arrived in Paris with her husband, Edward Avenarius. It was only

natural that she should feel embarrassed at the idea of meeting us in

Paris in our extremely straitened circumstances, especially as her

husband was not very well off. Consequently, instead of calling on them

frequently, we preferred waiting until they came to see us, which, by

the way, took them a long time. On the other hand, the renewal of our

acquaintance with Heinrich Laube, who came over to Paris at the

beginning of 1840 with his young wife, Iduna (nee Budaus), was very

cheering. She was the widow of a wealthy Leipzig doctor, and Laube had

married her under very extraordinary circumstances, since we last saw

him in Berlin; they intended to enjoy themselves for a few months in

Paris. During the long period of his detention, while awaiting his

trial, this young lady had been so touched by his misfortunes that

without knowing much of him, she had shown great sympathy and interest

in his case. Laube’s sentence was pronounced soon after I left Berlin;

it was unexpectedly light, consisting of only one year’s imprisonment

in the town gaol. He was allowed to undergo this term in the prison at

Muskau in Silesia, where he had the advantage of being near his friend,

Prince Puckler, who in his official capacity, and on account of his

influence with the governor of the prison, was permitted to afford the

prisoner even the consolation of personal intercourse.

The young widow resolved to marry him at the beginning of his term of

imprisonment, so that she might be near him at Muskau with her loving

assistance. To see my old friend under such favourable conditions was

in itself a pleasure to me; I also experienced the liveliest

satisfaction at finding there was no change in his former sympathetic

attitude. We met frequently; our wives also became friends, and Laube

was the first to approve in his kindly humorous way of our folly in

moving to Paris.

In his house I made the acquaintance of Heinrich Heine, and both of

them joked good-humouredly over my extraordinary position, making even

me laugh. Laube felt himself compelled to talk seriously to me about my

expectations of succeeding in Paris, as he saw that I treated my

situation, based on such trivial hopes, with a humour that charmed him

even against his better judgment. He tried to think how he could help

me without prejudicing my future. With this object he wanted me to make

a more or less plausible sketch of my future plans, so that on his

approaching visit to our native land he might procure some help for me.

I happened just at that time to have come to an exceedingly promising

understanding with the management of the Theatre de la Renaissance. I

thus seemed to have obtained a footing, and I thought it safe to

assert, that if I were guaranteed the means of livelihood for six

months, I could not fail within that period to accomplish something.

Laube promised to make this provision, and kept his word. He induced

one of his wealthy friends in Leipzig, and, following this example, my

well-to-do relations, to provide me for six months with the necessary

resources, to be paid in monthly instalments through Avenarius.

We therefore decided, as I have said, to leave our furnished apartments

and take a flat for ourselves in the Rue du Helder. My prudent, careful

wife had suffered greatly on account of the careless and uncertain

manner in which I had hitherto controlled our meagre resources, and in

now undertaking the responsibility, she explained that she understood

how to keep house more cheaply than we could do by living in furnished

rooms and restaurants. Success justified the step; the serious part of

the question lay in the fact that we had to start housekeeping without

any furniture of our own, and everything necessary for domestic

purposes had to be procured, though we had not the wherewithal to get

it. In this matter Lehrs, who was well versed in the peculiarities of

Parisian life, was able to advise us. In his opinion the only

compensation for the experiences we had undergone hitherto would be a

success equivalent to my daring. As I did not possess the resources to

allow of long years of patient waiting for success in Paris, I must

either count on extraordinary luck or renounce all my hopes forthwith.

The longed-for success must come within a year, or I should be ruined.

Therefore I must dare all, as befitted my name, for in my case he was

not inclined to derive ‘Wagner’[10] from Fuhrwerk. I was to pay my

rent, twelve hundred francs, in quarterly instalments; for the

furniture and fittings, he recommended me, through his landlady, to a

carpenter who provided everything that was necessary for what seemed to

be a reasonable sum, also to be paid by instalments, all of which

appeared very simple. Lehrs maintained that I should do no good in

Paris unless I showed the world that I had confidence in myself. My

trial audience was impending; I felt sure of the Theatre de la

Renaissance, and Dumersan was keenly anxious to make a complete

translation of my Liebesverbot into French. So we decided to run the

risk. On 15th April, to the astonishment of the concierge of the house

in the Rue du Helder, we moved with an exceedingly small amount of

luggage into our comfortable new apartments.

[10] ‘Wagner’ in German means one who dares, also a Wagoner; and

‘Fuhrwerk’ means a carriage.—Editor.

The very first visit I received in the rooms I had taken with such high

hopes was from Anders, who came with the tidings that the Theatre de la

Renaissance had just gone bankrupt, and was closed. This news, which

came on me like a thunder-clap, seemed to portend more than an ordinary

stroke of bad luck; it revealed to me like a flash of lightning the

absolute emptiness of my prospects. My friends openly expressed the

opinion that Meyerbeer, in sending me from the Grand Opera to this

theatre, probably knew the whole of the circumstances. I did not pursue

the line of thought to which this supposition might lead, as I felt

cause enough for bitterness when I wondered what I should do with the

rooms in which I was so nicely installed.

As my singers had now practised the portions of Liebesverbot intended

for the trial audience, I was anxious at least to have them performed

before some persons of influence. M. Edouard Monnaie, who had been

appointed temporary director of the Grand Opera after Duponchel’s

retirement, was the less disposed to refuse as the singers who were to

take part belonged to the institution over which he presided; moreover,

there was no obligation attached to his presence at the audience. I

also took the trouble to call on Scribe to invite him to attend, and he

accepted with the kindest alacrity. At last my three pieces were

performed before these two gentlemen in the green room of the Grand

Opera, and I played the piano accompaniment. They pronounced the music

charming, and Scribe expressed his willingness to arrange the libretto

for me as soon as the managers of the opera had decided on accepting

the piece; all that M. Monnaie had to reply to this offer was that it

was impossible for them to do so at present. I did not fail to realise

that these were only polite expressions; but at all events I thought it

very nice of them, and particularly condescending of Scribe to have got

so far as to think me deserving of a little politeness.

But in my heart of hearts I felt really ashamed of having gone back

again seriously to that superficial early work from which I had taken

these three pieces. Of course I had only done this because I thought I

should win success more rapidly in Paris by adapting myself to its

frivolous taste. My aversion from this kind of taste, which had been

long growing, coincided with my abandonment of all hopes of success in

Paris. I was placed in an exceedingly melancholy situation by the fact

that my circumstances had so shaped themselves that I dared not express

this important change in my feelings to any one, especially to my poor

wife. But if I continued to make the best of a bad bargain, I had no

longer any illusions as to the possibility of success in Paris. Face to

face with unheard-of misery, I shuddered at the smiling aspect which

Paris presented in the bright sunshine of May. It was the beginning of

the slack season for any sort of artistic enterprise in Paris, and from

every door at which I knocked with feigned hope I was turned away with

the wretchedly monotonous phrase, Monsieur est a la campagne.

On our long walks, when we felt ourselves absolute strangers in the

midst of the gay throng, I used to romance to my wife about the South

American Free States, far away from all this sinister life, where opera

and music were unknown, and the foundations of a sensible livelihood

could easily be secured by industry. I told Minna, who was quite in the

dark as to my meaning, of a book I had just read, Zschokke’s Die

Gründung von Maryland, in which I found a very seductive account of the

sensation of relief experienced by the European settlers after their

former sufferings and persecutions. She, being of a more practical turn

of mind, used to point out to me the necessity of procuring means for

our continued existence in Paris, for which she had thought out all

sorts of economies.

I, for my part, was sketching out the plan of the poem of my Fliegender

Holländer, which I kept steadily before me as a possible means of

making a debut in Paris. I put together the material for a single act,

influenced by the consideration that I could in this way confine it to

the simple dramatic developments between the principal characters,

without troubling about the tiresome operatic accessories. From a

practical point of view, I thought I could rely on a better prospect

for the acceptance of my proposed work if it were cast in the form of a

one-act opera, such as was frequently given as a curtain raiser before

a ballet at the Grand Opera. I wrote about it to Meyerbeer in Berlin,

asking for his help. I also resumed the composition of Rienzi, to the

completion of which I was now giving my constant attention.

In the meantime our position became more and more gloomy; I was soon

compelled to draw in advance on the subsidies obtained by Laube, but in

so doing I gradually alienated the sympathy of my brother-in-law

Avenarius, to whom our stay in Paris was incomprehensible.

One morning, when we had been anxiously consulting as to the

possibility of raising our first quarter’s rent, a carrier appeared

with a parcel addressed to me from London; I thought it was an

intervention of Providence, and broke open the seal. At the same moment

a receipt-book was thrust into my face for signature, in which I at

once saw that I had to pay seven francs for carriage. I recognised,

moreover, that the parcel contained my overture Rule Britannia,

returned to me from the London Philharmonic Society. In my fury I told

the bearer that I would not take in the parcel, whereupon he

remonstrated in the liveliest fashion, as I had already opened it. It

was no use; I did not possess seven francs, and I told him he should

have presented the bill for the carriage before I had opened the

parcel. So I made him return the only copy of my overture to Messrs.

Laffitte and Gaillard’s firm, to do what they liked with it, and I

never cared to inquire what became of that manuscript.

Suddenly Kietz devised a way out of these troubles. He had been

commissioned by an old lady of Leipzig, called Fraulein Leplay, a rich

and very miserly old maid, to find a cheap lodging in Paris for her and

for his stepmother, with whom she intended to travel. As our apartment,

though not spacious, was larger than we actually needed, and had very

quickly become a troublesome burden to us, we did not hesitate for a

moment to let the larger portion of it to her for the time of her stay

in Paris, which was to last about two months. In addition, my wife

provided the guests with breakfast, as though they were in furnished

apartments, and took a great pride in looking at the few pence she

earned in this way. Although we found this amazing example of

old-maidishness trying enough, the arrangement we had made helped us in

some degree to tide over the anxious time, and I was able, in spite of

this disorganisation of our household arrangements, to continue working

in comparative peace at my Rienzi.

This became more difficult after Fraulein Leplay’s departure, when we

let one of our rooms to a German commercial traveller, who in his

leisure hours zealously played the flute. His name was Brix; he was a

modest, decent fellow, and had been recommended to us by Pecht the

painter, whose acquaintance we had recently made. He had been

introduced to us by Kietz, who studied with him in Delaroche’s studio.

He was the very antithesis of Kietz in every way, and obviously endowed

with less talent, yet he grappled with the task of acquiring the art of

oil-painting in the shortest possible time under difficult

circumstances with an industry and earnestness quite out of the common.

He was, moreover, well educated, and eagerly assimilated information,

and was very straightforward, earnest, and trustworthy. Without

attaining to the same degree of intimacy with us as our three older

friends, he was, nevertheless, one of the few who continued to stand by

us in our troubles, and habitually spent nearly every evening in our

company.

One day I received a fresh surprising proof of Laube’s continued

solicitude on our behalf. The secretary of a certain Count Kuscelew

called on us, and after some inquiry into our affairs, the state of

which he had heard from Laube at Karlsbad, informed us in a brief and

friendly way that his patron wished to be of use to us, and with that

object in view desired to make my acquaintance. In fact, he proposed to

engage a small light opera company in Paris, which was to follow him to

his Russian estates. He was therefore looking for a musical director of

sufficient experience to assist in recruiting the members in Paris. I

gladly went to the hotel where the count was staying, and there found

an elderly gentleman of frank and agreeable bearing, who willingly

listened to my little French compositions. Being a shrewd reader of

human nature, he saw at a glance that I was not the man for him, and

though he showed me the most polite attention, he went no further into

the opera scheme. But that very day he sent me, accompanied by a

friendly note, ten golden napoleons, in payment for my services. What

these services were I did not know. I thereupon wrote to him, and asked

for more precise details of his wishes, and begged him to commission a

composition, the fee for which I presumed he had sent in advance. As I

received no reply, I made more than one effort to approach him again,

but in vain. From other sources I afterwards learned that the only kind

of opera Count Kuscelew recognised was Adam’s. As for the operatic

company to be engaged to suit his taste, what he really wanted was more

a small harem than a company of artists.

So far I had not been able to arrange anything with the music publisher

Schlesinger. It was impossible to persuade him to publish my little

French songs. In order to do something, however, towards making myself

known in this direction, I decided to have my Two Grenadiers engraved

by him at my own expense. Kietz was to lithograph a magnificent

title-page for it. Schlesinger ended by charging me fifty francs for

the cost of production. The story of this publication is curious from

beginning to end; the work bore Schlesinger’s name, and as I had

defrayed all expenses, the proceeds were, of course, to be placed to my

account. I had afterwards to take the publisher’s word for it that not

a single copy had been sold. Subsequently, when I had made a quick

reputation for myself in Dresden through my Rienzi, Schott the

publisher in Mainz, who dealt almost exclusively in works translated

from the French, thought it advisable to bring out a German edition of

the Two Grenadiers. Below the text of the French translation he had the

German original by Heine printed; but as the French poem was a very

free paraphrase, in quite a different metre to the original, Heine’s

words fitted my composition so badly that I was furious at the insult

to my work, and thought it necessary to protest against Schott’s

publication as an entirely unauthorised reprint. Schott then threatened

me with an action for libel, as he said that, according to his

agreement, his edition was not a reprint (Nachdruck), but a

reimpression (Abdruck). In order to be spared further annoyance, I was

induced to send him an apology in deference to the distinction he had

drawn, which I did not understand.

In 1848, when I made inquiries of Schlesinger’s successor in Paris (M.

Brandus) as to the fate of my little work, I learned from him that a

new edition had been published, but he declined to entertain any

question of rights on my part. Since I did not care to buy a copy with

my own money, I have to this day had to do without my own property. To

what extent, in later years, others profited by similar transactions

relating to the publication of my works, will appear in due course.

For the moment the point was to compensate Schlesinger for the fifty

francs agreed upon, and he proposed that I should do this by writing

articles for his Gazette Musicale.

As I was not expert enough in the French language for literary

purposes, my article had to be translated and half the fee had to go to

the translator. However, I consoled myself by thinking I should still

receive sixty francs per sheet for the work. I was soon to learn, when

I presented myself to the angry publisher for payment, what was meant

by a sheet. It was measured by an abominable iron instrument, on which

the lines of the columns were marked off with figures; this was applied

to the article, and after careful subtraction of the spaces left for

the title and signature, the lines were added up. After this process

had been gone through, it appeared that what I had taken for a sheet

was only half a sheet.

So far so good. I began to write articles for Schlesinger’s wonderful

paper. The first was a long essay, De la musique allemande, in which I

expressed with the enthusiastic exaggeration characteristic of me at

that time my appreciation of the sincerity and earnestness of German

music. This article led my friend Anders to remark that the state of

affairs in Germany must, indeed, be splendid if the conditions were

really as I described. I enjoyed what was to me the surprising

satisfaction of seeing this article subsequently reproduced in Italian,

in a Milan musical journal, where, to my amusement, I saw myself

described as Dottissimo Musico Tedesco, a mistake which nowadays would

be impossible. My essay attracted favourable comment, and Schlesinger

asked me to write an article in praise of the arrangement made by the

Russian General Lwoff of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, which I did as

superficially as possible. On my own impulse I then wrote an essay in a

still more amiable vein called Du metier du virtuose et de

l’independance de la composition.

In the meantime I was surprised in the middle of the summer by the

arrival of Meyerbeer, who happened to come to Paris for a fortnight. He

was very sympathetic and obliging. When I told him my idea of writing a

one-act opera as a curtain raiser, and asked him to give me an

introduction to M. Leon Pillet, the recently appointed manager of the

Grand Opera, he at once took me to see him, and presented me to him.

But alas, I had the unpleasant surprise of learning from the serious

conversation which took place between those two gentlemen as to my

future, that Meyerbeer thought I had better decide to compose an act

for the ballet in collaboration with another musician. Of course I

could not entertain such an idea for a moment. I succeeded, however, in

handing over to M. Pillet my brief sketch of the subject of the Flying

Dutchman..

Things had reached this point when Meyerbeer again left Paris, this

time for a longer period of absence.

As I did not hear from M. Pillet for quite a long time, I now began to

work diligently at my composition of Rienzi, though, to my great

distress, I had often to interrupt this task in order to undertake

certain pot-boiling hack-work for Schlesinger.

As my contributions to the Gazette Musicale proved so unremunerative,

Schlesinger one day ordered me to work out a method for the Cornet a

pistons. When I told him about my embarrassment, in not knowing how to

deal with the subject, he replied by sending me five different

published ‘Methods’ for the Cornet a pistons, at that time the

favourite amateur instrument among the younger male population of

Paris. I had merely to devise a new sixth method out of these five, as

all Schlesinger wanted was to publish an edition of his own. I was

racking my brains how to start, when Schlesinger, who had just obtained

a new complete method, released me from the onerous task. I was,

however, told to write fourteen ‘Suites’ for the Cornet a pistons—that

is to say, airs out of operas arranged for this instrument. To furnish

me with material for this work, Schlesinger sent me no less than sixty

complete operas arranged for the piano. I looked them through for

suitable airs for my ‘Suites,’ marked the pages in the volumes with

paper strips, and arranged them into a curious-looking structure round

my work-table, so that I might have the greatest possible variety of

the melodious material within my reach. When I was in the midst of this

work, however, to my great relief and to my poor wife’s consternation,

Schlesinger told me that M. Schlitz, the first cornet player in Paris,

who had looked my ‘Etudes’ through, preparatory to their being

engraved, had declared that I knew absolutely nothing about the

instrument, and had generally adopted keys that were too high, which

Parisians would never be able to use. The part of the work I had

already done was, however, accepted, Schlitz having agreed to correct

it, but on condition that I should share my fee with him. The remainder

of the work was then taken off my hands, and the sixty pianoforte

arrangements went back to the curious shop in the Rue Richelieu.

So my exchequer was again in a sorry plight. The distressing poverty of

my home grew more apparent every day, and yet I was now free to give a

last touch to Rienzi, and by the 19th of November I had completed this

most voluminous of all my operas. I had decided, some time previously,

to offer the first production of this work to the Court Theatre at

Dresden, so that, in the event of its being a success, I might thus

resume my connection with Germany. I had decided upon Dresden as I knew

that there I should have in Tichatschek the most suitable tenor for the

leading part. I also reckoned on my acquaintance with

Schroder-Devrient, who had always been nice to me and who, though her

efforts were ineffectual, had been at great pains, out of regard for my

family, to get my Feen introduced at the Court Theatre, Dresden. In the

secretary of the theatre, Hofrat Winkler (known as Theodor Hell), I

also had an old friend of my family, besides which I had been

introduced to the conductor, Reissiger, with whom I and my friend Apel

had spent a pleasant evening on the occasion of our excursion to

Bohemia in earlier days. To all these people I now addressed most

respectful and eloquent appeals, wrote out an official note to the

director, Herr von Lüttichau, as well as a formal petition to the King

of Saxony, and had everything ready to send off.

Meantime, I had not omitted to indicate the exact tempi in my opera by

means of a metronome. As I did not possess such a thing, I had to

borrow one, and one morning I went out to restore the instrument to its

owner, carrying it under my thin overcoat. The day when this occurred

was one of the strangest in my life, as it showed in a really horrible

way the whole misery of my position at that time. In addition to the

fact that I did not know where to look for the few francs wherewith

Minna was to provide for our scanty household requirements, some of the

bills which, in accordance with the custom in Paris in those days, I

had signed for the purpose of fitting up our apartments, had fallen

due. Hoping to get help from one source or another, I first tried to

get those bills prolonged by the holders. As such documents pass

through many hands, I had to call on all the holders across the length

and breadth of the city. That day I was to propitiate a cheese-monger

who occupied a fifth-floor apartment in the Cite. I also intended to

ask for help from Heinrich, the brother of my brother-in-law,

Brockhaus, as he was then in Paris; and I was going to call at

Schlesinger’s to raise the money to pay for the despatch of my score

that day by the usual mail service.

As I had also to deliver the metronome, I left Minna early in the

morning after a sad good-bye. She knew from experience that as I was on

a money-raising expedition, she would not see me back till late at

night. The streets were enveloped in a dense fog, and the first thing I

recognised on leaving the house was my dog Robber, who had been stolen

from us a year before. At first I thought it was a ghost, but I called

out to him sharply in a shrill voice. The animal seemed to recognise

me, and approached me cautiously, but my sudden movement towards him

with outstretched arms seemed only to revive memories of the few

chastisements I had foolishly inflicted on him during the latter part

of our association, and this memory prevailed over all others. He drew

timidly away from me and, as I followed him with some eagerness, he

ran, only to accelerate his speed when he found he was being pursued. I

became more and more convinced that he had recognised me, because he

always looked back anxiously when he reached a corner; but seeing that

I was hunting him like a maniac, he started off again each time with

renewed energy. Thus I followed him through a labyrinth of streets,

hardly distinguishable in the thick mist, until I eventually lost sight

of him altogether, never to see him again. It was near the church of

St. Roch, and I, wet with perspiration and quite breathless, was still

bearing the metronome. For a while I stood motionless, glaring into the

mist, and wondered what the ghostly reappearance of the companion of my

travelling adventures on this day might portend! The fact that he had

fled from his old master with the terror of a wild beast filled my

heart with a strange bitterness and seemed to me a horrible omen. Sadly

shaken, I set out again, with trembling limbs, upon my weary errand.

Heinrich Brockhaus told me he could not help me, and I left him. I was

sorely ashamed, but made a strong effort to conceal the painfulness of

my situation. My other undertakings turned out equally hopeless, and

after having been kept waiting for hours at Schlesinger’s, listening to

my employer’s very trivial conversations with his callers—conversations

which he seemed purposely to protract—I reappeared under the windows of

my home long after dark, utterly unsuccessful. I saw Minna looking

anxiously from one of the windows. Half expecting my misfortune she

had, in the meantime, succeeded in borrowing a small sum of our lodger

and boarder, Brix, the flute-player, whom we tolerated patiently,

though at some inconvenience to ourselves, as he was a good-natured

fellow. So she was able to offer me at least a comfortable meal.

Further help was to come to me subsequently, though at the cost of

great sacrifices on my part, owing to the success of one of Donizetti’s

operas, La Favorita, a very poor work of the Italian maestro’s, but

welcomed with great enthusiasm by the Parisian public, already so much

degenerated. This opera, the success of which was due mainly to two

lively little songs, had been acquired by Schlesinger, who had lost

heavily over Halevy’s last operas.

Taking advantage of my helpless situation, of which he was well aware,

he rushed into our rooms one morning, beaming all over with amusing

good-humour, called for pen and ink, and began to work out a

calculation of the enormous fees which he had arranged for me! He put

down: ‘La Favorita, complete arrangement for pianoforte, arrangement

without words, for solo; ditto, for duet; complete arrangement for

quartette; the same for two violins; ditto for a Cornet a piston. Total

fee, frcs. 1100. Immediate advance in cash, frcs. 500.’ I could see at

a glance what an enormous amount of trouble this work would involve,

but I did not hesitate a moment to undertake it.

Curiously enough, when I brought home these five hundred francs in hard

shining five-franc pieces, and piled them up on the table for our

edification, my sister Cecilia Avenarius happened to drop in to see us.

The sight of this abundance of wealth seemed to produce a good effect

on her, as she had hitherto been rather chary of coming to see us; and

after that we used to see rather more of her, and were often invited to

dine with them on Sundays. But I no longer cared for any amusements. I

was so deeply impressed by my past experiences that I made up my mind

to work through this humiliating, albeit profitable task, with untiring

energy, as though it were a penance imposed on me for the expiation of

my bygone sins. To save fuel, we limited ourselves to the use of the

bedroom, making it serve as a drawing-room, dining-room, and study, as

well as dormitory. It was only a step from my bed to my work-table; to

be seated at the dining-table, all I had to do was to turn my chair

round, and I left my seat altogether only late at night when I wanted

to go to bed again. Every fourth day I allowed myself a short

constitutional. This penitential process lasted almost all through the

winter, and sowed the seeds of those gastric disorders which were to be

more or less of a trouble to me for the rest of my life.

In return for the minute and almost interminable work of correcting the

score of Donizetti’s opera, I managed to get three hundred francs from

Schlesinger, as he could not get any one else to do it. Besides this, I

had to find the time to copy out the orchestra parts of my overture to

Faust, which I was still hoping to hear at the Conservatoire; and by

the way of counteracting the depression produced by this humiliating

occupation, I wrote a short story, Eine Pilgerfahrt zu Beethoven (A

Pilgrimage to Beethoven), which appeared in the Gazette Musicale, under

the title Une Visite a Beethoven. Schlesinger told me candidly that

this little work had created quite a sensation, and had been received

with very marked approval; and, indeed, it was actually reproduced,

either complete or in parts, in a good many fireside journals.

He persuaded me to write some more of the same kind; and in a sequel

entitled Das Ende eines Musikers in Paris (Un Musicien etranger a

Paris) I avenged myself for all the misfortunes I had had to endure.

Schlesinger was not quite so pleased with this as with my first effort,

but it received touching signs of approval from his poor assistant;

while Heinrich Heine praised it by saying that ‘Hoffmann would have

been incapable of writing such a thing.’ Even Berlioz was touched by

it, and spoke of the story very favourably in one of his articles in

the Journal des Debats. He also gave me signs of his sympathy, though

only during a conversation, after the appearance of another of my

musical articles entitled Ueber die Ouverture (Concerning Overtures),

mainly because I had illustrated my principle by pointing to Gluck’s

overture to Iphigenia in Aulis as a model for compositions of this

class.

Encouraged by these signs of sympathy, I felt anxious to become more

intimately acquainted with Berlioz. I had been introduced to him some

time previously at Schlesinger’s office, where we used to meet

occasionally. I had presented him with a copy of my Two Grenadiers, but

could, however, never learn any more from him concerning what he really

thought of it than the fact that as he could only strum a little on the

guitar, he was unable to play the music of my composition to himself on

the piano. During the previous winter I had often heard his grand

instrumental pieces played under his own direction, and had been most

favourably impressed by them. During that winter (1839-40) he conducted

three performances of his new symphony, Romeo and Juliet, at one of

which I was present.

All this, to be sure, was quite a new world to me, and I was desirous

of gaining some unprejudiced knowledge of it. At first the grandeur and

masterly execution of the orchestral part almost overwhelmed me. It was

beyond anything I could have conceived. The fantastic daring, the sharp

precision with which the boldest combinations—almost tangible in their

clearness—impressed me, drove back my own ideas of the poetry of music

with brutal violence into the very depths of my soul. I was simply all

ears for things of which till then I had never dreamt, and which I felt

I must try to realise. True, I found a great deal that was empty and

shallow in his Romeo and Juliet, a work that lost much by its length

and form of combination; and this was the more painful to me seeing

that, on the other hand, I felt overpowered by many really bewitching

passages which quite overcame any objections on my part.

During the same winter Berlioz produced his Sinfonie Fantastique and

his Harald (‘Harold en Italie’). I was also much impressed by these

works; the musical genre-pictures woven into the first-named symphony

were particularly pleasing, while Harald delighted me in almost every

respect..

It was, however, the latest work of this wonderful master, his

Trauer-Symphonie fur die Opfer der Juli-Revolution (Grande Symphonie

Funebre et Triomphale), most skilfully composed for massed military

bands during the summer of 1840 for the anniversary of the obsequies of

the July heroes, and conducted by him under the column of the Place de

la Bastille, which had at last thoroughly convinced me of the greatness

and enterprise of this incomparable artist. But while admiring this

genius, absolutely unique in his methods, I could never quite shake off

a certain peculiar feeling of anxiety. His works left me with a

sensation as of something strange, something with which I felt I should

never be able to be familiar, and I was often puzzled at the strange

fact that, though ravished by his compositions, I was at the same time

repelled and even wearied by them. It was only much later that I

succeeded in clearly grasping and solving this problem, which for years

exercised such a painful spell over me.

It is a fact that at that time I felt almost like a little school-boy

by the side of Berlioz. Consequently I was really embarrassed when

Schlesinger, determined to make good use of the success of my short

story, told me he was anxious to produce some of my orchestral

compositions at a concert arranged by the editor of the Gazette

Musicale. I realised that none of my available works would in any way

be suitable for such an occasion. I was not quite confident as to my

Faust Overture because of its zephyr-like ending, which I presumed

could only be appreciated by an audience already familiar with my

methods. When, moreover, I learned that I should have only a

second-rate orchestra—the Valentino from the Casino, Rue St.

Honore—and, moreover, that there could be only one rehearsal, my only

alternative lay between declining altogether, or making another trial

with my Columbus Overture, the work composed in my early days at

Magdeburg. I adopted the latter course.

When I went to fetch the score of this composition from Ilabeneck, who

had it stored among the archives of the Conservatoire, he warned me

somewhat dryly, though not without kindness, of the danger of

presenting this work to the Parisian public, as, to use his own words,

it was too ‘vague.’ One great objection was the difficulty of finding

capable musicians for the six cornets required, as the music for this

instrument, so skilfully played in Germany, could hardly, if ever, be

satisfactorily executed in Paris. Herr Schlitz, the corrector of my

‘Suites’ for Cornet a piston, offered his assistance. I was compelled

to reduce my six cornets to four, and he told me that only two of these

could be relied on.

As a matter of fact, the attempts made at the rehearsal to produce

those very passages on which the effect of my work chiefly depended

were very discouraging. Not once were the soft high notes played but

they were flat or altogether wrong. In addition to this, as I was not

going to be allowed to conduct the work myself, I had to rely upon a

conductor who, as I was well aware, had fully convinced himself that my

composition was the most utter rubbish—an opinion that seemed to be

shared by the whole orchestra. Berlioz, who was present at the

rehearsal, remained silent throughout. He gave me no encouragement,

though he did not dissuade me. He merely said afterwards, with a weary

smile, ‘that it was very difficult to get on in Paris.’

On the night of the performance (4th February 1841) the audience, which

was largely composed of subscribers to the Gazette Musicale, and to

whom, therefore, my literary successes were not unknown, seemed rather

favourably disposed towards me. I was told later on that my overture,

however wearisome it had been, would certainly have been applauded if

those unfortunate cornet players, by continually failing to produce the

effective passages, had not excited the public almost to the point of

hostility; for Parisians, for the most part, care only for the skilful

parts of performances, as, for instance, for the faultless production

of difficult tones. I was clearly conscious of my complete failure.

After this misfortune Paris no longer existed for me, and all I had to

do was to go back to my miserable bedroom and resume my work of

arranging Donizetti’s operas.

So great was my renunciation of the world that, like a penitent, I no

longer shaved, and to my wife’s annoyance, for the first and only time

in my life allowed my beard to grow quite long. I tried to bear

everything patiently, and the only thing that threatened really to

drive me to despair was a pianist in the room adjoining ours who during

the livelong day practised Liszt’s fantasy on Lucia di Lammermoor. I

had to put a stop to this torture, so, to give him an idea of what he

made us endure, one day I moved our own piano, which was terribly out

of tune, close up to the party wall. Then Brix with his piccolo-flute

played the piano-and-violin (or flute) arrangement of the Favorita

Overture I had just completed, while I accompanied him on the piano.

The effect on our neighbour, a young piano-teacher, must have been

appalling. The concierge told me the next day that the poor fellow was

leaving, and, after all, I felt rather sorry.

The wife of our concierge had entered into a sort of arrangement with

us. At first we had occasionally availed ourselves of her services,

especially in the kitchen, also for brushing clothes, cleaning boots,

and so on; but even the slight outlay that this involved was eventually

too heavy for us, and after having dispensed with her services, Minna

had to suffer the humiliation of doing the whole work of the household,

even the most menial part of it, herself. As we did not like to mention

this to Brix, Minna was obliged, not only to do all the cooking and

washing up, but even to clean our lodger’s boots as well. What we felt

most, however, was the thought of what the concierge and his wife would

think of us; but we were mistaken, for they only respected us the more,

though of course we could not avoid a little familiarity at times, Now

and then, therefore, the man would have a chat with me on politics.

When the Quadruple Alliance against France had been concluded, and the

situation under Thiers’ ministry was regarded as very critical, my

concierge tried to reassure me one day by saying: ‘Monsieur, il y a

quatre hommes en Europe qui s’appellent: le roi Louis Philippe,

l’empereur d’Autriche, l’empereur de Russie, le roi de Prusse; eh bien,

ces quatre sont des c…; et nous n’aurons pas la guerre.’

Of an evening I very seldom lacked entertainment; but the few faithful

friends who came to see me had to put up with my going on scribbling

music till late in the night. Once they prepared a touching surprise

for me in the form of a little party which they arranged for New Year’s

Eve (1840). Lehrs arrived at dusk, rang the bell, and brought a leg of

veal; Kietz brought some rum, sugar, and a lemon; Pecht supplied a

goose; and Anders two bottles of the champagne with which he had been

presented by a musical instrument-maker in return for a flattering

article he had written about his pianos. Bottles from that stock were

produced only on very great occasions. I soon threw the confounded

Favorita aside, therefore, and entered enthusiastically into the fun.

We all had to assist in the preparations, to light the fire in the

salon, give a hand to my wife in the kitchen, and get what was wanted

from the grocer. The supper developed into a dithyrambic orgy. When the

champagne was drunk, and the punch began to produce its effects, I

delivered a fiery speech which so provoked the hilarity of the company

that it seemed as though it would never end. I became so excited that I

first mounted a chair, and then, by way of heightening the effect, at

last stood on the table, thence to preach the maddest gospel of the

contempt of life together with a eulogy on the South American Free

States. My charmed listeners eventually broke into such fits of sobs

and laughter, and were so overcome, that we had to give them all

shelter for the night—their condition making it impossible for them to

reach their own homes in safety. On New Year’s Day (1841) I was again

busy with my Favorita.

I remember another similar though far less boisterous feast, on the

occasion of a visit paid us by the famous violinist Vieux-temps, an old

schoolfellow of Kietz’s. We had the great pleasure of hearing the young

virtuoso, who was then greatly feted in Paris, play to us charmingly

for a whole evening—a performance which lent my little salon an unusual

touch of ‘fashion.’ Kietz rewarded him for his kindness by carrying him

on his shoulders to his hotel close by.

We were hard hit in the early part of this year by a mistake I made

owing to my ignorance of Paris customs. It seemed to us quite a matter

of course that we should wait until the proper quarter-day to give

notice to our landlady. So I called on the proprietress of the house, a

rich young widow living in one of her own houses in the Marias quarter.

She received me, but seemed much embarrassed, and said she would speak

to her agent about the matter, and eventually referred me to him. The

next day I was informed by letter that my notice would have been valid

had it been given two days earlier. By this omission I had rendered

myself liable, according to the agreement, for another year’s rent.

Horrified by this news, I went to see the agent himself, and after

having been kept waiting for a long time—as a matter of fact they would

not let me in at all—I found an elderly gentleman, apparently crippled

by some very painful malady, lying motionless before me. I frankly told

him my position, and begged him most earnestly to release me from my

agreement, but I was merely told that the fault was mine, and not his,

that I had given notice a day too late, and consequently that I must

find the rent for the next year. My concierge, to whom, with some

emotion, I related the story of this occurrence, tried to soothe me by

saying: ‘J’aurais pu vous dire cela, car voyez, monsieur, cet homme ne

vaut pas l’eau qu’il boit.’

This entirely unforeseen misfortune destroyed our last hopes of getting

out of our disastrous position. We consoled ourselves for awhile with

the hope of finding another lodger, but the fates were once more

against us. Easter came, the new term began, and our prospects were as

hopeless as ever. At last our concierge recommended us to a family who

were willing to take the whole of our apartment, furniture included,

off our hands for a few months. We gladly accepted this offer; for, at

any rate, it ensured the payment of the rent for the ensuing quarter.

We thought if only we could get away from this unfortunate place we

should find some way of getting rid of it altogether. We therefore

decided to find a cheap summer residence for ourselves in the outskirts

of Paris.

Meudon had been mentioned to us as an inexpensive summer resort, and we

selected an apartment in the avenue which joins Meudon to the

neighbouring village of Bellevue. We left full authority with our

concierge as to our rooms in Rue du Helder, and settled down in our new

temporary abode as well as we could. Old Brix, the good-natured

flutist, had to stay with us again, for, owing to the fact that his

usual receipts had been delayed, he would have been in great straits

had we refused to give him shelter. The removal of our scanty

possessions took place on the 29th of April, and was, after all, no

more than a flight from the impossible into the unknown, for how we

were going to live during the following summer we had not the faintest

idea. Schlesinger had no work for me, and no other sources were

available.

The only help we could hope for seemed to lie in journalistic work

which, though rather unremunerative, had indeed given me the

opportunity of making a little success. During the previous winter I

had written a long article on Weber’s Freischutz for the Gazette

Musicale. This was intended to prepare the way for the forthcoming

first performance of this opera, after recitatives from the pen of

Berlioz had been added to it. The latter was apparently far from

pleased at my article. In the article I could not help referring to

Berlioz’s absurd idea of polishing up this old-fashioned musical work

by adding ingredients that spoiled its original characteristics, merely

in order to give it an appearance suited to the luxurious repertoire of

Opera House. The fact that the result fully justified my forecasts did

not in the least tend to diminish the ill-feeling I had roused among

all those concerned in the production; but I had the satisfaction of

hearing that the famous George Sand had noticed my article. She

commenced the introduction to a legendary story of French provincial

life by repudiating certain doubts as to the ability of the French

people to understand the mystic, fabulous element which, as I had

shown, was displayed in such a masterly manner in Freischutz, and she

pointed to my article as clearly explaining the characteristics of that

opera.

Another journalistic opportunity arose out of my endeavours to secure

the acceptance of my Rienzi by the Court Theatre at Dresden. Herr

Winkler, the secretary of that theatre, whom I have already mentioned,

regularly reported progress; but as editor of the Abendzeitung, a paper

then rather on the wane, he seized the opportunity presented by our

negotiations in order to ask me to send him frequent and gratuitous

contributions. The consequence was, that whenever I wanted to know

anything concerning the fate of my opera, I had to oblige him by

enclosing an article for his paper. Now, as these negotiations with the

Court Theatre lasted a very long time, and involved a large number of

contributions from me, I often got into the most extraordinary fixes

simply owing to the fact that I was now once more a prisoner in my

room, and had been so for some time, and therefore knew nothing of what

was going on in Paris.

I had serious reasons for thus withdrawing from the artistic and social

life of Paris. My own painful experiences and my disgust at all the

mockery of that kind of life, once so attractive to me and yet so alien

to my education, had quickly driven me away from everything connected

with it. It is true that the production of the Huguenots, for instance,

which I then heard for the first time, dazzled me very much indeed. Its

beautiful orchestral execution, and the extremely careful and effective

mise en scene, gave me a grand idea of the great possibilities of such

perfect and definite artistic means. But, strange to say, I never felt

inclined to hear the same opera again. I soon became tired of the

extravagant execution of the vocalists, and I often amused my friends

exceedingly by imitating the latest Parisian methods and the vulgar

exaggerations with which the performances teemed. Those composers,

moreover, who aimed at achieving success by adopting the style which

was then in vogue, could not help, either, incurring my sarcastic

criticism. The last shred of esteem which I still tried to retain for

the ‘first lyrical theatre in the world’ was at last rudely destroyed

when I saw how such an empty, altogether un-French work as Donizetti’s

Favorita could secure so long and important a run at this theatre.

During the whole time of my stay in Paris I do not think I went to the

opera more than four times. The cold productions at the Opera Comique,

and the degenerate quality of the music produced there, had repelled me

from the start; and the same lack of enthusiasm displayed by the

singers also drove me from Italian opera. The names, often very famous

ones, of these artists who sang the same four operas for years could

not compensate me for the complete absence of sentiment which

characterised their performance, so unlike that of Schroder-Devrient,

which I so thoroughly enjoyed. I clearly saw that everything was on the

down grade, and yet I cherished no hope or desire to see this state of

decline superseded by a period of newer and fresher life. I preferred

the small theatres, where French talent was shown in its true light;

and yet, as the result of my own longings, I was too intent upon

finding points of relationship in them which would excite my sympathy,

for it to be possible for me to realise those peculiar excellences in

them which did not happen to interest me at all. Besides, from the very

beginning my own troubles had proved so trying, and the consciousness

of the failure of my Paris schemes had become so cruelly apparent,

that, either out of indifference or annoyance, I declined all

invitations to the theatres. Again and again, much to Minna’s regret, I

returned tickets for performances in which Rachel was to appear at the

Theatre Francais, and, in fact, saw that famous theatre only once,

when, some time later, I had to go there on business for my Dresden

patron, who wanted some more articles.

I adopted the most shameful means for filling the columns of the

Abendzeitung; I just strung together whatever I happened to hear in the

evening from Anders and Lehrs. But as they had no very exciting

adventures either, they simply told me all they had picked up from

papers and table-talk, and this I tried to render with as much piquancy

as possible in accordance with the journalistic style created by Heine,

which was all the rage at the time. My one fear was lest old Hofrath

Winkler should some day discover the secret of my wide knowledge of

Paris. Among other things which I sent to his declining paper was a

long account of the production of Freischutz, He was particularly

interested in it, as he was the guardian of Weber’s children; and when

in one of his letters he assured me that he would not rest until he had

got the definite assurance that Rienzi had been accepted, I sent him,

with my most profuse thanks, the German manuscript of my ‘Beethoven’

story for his paper. The 1841 edition of this gazette, then published

by Arnold, but now no longer in existence, contains the only print of

this manuscript.

My occasional journalistic work was increased by a request from Lewald,

the editor of Europa, a literary monthly, asking me to write something

for him. This man was the first who, from time to time, had mentioned

my name to the public. As he used to publish musical supplements to his

elegant and rather widely read magazine, I sent him two of my

compositions from Königsberg for publication. One of these was the

music I had set to a melancholy poem by Scheuerlin, entitled Der Knabe

und der Tannenbaum (a work of which even to-day I am still proud), and

my beautiful Carnevals Lied out of Liebesverbot.

When I wanted to publish my little French compositions—Dors, mon

enfant, and the music to Hugo’s Attente and Ronsard’s Mignonne—Lewald

not only sent me a small fee—the first I had ever received for a

composition—but commissioned some long articles on my Paris

impressions, which he begged me to write as entertainingly as possible.

For his paper I wrote Pariser Amusements and Pariser Fatalitaten, in

which I gave vent in a humorous style, a la Heine, to all my

disappointing experiences in Paris, and to all my contempt for the life

led by its inhabitants. In the second I described the existence of a

certain Hermann Pfau, a strange good-for-nothing with whom, during my

early Leipzig days, I had become more intimately acquainted than was

desirable. This man had been wandering about Paris like a vagrant ever

since the beginning of the previous winter, and the meagre income I

derived from arrangements of La Favorita was often partly consumed in

helping this completely broken-down fellow. So it was only fair that I

should get back a few francs of the money spent on him in Paris by

turning his adventures to some account in Lewald’s newspapers.

When I came into contact with Leon Pillet, the manager of the Opera, my

literary work took yet another direction. After numerous inquiries I

eventually discovered that he had taken a fancy to my draft of the

Fliegender Holländer. He informed me of this, and asked me to sell him

the plot, as he was under contract to supply various composers with

subjects for operettas. I tried to explain to Pillet, both verbally and

in writing, that he could hardly expect that the plot would be properly

treated except by myself, as this draft was in fact my own idea, and

that it had only come to his knowledge by my having submitted it to

him. But it was all to no purpose. He was obliged to admit quite

frankly that the expectations I had cherished as to the result of

Meyerbeer’s recommendation to him would not come to anything. He said

there was no likelihood of my getting a commission for a composition,

even of a light opera, for the next seven years, as his already

existing contracts extended over that period. He asked me to be

sensible, and to sell him the draft for a small amount, so that he

might have the music written by an author to be selected by him; and he

added that if I still wished to try my luck at the Opera House, I had

better see the ‘ballet-master,’ as he might want some music for a

certain dance. Seeing that I contemptuously refused this proposal, he

left me to my own devices.

After endless and unsuccessful attempts at getting the matter settled,

I at last begged Edouard Monnaie, the Commissaire for the Royal

Theatres, who was not only a friend of mine, but also editor of the

Gazette Musicale, to act as mediator. He candidly confessed that he

could not understand Pillet’s liking for my plot, which he also was

acquainted with; but as Pillet seemed to like it—though he would

probably lose it—he advised me to accept anything for it, as Monsieur

Paul Faucher, a brother-in-law of Victor Hugo’s, had had an offer to

work out the scheme for a similar libretto. This gentleman had,

moreover, declared that there was nothing new in my plot, as the story

of the Vaisseau Fantome was well known in France. I now saw how I

stood, and, in a conversation with Pillet, at which M. Faucher was

present, I said I would come to an arrangement. My plot was generously

estimated by Pillet at five hundred francs, and I received that amount

from the cash office at the theatre, to be subsequently deducted from

the author’s rights of the future poet.

Our summer residence in the Avenue de Meudon now assumed quite a

definite character. These five hundred francs had to help me to work

out the words and music of my Fliegender Holländer for Germany, while I

abandoned the French Vaisseau Fantome to its fate.

The state of my affairs, which was getting ever worse and worse, was

slightly improved by the settlement of this matter. May and June had

gone by, and during these months our troubles had grown steadily more

serious. The lovely season of the year, the stimulating country air,

and the sensation of freedom following upon my deliverance from the

wretchedly paid musical hack-work I had had to do all the winter,

wrought their beneficial effects on me, and I was inspired to write a

small story entitled Ein glucklicher Abend. This was translated and

published in French in the Gazette Musicale. Soon, however, our lack of

funds began to make itself felt with a severity that was very

discouraging. We felt this all the more keenly when my sister Cecilia

and her husband, following our example, moved to a place quite close to

us. Though not wealthy, they were fairly well-to-do. They came to see

us every day, but we never thought it desirable to let them know how

terribly hard-up we were. One day it came to a climax. Being absolutely

without money, I started out, early one morning, to walk to Paris—for I

had not even enough to pay the railway fare thither—and I resolved to

wander about the whole day, trudging from street to street, even until

late in the afternoon, in the hope of raising a five-franc piece; but

my errand proved absolutely vain, and I had to walk all the way back to

Meudon again, utterly penniless.

When I told Minna, who came to meet me, of my failure, she informed me

in despair that Hermann Pfau, whom I have mentioned before, had also

come to us in the most pitiful plight, and actually in want of food,

and that she had had to give him the last of the bread delivered by the

baker that morning. The only hope that now remained was that, at any

rate, my lodger Brix, who by a singular fate was now our companion in

misfortune, would return with some success from the expedition to Paris

which he also had made that morning. At last he, too, returned bathed

in perspiration and exhausted, driven home by the craving for a meal,

which he had been unable to procure in the town, as he could not find

any of the acquaintances he went to see. He begged most piteously for a

piece of bread. This climax to the situation at last inspired my wife

with heroic resolution; for she felt it her duty to exert herself to

appease at least the hunger of her menfolk. For the first time during

her stay on French soil, she persuaded the baker, the butcher, and

wine-merchant, by plausible arguments, to supply her with the

necessaries of life without immediate cash payment, and Minna’s eyes

beamed when, an hour later, she was able to put before us an excellent

meal, during which, as it happened, we were surprised by the Avenarius

family, who were evidently relieved at finding us so well provided for.

This extreme distress was relieved for a time, at the beginning of

July, by the sale of my Vaisseau Fantome, which meant my final

renunciation of my success in Paris. As long as the five hundred francs

lasted, I had an interval of respite for carrying on my work. The first

object on which I spent my money was on the hire of a piano, a thing of

which I had been entirely deprived for months. My chief intention in so

doing was to revive my faith in myself as a musician, as, ever since

the autumn of the previous year, I had exercised my talents as a

journalist and adapter of operas only. The libretto of the Fliegender

Holländer, which I had hurriedly written during the recent period of

distress, aroused considerable interest in Lehrs; he actually declared

I would never write anything better, and that the Fliegender Holländer

would be my Don Juan; the only thing now was to find the music for it.

As towards the end of the previous winter I still entertained the hopes

of being permitted to treat this subject for the French Opera, I had

already finished some of the words and music of the lyric parts, and

had had the libretto translated by Emile Deschamps, intending it for a

trial performance, which, alas, never took place. These parts were the

ballad of Senta, the song of the Norwegian sailors, and the ‘Spectre

Song’ of the crew of the Fliegender Holländer. Since that time I had

been so violently torn away from the music that, when the piano arrived

at my rustic retreat, I did not dare to touch it for a whole day. I was

terribly afraid lest I should discover that my inspiration had left

me—when suddenly I was seized with the idea that I had forgotten to

write out the song of the helmsman in the first act, although, as a

matter of fact, I could not remember having composed it at all, as I

had in reality only just written the lyrics. I succeeded, and was

pleased with the result. The same thing occurred with the ‘Spinner’s

Song,’ and when I had written out these two pieces, and, on further

reflection, could not help admitting that they had really only taken

shape in my mind at that moment, I was quite delirious with joy at the

discovery. In seven weeks the whole of the music of the Fliegender

Holländer, except the orchestration, was finished.

Thereupon followed a general revival in our circle; my exuberant good

spirits astonished every one, and my Avenarius relations in particular

thought I must really be prospering, as I was such good company. I

resumed my long walks in the woods of Meudon, frequently even

consenting to help Minna gather mushrooms, which, unfortunately, were

for her the chief charm of our woodland retreat, though it filled our

landlord with terror when he saw us returning with our spoils, as he

felt sure we should be poisoned if we ate them.

My destiny, which almost invariably led me into strange adventures,

here once more introduced me to the most eccentric character to be

found not only in the neighbourhood of Meudon, but even in Paris. This

was M. Jadin, who, though he was old enough to be able to say that he

remembered seeing Madame de Pompadour at Versailles, was still vigorous

beyond belief. It appeared to be his aim to keep the world in a

constant state of conjecture as to his real age; he made everything for

himself with his own hands, including even a quantity of wigs of every

shade, ranging in the most comic variety from youthful flaxen to the

most venerable white, with intermediate shades of grey; these he wore

alternately, as the fancy pleased him. He dabbled in everything, and I

was pleased to find he had a particular fancy for painting. The fact

that all the walls of his rooms were hung with the most childish

caricatures of animal life, and that he had even embellished the

outside of his blinds with the most ridiculous paintings, did not

disconcert me in the least; on the contrary, it confirmed my belief

that he did not dabble in music, until, to my horror, I discovered that

the strangely discordant sounds of a harp which kept reaching my ears

from some unknown region were actually proceeding from his basement,

where he had two harpsichords of his own invention. He informed me that

he had unfortunately neglected playing them for a long time, but that

he now meant to begin practising again assiduously in order to give me

pleasure. I succeeded in dissuading him from this, by assuring him that

the doctor had forbidden me to listen to the harp, as it was bad for my

nerves. His figure as I saw him for the last time remains impressed on

my memory, like an apparition from the world of Hoffmann’s fairy-tales.

In the late autumn, when we were going back to Paris, he asked us to

take with us on our furniture van an enormous stove-pipe, of which he

promised to relieve us shortly. One very cold day Jadin actually

presented himself at our new abode in Paris, in a most preposterous

costume of his own manufacture, consisting of very thin light-yellow

trousers, a very short pale-green dress-coat with conspicuously long

tails, projecting lace shirt frills and cuffs, a very fair wig, and a

hat so small that it was constantly dropping off; he wore in addition a

quantity of imitation jewellery—and all this on the undisguised

assumption that he could not go about in fashionable Paris dressed as

simply as in the country. He had come for the stove-pipe; we asked him

where the men to carry it were; in reply he simply smiled, and

expressed his surprise at our helplessness; and thereupon took the

enormous stove-pipe under his arm and absolutely refused to accept our

help when we offered to assist him in carrying it down the stairs,

though this operation, notwithstanding his vaunted skill, occupied him

quite half an hour. Every one in the house assembled to witness this

removal, but he was by no means disconcerted, and managed to get the

pipe through the street door, and then tripped gracefully along the

pavement with it, and disappeared from our sight.

For this short though eventful period, during which I was quite free to

give full scope to my inmost thoughts, I indulged in the consolation of

purely artistic creations. I can only say that, when it came to an end,

I had made such progress that I could look forward with cheerful

composure to the much longer period of trouble and distress I felt was

in store for me. This, in fact, duly set in, for I had only just

completed the last scene when I found that my five hundred francs were

coming to an end, and what was left was not sufficient to secure me the

necessary peace and freedom from worry for composing the overture; I

had to postpone this until my luck should take another favourable turn,

and meanwhile I was forced to engage in the struggle for a bare

subsistence, making efforts of all kinds that left me neither leisure

nor peace of mind. The concierge from the Rue du Helder brought us the

news that the mysterious family to whom we had let our rooms had left,

and that we were now once more responsible for the rent. I had to tell

him that I would not under any circumstances trouble about the rooms

any more, and that the landlord might recoup himself by the sale of the

furniture we had left there. This was done at a very heavy loss, and

the furniture, the greater part of which was still unpaid for, was

sacrificed to pay the rent of a dwelling which we no longer occupied.

Under the stress of the most terrible privations I still endeavoured to

secure sufficient leisure for working out the orchestration of the

score of the Fliegender Holländer. The rough autumn weather set in at

an exceptionally early date; people were all leaving their country

houses for Paris, and, among them, the Avenarius family. We, however,

could not dream of doing so, for we could not even raise the funds for

the journey. When M. Jadin expressed his surprise at this, I pretended

to be so pressed with work that I could not interrupt it, although I

felt the cold that penetrated through the thin walls of the house very

severely.

So I waited for help from Ernst Castel, one of my old Königsberg

friends, a well-to-do young merchant, who a short time before had

called on us in Meudon and treated us to a luxurious repast in Paris,

promising at the same time to relieve our necessities as soon as

possible by an advance, which we knew was an easy matter to him.

By way of cheering us up, Kietz came over to us one day, with a large

portfolio and a pillow under his arm; he intended to amuse us by

working at a large caricature representing myself and my unfortunate

adventures in Paris, and the pillow was to enable him, after his

labours, to get some rest on our hard couch, which he had noticed had

no pillows at the head. Knowing that we had a difficulty in procuring

fuel, he brought with him some bottles of rum, to ‘warm’ us with punch

during the cold evenings; under these circumstances I read Hoffmann’s

Tales to him and my wife.

At last I had news from Königsberg, but it only opened my eyes to the

fact that the gay young dog had not meant his promise seriously. We now

looked forward almost with despair to the chilly mists of approaching

winter, but Kietz, declaring that it was his place to find help, packed

up his portfolio, placed it under his arm with the pillow, and went off

to Paris. On the next day he returned with two hundred francs, that he

had managed to procure by means of generous self-sacrifice. We at once

set off for Paris, and took a small apartment near our friends, in the

back part of No. 14 Rue Jacob. I afterwards heard that shortly after we

left it was occupied by Proudhon.

We got back to town on 30th October. Our home was exceedingly small and

cold, and its chilliness in particular made it very bad for our health.

We furnished it scantily with the little we had saved from the wreck of

the Rue du Holder, and awaited the results of my efforts towards

getting my works accepted and produced in Germany. The first necessity

was at all costs to secure peace and quietness for myself for the short

time which I should have to devote to the overture of the Fliegender

Holländer; I told Kietz that he would have to procure the money

necessary for my household expenses until this work was finished and

the full score of the opera sent off. With the aid of a pedantic uncle,

who had lived in Paris a long time and who was also a painter, he

succeeded in providing me with the necessary assistance, in instalments

of five or ten francs at a time. During this period I often pointed

with cheerful pride to my boots, which became mere travesties of

footgear, as the soles eventually disappeared altogether.

As long as I was engaged on the Dutchman, and Kietz was looking after

me, this made no difference, for I never went out: but when I had

despatched my completed score to the management of the Berlin Court

Theatre at the beginning of December, the bitterness of the position

could no longer be disguised. It was necessary for me to buckle to and

look for help myself.

What this meant in Paris I learned just about this time from the

hapless fate of the worthy Lehrs. Driven by need such as I myself had

had to surmount a year before at about the same time, he had been

compelled on a broiling hot day in the previous summer to scour the

various quarters of the city breathlessly, to get grace for bills he

had accepted, and which had fallen due. He foolishly took an iced

drink, which he hoped would refresh him in his distressing condition,

but it immediately made him lose his voice, and from that day he was

the victim of a hoarseness which with terrific rapidity ripened the

seeds of consumption, doubtless latent in him, and developed that

incurable disease. For months he had been growing weaker and weaker,

filling us at last with the gloomiest anxiety: he alone believed the

supposed chill would be cured, if he could heat his room better for a

time. One day I sought him out in his lodging, where I found him in the

icy-cold room, huddled up at his writing-table, and complaining of the

difficulty of his work for Didot, which was all the more distressing as

his employer was pressing him for advances he had made.

He declared that if he had not had the consolation in those doleful

hours of knowing that I had, at any rate, got my Dutchman finished, and

that a prospect of success was thus opened to the little circle of

friends, his misery would have been hard indeed to bear. Despite my own

great trouble, I begged him to share our fire and work in my room. He

smiled at my courage in trying to help others, especially as my

quarters offered barely space enough for myself and my wife. However,

one evening he came to us and silently showed me a letter he had

received from Villemain, the Minister of Education at that time, in

which the latter expressed in the warmest terms his great regret at

having only just learned that so distinguished a scholar, whose able

and extensive collaboration in Didot’s issue of the Greek classics had

made him participator in a work that was the glory of the nation,

should be in such bad health and straitened circumstances.

Unfortunately, the amount of public money which he had at his disposal

at that moment for subsidising literature only allowed of his offering

him the sum of five hundred francs, which he enclosed with apologies,

asking him to accept it as a recognition of his merits on the part of

the French Government, and adding that it was his intention to give

earnest consideration as to how he might materially improve his

position.

This filled us with the utmost thankfulness on poor Lehrs’ account, and

we looked on the incident almost as a miracle. We could not help

assuming, however, that M. Villemain had been influenced by Didot, who

had been prompted by his own guilty conscience for his despicable

exploitation of Lehrs, and by the prospect of thus relieving himself of

the responsibility of helping him. At the same time, from similar cases

within our knowledge, which were fully confirmed by my own subsequent

experience, we were driven to the conclusion that such prompt and

considerate sympathy on the part of a minister would have been

impossible in Germany. Lehrs would now have a fire to work by, but

alas! our fears as to his declining health could not be allayed. When

we left Paris in the following spring, it was the certainty that we

should never see our dear friend again that made our parting so

painful.

In my own great distress I was again exposed to the annoyance of having

to write numerous unpaid articles for the Abendzeitung, as my patron,

Hofrath Winkler, was still unable to give me any satisfactory account

of the fate of my Rienzi in Dresden. In these circumstances I was

obliged to consider it a good thing that Halevy’s latest opera was at

last a success. Schlesinger came to us radiant with joy at the success

of La Reine de Chypre, and promised me eternal bliss for the piano

score and various other arrangements I had made of this newest rage in

the sphere of opera. So I was again forced to pay the penalty for

composing my own Fliegender Holländer by having to sit down and write

out arrangements of Halevy’s opera. Yet this task no longer weighed on

me so heavily. Apart from the wellfounded hope of being at last

recalled from my exile in Paris, and thus being able, as I thought, to

regard this last struggle with poverty as the decisive one, the

arrangement of Halevy’s score was far and away a more interesting piece

of hack-work than the shameful labour I had spent on Donizetti’s

Favorita.

I paid another visit, the last for a long time to come, to the Grand

Opera to hear this Reine de Chypre. There was, indeed, much for me to

smile at. My eyes were no longer shut to the extreme weakness of this

class of work, and the caricature of it that was often produced by the

method of rendering it. I was sincerely rejoiced to see the better side

of Halevy again. I had taken a great fancy to him from the time of his

La Juive, and had a very high opinion of his masterly talent.

At the request of Schlesinger I also willingly consented to write for

his paper a long article on Halevy’s latest work. In it I laid

particular stress on my hope that the French school might not again

allow the benefits obtained by studying the German style to be lost by

relapsing into the shallowest Italian methods. On that occasion I

ventured, by way of encouraging the French school, to point to the

peculiar significance of Auber, and particularly to his Stumme von

Portici, drawing attention, on the other hand, to the overloaded

melodies of Rossini, which often resembled sol-fa exercises. In reading

over the proof of my article I saw that this passage about Rossini had

been left out, and M. Edouard Monnaie admitted to me that, in his

capacity as editor of a musical paper, he had felt himself bound to

suppress it. He considered that if I had any adverse criticism to pass

on the composer, I could easily get it published in any other kind of

paper, but not in one devoted to the interests of music, simply because

such a passage could not be printed there without seeming absurd. It

also annoyed him that I had spoken in such high terms of Auber, but he

let it stand. I had to listen to much from that quarter which

enlightened me for ever with regard to the decay of operatic music in

particular, and artistic taste in general, among Frenchmen of the

present day.

I also wrote a longer article on the same opera for my precious friend

Winkler at Dresden, who was still hesitating about accepting my Rienzi.

In doing so I intentionally made merry over a mishap that had befallen

Lachner the conductor. Küstner, who was theatrical director at Munich

at the time, with a view to giving his friend another chance, ordered a

libretto to be written for him by St. Georges in Paris, so that,

through his paternal care, the highest bliss which a German composer

could dream of might be assured to his protege. Well, it turned out

that when Halevy’s Reine de Chypre appeared, it treated the same

subject as Lachner’s presumably original work, which had been composed

in the meantime. It mattered very little that the libretto was a really

good one, the value of the bargain lay in the fact that it was to be

glorified by Lachner’s music. It appeared, however, that St. Georges

had, as a matter of fact, to some extent altered the book sent to

Munich, but only by the omission of several interesting features. The

fury of the Munich manager was great, whereupon St. Georges declared

his astonishment that the latter could have imagined he would supply a

libretto intended solely for the German stage at the paltry price

offered by his German customer. As I had formed my own private opinion

as to procuring French librettos for operas, and as nothing in the

world would have induced me to set to music even the most effective

piece of writing by Scribe or St. Georges, this occurrence delighted me

immensely, and in the best of spirits I let myself go on the point for

the benefit of the readers of the Abendzeitung, who, it is to be hoped,

did not include my future ‘friend’ Lachner.

In addition, my work on Halevy’s opera (Reine de Chypre) brought me

into closer contact with that composer, and was the means of procuring

me many an enlivening talk with that peculiarly good-hearted and really

unassuming man, whose talent, alas, declined all too soon. Schlesinger,

in fact, was exasperated at his incorrigible laziness. Halevy, who had

looked through my piano score, contemplated several changes with a view

to making it easier, but he did not proceed with them: Schlesinger

could not get the proof-sheets back; the publication was consequently

delayed, and he feared that the popularity of the opera would be over

before the work was ready for the public. He urged me to get firm hold

of Halevy very early in the morning in his rooms, and compel him to set

to work at the alterations in my company.

The first time I reached his house at about ten in the morning, I found

him just out of bed, and he informed me that he really must have

breakfast first. I accepted his invitation, and sat down with him to a

somewhat luxurious meal; my conversation seemed to appeal to him, but

friends came in, and at last Schlesinger among the number, who burst

into a fury at not finding him at work on the proofs he regarded as so

important. Halevy, however, remained quite unmoved. In the best of good

tempers he merely complained of his latest success, because he had

never had more peace than of late, when his operas, almost without

exception, had been failures, and he had not had anything to do with

them after the first production. Moreover, he feigned not to understand

why this Reine de Chypre in particular should have been a success; he

declared that Schlesinger had engineered it on purpose to worry him.

When he spoke a few words to me in German, one of the visitors was

astonished, whereupon Schlesinger said that all Jews could speak

German. Thereupon Schlesinger was asked if he also was a Jew. He

answered that he had been, but had become a Christian for his wife’s

sake. This freedom of speech was a pleasant surprise to me, because in

Germany in such cases we always studiously avoided the point, as

discourteous to the person referred to. But as we never got to the

proof correcting, Schlesinger made me promise to give Halevy no peace

until we had done them.

The secret of his indifference to success became clear to me in the

course of further conversation, as I learned that he was on the point

of making a wealthy marriage. At first I was inclined to think that

Halevy was simply a man whose youthful talent was only stimulated to

achieve one great success with the object of becoming rich; in his

case, however, this was not the only reason, as he was very modest in

regard to his own capacity, and had no great opinion of the works of

those more fortunate composers who were writing for the French stage at

that time. In him I thus, for the first time, met with the frankly

expressed admission of disbelief in the value of all our modern

creations in this dubious field of art. I have since come to the

conclusion that this incredulity, often expressed with much less

modesty, justifies the participation of all Jews in our artistic

concerns. Only once did Halevy speak to me with real candour, when, on

my tardy departure for Germany, he wished me the success he thought my

works deserved.

In the year 1860 I saw him again. I had learned that, while the

Parisian critics were giving vent to the bitterest condemnation of the

concerts I was giving at that time, he had expressed his approval, and

this determined me to visit him at the Palais de l’Institut, of which

he had for some time been permanent secretary. He seemed particularly

eager to learn from my own lips what my new theory about music really

was, of which he had heard such wild rumours. For his own part, he

said, he had never found anything but music in my music, but with this

difference, that mine had generally seemed very good. This gave rise to

a lively discussion on my part, to which he good-humouredly agreed,

once more wishing me success in Paris. This time, however, he did so

with less conviction than when he bade me good-bye for Germany, which I

thought was because he doubted whether I could succeed in Paris. From

this final visit I carried away a depressing sense of the enervation,

both moral and aesthetic, which had overcome one of the last great

French musicians, while, on the other hand, I could not help feeling

that a tendency to a hypocritical or frankly impudent exploitation of

the universal degeneracy marked all who could be designated as Halevy’s

successors.

Throughout this period of constant hack-work my thoughts were entirely

bent on my return to Germany, which now presented itself to my mind in

a wholly new and ideal light. I endeavoured in various ways to secure

all that seemed most attractive about the project, or which filled my

soul with longing. My intercourse with Lehrs had, on the whole, given a

decided spur to my former tendency to grapple seriously with my

subjects, a tendency which had been counteracted by closer contact with

the theatre. This desire now furnished a basis for closer study of

philosophical questions. I had been astonished at times to hear even

the grave and virtuous Lehrs, openly and quite as a matter of course,

give expression to grave doubts concerning our individual survival

after death. He declared that in many great men this doubt, even though

only tacitly held, had been the real incitement to noble deeds. The

natural result of such a belief speedily dawned on me without, however,

causing me any serious alarm. On the contrary, I found a fascinating

stimulus in the fact that boundless regions of meditation and knowledge

were thereby opened up which hitherto I had merely skimmed in

light-hearted levity.

In my renewed attempts to study the Greek classics in the original, I

received no encouragement from Lehrs. He dissuaded me from doing so

with the well-meant consolation, that as I could only be born once, and

that with music in me, I should learn to understand this branch of

knowledge without the help of grammar or lexicon; whereas if Greek were

to be studied with real enjoyment, it was no joke, and would not suffer

being relegated to a secondary place.

On the other hand, I felt strongly drawn to gain a closer acquaintance

of German history than I had secured at school. I had Raumer’s History

of the Hohenstaufen within easy reach to start upon. All the great

figures in this book lived vividly before my eyes. I was particularly

captivated by the personality of that gifted Emperor Frederick II.,

whose fortunes aroused my sympathy so keenly that I vainly sought for a

fitting artistic setting for them. The fate of his son Manfred, on the

other hand, provoked in me an equally well-grounded, but more easily

combated, feeling of opposition.

I accordingly made a plan of a great five-act dramatic poem, which

should also be perfectly adapted to a musical setting. My impulse to

embellish the story with the central figure of romantic significance

was prompted by the fact of Manfred’s enthusiastic reception in Luceria

by the Saracens, who supported him and carried him on from victory to

victory till he reached his final triumph, and this, too, in spite of

the fact that he had come to them betrayed on every hand, banned by the

Church, and deserted by all his followers during his flight through

Apulia and the Abruzzi.

Even at this time it delighted me to find in the German mind the

capacity of appreciating beyond the narrow bounds of nationality all

purely human qualities, in however strange a garb they might be

presented. For in this I recognised how nearly akin it is to the mind

of Greece. In Frederick II. I saw this quality in full flower. A

fair-haired German of ancient Swabian stock, heir to the Norman realm

of Sicily and Naples, who gave the Italian language its first

development, and laid a basis for the evolution of knowledge and art

where hitherto ecclesiastical fanaticism and feudal brutality had alone

contended for power, a monarch who gathered at his court the poets and

sages of eastern lands, and surrounded himself with the living products

of Arabian and Persian grace and spirit—this man I beheld betrayed by

the Roman clergy to the infidel foe, yet ending his crusade, to their

bitter disappointment, by a pact of peace with the Sultan, from whom he

obtained a grant of privileges to Christians in Palestine such as the

bloodiest victory could scarcely have secured.

In this wonderful Emperor, who finally, under the ban of that same

Church, struggled hopelessly and in vain against the savage bigotry of

his age, I beheld the German ideal in its highest embodiment. My poem

was concerned with the fate of his favourite son Manfred. On the death

of an elder brother, Frederick’s empire had entirely fallen to pieces,

and the young Manfred was left, under papal suzerainty, in nominal

possession of the throne of Apulia. We find him at Capua, in

surroundings, and attended by a court, in which the spirit of his great

father survives, in a state of almost effeminate degeneration. In

despair of ever restoring the imperial power of the Hohenstaufen, he

seeks to forget his sadness in romance and song. There now appears upon

the scene a young Saracen lady, just arrived from the East, who, by

appealing to the alliance between East and West concluded by Manfred’s

noble father, conjures the desponding son to maintain his imperial

heritage. She acts the part of an inspired prophetess, and though the

prince is quickly filled with love for her, she succeeds in keeping him

at a respectful distance. By a skilfully contrived flight she snatches

him, not only from the pursuit of rebellious Apulian nobles, but also

from the papal ban which is threatening to depose him from his throne.

Accompanied only by a few faithful followers, she guides him through

mountain fastnesses, where one night the wearied son beholds the spirit

of Frederick II. passing with feudal array through the Abruzzi, and

beckoning him on to Luceria.

To this district, situated in the Papal States, Frederick had, by a

peaceful compact, transplanted the remnant of his Saracen retainers,

who had previously been wreaking terrible havoc in the mountains of

Sicily. To the great annoyance of the Pope, he had handed the town over

to them in fee-simple, thus securing for himself a band of faithful

allies in the heart of an ever-treacherous and hostile country.

Fatima, as my heroine is called, has prepared, through the

instrumentality of trusty friends, a reception for Manfred in this

place. When the papal governor has been expelled by a revolution, he

slips through the gateway into the town, is recognised by the whole

population as the son of their beloved Emperor, and, amid wildest

enthusiasm, is placed at their head, to lead them against the enemies

of their departed benefactor. In the meantime, while Manfred is

marching on from victory to victory in his reconquest of the whole

kingdom of Apulia, the tragic centre of my action still continues to be

the unvoiced longing of the lovelorn victor for the marvellous heroine.

She is the child of the great Emperor’s love for a noble Saracen

maiden. Her mother, on her deathbed, had sent her to Manfred,

foretelling that she would work wonders for his glory provided she

never yielded to his passion. Whether Fatima was to know that she was

his sister I left undecided in framing my plot. Meanwhile she is

careful to show herself to him only at critical moments, and then

always in such a way as to remain unapproachable. When at last she

witnesses the completion of her task in his coronation at Naples, she

determines, in obedience to her vow, to slip away secretly from the

newly anointed king, that she may meditate in the solitude of her

distant home upon the success of her enterprise.

The Saracen Nurreddin, who had been a companion of her youth, and to

whose help she had chiefly owed her success in rescuing Manfred, is to

be the sole partner of her flight. To this man, who loves her with

passionate ardour, she had been promised in her childhood. Before her

secret departure she pays a last visit to the slumbering king. This

rouses her lover’s furious jealousy, as he construes her act into a

proof of unfaithfulness on the part of his betrothed. The last look of

farewell which Fatima casts from a distance at the young monarch, on

his return from his coronation, inflames the jealous lover to wreak

instant vengeance for the supposed outrage upon his honour. He strikes

the prophetess to the earth, whereupon she thanks him with a smile for

having delivered her from an unbearable existence. At the sight of her

body Manfred realises that henceforth happiness has deserted him for

ever.

This theme I had adorned with many gorgeous scenes and complicated

situations, so that when I had worked it out I could regard it as a

fairly suitable, interesting, and effective whole, especially when

compared with other well-known subjects of a similar nature. Yet I

could never rouse myself to sufficient enthusiasm over it to give my

serious attention to its elaboration, especially as another theme now

laid its grip upon me. This was suggested to me by a pamphlet on the

‘Venusberg,’ which accidentally fell into my hands.

If all that I regarded as essentially German had hitherto drawn me with

ever-increasing force, and compelled me to its eager pursuit, I here

found it suddenly presented to me in the simple outlines of a legend,

based upon the old and well-known ballad of ‘Tannhäuser.’ True, its

elements were already familiar to me from Tieck’s version in his

Phantasus. But his conception of the subject had flung me back into the

fantastic regions created in my mind at an earlier period by Hoffmann,

and I should certainly never have been tempted to extract the framework

of a dramatic work from his elaborate story. The point in this popular

pamphlet which had so much weight with me was that it brought

‘Tannhäuser,’ if only by a passing hint, into touch with ‘The

Minstrel’s War on the Wartburg.’ I had some knowledge of this also from

Hoffmann’s account in his Serapionsbrudern. But I felt that the writer

had only grasped the old legend in a distorted form, and therefore

endeavoured to gain a closer acquaintance with the true aspect of this

attractive story. At this juncture Lehrs brought me the annual report

of the proceedings of the Königsberg German Society, in which the

‘Wartburg contest’ was criticised with a fair amount of detail by

Lukas. Here I also found the original text. Although I could utilise

but little of the real setting for my own purpose, yet the picture it

gave me of Germany in the Middle Ages was so suggestive that I found I

had not previously had the smallest conception of what it was like.

As a sequel to the Wartburg poem, I also found in the same copy a

critical study, ‘Lohengrin,’ which gave in full detail the main

contents of that widespread epic.

Thus a whole new world was opened to me, and though as yet I had not

found the form in which I might cope with Lohengrin, yet this image

also lived imperishably within me. When, therefore, I afterwards made a

close acquaintance with the intricacies of this legend, I could

visualise the figure of the hero with a distinctness equal to that of

my conception of Tannhäuser at this time.

Under these influences my longing for a speedy return to Germany grew

ever more intense, for there I hoped to earn a new home for myself

where I could enjoy leisure for creative work. But it was not yet

possible even to think of occupying myself with such grateful tasks.

The sordid necessities of life still bound me to Paris. While thus

employed, I found an opportunity of exerting myself in a way more

congenial to my desires. When I was a young man at Prague, I had made

the acquaintance of a Jewish musician and composer called Dessauer—a

man who was not devoid of talent, who in fact achieved a certain

reputation, but was chiefly known among his intimates on account of his

hypochondria. This man, who was now in flourishing circumstances, was

so far patronised by Schlesinger that the latter seriously proposed to

help him to a commission for Grand Opera. Dessauer had come across my

poem of the Fliegender Holländer, and now insisted that I should draft

a similar plot for him, as M. Leon Pillet’s Vaisseau Fantome had

already been given to M. Dietsch, the letter’s musical conductor, to

set to music. From this same conductor Dessauer obtained the promise of

a like commission, and he now offered me two hundred francs to provide

him with a similar plot, and one congenial to his hypochondriacal

temperament.

To meet this wish I ransacked my brain for recollections of Hoffmann,

and quickly decided to work up his Bergwerke von Falun. The moulding of

this fascinating and marvellous material succeeded as admirably as I

could wish. Dessauer also felt convinced that the topic was worth his

while to set to music. His dismay was accordingly all the greater when

Pillet rejected our plot on the ground that the staging would be too

difficult, and that the second act especially would entail

insurmountable obstacles for the ballet, which had to be given each

time. In place of this Dessauer wished me to compose him an oratorio on

‘Mary Magdalene.’ As on the day that he expressed this wish he appeared

to be suffering from acute melancholia, so much so that he declared he

had that morning seen his own head lying beside his bed, I thought well

not to refuse his request. I asked him, therefore, to give me time, and

I regret to say that ever since that day I have continued to take it..

It was amid such distractions as these that this winter at length drew

to an end, while my prospects of getting to Germany gradually grew more

hopeful, though with a slowness that sorely tried my patience. I had

kept up a continuous correspondence with Dresden respecting Rienzi, and

in the worthy chorus-master Fischer I at last found an honest man who

was favourably disposed to me. He sent me reliable and reassuring

reports as to the state of my affairs.

After receiving news, early in January, 1842, of renewed delay, I at

last heard that by the end of February the work would be ready for

performance. I was seriously uneasy at this, as I was afraid of not

being able to accomplish the journey by that date. But this news also

was soon contradicted, and the honest Fischer informed me that my opera

had had to be postponed till the autumn of that year. I realised fully

that it would never be performed if I could not be present in person at

Dresden. When eventually in March Count Redern, the director of the

Theatre Royal in Berlin, told me that my Fliegender Holländer had been

accepted for the opera there, I thought I had sufficient reason to

return to Germany at all costs as soon as possible.

I had already had various experiences as to the views of German

managers on this work. Relying on the plot, which had pleased the

manager of the Paris Opera so much, I had sent the libretto in the

first instance to my old acquaintance Ringelhardt, the director of the

Leipzig theatre. But the man had cherished an undisguised aversion for

me since my Liebesverbot. As he could not this time possibly object to

any levity in my subject, he now found fault with its gloomy solemnity

and refused to accept it. As I had met Councillor Küstner, at that time

manager of the Munich Court Theatre, when he was making arrangements

about La Reine de Chypre in Paris, I now sent him the text of the

Dutchman with a similar request. He, too, returned it, with the

assurance that it was not suited to German stage conditions, or to the

taste of the German public. As he had ordered a French libretto for

Munich, I knew what he meant. When the score was finished, I sent it to

Meyerbeer in Berlin, with a letter for Count Redern, and begged him, as

he had been unable to help me to anything in Paris, in spite of his

desire to do so, to be kind enough to use his influence in Berlin in

favour of my composition. I was genuinely astonished at the truly

prompt acceptance of my work two months later, which was accompanied by

very gratifying assurances from the Count, and I was delighted to see

in it a proof of Meyerbeer’s sincere and energetic intervention in my

favour. Strange to say, on my return to Germany soon afterwards, I was

destined to learn that Count Redern had long since retired from the

management of the Berlin Opera House, and that Küstner of Munich had

already been appointed his successor; the upshot of this was that Count

Redern’s consent, though very courteous, could not by any means be

taken seriously, as the realisation of it depended not on him but on

his successor. What the result was remains to be seen.

A circumstance that eventually facilitated my long-desired return to

Germany, which was now justified by my good prospects, was the tardily

awakened interest taken in my position by the wealthy members of my

family. If Didot had had reasons of his own for applying to the

Minister Villemain for support for Lehrs, so also Avenarius, my

brother-in-law in Paris, when he heard how I was struggling against

poverty, one day took it into his head to surprise me with some quite

unexpected help secured by his appeal to my sister Louisa. On 26th

December of the fast-waning year 1841 I went home to Minna carrying a

goose under my arm, and in the beak of the bird we found a

five-hundred-franc note. This note had been given me by Avenarius as

the result of a request on my behalf made by my sister Louisa to a

friend of hers, a wealthy merchant named Schletter. This welcome

addition to our extremely straitened resources might not in itself have

been sufficient to put me in an exceedingly good-humour, had I not

clearly seen in it the prospect of escaping altogether from my position

in Paris. As the leading German managers had now consented to the

performance of two of my compositions, I thought I might seriously

reproach my brother-in-law, Friedrich Brockhaus, who had repulsed me

the year before when I applied to him in great distress, on the ground

that he ‘disapproved of my profession.’ This time I might be more

successful in securing the wherewithal for my return. I was not

mistaken, and when the time came I was supplied from this source with

the necessary travelling expenses.

With these prospects, and my position thus improved, I found myself

spending the second half of the winter 1841-42 in high spirits, and

affording constant entertainment to the small circle of friends which

my relationship to Avenarius had created around me. Minna and I

frequently spent our evenings with this family and others, amongst whom

I have pleasant recollections of a certain Herr Kuhne, the head of a

private school, and his wife. I contributed so greatly to the success

of their little soirees, and was always so willing to improvise dances

on the piano for them to dance to, that I soon ran the risk of enjoying

an almost burdensome popularity.

At length the hour struck for my deliverance; the day came on which, as

I devoutly hoped, I might turn my back on Paris for ever. It was the

7th of April, and Paris was already gay with the first luxuriant

buddings of spring. In front of our windows, which all the winter had

looked upon a bleak and desolate garden, the trees were burgeoning, and

the birds sang. Our emotion at parting from our dear friends Anders,

Lehrs, and Kietz, however, was great, almost overwhelming. The first

seemed already doomed to an early death, for his health was exceedingly

bad, and he was advanced in years. About Lehrs’ condition, as I have

already said, there could no longer be any doubt, and it was dreadful,

after so short an experience as the two and a half years which I had

spent in Paris, to see the ravages that want had wrought among good,

noble, and sometimes even distinguished men. Kietz, for whose future I

was concerned, less on grounds of health than of morals, touched our

hearts once more by his boundless and almost childlike good-nature.

Fancying, for instance, that I might not have enough money for the

journey, he forced me, in spite of all resistance, to accept another

five-franc piece, which was about all that remained of his own fortune

at the moment: he also stuffed a packet of good French snuff for me

into the pocket of the coach, in which we at last rumbled through the

boulevards to the barriers, which we passed but were unable to see this

time, because our eyes were blinded with tears.