EARLY BOYHOOD
I
So far all we can learn about Wagner that is worth knowing amounts to
this: he was born into and passed his first years in the precincts of
Bohemia, where the Bohemian atmosphere was tempered with officialism,
court-etiquette, and the influence of a methodical and resolutely
conscientious stepfather. When Richard became a man and wrote on the
theatre and theatrical life he showed an intimate knowledge of all
details hardly possible to one who had not gone through this early
experience: scores of things that an ordinary educated Englishman
learns with considerable surprise were to him the merest matters of
course. When an English composer resolves to write an opera, in the
spirit in which a sculptor may decide to paint a picture or a
flute-player to play the fiddle, he has to learn all, or as much as he
can, about the requirements of the stage, and even then if his work
comes to rehearsal he has to accept corrections and make alterations
at the instance of those who have been through the proper early
training. No one had anything to teach Richard in these respects: he
knew by what seems an infallible instinct, but which was mainly the
result of all he had seen since his babyhood, precisely what was
effective and what ineffective on the stage, what was possible and
what impossible. He made no mistakes; even the "impossibilities" of
the _Ring_ proved feasibilities and are now accomplished nightly
without trouble in every opera-house of Europe.
This training--for it was a training, perhaps the very best for the
career before him--now went on as in Geyer's time. He still dwelt in
Bohemia, but as the influence of his stepfather had been salutary, so
now to an extent came in the influence of school. Hitherto we have had
rather to consider his family than him; but now the little
individuality begins to emerge, more and more clearly and distinctly,
from that circle. He begins an independent existence, controlled in an
overwhelming degree by the life of the theatre and home-life, but also
leading a life of his own at school and very wilfully taking a line or
lines of his own there. We can now begin to trace the growth of the
mental, and especially the artistic, nature of one of the most
stupendous geniuses the earth has produced. It is altogether
unnecessary to try to piece together anything approaching an elaborate
sketch of the activities and escapades of these days: this would
involve laying violent and liberal hands on the fruits of the labours
of Glasenapp and a dozen other pickers-up of unconsidered trifles,
would yield us nothing essential and might drive the reader to an
untimely end. Out of the strangely tangled skein of truth and obvious
fiction which is called his "life" for this period I shall endeavour
only to pick out such threads of fact as seem to me helpful.
Richard remained five years at the Kreuzschule and took to the
classics with avidity. The best part of his education was classical.
True, he learned enough arithmetic to know how many marks made twenty
and how many francs a louis; but the classics provided him with the
pabulum his growing mind hungered for. His Greek professor took a
special interest in him, which is not surprising when we remember that
at the age of thirteen he translated twelve books of the Odyssey as a
holiday task. Besides this he worked at philology and the ordinary
school curriculum. It is just possible--just, I say--that had the
family remained longer in Dresden he might never have turned to the
Scandinavian sagas at all, but have become an eminent scholar and the
composer of mediocre symphonic music. That, luckily, is one of the
might-have-beens, and we need not mourn over it. Music he was very far
from dropping. He had played a Weber scene while his stepfather was
dying; and he continued to bang away at overtures with such a
fingering, as Mr. Bernard Shaw has said, as of necessity would be
employed by the average worker at a circular-saw. But the great
awakening was not yet. He had first to give the world the mightiest
drama ever conceived by the mind of an energetic, bright,
self-confident boy.
I do not think there is on record a single instance of a great
engineer having manifested artistic preferences in his youth, or of a
great painter having misspent his boyhood in making toy machines.
Always, from the very beginning, the boy unconsciously, without
reflection, instinctively, helplessly, starts away in the direction he
is destined to follow as a man; and though some potential great poets
may be thwarted and ultimately discouraged and lost to the world, by
far the more common phenomenon is that of young geniuses overcoming or
brushing aside or dodging all obstacles at all costs (to themselves
and every one else) and finding their true road, the path nature
shaped them to tread. At the first glance Wagner might seem a
startling exception to the nearly universal rule; but he is no
exception. The theatre was his first love, and to the theatre he ever
remained faithful: only through the theatre did his genius manifest
itself; apart from the theatre it may be doubted whether he could have
developed into the consummate technical musician of _Tristan_ and the
_Mastersingers_. Music was his second love, music associated with
drama; and throughout his long career we find him engaged, first, in
getting his drama true, poignant and effective, and then in allying it
with music. Third in his affections came philosophy; and at this time
of day it need scarcely be remarked that he always considered himself
a bit of a philosopher, and toyed to the last with philosophy and
pseudo-philosophy. Reams of good paper and gallons of good ink have
been used in writing about the musician, the composer of the most
magnificent operas in the world; weeks, months, years have gone to the
writing. But all the paper, all the ink, all the labour, all the
mental effort and sympathy and love seem a bagatelle when we look
through the bibliographies and realize how much paper, ink,
effort--not always to be called mental--sympathy and love have been
used up in expounding Wagner's philosophy. The cases of Whitman and
Browning make a poor show compared with this case. I believe there are
still some human beings who turn for guidance to Wagner the
philosopher. Later I shall be compelled to say something about the
subject. What Wagner's docile apostles say does not greatly matter--in
fact, does not matter at all; what Wagner said does demand a little
consideration; and we must bear in mind that philosophy and
pseudo-philosophy supplied him with the stuff out of which he wove the
word-tissue of his dramas.
II
There is not much, then, to detain us during this period. Rosalie and
Albert had their engagements, Rosalie being the mainstay of the
family. On May 1, 1824 Clara made her debut. Uncle Adolph, ceaseless
in objurgations touching every one who had any connection with the
court or trade theatres of the day, had to accept the situation; and,
apparently in desperation, or because he found life intolerable with
two nagging females in the house where he dwelt, quietly went in 1824
and married Sophie, a sister of his friend Amadeus Wendt.
Thenceforward he lived in peace at a house called "The Hut," visiting
his two nagging ladies every day, however. One was his sister,
Friederike, the other Jeannette Thomä. He was a studious, retiring
man, and in the course of time produced some books that are worthless,
or all but worthless, now. Of course the Bayreuth worshippers and
idolizers of the Wagner family will have it that he, being one of the
family, was inevitably a man of superlative gifts; but as I have
already indicated, there is nothing to justify such an assumption. A
cultivated man of sound sense he must have been; and it is true he was
in some slight touch with a few of the stronger artistic and literary
spirits in that very dull and disheartening period; it is true that he
influenced, wholly for good, Richard a few years afterwards. When that
is said all is said.
Richard is said to have studied English, but how much he actually
learnt I never could ascertain. I have been told with solemn
mysteriousness at Bayreuth that, like the parrot, he could have
rattled off our tongue with tremendous volubility had he chosen; but
the fact that he never chose lends colour to the supposition that in
reality he had no choice. However, in the original or in translations
he read Shakespeare; and it may be presumed that he knew Goethe and
Schiller almost by heart. Naturally he determined to rival them. In
that heyday of the big Romantic movement he just as naturally
determined to rival or to beat them by piling terror on terror, horror
on horror. At that period the latest word in the theatre was melodrama
of the wildest sort, and a play which did not contain a few murders,
ghosts, enchanted woods and haunted castles had not the faintest
chance of success. According to Wagner's own account he made a
handsome bid for success; for nearly all the _dramatis-personæ_ came
to an untimely end, and a spectre told one, not yet finished off, that
if he moved another step his nose would then and there crumble to
powder.
While this masterwork was in process of construction, circumstances so
altered that Frau Geyer thought it wisdom to quit Dresden and return
to Leipzig. Albert, Rosalie, Louise and Clara were in various towns
fulfilling engagements; she was left alone with the younger children.
In 1826 Rosalie had gone to Prague; Albert and Clara were in Augsburg;
Louise had been in Breslau, had tried Berlin, then finally took a
permanent post at the theatre in Leipzig. So a move was determined on,
and the family made another migration in 1827. Richard stayed on for
some time, in connection with his schooling, I presume; then he
followed, incidentally taking the most momentous step in his young
life.
These five years had been for him profitable. He got the best part of
his education at Dresden, where he had skilful and sympathetic
masters; and almost, one may say, without knowing it he had received
an informal musical education which was profoundly to affect him as
soon as he started writing operas. I mean that he constantly attended
the opera while Weber was conductor, and Weber, who had been a friend
of Geyer's, used to call at the house to pass the time of day with the
widow. Richard looked up to him with awe and worshipped every bar of
his music; and this, together with a knowledge of the road Richard was
soon to take and of what he was to become, makes one wonder that he
had not already decided to compose another _Freischütz_. But, as I
have said, the theatre--that is, the theatre with the spoken
drama--was his first love; and evidently it had a wondrous hold on
him, for after spending a rapturous evening with _Freischütz_--first
given in Leipzig in 1822--he would return contentedly to his tragedy.
It took a stronger spirit even than Weber's to awaken the musical side
of his nature. But unconsciously the foundation had been laid, as we
shall have ample reason to understand before long. These years at
Dresden, too, are noteworthy, inasmuch as they saw the beginning of
some friendships, at least one of which was to prove lifelong and
invaluable to Richard.
III
When the family settled again in Leipzig one Ludwig van Beethoven died
(March 1827), and Wagner heard of this composer, it is said, for the
first time. It is all but unimaginable, yet there seems no reason to
doubt it. After all, that was not an age of halfpenny morning and
evening papers, and if composers were boomed the deed was accomplished
tranquilly in the houses of great society leaders, dukes and
archbishops, and the general public knew little of what was going on.
I dare say even in our newspaper age many a clever boy of fourteen has
never heard of Strauss or Josef Holbrooke, and Beethoven did not loom
nearly so large before the eyes of the people as these composers do:
the names of Salieri, Marschner, Meyerbeer, Spontini, Spohr and Weber
would be much more familiar than his; even in Vienna he was regarded
mainly as a deaf, surly old crank who had the support of highly placed
personages. So there is the amazing fact: Wagner, who worshipped
Weber's operas, had not, when fourteen years old, heard of the
existence of a musician a thousand times mightier than Weber. The
great hour was at hand.
First, however, he had to pass through a period of boyish disgust and
disappointment. At Dresden he had been a favourite with his masters,
and had worked hard. His own account of the methods, temper, and
intellectual qualifications of his masters seems to me eminently
reasonable. Their aim was to bring out whatever was best in their
pupils. His account of his first masters at Leipzig similarly bears
the stamp of truthfulness. They were a set of conceited academics
with only two ideas in the world: first, that they were the very
finest flower of Teutonic culture; second, that they must so impose
their personalities on the boys, so impress them with their ideal,
that every pupil would carry to his dying hour the stamp of the
culture of the Nicolai school. Utterly unsympathetic, narrow beyond
the dreams of the narrowest of modern schoolmasters, they were
frankly, virulently hostile to any one in whom they perceived--as they
always did perceive with the unerring instinct of stupidity to detect
cleverness--the smallest trace of originality of character, thought or
outlook on life. As a rule they seem to have been successful in
achieving their aim. An old German friend of mine told me he had
calculated that the Nicolai school turned out in ten years more
complete, complacent blockheads than any other school in Germany had
turned out in half-a-century; and my friend gave me many notable
instances of men who had soon won the proud distinction of being
unmistakable pupils of the Nicolai school. There were rebels, and
Wagner makes it clear that he was amongst them. To begin with, he had
been in the second class at the Kreuzschule. The more effectually to
imbue him with the Nicolai ambition of becoming a scholar, _i.e._ a
pedant, and a complete, if sausage-munching, German gentleman of the
period, they degraded him to the third. No doubt there were protests:
one cannot believe that Wagner the boy any more than Wagner the man
could refrain from declamation under a grievance; but with such
impervious skulls and thick hides protests would be unavailing. The
mischief was done: he was numbered amongst the rebels, the lost souls,
the unhappy beings who dared to have notions of their own. He
neglected his studies and sought refuge in his drama. I wonder if he
found, or made, an opportunity of satirizing his precious professors
in it.
At home his life cannot have been much better. Good Hausfrau Geyer
cannot have understood where the shoe pinched: she can only have seen
how he was wasting his time. The tragedy was discovered and there seem
to have been solemn family deliberations regarding the probable fate
of the reprobate. His Uncle Adolph seems to have acted as the great
consoler. He, at any rate, knew better than to think a boy was on the
way to the bottomless pit simply because he could not get on with a
gang of dull pedagogues. Now and later he lectured Richard in a kindly
if sententious way; and he must have fostered the boy's natural strong
spirit of revolt. Adolph loathed authority, especially the authority
of irresponsible court officials; and in some of his preserved letters
he lashes these gentry, the scum of humanity and the parasites of
courts, with scathing sarcasm. His sarcasm had no practical result,
because the officials never saw it--if they had they would have
shrugged their fat shoulders and gone to draw their comfortable
salaries. But he taught Wagner that officialdom is the curse of the
human race; and in after years that certainly had some practical
results--at the moment calamitous to Wagner; in the long run
beneficial to him and the human race. Perhaps of all forms of
authority that which Adolph found least tolerable, that which he
taught Richard to loathe and hate and spit upon, was official
authority in art matters. Nowadays, when public opinion counts for
something, when those who pay the taxes insist on having some small
say as to the way in which they are spent, the intendant of a German
theatre is by no means the lordly court-parasite he was once. Yet even
now he often flouts his paymasters, feeling fairly secure under court
protection. We can easily imagine the high-and-mighty jack-in-office
he must have been in Adolph's time.
Wherever he made his power felt it blasted honest art and checked
honest art endeavour. It was fitting that Richard should have dinned
into him--as I have no doubt he did--his uncle's views on these
heroes; for later Richard had a fair amount of fighting to do with
them, and in the end it was he more than any other one man who broke
their power for ever by appealing to the great public. This attitude
is due to Richard's preaching and example; and he learnt it from Uncle
Adolph. In one other respect Adolph's influence was good: he opened
out to Richard's vision immense fields of literature that the
youngster had never heard of. I have previously mentioned that all the
culture of the Geyer family came through the theatre. To this Richard
added a small school-acquaintance with the classics; and now came
Adolph to show him a huge, truly vital literature--poetry and prose
dealing with the life of our own epoch. Adolph wrote reminding him of
how finely Weber Had cultivated himself, of his breadth, of his
outlook on history and mankind. It is evident that Adolph, seeing the
irresistible bent of the Wagners towards the theatre, and fearing that
Richard might in time learn to be content with a life of ignorant
theatre tittle-tattle, did his best to save him, not so much by
warning him against the theatre--which he certainly knew to be
useless--as by showing how many great and interesting things the world
holds. The preaching did not fall on deaf ears; and Richard always
declared that in this regard he was incalculably indebted to his
uncle. One of Richard's most strongly marked characteristics was the
tenacity with which he held any idea that once entered his mind; and
it is worthy of note that about this period he read E.T.A. Hoffmann's
collected fantasies and Tieck's _Tannhäuser_. From the first he
unmistakably got the minstrels' contest in his own _Tannhäuser_; from
the second, Tannhäuser's coming home after being cursed by the Pope.
So things went on. Richard's mother, Richard, Louise, Ottilie and
Cäcilie formed the household; Uncle Adolph and Aunt Sophie lived not
far off; and they had plenty of friends. They lived at first in the
Pichhof outside the Halle gate and later removed into the town.
Richard wandered about the city, seeking the scenes of his babyhood;
and his mother pointed out to him the spot where she saw Napoleon
rush off, without his hat, to make his: escape after the battle of
liberation, while Richard was in his cradle. The Rannstadt gate, where
his grandfather spent his life collecting dues, was still standing,
though it was soon to vanish; and the house of the Red and White Lion
on the Brühl, where Richard was born, was now in the very heart of the
Jew quarter. The costumes, speech and gesticulation of these strange
animals left an indelible impression on him, and were, perhaps,
incidentally responsible for the notorious _Judaism in Music_ of 1850,
and all the fallacies contained in that deplorable essay. Richard got
his own way in most things, and the seeds were sown of the
self-confidence, egotism, selfishness--call it what you will--that was
to carry him through unheard-of difficulties and troubles in later
life, and was often, unfortunately, to show as an objectionable, even
odious, feature in his character. He still laboured at his tragedy,
killing off his personages and turning their noses into dust with the
careless facility and cheerfulness of buoyant boyhood. He had always
been fond of roaming the country, and he continued to nourish that
love of the pleasant earth which forced him to keep up the habit all
his life and resulted in the glorious pictorial music of the _Ring_.
He struggled in vain to conquer the piano-keys, and, indifferent to
the fable of the fox and the grapes, came to the satisfying conclusion
that the instrument was not worth mastering. We must remember that
through Louise he was in constant touch with the theatre, and it is
evident that he kept up the connection after her marriage to
Brockhaus the bookseller in 1828, for when the theatre was entirely
reformed next year Rosalie came as a principal lady and Heinrich Dorn,
who speedily became his friend, as conductor. Drama, literature,
school-tasks, open-air rambles, talks with Uncle Adolph--these
constituted his life. Now another element was to enter and overwhelm
all the rest.