DRESDEN
I
When Wagner left Paris on the proceeds of some work for Schlesinger
which still remained to be done, he had learnt three lessons. The
first, that it was foolish for an unknown man to go off into unknown
lands, proved useful for a time. That is, for a time he put up with
many vexations rather than undertake such adventures. No one likes to
be starved and to see his wife starving, Wagner least of all men; and
we shall see that, once settled in Dresden, he set his teeth and
grinned and bore up against lack of appreciation and against actual
insult, so determined was he that his Minna should, if possible, live
in comfort. This lesson had been emphasized by his experiences before
he received a permanent appointment. His creditors of the north,
learning of the success of _Rienzi_, and little dreaming his profits
to be £45, immediately began to worry him; and until he got the
conductorship of the Royal opera-house his plight was little, if any,
better than it was in the Paris days. The second lesson was, that
whatever might happen in the future, it was futile to raise his eyes
to Paris: Paris would not listen to him or to any sincere artist. The
third was that nothing was to be hoped at all from the modern opera.
That lesson he never forgot. Unfortunately its teaching clashed with
that of lesson number one, and for some time it was neglected. But
Dresden reinforced it as only a court-ridden town can, a town whose
inhabitants were, almost to a man, the sort of flunkeys who hang
around a Court.
Wagner did not wish to be kapellmeister--on the contrary, wished most
vigorously not to be kapellmeister. What on earth he did wish to be,
how he hoped to earn bread--he who had had only one opera produced,
and gained £45 by it: it is idle to speculate concerning such
questions. Excepting that he laboured incessantly at his
operas--scheming and sketching, if not actually composing and
writing--he would seem at this stage of his growth to have been a Mr.
Micawber, whose contemporary, of course, he was. He flirted with von
Lüttichau, the intendant of the theatre, a fine specimen of a court
barbarian. Wagner neither would nor wouldn't; and it was only when the
theatre found it could not well do without him, and asked him to say
definitely if he would, that he accepted the offer. We can imagine how
poor, stupid, unimaginative Minna would rejoice at the news. She ought
to have married a pork butcher, or would have behaved admirably as the
mistress of a beerhouse or café; but as the wife of a man of genius--!
To be the wife of the kapellmeister of one of Germany's principal
opera-houses--a court opera-house--that was almost, if not quite, as
good; and for the time she rested content with her lot. And we may
believe that Richard, too, felt a double gratification, even against
his deepest and truest instincts. The salary lifted a burden off his
shoulders for a while; and was he not appointed to the very post his
idol Weber had occupied? Nevertheless, things soon came to pass which
show how the Richard who set off from Pillau to Paris with his bare
travelling expenses, and the Richard who was to do yet madder things
hereafter, was the Richard of this middle period. This von Lüttichau
said it was the rule of the court that a new conductor should serve a
year on trial. Wagner was quite brutally reminded that the mighty
Weber had been compelled to do so; and he was told _he_ must do so. He
point-blank refused; sent the Lüttichau man a long explanation--which,
I dare say, was never read--of why he couldn't accept such terms;
spoke of the necessity of getting some sort of order and discipline
into an orchestra which Reissiger had allowed to go to pieces, etc.,
etc. But he had to his credit, as we have seen, the triumphs of
_Rienzi_ and the _Dutchman_; and it shows how much he was wanted that
Lüttichau yielded; he waived the twelve months' probation without
murmuring--a thing almost unheard of in the case of a German official,
a German court official. So on the 2nd of February, 1843, he was sworn
in "for life" as co-conductor with Reissiger; and promptly learnt that
he had to wear a livery like others condemned to penal servitude for
life. This was the least of his troubles.
Reissiger had been the slackest of theatre conductors, the slackest
of the slack old school. I may have mentioned that once I had the
misfortune to play the piano part in a number of his trios; and though
these are the only compositions of his known to me they suffice. A man
who had the patience to plod through the task of writing such dreary
stuff and the presumption to send it forth to a world already familiar
with Mendelssohn's trios, if not with Beethoven's, cannot have had a
spark of the genuine, enthusiastic musician in him. His waltz--known
as "Weber's last thoughts," in Germany and England as "Weber's last
waltz"--must have been the fruit of a lucky accident--or perhaps he
did have a moment of inspiration: it would be hard if that had not
come once in a lifetime to a man who wrote so much. The little thing
is certainly pretty. But it is not enough to counteract the impression
made by his trios on me, nor by his operas and conducting-work on
Wagner. The latter, indeed, was fond of telling anecdotes showing how
entirely indifferent Reissiger was to his work, so long as he got
through it somehow, reached home in good time, and drew his pay
regularly. One story, though well enough known, ought to be mentioned,
because it reveals the man whose duties Wagner had to share, and the
result of whose faults Wagner had to cure and efface. Wagner met
Reissiger on the river bridge one evening at nine o'clock, when the
opera ought to have been in full swing with Reissiger at the
conductor's desk. "Are you not conducting the opera to-night?" asked
Wagner--possibly in a fit of consternation, thinking it might be
_his_ night. "Have had it," Reissiger replied; "how's that for smart
conducting?" As long as they got through, Reissiger was content. Not
so Wagner. His first duty was to make the band a smart, clean-playing,
smooth-working machine; the players had to learn to follow his beat
and to obey his directions; and he at once met with opposition. The
bandsmen, like Reissiger, and in fact all officials who regard their
posts as more or less sinecures, wanted to go on in the old slovenly
fashion, rehearsing carelessly, hastily, or not at all, and quite
satisfied so long as they got through. During the first weeks of the
new regime the principal first violin declined to follow Wagner's
directions, and, moreover, had the impudence to tell our arrogant
Richard he was wrong, and, above all, to tell him in von Lüttichau's
presence. Wagner, having the pen of a too-ready writer--like old
Sebastian Bach before him--sent in one of his long letters; and with
that the trouble ceased for the moment. But similar episodes seem to
have been of frequent occurrence during his six years of
conductorship. Still, he introduced discipline into the band, and, on
the whole, got on well with his men. With genuine artists, even of the
humblest sort, he was always on good terms. He had a fine fund of good
humour and sanguine cheerfulness, a ready wit and a kind heart; he won
the respect due to a man who really knew his work, knew what he
wanted, and how it could best be attained. What he wanted was
performances worthy of the house to which he had come as conductor.
Tricks were played on him, so that he had to direct operas which had
been insufficiently rehearsed or not at all rehearsed; and the press
made the most of shortcomings which he realized better than the
critics.
He had compensations. August Roeckel became his assistant at the
theatre and a close personal friend; he had Heine, Fischer, Uhlig and
others amongst his intimates; and by what was undoubtedly the most
artistic section of the community he was made much of. The Liedertafel
chose him as its first Liedermeister. For the unveiling of a statue to
Friedrich August I he organized a gigantic musical festival, writing
for the occasion a hymn. Mendelssohn had composed something for the
event; and the whole affair made the Dresden folk open their mouths as
well as their ears. For the Liedertafel he wrote the _Love-feast of
the Apostles_, which was performed on July 6 of this year (1843) with,
so far as one can judge, immense effect and success. The pious
press-men were, of course, scandalized by his very secular treatment
of a sacred subject; they expected, or at least asked for, a
Mendelssohnian psalm--and they would have grumbled even had they got
it. It was considered a crime to compete with Mendelssohn, also a
crime not to imitate him.
At this time he appears to have been happy with Minna; the good lady
had all she wanted; and the rift within the lute did not show until
Wagner later on began to kick against the pricks. Perhaps the greatest
pleasure that he had at this time--perhaps the greatest he had had in
his life--came through old Spohr the violinist, then conductor (and
king) of the Cassel opera. Spohr had heard _Rienzi_ at Dresden, and,
antiquated stick though he was--as any one might guess who knows his
_Last Judgment_ or _Calvary_--he yet recognized in Wagner an original
and deeply sincere musician. He wrote, after seeing the _Flying
Dutchman_, "I believe I know my mind sufficiently to say that among
the dramatic composers of our day I consider Wagner the most gifted."
He produced the _Dutchman_ at Cassel, directing the representation
himself, and sent Wagner a letter which lifted that young man into the
seventh heaven of delight. Wagner always cherished the recollection of
this, the first genuine praise he had received from an older musician,
and one famous throughout Europe; and on Spohr's death, long
afterwards, he wrote one of the most beautiful obituary articles in
all literature. His answer to Spohr shows that at this time there were
no serious differences in the household; he speaks in terms of the
greatest affection of his wife, and regrets that she is not there to
share his joy. The Cassel performance took place June 5, 1843. It was
unsolicited: Spohr himself had asked for the score; and this had a
double or triple value to Wagner. Spohr's authority was immense
throughout Germany; and the mere fact that he had asked for the
_Dutchman_, and, later, performed it, was a recommendation to every
other opera-house. And, as a matter of fact, it was done elsewhere,
though in many towns the thing was found incomprehensible, and the
score returned to Wagner unused, sometimes the parcel containing it
unopened. By the way, Berlioz was in Dresden at the time, doing
mountebank tricks with the orchestra, and after hearing, the
_Dutchman_ he went so far as to speak well of it. Liszt was
enthusiastic over _Rienzi_.
When Spohr's letter arrived Minna was at Teplitz, ill; Wagner joined
her there immediately his holiday began, but not before writing to
Lehrs (July 7) that the book of _Tannhäuser_ was finished. Whether
Lehrs received the letter I do not know, for he died on July 13. It
will be remembered that it was Lehrs who gave Wagner the _Sängerkrieg_
from which he drew both _Tannhäuser_ and _Lohengrin_. Before dealing
with these operas, Wagner's first very great ones, we must pass in
review the remainder of the Dresden days, ending with the insurrection
of May 1849 and the flight to Switzerland.
II
Nothing in Wagner's life has been less perfectly understood, or more
completely and wilfully misunderstood, than his share in this May
insurrection of 1849. He was never at any time a politician; of
politics he knew nothing, and he held the trade in profound,
undisguised contempt. He wrote much about the State, and in every
paragraph contrived to show the astounding breadth of his
ignorance--an ignorance of that kind which Dr. Johnson might have
described as not natural but acquired. Everlastingly he prattles
about the State until he throws us into a condition of imbecile
confusion. Then we resolutely sit down to his prose writings and track
his meaning or meanings. And at last we perceive this: the State in
his mind, the State he talked and wrote about, was something purely
ideal, such a State as has never existed, and at the present day,
nearly seventy years after Wagner's solitary plunge into practical
politics, seems as unlikely as ever to come into existence. He wanted
(1) an all-wise absolute monarch who should work the will of all his
subjects, no matter how conflicting their interests might be; (2) some
millions of these subjects to think alike on every conceivable
question--to think, that is, as Wagner thought; these millions to make
sublime sacrifice of themselves that Wagner's art-schemes might
prosper. All this, be it noted, was to be the barest basis and
beginning of the perfect State. How this point could be reached by our
imperfect human race was a question he scorned to discuss: he simply
assumed that it could be reached, and proceeded to further argument.
The point had to be attained in the first place; then humanity--by
which he meant German humanity--was to move upward, working out the
beast, talking German philosophy, reading what is called German poetry
(though Shakespeare might be tolerated), looking at what is called
German painting, listening to German music, dreaming thin, mystical
German dreams and munching thick German sausages. Thus should the
inhabitants of a small subsidiary State, whose kings could be, and
had been, made and unmade by other kings, create for themselves a new
heaven on earth and become the wonder of the world.
It is very like sheer lunacy. But this account is no exaggeration of
Wagner's doctrine and plans. The one truth which emerges and speaks
unequivocally is that Richard, deeply dissatisfied with the theatre of
the day, and tracing its sad degeneracy to the corrupt state of
society, wished to see society upraised, not that men and women might
live more happily, but that a finer, nobler theatre might flourish.
The most magnificent egotist of the century, it seemed to him the
prime concern of mankind that Richard Wagner's works should be
understood and loved. Being an egotist also, if I may say so, on a
national scale, he thought humanity could only be redeemed by German
art. Disregarding the fact that Germany has had no painters, no poet
of the first rank, no genuine dramatist, and that before "our art," as
he persistently calls music, had got a root in Germany, three great
schools had flourished, the English, the Flemish and the
Italian--disregarding all this, he looked for the regeneration of the
human species by means of the efforts of German artists alone. It is
comical, and, I say, very like lunacy. Mr. Ernest Newman will have it
that Wagner's was only a very mediocre intellect. The cold truth is
that only a mighty intellect, gone wrong on one point, could have
evolved the idea of such a new social system. For, mark you, Wagner
propounded no scheme for the regeneration of humanity: he assumed that
it could regenerate itself by wishing, or willing, and that then the
thousand years of peace would commence, with Richard as
conductor-in-chief. He could not see that humanity cannot jump out of
its shadow and regenerate itself, any more than gentlemen of
intelligence gone wrong on one point can see that Bacon could not have
written Shakespeare's plays, or that perpetual motion is a crazy
impossibility.
It is curious to picture the share Richard took in the Dresden ferment
of 1848-49. Of course, all Europe was in a condition of excitement;
and the powers that were got their guns ready, and their men.
Political liberty was the thing aimed at: the "outs" wanted to be in.
Every right-thinking man must be in sympathy with the "outs." The
governments of Europe were in the hands of shameless place-seekers;
the working men, the merchants, all other classes were supposed to
labour and pay taxes for the benefit of these gentry. Money was
squandered on useless court-flummery while men were toiling sixteen
hours a day for bread. The aristocracy were resolved that this state
of affairs should continue; the average citizens were resolved that it
should not. What did Wagner propose?--obedience to the puppet king and
a reformed opera! It is small wonder that he was considered a
visionary. He made at least one speech, talking about the State,
meaning thereby something very different from the meaning his audience
attached to the word; he heard speeches, and undoubtedly in all
sincerity read his own thoughts into them. He thought the millennium
was at hand. When the fighting began he joined the revolutionists;
though I can nowhere find proof that he shouldered a musket. Had he
done so it is extremely probable he would have shot the man behind
him. It is hard to get at the truth about these days of May. Perhaps
he did help to escort supplies; but with his excitable brain we must
remember that what he thought he saw and what he actually did see may
be two very different things. A good many other people who were in
Dresden at the time have let their pretty fancies run away with them;
for their accounts of Wagner's doings contradict one another to such
an extent that any attempt to reconcile them is futile. I must confess
to a boundless distrust of "recollections" set down or spoken at any
length of time after the event. Ask, reader, ask any of your friends
to give an account of some striking occurrence of a year ago. In
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it will not tally with yours. You
may be wrong or your friend may be wrong: in either case some one's
memory has played a trick. In this book I have omitted many a dozen
picturesque touches, simply because there is no proof of their truth
and every probability that they are false. It is perhaps enough to
remember that the hopes of liberty were crushed, that Roeckel,
Wagner's assistant and friend, was taken and afterwards sentenced to a
long term of imprisonment, and that Wagner had to run for safety. From
every point of view it was as well he got away from Dresden. If he had
not got away he would have shared Roeckel's martyrdom. Had the
revolution succeeded, a terrible disillusionment would have been his
share of the spoils: the revolutionists thought a fine opera of no
more importance than did their enemies, and had Richard asked to be
set up in his kingdom he would have quickly found the defenders of
liberty as adroit in evading him and his claims as any court flunkeys
could be. It was well he got away from Dresden also because, as he
afterwards said, the court livery had grown too tight for him. He had
had a comfortable income, and had he not been Richard Wagner he might
have vegetated happily, in the Reissiger way, for life. Minna would
have been content. Being Richard Wagner, he felt his soul strangled;
and that Minna had for some time been worrying about what he might do
next is shown by his remark to a friend--that other people had their
enemies outside their houses: _his_ enemy sat at his own table.
III
Things had not gone well at the theatre. In spite of performances
never before equalled in the town--nay, probably because of them--he
had enemies all around, especially in the Jew-controlled press. His
carefulness about rehearsals was called fussiness; his determination
that the singers should not at their own sweet pleasure mar fine
operas with interpolations, alterations and "liberties" generally, was
called interference with their rights. Even when he played
Beethoven's Pastoral and Ninth Symphonies, as they had never been
given before, he was impertinently taken to task by press scribblers
for departing from the Mendelssohn tradition. I have already expressed
the opinion that _Judaism in Music_ was a huge mistake; yet one must
own that when one considers how the Jews consistently attacked him for
venturing to challenge inferior Jew composers and conductors on their
own ground, the thing seems almost excusable. At any rate, it is
surprising that he dealt so tenderly with Mendelssohn. There is one
point always to be borne in mind. Wagner was assailed at this time not
so much _quâ_ composer as _quâ_ conductor. Now we of the generation of
to-day--the younger members, anyhow--are so accustomed to really able
conductors, that it is somewhat difficult to realize what things were
like throughout Europe in 1843-49. Perhaps the nearest approach to a
true idea may be formed by those who heard our own precious
Philharmonic Society under the late Cusins. As in London in the
'eighties, so in Dresden in the 'forties. Callous indifference to the
beauty of fine music and complete slovenliness in every detail of the
rendering of it went hand in hand. If Europe to-day is stocked with
competent conductors, that is a debt we owe to Wagner. Himself one of
the greatest conductors who has lived, he almost created a new art,
and by his immediate and direct example and through his pupils Bülow,
Richter, Levi and Seidl, not to mention his influence on Liszt, he
certainly created the school which has now ousted the older
inartistic men. It was precisely this fact that maddened the older men
and their friends.
Another discomforting circumstance was Wagner's intense Germanism. It
was through his efforts that Weber's remains were brought from the
Roman Church in Moorfields and re-interred in Dresden (December,
1844); for the ceremony he compiled some funeral music and delivered
an oration. He was not content to claim Germany for the Germans: he
claimed all Europe, or at least all European art, for the Germans. The
Germans themselves were contentedly jogging on with the hybrid music
of Spontini, Bellini, Donizetti, Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn; and Wagner
never tired of telling them to create an art of their own, or really
he would have to do it for them. He did as well as talked and wrote;
he produced the nearest thing he could find to pure German opera--for
instance, Marschner's _Adolph von Nassau_ in 1845. Of course, he
ceased not to press Weber upon his audiences; and Weber at that period
appears to have gone temporarily out of favour. Wagner lived in an
atmosphere of depreciation and disapprobation which must have got upon
his nerves and hastened the catastrophe--that of his taking active
part in the attempted revolution. Sneers from artistic enemies
outside; whimpering and nagging inside because he would not conform to
court rules, and seek popularity as a good livery-wearing conductor
should--no wonder he gave a sigh of relief at quitting Dresden.
He had no option. The Prussian troops were ruthless; the judges were
paid to "punish" those whose crime was fighting for their ordinary
rights; and as the judges' billets would not have been worth twenty
minutes' purchase if they had not obeyed orders, they cheerfully
obeyed them. It is a fine thing to accept a handsome salary to do
dirty work and to call the doing of it doing your "duty": duty is a
fine word that has covered a million crimes since it was invented.
Bakunin, who said Richard Wagner was "a visionary"--obviously meaning
a harmless fool--and many others got long terms of imprisonment.
Wagner had left the town without leave, and for that offence he was
dismissed from his post at the opera. Next, the police issued a
warrant for his arrest.
He had gone quietly to visit Liszt at Weimar, meaning to "lie low"
till the storm had blown by. He was apparently quite unconscious of
having broken any laws. Liszt was not so easy in his mind. He made
inquiries: found that Wagner must bolt at once: it is supposed he
somehow "squared" the local police official to defer executing the
warrant; he got a passport in a false name, and six days after his
arrival Richard set out again on his travels. What need be recorded
about the journey to Zurich and the getting of Minna there, will best
be described when I come to tell of his settling down in his new abode
and the years he spent there.