Herwegh, another friend of longer standing, was less fortunate. I had

worried myself for a long time about him too, trying to think that his

previous efforts were merely introductions to really serious artistic

achievements. He admitted himself that he felt his best was still to

come. It seemed to him that he had all the material--crowds of

'ideas'--in reserve for a great poetical work; there was nothing

wanting but the 'frame' in which he could paint it all, and this is

what he hoped, from day to day, to find. As I grew tired of waiting for

it, I set about trying to find the longed-for frame for him myself. He

evidently wished to evolve an epic poem on a large scale, in which to

embody the views he had acquired. As he had once alluded to Dante's

luck in finding a subject like the pilgrimage through hell and

purgatory into paradise, it occurred to me to suggest, for the desired

frame, the Brahman myth of Metempsychosis, which in Plato's version

comes within reach of our classical education. He did not think it a

bad idea, and I accordingly took some trouble to define the form such a

poem would take. He was to decide upon three acts, each containing

three songs, which would make nine songs in all. The first act would

show his hero in the Asiatic country of his birth; the second, his

reincarnation in Greece and Rome; the third, his reincarnation in the

Middle Ages and in modern times. All this pleased him very much, and he

thought, it might come to something. Not so my cynical friend, Dr.

Wille, who had an estate in the country where we often met in the bosom

of his family. He was of opinion that we expected far too much of

Herwegh. Viewed at close quarters he was, after all, only a young

Swabian who had received a far larger share of honour and glory than

his abilities warranted, through the Jewish halo thrown around him by

his wife. In the end I had to shrug my shoulders in silent acquiescence

with these hopelessly unkind remarks, as I could, of course, see poor

Herwegh sinking into deeper apathy every year, until in the end he

seemed incapable of doing anything.

Semper's arrival in Zurich, which had at last taken place, enlivened

our circle considerably. The Federal authorities had asked me to use my

influence with Semper to induce him to accept a post as teacher at the

Federal Polytechnic. Semper came over at once to have a look at the

establishment first, and was favourably impressed with everything. He

even found cause for delight, when out walking, in the unclipped trees,

'where one might light upon a caterpillar again,' he said, and decided

definitely to migrate to Zurich, and thus brought himself and his

family permanently into my circle of acquaintance. True, he had small

prospect of commissions for large buildings, and considered himself

doomed to play the schoolmaster for ever. He was, however, in the

throes of writing a great work on art, which, after various mishaps and

a change of publisher, he brought out later under the title, Der Styl.

I often found him engaged with the drawings for illustrating this book;

he drew them himself very neatly on stone, and grew so fond of the work

that he declared the smallest detail in his drawing interested him far

more than the big clumsy architectural jobs.

From this time forward, in accordance with my manifesto, I would have

nothing whatever to do with the 'Musikgesellschaft,' neither did I ever

conduct a public performance in Zurich again. The members of this

society could not at first be brought to believe that I was in earnest,

and I was obliged to bring it home to them by a categorical

explanation, in which I dwelt on their slackness and their disregard of

my urgent proposals for the establishment of a decent orchestra. The

excuse I invariably received was, that although there was money enough

among the musical public, yet every one fought shy of heading the

subscription list with a definite sum, because of the tiresome

notoriety they would win among the towns-people. My old friend, Herr

Ott-Imhof, assured me that it would not embarrass him in the least to

pay ten thousand francs a year to a cause of that sort, but that from

that moment every one would demand why he was spending his income in

that way. It would rouse such a commotion that he might easily be

brought to account about the administration of his property. This

called to my mind Goethe's exclamation at the beginning of his Erste

Schweizer Briefe. So my musical activities at Zurich ceased definitely

from that time.

[Footnote: This doubtless refers to the following passage: 'And the

Swiss call themselves free! These smug bourgeois shut up in their

little towns, these poor devils on their precipices and rocks, call

themselves free! Is there any limit at all to what one can make people

believe and cherish, provided that one preserves the old fable of

"Freedom" in spirits of wine for them? Once upon a time they rid

themselves of a tyrant and thought themselves free. Then, thanks to the

glorious sun, a singular transformation occurred, and out of the corpse

of their late oppressor a host of minor tyrants arose. Now they

continue to relate the old fable; on all sides it is drummed into one's

ears ad nauseam--they have thrown off the yoke of the despot and have

remained free. And there they are, ensconsed behind their walls and

imprisoned in their customs, their laws, the opinion of their

neighbours, and their Philistine suburbanism' (Goethe's Werke, Briefe

aus der Schweiz, Erste Abteilung.)--Editor]

On the other hand, I occasionally had music at home. Neat and precious

copies of Klindworth's pianoforte score of Rheingold, as well as of

some acts of the Walkure, lay ready to hand, and Baumgartner was the

first who was set down to see what he could make of the atrociously

difficult arrangement. Later on we found that Theodor Kirchner, a

musician who had settled at Winterthur and frequently visited Zurich,

was better able to play certain bits of the pianoforte score. The wife

of Heim, the head of the Glee Society, with whom we were both on

friendly terms, was pressed into the service to sing the parts for

female voices when I attempted to play some of the vocal parts. She had

a really fine voice and a warm tone, and had been the only soloist at

the big performances in 1853; only she was thoroughly unmusical, and I

had hard work to make her keep in tune, and it was even more difficult

to get the time right. Still, we achieved something, and my friends had

an occasional foretaste of my Nibelungen music.

But I had to exercise great moderation here too, as every excitement

threatened to bring on a return of erysipelas. A little party of us

were at Karl Ritter's one evening, when I hit upon the idea of reading

aloud Hoffmann's Der Goldene Topf. I did not notice that the room was

getting gradually cooler, but before I had finished my reading I found

myself, to every one's horror, with a swollen, red nose, and had to

trail laboriously home to tend the malady, which exhausted me terribly

every time. During these periods of suffering I became more and more

absorbed in developing the libretto of Tristan, whereas my intervals of

convalescence were devoted to the score of the Walkure, at which I

toiled diligently but laboriously, completing the fair copy in March of

that year (1856). But my illness and the strain of work had reduced me

to a state of unusual irritability, and I can remember how extremely

bad-tempered I was when our friends the Wesendoncks came in that

evening to pay a sort of congratulatory visit on the completion of my

score. I expressed my opinion of this way of sympathising with my work

with such extraordinary bitterness that the poor insulted visitors

departed abruptly in great consternation, and it took many

explanations, which I had great difficulty in making, to atone for the

insult as the days went on. My wife came out splendidly on this

occasion in her efforts to smooth things over. A special tie between

her and our friends had been formed by the introduction of a very

friendly little dog into our house, which had been obtained by the

Wesendoncks as a successor to my good old Peps. He proved such a good

and ingratiating animal that he soon gained my wife's tender affection,

while I, too, always felt very kindly towards him. This time I left the

choice of a name to my wife, however, and she invented, apparently as a

pendant to Peps, the name Fips, which I was quite willing for him to

have. But he was always more my wife's friend, as, despite my great

sense of justice, which made me recognise the excellence of these

animals, I never was able to become so attached to them as to Peps and

Papo.

About the time of my birthday I had a visit from my old friend

Tichatschek of Dresden, who remained faithful to his devotion and

enthusiasm for me--as far as so uncultured a person was capable of such

emotions. On the morning of my birthday I was awakened in a touching

way by the strains of my beloved Adagio from Beethoven's E minor

Quartette. My wife had invited the musicians in whom I took a special

interest for this occasion, and they had, with subtle delicacy, chosen

the very piece of which I had once spoken with such great emotion. At

our party in the evening Tichatschek sang several things from

Lohengrin, and really amazed us all by the brilliancy of voice he still

preserved. He had also succeeded, by perseverance, in overcoming the

irresolution of the Dresden management, due to their subserviency to

the court, with regard to further performances of my operas. They were

now being given there again, with great success and to full houses. I

took a slight cold on an excursion which we made with our visitor to

Brunnen on Lake Lucerne, and thus brought on my thirteenth attack of

erysipelas. One of the terrible southern gales, which make it

impossible to heat the rooms at Brunnen, made my sufferings this time

more acute, added to the fact that I went through with the excursion,

in spite of my painful condition, rather than spoil our guest's

pleasure by turning back sooner. I was still in bed when Tichatschek

left, and I decided at least to try a change of air in the south,

because this dreadful malady seemed to me to haunt the locality of

Zurich. I chose the Lake of Geneva, and decided to look out for a

well-situated country resort in the neighbourhood of Geneva or

thereabouts, where I could start on a cure which my Zurich doctor had

prescribed. I therefore started for Geneva in the beginning of June.

Fips, who was to accompany me into my rural retreat, caused me great

anxiety on the journey; I nearly changed my destination, on account of

an attempt to dislodge him from my carriage in the train for part of

the journey. It was thanks to the energetic way in which I carried my

point that I started my cure at Geneva, as I should otherwise probably

have gone in a different direction.

In Geneva I put up first at the familiar old Hotel de l'Ecu de Geneve,

which called up various reminiscences to my mind. Here I consulted Dr.

Coindet, who sent me to Mornex on Mont Saleve, for the sake of its good

air, and recommended me a pension. My first thought on arrival was to

find a place where I should be undisturbed, and I persuaded the lady

who kept the pension to make over to me an isolated pavilion in the

garden which consisted of one large reception-room. Much persuasion was

needed, as all the boarders--precisely the people I wished to

avoid--were indignant at having the room originally intended for their

social gatherings taken away. But at last I secured my object, though I

had to bind myself to vacate my drawing-room on Sunday mornings,

because it was then stocked with benches and arranged for a service,

which seemed to mean a good deal to the Calvinists among the boarders.

I fell in with this quite happily, and made my sacrifice honourably the

very first Sunday by betaking myself to Geneva to read the papers. The

next day, however, my hostess informed me that the boarders were very

annoyed at only being able to hold the service, and not the week-day

games in my drawing-room. I was given notice, and looked round for

other quarters, which I found in the house of a neighbour.

This neighbour was a Dr. Vaillant, who had taken an equally fine site

on which to erect a hydropathic institute. I first made inquiries about

warm baths, as my Zurich doctor had advised the use of these with

sulphur, but there was no prospect of obtaining any such thing. Dr.

Vaillant'a whole manner pleased me so much, however, that I told him my

troubles. When I asked him which of two things I should drink: hot

sulphur bath-water or a certain stinking mineral water, he smiled and

said: 'Monsieur, vous n'etes que nerveux. All this will only excite you

more; you merely need calming. If you will entrust yourself to me, I

promise that you will have so far recovered by the end of two months as

never to have erysipelas again.' And he kept his word.

I certainly formed a very different opinion of hydrotherapic methods

through this excellent doctor from any I could have acquired from the

'Water Jew' of Albisbrunnen and other raw amateurs. Vaillant had been

famous as a doctor in Paris itself (Lablache and Rossini had consulted

him), but he had the misfortune of becoming paralysed in both legs, and

after four years of helpless misery, during which he lost his whole

practice and sank into utter misery, he came across the original

Silesian hydropathologist, Priessnitz, to whom he was conveyed, with

the result that he recovered completely. There he learned the method

that had proved so effective, refined it from all the brutalities of

its inventor, and tried to recommend himself to the Parisians by

building a hydro at Meudon. But he met with no encouragement. His

former patients, whom he tried to persuade into visiting his

institution, merely asked whether there was dancing there in the

evening. He found it impossible to keep it up, and it is to this

circumstance that I owe my meeting with him there, near Geneva, where

he was once more trying to exploit his cure in a practical way. He laid

claim to attention, if only by the fact that he strictly limited the

number of patients he took into his house, insisting that a doctor

could only be responsible for the right application and success of his

treatment by being in a position to observe his patients minutely at

all hours of the day. The advantage of his system, which benefited me

so wonderfully, was the thoroughly calming effect of the treatment,

which consisted in the most ingenious use of water at a moderate

temperature.

Besides this, Vaillant took a special pleasure in satisfying my wants,

particularly in procuring me rest and quiet. For instance, my presence

at the common breakfast, which I found exciting and inconvenient, was

excused, and I was allowed to make tea in my own room instead. This was

an unaccustomed treat for me, and I indulged in it, under cover of

secrecy, to excess, usually drinking tea behind closed doors for two

hours, while I read Walter Scott's novels, after the fatiguing

exertions of my morning cure. I had found some cheap and good French

translations of these novels in Geneva, and had brought a whole pile of

them to Mornex. They were admirably suited to my routine, which

prohibited serious study or work; but, apart from that, I now fully

endorsed Schopenhauer's high opinion of this poet's value, of which I

had till then been doubtful. On my solitary strolls, it is true, I

generally took a volume of Byron with me, because I possessed a

miniature edition, to read on some mountain height with a view of Mont

Blanc, but I soon left it at home, for I realised that I hardly ever

drew it from my pocket.

The only work I permitted myself was the sketching of plans for

building myself a house. These, in the end, I tried to work out

correctly with all the materials of an architect's draughtsman. I had

risen to this bold idea after negotiations on which I entered about

that time with Hartel, the music publishers at Leipzig, for the sale of

my Nibelungen compositions. I demanded forty thousand francs on the

spot for the four works, of which half was to be paid me when the

building of the house began. The publishers really seemed so far

favourably inclined towards my proposals as to make my undertaking

possible.

Very soon, however, their opinion of the market value of my works

underwent an unhappy change. I could never make out whether this was

the result of their having only just examined my poem carefully and

decided that it was impracticable, or whether influence had been

brought to bear on them from the same quarter to which the opposition

directed against most of my undertakings could be traced, and which

grew more and more evident as time wore on. Be that as it may, the hope

of earning capital for my house-building forsook me; but my

architectural studies took their course, and I made it my aim to obtain

means to fulfil them.

As the two months I had destined to Dr. Vaillant's treatment were up on

the 15th of August, I left the resort which had proved so beneficial,

and went straight off on a visit to Karl Ritter, who, with his wife,

had taken a lovely and very unassuming little house near Lausanne for

the summer months. Both of them had visited me at Mornex, but when I

tried to induce Karl to have some cold-water treatment, he declared,

after one trial, that even the most soothing method excited him. On the

whole, though, we found a good number of agreeable topics to discuss,

and he told me he would return to Zurich in the autumn.

I returned home in a fairly good humour with Fips, on whose account I

travelled by mail-coach to avoid the obnoxious railway journey. My

wife, too, had returned home from her sour-milk cure on the Selisberg,

and in addition I found my sister Clara installed, the only one of my

relatives who had visited me in my Swiss retreat. We at once made an

excursion with her to my favourite spot, Brunnen on Lake Lucerne, and

spent an exquisite evening there enjoying the glorious sunset and other

beautiful effects of the Alpine landscape. At night-fall, when the moon

rose full over the lake, it turned out that a very pretty and effective

ovation had been arranged for me (I had been a frequent visitor there)

by our enthusiastic and attentive host, Colonel Auf-der-Mauer. Two

boats, illuminated by coloured lanterns, came up to the beach facing

our hotel, bearing the Brunnen brass band, which was formed entirely of

amateurs from the countryside. With Federal staunchness, and without

any attempts at punctilious unison, they proceeded to play some of my

compositions in a loud and irrefutable manner. They then paid me homage

in a little speech, and I replied heartily, after which there was much

gripping of all sorts of horny hands on my part, as we drank a few

bottles of wine on the beach. For years afterwards I never passed this

beach on very frequent visits without receiving a friendly handshake or

a greeting. I was generally in doubt as to what the particular boatman

wanted of me, but it always turned out that I was dealing with one of

the brass bandsmen whose good intentions had been manifested on that

pleasant evening.

My sister Clara's lengthy stay with us at Zurich enlivened our family

circle very pleasantly. She was the musical one among my brothers and

sisters, and I enjoyed her society very much. It was also a relief to

me when her presence acted as a damper upon the various household

scenes brought on by Minna, who, as a result of the steady development

of her heart trouble, grew more and more suspicious, vehement and

obstinate.

In October I expected a visit from Liszt, who proposed to make a fairly

long stay at Zurich, accompanied by various people of note. I could not

wait so long, however, before beginning the composition of Siegfried,

and I began to sketch the overture on the 22nd of September.

A tinker had established himself opposite our house, and stunned my

ears all day long with his incessant hammering. In my disgust at never

being able to find a detached house protected from every kind of noise,

I was on the point of deciding to give up composing altogether until

the time when this indispensable condition should be fulfilled. But it

was precisely my rage over the tinker that, in a moment of agitation,

gave me the theme for Siegfried's furious outburst against the bungling

Mime. I played over the childishly quarrelsome Polter theme in G minor

to my sister, furiously singing the words at the same time, which made

us all laugh so much that I decided to make one more effort. This

resulted in my writing down a good part of the first scene by the time

Liszt arrived on 13th October.

Liszt came by himself, and my house at once became a musical centre. He

had finished his Faust and Dante Symphonies since I had seen him, and

it was nothing short of marvellous to hear him play them to me on the

piano from the score. As I felt sure that Liszt must be convinced of

the great impression his compositions made on me, I felt no scruples in

persuading him to alter the mistaken ending of the Dante Symphony. If

anything had convinced me of the man's masterly and poetical powers of

conception, it was the original ending of the Faust Symphony, in which

the delicate fragrance of a last reminiscence of Gretchen overpowers

everything, without arresting the attention by a violent disturbance.

The ending of the Dante Symphony seemed to me to be quite on the same

lines, for the delicately introduced Magnificat in the same way only

gives a hint of a soft, shimmering Paradise. I was the more startled to

hear this beautiful suggestion suddenly interrupted in an alarming way

by a pompous, plagal cadence which, as I was told, was supposed to

represent Domenico.

'No!' I exclaimed loudly, 'not that! Away with it! No majestic Deity!

Leave us the fine soft shimmer.'

'You are right,' said Liszt. 'I said so too; it was the Princess who

persuaded me differently. But it shall be as you wish.'

All well and good--but all the greater was my distress to learn later

that not only had this ending of the Dante Symphony been preserved, but

even the delicate ending of the Faust Symphony, which had appealed to

me so particularly, had been changed, in a manner better calculated to

produce an effect, by the introduction of a chorus. And this was

exactly typical of my relations to Liszt and to his friend Caroline

Wittgenstein!

This woman, with her daughter Marie, was soon to arrive on a visit too,

and the necessary preparations were made for her reception. But before

these ladies arrived, a most painful incident occurred between Liszt

and Karl Ritter at my house. Ritter's looks alone, and still more, a

certain abrupt contradictoriness in his way of speaking, seemed to put

Liszt into a state in which he was easily irritated. One evening Liszt

was speaking in an impressive tone of the merits of the Jesuits, and

Ritter's inopportune smiles appeared to offend him. At table the

conversation turned on the Emperor of the French, Louis Napoleon, whose

merits Liszt rather summarily insisted that we should acknowledge,

whereas we were, on the whole, anything but enthusiastic about the

general state of affairs in France. When Liszt, in an attempt to make

clear the important influence of France on European culture, mentioned

as an instance the French Academie, Karl again indulged in his fatal

smile. This exasperated Liszt beyond all bounds, and in his reply he

included some such phrase as this: 'If we are not prepared to admit

this, what do we prove ourselves to be? Baboons!' I laughed, but again

Karl only smiled--this time, with deadly embarrassment. I discovered

afterwards through Bulow that in some youthful squabble he had had the

word 'Baboon-face' hurled at him. It soon became impossible to hide the

fact that Ritter felt himself grossly insulted by 'the doctor,' as he

called him, and he left my house foaming with rage, not to set foot in

it again for years. After a few days I received a letter in which he

demanded, first, a complete apology from Liszt, as soon as he came to

see me again, and if this were unobtainable, Liszt's exclusion from my

house. It distressed me greatly to receive, soon after this, a letter

from Ritter's mother, whom I respected very much, reproaching me for my

unjust treatment of her son in not having obtained satisfaction for an

insult offered him in my house. For a long time my relations with this

family, intimate as they had been, were painfully strained, as I found

it impossible to make them see the incident in the right light. When

Liszt, after a time, heard of it, he regretted the disturbance too, and

with praise-worthy magnanimity made the first advance towards a

reconciliation by paying Ritter a friendly visit. There was nothing

said about the incident, and Ritter's return visit was made, not to

Liszt, but to the Princess, who had arrived in the meantime. After this

Liszt decided that he could do nothing further; Ritter, therefore,

withdrew from our society from this time forward, and changed his

winter quarters from Zurich to Lausanne, where he settled permanently.

Not only my own modest residence, but the whole of Zurich seemed full

of life when Princess Caroline and her daughter took up their abode at

the Hotel Baur for a time. The curious spell of excitement which this

lady immediately threw over every one she succeeded in drawing into her

circle amounted, in the case of my good sister Clara (who was still

with us at the time), almost to intoxication. It was as if Zurich had

suddenly become a metropolis. Carriages drove hither and thither,

footmen ushered one in and out, dinners and suppers poured in upon us,

and we found ourselves suddenly surrounded by an increasing number of

interesting people, whose existence at Zurich we had never even

suspected, though they now undoubtedly cropped up everywhere. A

musician named Winterberger, who felt it incumbent on him on certain

occasions to behave eccentrically, had been brought there by Liszt;

Kirchner, the Schumann enthusiast from Winterthur, was practically

always there, attracted by the new life, and he too did not fail to

play the wag. But it was principally the professors of Zurich

University whom Princess Caroline coaxed out of their hole-and-corner

Zurich habits. She would have them, one at a time, for herself, and

again serve them up en masse for us. If I looked in for a moment from

my regular midday walk, the lady would be dining alone, now with

Semper, now with Professor Kochly, then with Moleschott, and so on.

Even my very peculiar friend Sulzer was drawn in, and, as he could not

deny, in a manner intoxicated. But a really refreshing sense of freedom

and spontaneity pervaded everything, and the unceremonious evenings at

my house in particular were really remarkably free and easy. On these

occasions the Princess, with Polish patriarchal friendliness, would

help the mistress of the house in serving. Once, after we had had some

music, I had to give the substance of my two newly conceived poems,

Tristan und Isolde and Die Sieger, to a group which, half sitting, half

lying before me, was certainly not without charm.

The crown of our festivities was, however, Liszt's birthday, on the

22nd October, which the Princess celebrated with due pomp at her own

house. Every one who was some one at Zurich was there. A poem by

Hoffmann von Fallersleben was telegraphed from Weimar, and at the

Princess's request was solemnly read aloud by Herwegh in a strangely

altered voice. I then gave a performance, with Frau Heim, of the first

act, and a scene from the second, of the Walkure, Liszt accompanying. I

was able to obtain a favourable idea of the effect of our performance

by the wish expressed by Dr. Wille to hear these things badly done, so

that he could form a correct judgment, as he feared he might be seduced

by the excellence of our execution. Besides these, Liszt's Symphonic

Poems were played on two grand pianos. At the feast, a dispute arose

about Heinrich Heine, with respect to whom Liszt made all sorts of

insidious remarks. Frau Wesendonck responded by asking if he did not

think Heine's name as a poet would, nevertheless, be inscribed in the

temple of immortality.

'Yes, but in mud,' answered Liszt quickly, creating, as may be

conceived, a great sensation.

Unfortunately, our circle was soon to suffer a great loss by Liszt's

illness--a skin eruption--which confined him to his bed for a

considerable period. As soon as he was a little better, we quickly went

to the piano again to try over by ourselves my two finished scores of

Rheingold and the Walkure. Princess Marie listened carefully, and was

even able to make intelligent suggestions in connection with a few

difficult passages in the poem.

Princess Caroline, too, seemed to set extraordinary store on being

quite clear as to the actual intrigue concerning the fate of the gods

in my Nibelungen. She took me in hand one day, quite like one of the

Zurich professors, en particulier, to clear up this point to her

satisfaction. I must confess it was irrefutably brought home to me that

she was anxious to understand the most delicate and mysterious features

of the intrigue, though in rather too precise and matter-of-fact a

spirit. In the end I felt as though I had explained a French society

play to her. Her high spirits in all such things were as marked as the

curious amiability of her nature in other respects; for when I one day

explained to her, in illustration of the first of these two qualities,

that four weeks of uninterrupted companionship with her would have been

the death of me, she laughed heartily. I had reason for sadness in the

changes which I realised had taken place in her daughter Marie; in the

three years since I had first seen her she had faded to an

extraordinary extent. If I then called her a 'child,' I could not now

properly describe her as a 'young woman.' Some disastrous experience

seemed to have made her prematurely old. It was only when she was

excited, especially in the evening when she was with friends, that the

attractive and radiant side of her nature asserted itself to a marked

extent. I remember one fine evening at Herwegh's, when Liszt was moved

to the same state of enthusiasm by a grand-piano abominably out of

tune, as by the disgusting cigars to which at that time he was more

passionately devoted than to the finer brands. We were all compelled to

exchange our belief in magic for a belief in actual witchcraft as we

listened to his wonderful phantasies on this pianoforte. To my great

horror, Liszt still gave evidence on more than one occasion of an

irritability which was thoroughly bad-tempered and even quarrelsome,

such as had already manifested itself in the unfortunate scene with

young Ritter. For instance, it was dangerous, especially in the

presence of Princess Caroline, to praise Goethe. Even Liszt and myself

had nearly quarrelled (for which he seemed to be very eager) over the

character of Egmont, which he thought it his duty to depreciate because

the man allows himself to be taken in by Alba. I had been warned, and

had the presence of mind to confine myself to observing the peculiar

physiology of my friend on this occasion, and turning my attention to

his condition, much more than to the subject of our dispute. We never

actually came to blows; but from this time forward I retained

throughout my life a vague feeling that we might one day come to such

an encounter, in which case it would not fail to be terrific. Perhaps

it was just this feeling that acted as a check on me whenever any

opportunity arose for heated argument. Goodness knows that I myself had

a bad enough reputation with my friends for my own irritability and

sudden outbursts of temper!

After I had made a stay of more than six weeks, we had a final

opportunity for coming together again before my return from this visit

that had meant so much for me. We had agreed to spend a week at St.

Gall, where we had an invitation from Schadrowsky, a young musical

director, to give our support to a society concert in that district.

We stayed together at the Hecht inn, and the Princess entertained us as

if she had been in her own house. She gave me and my wife a room next

her own private apartment. Unfortunately a most trying night was in

store for us. Princess Caroline had one of her severe nervous attacks,

and in order to preclude the approach of the painful hallucination by

which she was tormented at such times, her daughter Marie was obliged

to read to her all through the night in a voice deliberately raised a

good deal above its natural pitch. I got fearfully excited, especially

at what appeared to be an inexplicable disregard for the peace of one's

neighbour implied by such conduct. At two o'clock in the morning I

leaped out of bed, rang the bell continuously until the waiter awoke,

and asked him to take me to a bedroom in one of the remotest parts of

the inn. We moved there and then, not without attracting the attention

of our neighbours, upon whom, however, the circumstance made no

impression. The next morning I was much astonished to see Marie appear

as usual, quite unembarrassed, and without showing the least traces of

anything exceptional having occurred. I now learned that everybody

connected with the Princess was thoroughly accustomed to such

disturbances. Here, too, the house soon filled with all sorts of

guests: Herwegh and his wife came, Dr. Wille and his wife, Kirchner,

and several others, and before long our life in the Hecht yielded

nothing, in point of activity, to our life in the Hotel Baur. The

excuse for all this, as I have said, was the society concert of the

musical club of St. Gall. At the rehearsal, to my genuine delight,

Liszt impressed two of his compositions, Orpheus and the Prelude, upon

the orchestra with complete success, in spite of the limited resources

at his command. The performance turned out to be a really fine one, and

full of spirit. I was especially delighted with the Orpheus and with

the finely proportioned orchestral work, to which I had always assigned

a high place of honour among Liszt's compositions. On the other hand,

the special favour of the public was awarded to the Prelude, of which

the greater part was encored. I conducted the Eroica Symphony of

Beethoven under very painful conditions, as I always caught cold on

such occasions, and generally became feverish afterwards. My conception

and rendering of Beethoven's work made a powerful impression upon

Liszt, whose opinion was the only one which had any real weight with

me. We watched each other over our work with a closeness and sympathy

that was genuinely instructive. At night we had to take part in a

little supper in our honour, which was the occasion for expressing the

noble and deep sentiments of the worthy citizens of St. Gall concerning

the significance of our visit. As I was regaled with a most

complimentary panegyric by a poet, it was necessary for me to respond

with equal seriousness and eloquence. In his dithyrambic enthusiasm,

Liszt went so far as to suggest a general clinking of glasses,

signifying approval of his suggestion that the new theatre of St. Gall

should be opened with a model performance of Lohengrin. No one offered

any objection. The next day, the 24th of November, we all met, for

various festivities, in the house of an ardent lover of music, Herr

Bourit, a rich merchant of St. Gall. Here we had some pianoforte music,

and Liszt played to us, among other things, the great Sonata of

Beethoven in B flat major, at the close of which Kirchner dryly and

candidly remarked, 'Now we can truly say that we have witnessed the

impossible, for I shall always regard what I have just heard as an

impossibility.' On this occasion, attention was called to the twentieth

anniversary of my marriage with Minna, which fell on this day, and

after the wedding music of Lohengrin had been played, we formed a

charming procession a la Polonaise through the various rooms.

In spite of all these pleasant experiences, I should have been well

content to see the end of the business and return to the peace of my

home in Zurich. The indisposition of the Princess, however, retarded

the departure of my friends for Germany for several days, and we found

ourselves compelled to remain together in a state of nervous tension

and aimlessness for some time, until at last, on the 27th November, I

escorted my visitors to Rorschach, and took my leave of them there on

the steamer. Since then I have never seen the Princess or her daughter,

nor I think it likely I shall ever meet them again.

It was not without some misgiving that I took leave of my friends, for

the Princess was really ill, and Liszt seemed to be much exhausted. I

recommended their immediate return to Weimar, and told them to take

care of themselves. Great was my surprise, therefore, when before long

I received the news that they were making a sojourn of some duration in

Munich. This followed immediately upon their departure, and was also

attended with much noisy festivity and occasional artistic gatherings.

I was thus led to the conclusion that it was foolish of me to recommend

people with such constitutions either to do a thing or to abstain from

doing it. I, for my part, returned home to Zurich very much exhausted,

unable to sleep, and tormented by the frosty weather at this cold

season of the year. I was afraid that I had by my recent method of life

subjected myself to a fresh attack of erysipelas. I was very pleased

when I awoke the next morning to discover no trace of what I feared,

and from that day I continued to sing the praises of my excellent Dr.

Vaillant wherever I went. By the beginning of December I had so far

recovered as to be able to resume the composition of Siegfried. Thus I

again entered upon my orderly method of life, with all its

insignificance as far as outward things were concerned: work, long

walks, the perusal of books, evenings spent with some friend or other

of the domestic circle. The only thing that worried me was the regret I

still felt for my quarrel with Ritter, in consequence of the unhappy

contre-temps with Liszt. I now lost touch entirely with this young

friend, who in so many ways had endeared himself to me. Before the

close of the winter he left Zurich without seeing me again.

During the months of January and February (1857) I completed the first

act of Siegfried, writing down the composition in full to take the

place of the earlier rough pencil draft, and immediately set to work on

the orchestration; but I probably carried out Vaillant's instructions

with too much zeal. Pursued by the fear of a possible return of

erysipelas, I sought to ward it off by a repeated and regular process

of sweating once a week, wrapped up in towels, on the hydropathic

system. By this means I certainly escaped the dreaded evil, but the

effort exhausted me very much, and I longed for the return of the warm

weather, when I should be relieved from the severities of this

treatment.

It was now that the tortures inflicted upon me by noisy and musical

neighbours began to increase in intensity. Apart from the tinker, whom

I hated with a deadly hatred, and with whom I had a terrible scene

about once a week, the number of pianos in the house where I lived was

augmented. The climax came with the arrival of a certain Herr Stockar,

who played the flute in the room under mine every Sunday, whereupon I

gave up all hope of composing any more. One day my friends the

Wesendoncks, who had returned from wintering in Paris, unfolded to me a

most welcome prospect of the fulfilment of my ardent wishes in regard

to my future place of abode. Wesendonck had already had an idea of

having a small house built for me on a site I was to select for myself.

My own plans, elaborated with a deceptive skill, had been already

submitted to an architect. But the acquisition of a suitable plot of

land was and still remained a great difficulty. In my walks I had long

had my eye on a little winter residence in the district of Enge, on the

ridge of the hill that separates the Lake of Zurich from Sihlthal. It

was called Lavater Cottage, as it had belonged to that famous

phrenologist, and he had been in the habit of staying there regularly.

I had enlisted the services of my friend Hagenbuch, the Cantonal

Secretary, to use all his influence to secure me a few acres of land at

this spot as cheaply as possible. But herein lay the great difficulty.

The piece of land I required consisted of various lots attached to

larger estates, and it turned out that in order to acquire my one plot

it would have been necessary to buy out a large number of different

owners. I put the difficulties of my case before Wesendonck, and

gradually created in him a desire to purchase this wide tract of land,

and lay out a fine site containing a large villa for his own family.

The idea was that I should also have a plot there. However, the demands

made upon my friend in regard to the preliminaries and to the building

of his house, which was to be on a scale both generous and dignified,

were too many, and he also thought the enclosure of two families within

the same confines might lead in time to inconveniences on both sides.

There happened to be an unpretentious little country house with a

garden which I had admired, and which was only separated from his

estate by a narrow carriage drive; and this Wesendonck decided to buy

for me. I rejoiced beyond measure when I heard of his intention. The

shock experienced by the over-cautious buyer was consequently all the

greater when one day be discovered that the present owner, with whom he

had negotiated in too timid a fashion, had just sold his piece of land

to somebody else. Luckily it turned out that the buyer was a mental

specialist, whose sole intention in making the purchase was to instal

himself with his lunatic asylum by the side of my friend. This

information awakened the most terrible anticipations in Wesendonck, and

put the utmost strain upon his energy. He now gave instructions that

this piece of land must be acquired at any price from the unfortunate

specialist. Thus, after many vexatious vicissitudes, it came into the

possession of my friend, who had to pay pretty heavily for it. He

allowed me to come into possession at Easter of this year, charging me

the same rent as I had paid for my lodging in the Zeltweg, that is to

say, eight hundred francs a year.

Our installation in this house, which occupied me heart and soul at the

beginning of the spring, was not achieved without many a

disappointment. The cottage, which had only been designed for use in

summer, had to be made habitable for the winter by putting in heating

apparatus and various other necessaries. It is true, that most of the

essentials in this respect were carried out by the proprietor; but no

end of difficulties remained to be solved. There was not a single thing

upon which my wife and I did not constantly differ, and my position as

an ordinary middle-class man without a brass farthing of my own made

matters no easier. With regard to my finances, however, events took

place from time to time which were well calculated to inspire a

sanguine temperament with trustful confidence in the future. In spite

of the bad performances of my operas, Tannhauser brought me

unexpectedly good royalties from Berlin. From Vienna, too, I obtained

the wherewithal to give me breathing-space in a most curious way. I was

still excluded from the Royal Opera, and I had been assured that so

long as there was an imperial court, I was not to dream of a

performance of my seditious works in Vienna. This strange state of

affairs inspired my old director, Hoffmann of Riga, now director of the

Josephstadt Theatre, to venture on the production of Tannhauser with a

special opera company, in a summer theatre built by himself on the

Lerchenfeld outside the boundary of Vienna. He offered me for every

performance which I would license a royalty of a hundred francs. When

Liszt, whom I informed of the matter, thought this offer was

suspicious, I wrote and told him that I proposed to follow Mirabeau's

example with regard to it. Mirabeau, when he failed to be elected by

his peers to the assembly of Notables, addressed himself to the

electors of Marseilles in the capacity of a linen-draper. This pleased

Liszt; and, indeed, I now made my way, by means of the summer theatre

on the Lerchenfeld, into the capital of the Austrian empire. Of the

performance itself the most wonderful accounts reached me. Sulzer, who

on one of his journeys had passed through Vienna and had witnessed a

performance, had complained principally of the darkness of the house,

which did not allow him to read a single word of the libretto, also of

its having rained hard right into the middle of the audience. Another

story was told me some years later by the son-in-law of Mme. Herold,

the widow of the composer of that name. He had been in Vienna at that

period on his wedding tour, and had heard this Lerchenfeld performance.

The young man assured me that, in spite of all superficial

deficiencies, the production there had given him genuine pleasure, and

had been more deeply impressive than the performance in the Berlin

Court Theatre, which he had seen afterwards, and found immeasurably

inferior. The energy of my old Riga Theatre director in Vienna brought

me in two thousand francs for twenty performances of Tannhauser. After

such a curious experience, offering clear proof of my popularity, I may

perhaps be excused for having felt confident about the future, and

having relied on incalculable results from my works, even with regard

to actual gain.

While I was thus occupied in arranging the little country house for

which I had longed so much, and working on the orchestration of the

first act of Siegfried, I plunged anew into the philosophy of

Schopenhauer and into Scott's novels, to which I was drawn with a

particular affection. I also busied myself with elucidating my

impressions of Liszt's compositions. For this purpose I adopted the

form of a letter to Marie Wittgenstein, which was published in

Brendel's musical journal.

When we moved to what I intended to be my permanent refuge for life, I

again set myself to consider the means of obtaining a basis for the

supply of the necessities of that life. Once again I took up the

threads of my negotiations with Hartel about the Nibelungen, but I was

obliged to put them down as unfruitful, and little calculated to end in

any success for this work. I complained of this to Liszt, and openly

told him how glad I should be if he would bring this to the ears of the

Grand Duke of Weimar (who, from what my friend told me, wished himself

still to be regarded as the patron of my Nibelungen enterprise), so

that he might realise the difficulties I was encountering in the

matter. I added that if one could not expect a common bookseller to

assume the responsibility of such an extraordinary undertaking, one

might well hope that the Prince, whose idea was to make it a point of

honour, should take a share, and a serious share, in the necessary

preliminaries, among which the development of the work itself must very

properly be included. My meaning was, that the Grand Duke should take

the place of Hartel, should purchase the work from me, and pay by

instalments as the score neared completion; he would thus become the

owner, and, later on, could if he liked cover his expenses through a

publisher. Liszt understood me very well, but could not refrain from

dissuading me from taking up such an attitude towards his Royal

Highness.

My whole attention was now directed to the young Grand Duchess of

Baden. Several years had passed since Eduard Devrient had been

transferred to Karlsruhe by the Grand Duke to be manager of the court

theatre there. Since my departure from Dresden I had always kept in

touch with Devrient, though our meetings were rare. Moreover, he had

written the most enthusiastic letters in appreciation of my pamphlets,

Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft and Oper und Drama. He maintained that the

Karlsruhe Theatre was so poorly equipped, that he thought he could not

well entertain the idea of a performance of my operas in that house.

All these conditions were suddenly changed when the Grand Duke married,

and the Crown Princess's young daughter, who had been turned into a

champion of mine by my old friend Alwine Frommann, thus secured a

position of independence in Karlsruhe, and was eager in her demand for

the performance of my works. My operas were now being produced there

also, and Devrient in his turn had the pleasure of informing me of the

great interest shown in them by the young Princess, who even frequently

attended the rehearsals. This made a very agreeable impression upon me.

On my own initiative I expressed my gratitude in an address which I

directed to the Grand Duchess herself, enclosing 'Wotan's Abschied'

from the finale of the Walkure as a souvenir for her album.

The 20th April was now drawing near, the day on which I was to leave my

lodging in the Zeltweg (which had already been let), although I could

not occupy the cottage, where the arrangements were not yet complete.

The bad weather had given us colds in the course of our frequent visits

to the little house, in which masons and carpenters had made themselves

at home. In the worst of tempers we spent a week in the inn, and I

began to wonder whether it was worth while occupying this new piece of

land at all, for I had a sudden foreboding that it would be my fate to

wander further afield. Eventually we moved in at the end of April, in

spite of everything. It was cold and damp, the new heating apparatus

did not provide any warmth, and we were both ill, and could hardly

leave our beds. Then came a good omen: the first letter that reached me

was one of reconciliation and love from Frau Julie Ritter, in which she

told me that the quarrel, brought about by her son's conduct, was at

last ended. Beautiful spring weather now set in; on Good Friday I awoke

to find the sun shining brightly for the first time in this house: the

little garden was radiant with green, the birds sang, and at last I

could sit on the roof and enjoy the long-yearned-for peace with its

message of promise. Full of this sentiment, I suddenly remembered that

the day was Good Friday, and I called to mind the significance this

omen had already once assumed for me when I was reading Wolfram's

Parsifal. Since the sojourn in Marienbad, where I had conceived the

Meistersinger and Lohengrin, I had never occupied myself again with

that poem; now its noble possibilities struck me with overwhelming

force, and out of my thoughts about Good Friday I rapidly conceived a

whole drama, of which I made a rough sketch with a few dashes of the

pen, dividing the whole into three acts.

In the midst of arranging the house, a never-ending task, at which I

set to work with all my might, I felt an inner compulsion to work: I

took up Siegfried again, and began to compose the second act. I had not

made up my mind what name to give to my new place of refuge. As the

introductory part of this act turned out very well, thanks to my

favourable frame of mind, I burst out laughing at the thought that I

ought to call my new home 'Fafner's Ruhe,' to correspond with the first

piece of work done in it. It was not destined to be so, however. The

property continued to be called simply 'Asyl,' and I have designated it

under this title in the chart of dates to my works.

The miscarriage of my prospects of support for the Nibelungen from the

Grand Duke of Weimar fostered in me a continued depression of spirits;

for I saw before me a burden of which I knew not how to rid myself. At

the same time a romantic message was conveyed to me: a man who rejoiced

in the name of Ferreiro introduced himself to me as the Brazilian

consul in Leipzig, and told me that the Emperor of Brazil was greatly

attracted by my music. The man was an adept in meeting my doubts about

this strange phenomenon in the letters which he wrote; the Emperor

loved everything German, and wanted me very much to come to him in Rio

Janeiro, so that I might conduct my operas in person. As only Italian

was sung in that country, it would be necessary to translate my

libretto, which the Emperor regarded as a very easy matter, and

actually an improvement to the libretto itself. Strange to say, these

proposals exercised a very agreeable influence on me. I felt I could

easily produce a passionate musical poem which would turn out quite

excellent in Italian, and I turned my thoughts once more, with an

ever-reviving preference, towards Tristan und Isolde. In order in some

way to test the intensity of that generous affection for my works

protested by the Emperor of Brazil, I promptly sent to Senor Ferreiro

the expensively bound volumes containing the pianoforte versions of my

three earlier operas, and for a long time I indulged in the hope of

some very handsome return from their gracious and splendid reception in

Rio Janeiro. But of these pianoforte versions, and the Emperor of

Brazil and his consul Ferreiro, I never heard a single syllable again

as long as I lived. Semper, it is true, involved himself in an

architectonic entanglement with this tropical country: a competition

was invited for the building of a new opera house in Rio; Semper had

announced that he would take part in it, and completed some splendid

plans which afforded us great entertainment, and appeared to be of

special interest, among others, to Dr. Wille, who thought that it must

be a new problem for an architect to sketch an opera house for a black

public. I have not learned whether the results of Semper's negotiations

with Brazil were much more satisfactory than mine; at all events, I

know that he did not build the theatre.

A violent cold threw me for a few days into a state of high fever; when

I recovered from it, my birthday had come. As I was sitting once more

in the evening on my roof, I was surprised at hearing one of the songs

of the Three Rhine Maidens, from the finale of Rheingold, which floated

to my ears from the near distance across the gardens. Frau Pollert,

whose troubles with her husband had once stood in the way of a second

performance in Magdeburg of my Liebesverbot (in itself a very difficult

production), had again appeared last winter as a singer, and also as

the mother of two daughters, in the theatrical firmament of Zurich. As

she still had a fine voice, and was full of goodwill towards me, I

allowed her to practise the last act of Walkure for herself, and the

Rhine Maidens scenes from the Rheingold with her two daughters, and

frequently in the course of the winter we had managed to give short

performances of this music for our friends. On the evening of my

birthday the song of my devoted lady friends surprised me in a very

touching way, and I suddenly experienced a strange revulsion of

feeling, which made me disinclined to continue the composition of the

Nibelungen, and all the more anxious to take up Tristan again. I

determined to yield to this desire, which I had long nourished in

secret, and to set to work at once on this new task, which I had wished

to regard only as a short interruption to the great one. However, in

order to prove to myself that I was not being scared away from the

older work by any feeling of aversion, I determined, at all events, to

complete the composition of the second act of Siegfried, which had only

just been begun. This I did with a right good will, and gradually the

music of Tristan dawned more and more clearly on my mind.

To some extent external motives, which seemed to me both attractive and

advantageous to the execution of my task, acted as incentives to make

me set to work on Tristan. These motives became fully defined when

Eduard Devrient came on a visit to me at the beginning of July and

stayed with me for three days. He told me of the good reception

accorded to my despatch by the Grand Duchess of Baden, and I gathered

that he had been commissioned to come to an understanding with me about

some enterprise or other; I informed him that I had decided to

interrupt my work on the Nibelungen by composing an opera, which was

bound by its contents and requirements to put me once more into

relation with the theatres, however inferior they might be. I should do

myself an injustice if I said that this external motive alone inspired

the conception of Tristan, and made me determine to have it produced.

Nevertheless, I must confess that a perceptible change had come over

the frame of mind in which, several years ago, I had contemplated the

completion of the greater work. At the same time I had come fresh from

my writings upon art, in which I had attempted to explain the reasons

for the decay of our public art, and especially of the theatre, by

seeking to establish some connection between these reasons and the

prevailing condition of culture. It would have been impossible for me

at that time to have devoted myself to a work which compelled me to

study its immediate production at one of our existing theatres. It was

only an utter disregard of these theatres, as I have taken occasion to

observe before, that could determine me to take up my artistic work

again. With regard to the Nibelungen dramas, I was compelled to adhere

without flinching to the one essential stipulation that it could only

be produced under quite exceptional conditions, such as those I

afterwards described in the preface to the printed edition of the poem.

Nevertheless, the successful popularisation of my earlier operas had so

far influenced my frame of mind that, as I approached the completion of

more than half of my great work, I felt I could look forward with

growing confidence to the possibility that this too might be produced.

Up to this point Liszt had been the only person to nourish the secret

hope of my heart, as he was confident that the Grand Duke of Weimar

would do something for me, but to judge from my latest experience these

prospects amounted to nothing, while I had grounds for hoping that a

new work of similar design to Tannhauser or Lohengrin would be taken up

everywhere with considerable alacrity. The manner in which I finally

executed the plan of Tristan shows clearly how little I was thinking of

our operatic theatres and the scope of their capabilities.

Nevertheless, I had still to fight a continuous battle for the

necessaries of life, and I succeeded in deceiving myself so far as to

persuade myself that in interrupting the composition of the Nibelungen

and taking up Tristan, I was acting in the practical spirit of a man

who carefully weighs the issues at stake. Devrient was much pleased to

hear that I was undertaking a work that could be regarded as practical.

He asked me at which theatre I contemplated producing my new work. I

answered that naturally I could only have in view a theatre in which it

would be possible for me to superintend the task of production in

person. My idea was that this would either be in Brazil or, as I was

excluded from the territory of the German Confederation, in one of the

towns lying near the German frontiers, which I presumed would be able

to place an operatic company at my disposal. The place I had in my mind

was Strasburg, but Devrient had many practical reasons for being wholly

opposed to such an undertaking; he was of opinion that a performance in

Karlsruhe could be arranged more easily and would meet with greater

success. My only objection to this was, that in that town I should be

debarred from taking a personal share in the study and production of my

work. Devrient, however, thought that, as far as this was concerned, I

might feel justified in entertaining some hope, as the Grand Duke of

Baden was so well disposed towards me, and took an active interest in

my work. I was highly delighted to learn this. Devrient also spoke with

great sympathy of the young tenor Schnorr, who, besides possessing

admirable gifts, was keenly attracted by my operas. I was now in the

best of tempers, and acted the host to Devrient for all I was worth.

One morning I played and sang to him the whole of the Rheingold, which

seemed to give him great pleasure. Half seriously, and half in joke, I

told him that I had written the character of Mime especially for him,

and that if, when the work was ready, it was not too late, he might

have the pleasure of taking the part. As Devrient was with me, he had,

of course, to do his share of reciting. I invited all the friends in

our circle, including Semper and Herwegh, and Devrient read us the Mark

Antony scenes from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. So happy was his

interpretation of the part, that even Herwegh, who had approached the

recitation from its outset in a spirit of ridicule, freely acknowledged

the success of the practised actor's skilful manipulation. Devrient

wrote a letter from my house to the Grand Duke of Baden, telling him

his impressions about me and what he had found me like. Soon after his

departure I received an autograph letter from the Grand Duke, couched

in very amiable terms, in which he first thanked me most profusely for

the souvenir I had presented to his wife for her album, and at the same

time declared his intention of championing my cause, and, above all, of

securing my return to Germany.

From this time forward my resolve to produce Tristan had to be

seriously entertained, as it was written in plain letters in my book of

fate. To all these circumstances I was indebted for the continuation of

the favourable mood in which I now brought the second act of Siegfried

to a close. My daily walks were directed on bright summer afternoons to

the peaceful Sihlthal, in whose wooded surroundings I listened long and

attentively to the song of the forest birds, and I was astonished to

make the acquaintance of entirely new melodies, sung by singers whose

forms I could not see and whose names I did not know. In the forest

scene of Siegfried I put down, in artistic imitation of nature, as much

as I could remember of these airs. At the beginning of August I had

carefully sketched the composition of the second act. I was glad I had

reserved the third act with the awakening of Brunhilda for the time

when I should again be able to go on with the opera, for it seemed to

me that all the problems in my work were now happily solved, and that

all that remained was to get pure joy out of it.

As I firmly believed in the wisdom of husbanding my artistic power, I

now prepared to write out Tristan. A certain strain was put upon my

patience at this point by the arrival of the excellent Ferdinand Prager

from London. His visit, in other respects, was a source of genuine

pleasure to me, for I was bound to recognise in him a faithful and

life-long friend. The only difficulty was, that he laboured under the

delusion that he was exceptionally nervous, and that he was persecuted

by fate. This was a source of considerable annoyance to me, as with the

best will in the world, I could not muster up any sympathy for him. We

helped ourselves out of the dilemma by an excursion to Schaffhausen,

where I paid my first visit to the famous Rhine Falls, which did not

fail to impress me duly.

About this time the Wesendoncks moved into their villa, which had now

been embellished by stucco-workers and upholsterers from Paris. At this

point a new phase began in my relations with this family, which was not

really important, but nevertheless exercised considerable influence on

the outward conduct of my life. We had become so intimate, through

being such near neighbours in a country place, that it was impossible

to avoid a marked increase in our intimacy if only through meeting one

another daily. I had often noticed that Wesendonck, in his

straightforward open manner, had shown uneasiness at the way in which I

made myself at home in his house. In many things, in the matter of

heating and lighting the rooms, and also in the hours appointed for

meals, consideration was shown me which seemed to encroach upon his

rights as master of the house. It needed a few confidential discussions

on the subject to establish an agreement which was half implied and

half expressed. This understanding had a tendency, as time wore on, to

assume a doubtful significance in the eyes of other people, and

necessitated a certain measure of precaution in an intimacy which had

now become exceedingly close. These precautions were occasionally the

source of great amusement to the two parties who were in the secret.

Curiously enough, this closer association with my neighbour coincided

with the time when I began to work out my libretto, Tristan und Isolde.

Robert Franz now arrived in Zurich on a visit. I was delighted by his

agreeable personality, and his visit reassured me that no deep

significance need be attached to the somewhat strained relations which

had sprung up between us since the time when he took up the cudgels for

me on the occasion of the production of Lohengrin. The misunderstanding

had been chiefly due to the intermeddling of his brother-in-law

Heinrich (who had written a pamphlet about me). We played and sang

together; he accompanied me in some of his songs, and my compositions

for the Nibelungen seemed to please him. But one day, when the

Wesendoncks asked him to dinner to meet me, he begged that he might be

alone with the family without any other guests, because if I were there

he would not attain the importance by which he set so much store. We

laughed over this, and I did so the more heartily because I was

sometimes quite grateful to be saved the trouble of talking to people

so curiously uncommunicative as I found Franz to be. After he left us,

he never sent us a word of himself or his doings again.

When I had almost finished the first act of Tristan, a newly married

couple arrived in Zurich, who certainly had a prominent claim on my

interest. It was about the beginning of September that Hans von Bulow

arrived with his young wife Cosima (a daughter of Liszt's) at the Raben

Hotel. I invited them to my little house, so that they might spend the

whole time of their stay in Zurich with me, as their visit was mainly

on my account.

We spent the month of September together most pleasantly. In the

meanwhile I completed the libretto of Tristan und Isolde, and at the

same time Hans made me a fair copy of each act. I read it over, act by

act, to my two friends, until at last I was able to get them all

together for a private reading, which made a deep impression on the few

intimate friends who composed the audience. As Frau Wesendonck appeared

to be particularly moved by the last act, I said consolingly that one

ought not to grieve over it, as, under any circumstances, in a matter

so grave things generally turned out in this way, and Cosima heartily

agreed. We also had a good deal of music together, as in Billow I had

at last found the right man to play Klindworth's atrocious arrangement

of my Nibelungen scores. But the two acts of Siegfried, which had only

been written down as rough drafts, were mastered by Hans with such

consummate skill that he could play them as if they had really been

arranged for the piano. As usual, I took all the singing parts;

sometimes we had a few listeners, amongst whom Mme. Wille was the most

promising. Cosima listened silently with her head bowed; if pressed for

an expression of opinion, she began to cry.

Towards the end of September my young friends left me to travel back to

their destination in Berlin, and begin their married life like good

citizens.

For the time being we had sounded a sort of funeral peal over the

Nibelungen by playing so much of it, and it was now completely laid

aside. The consequence was, that when later on we took it out of its

folio for similar gatherings, it wore a lack-lustre look, and grew ever

fainter, as if to remind us of the past. At the beginning of October,

however, I at once began to compose Tristan, finishing the first act by

the new year, when I was already engaged in orchestrating the prelude.

During that time I developed a dreamy, timorous passion for retirement.

Work, long walks in all winds and weathers, evenings spent in reading

Calderon--such was my mode of life, and if it was disturbed, I was

thrown into the deepest state of irritation. My connection with the

world confined itself almost entirely to my negotiations with the

music-seller Hartel about the publication of Tristan. As I had told

this man that, by way of contrast to the immense undertaking of the

Nibelungen, I had in my mind a practicable work, which, in its demands

upon the producer, confined itself, to all intents and purposes, to the

engagement of a few good singers, he showed such keenness to take up my

offer that I ventured to ask four hundred louis d'or. Thereupon Hartel

answered that I was to read his counter offer, made, in a sealed letter

which he enclosed, only on condition that I at once agreed to waive my

own demands entirely, as he did not think the work I proposed to write

was one which could be produced without difficulties. In the sealed

enclosure I found that he offered me only one hundred louis d'or, but

he undertook, after a period of five years, to give me a half-share in

the proceeds, with the alternative of buying out my rights for another

hundred louis d'or. With these terms I had to comply, and soon set to

work to orchestrate the first act, so as to let the engraver have one

batch of sheets at a time.

Besides this, I was interested at that time in the expected crisis of

the American money market in the month of November, the consequences of

which, during a few fatal weeks, threatened to endanger the whole of my

friend Wesendonck's fortune. I remember that the impending catastrophe

was borne with great dignity by those who were likely to be its

victims; still the possibility of having to sell their house, their

grounds, and their horses cast an unavoidable gloom over our evening

meetings; and, after a while, Wesendonck went away to make arrangements

with various foreign bankers.

During that time I spent the mornings in my house composing Tristan,

and every evening we used to read Calderon, which made a deep and

permanent impression upon me, for I had become fairly familiar with

Spanish dramatic literature, thanks to Schack. At last the dreaded

American crisis happily blew over, and it was soon apparent that

Wesendonck's fortune had considerably increased. Again, during the

winter evenings, I read Tristan aloud to a wider circle of friends.

Gottfried Keller was pleased with the compact form of the whole, which

really contained only three full scenes. Semper, however, was very

angry about it: he objected that I took everything too seriously, and

said that the charm in the artistic construction of such material

consisted in the fact that the tragic element was broken up in such a

way that one could extract enjoyment even from its most affecting

parts. That was just what pleased him in Mozart's Don Juan, one met the

tragic types there, as if at a masquerade, where even the domino was

preferable to the plain character. I admitted that I should get on much

more comfortably if I took life more seriously and art more lightly,

but for the present I intended to let the opposite relations prevail.

As a matter of fact people shook their heads. After I had sketched the

first act of the composition, and had developed the character of my

musical production more precisely. I thought with a peculiar smile of

my first idea of writing this work as a sort of Italian opera, and I

became less anxious at the absence of news from Brazil. On the other

hand, my attention was particularly drawn at the end of this year to

what was going on in Paris in regard to my operas. A young author from

that city wrote asking me to entrust him with the translation of my

Tannhauser, as the manager of the Theatre Lyrique, M. Carvalho, was

taking steps to produce that opera in Paris. I was alarmed at this, as

I was afraid that the copyright of my works had not been secured in

France, and that they might dispose of them there at their own sweet

will. To this I most strongly objected. I was well aware how this

undertaking would be carried out, from an account I had read a short

time before of the performance of Weber's Euryanthe at that very

Theatre Lyrique, and of the objectionable elaborations or rather

mutilations which had been effected for the purposes of production. As

Liszt's elder daughter Blandine had recently married the famous lawyer

E. Ollivier, and I could consequently rely on substantial help from

them, I made up my mind to go to Paris for a week, and look after the

matter about which I had been approached, and, at any rate, secure my

author's rights legally. In addition to this I was in a very melancholy

state of mind, to which overwork and constant occupation on the kind of

task that Semper had, perhaps with justice, denounced as being too

serious, had contributed by reason of the strain on my mental powers.

If I remember rightly, I gave evidence of this state of mind (which

curiously enough led me to despise all worldly cares) in a letter I

wrote to my old friend Alwine Frommann on New Year's Eve 1857.

With the beginning of the new year 1858 the necessity for a break in my

work became so manifest, that I positively dreaded beginning the

instrumentation of the first act of Tristan und Isolde, until I had

allowed myself the trip for which I longed. For at that moment,

unfortunately, neither Zurich, nor my home, nor the company of my

friends afforded me any relaxation.

Even the agreeable and immediate proximity of the Wesendonck family

increased my discomfort, for it was really intolerable to me to devote

all my evenings to conversations and entertainments in which my kind

friend Otto Wesendonck felt obliged to take as much part as myself and

the rest of us. His apprehension that everything in his house would

very soon follow my lead instead of his, gave him that peculiar

aggressiveness with which a man who believes himself neglected

interpolates himself like an extinguisher into every conversation

carried on in his presence.

All this soon became oppressive and irksome to me, and no one who did

not realise my condition, and show signs of sympathising with it, could

excite my interest, and even then it was a very languid one. So I made

up my mind in the middle of the severe winter weather, and

notwithstanding the fact that for the present I was quite unprovided

with the necessary means, and was consequently obliged to take all

sorts of tiresome precautions, to carry out my excursion to Paris. I

felt a growing presentiment that I was going away never to return. I

reached Strasburg on the 15th of January, too much upset to travel any

further just then. From there I wrote to Eduard Devrient at Karlsruhe,

asking him to request the Grand Duke to send an adjutant to meet me at

Kehl on my return from Paris, to accompany me on a visit to Karlsruhe,

as I particularly wanted to become acquainted with the artists who were

to sing in Tristan. A little later I was taken to task by Eduard

Devrient for my impertinence in expecting to have grand-ducal adjutants

at my disposal, from which I gathered that he had attributed my request

to a desire for some mark of honour, whereas my idea had been that that

was the only possible way in which I, a political outlaw, could venture

to visit Karlsruhe, though my object was a purely professional one. I

could not help smiling at this strange misconception, but I was also

startled at this proof of shallowness in my old friend, and began to

wonder what he might do next.

I was trudging wearily along in the twilight through the public

promenade of Strasburg, to restore my overwrought nerves, when I was

suddenly taken aback by seeing on a theatre poster the word TANNHAUSER.

Looking at the bill more closely, I saw that it was the Overture to

Tannhauser that was to be given as a prelude to a French play. The

exact meaning of this I did not quite understand, but of course I took

my seat in the theatre, which was very empty. The orchestra, looking

all the larger from contrast with the empty house, was assembled in a

huge space and was a very strong one. The rendering given of my

overture under the conductor's baton was really a very good one.

As I was sitting rather near the front in the stalls, I was recognised

by the man who was playing the kettledrum, as he had taken part in my

Zurich performances in 1853. The news of my presence spread like

wildfire through the whole orchestra until it reached the ears of the

conductor, and led to great excitement. The small audience, who had

evidently put in appearance simply on account of the French play, and

who were not at all inclined to pay any particular attention to the

overture, were very much astonished when, at the conclusion of the

overture, the conductor and the whole orchestra turned round in the

direction of my stall, and gave vent to enthusiastic applause, which I

had to acknowledge with a bow. All eyes followed me eagerly as I left

the hall after this scene, to pay my respects to the conductor. It was

Herr Hasselmann, a native of Strasburg, and apparently a very

good-natured, amiable fellow. He accompanied me to my hotel and,

amongst other things, told me the circumstances connected with the

performance of my overture. These somewhat surprised me. According to

the terms of a legacy left by a wealthy citizen of Strasburg, a great

lover of music, who had already contributed very largely to the

building of the theatre, the orchestra, whose flourishing condition was

due to his beneficence, had to give, during the usual theatrical

performances, one of the greater instrumental works with a full band

once a week. This time, as it happened, it was the turn for the

overture to Tannhauser. The feeling that was uppermost in my mind was

one of envy that Strasburg should have produced a citizen whose like

had never seen the light of day in any of the towns in which I had been

connected with music, and more particularly Zurich.

Whilst I was discussing the state of music in Strasburg with Conductor

Hasselmann, Orsini's famous attempt on the life of the Emperor took

place in Paris. I heard some vague rumours of it on my journey the

following morning, but it was not until the 17th, on my arrival in

Paris, that I heard the full details of it from the waiter in my hotel.

I looked upon this event as a malicious stroke of fate, aimed at me

personally. Even at breakfast on the following morning, I feared I

should see my old acquaintance, the agent of the Ministry of the

Interior, walk in and demand my instant departure from Paris as a

political refugee. I presumed that as a visitor at the Grand Hotel du

Louvre, then newly opened, I should be regarded by the police with

greater respect, than at the little hotel at the corner of the Rue des

Filles St. Thomas, where I had once stayed for the sake of economy. I

had originally intended to take up my quarters at an hotel I knew in

the Rue le Pelletier, but the outrage had been perpetrated just at that

spot, and the principal criminals had been pursued and arrested there.

It was a strange coincidence! Supposing I had arrived in Paris just two

days earlier, and had gone there!!!

After thus apostrophising the demon of my fate, I hunted up M. Ollivier

and his young wife. In the former I soon found a very taking and active

friend, who at once resolutely took in hand the matter which was my

chief object in Paris. One day we called on a notary who was a friend

of his, and who seemed to be under an obligation to him. I there gave

Ollivier a formal and carefully considered power of attorney, to

represent my proprietary rights as author, and in spite of many

official formalities in the way of stamps I was treated with perfect

hospitality, so that I felt I was well sheltered under my friend's

protection. In the course of my walks with my friend Ollivier in the

Palais de Justice and in the Salle des pas perdus, I was introduced to

the most celebrated lawyers in the world strolling about there in their

berrettas and robes, and I was soon on such intimate terms with them

that they formed a circle around me, and made me explain the subject of

Tannhauser. This pleased me greatly. I was no less delighted by my

conversation with Ollivier regarding his political views and position.

He still believed in the Republic which would come to stay after the

inevitable overthrow of the Napoleonic rule. He and his friends did not

intend to provoke a revolution, but they held themselves in readiness

for the moment when it should come, as it necessarily must, and fully

resolved this time not to give it up again to the plunder of base

conspirators. In principle he agreed with the logical conclusions of

socialism; he knew and respected Proudhon, but not as a politician; he

thought nothing could be founded on a durable basis except through the

initiative of political organisation. By means of simple legislation,

which had already passed several enactments protecting the public good

against the abuses of private privilege, even the boldest demands for a

commonwealth based on equal rights for all would gradually be met.

I now noticed with great satisfaction that I had made considerable

progress in the development of my character, as I could listen to and

discuss these and other topics without getting into a state of

excitement, as I used formally to do in similar discussions.

Blandine impressed me at the same time most favourably with her

gentleness, her cheerfulness, and a certain quiet wit added to a quick

mental perception. We very soon understood each other; the slightest

suggestion sufficed to create a mutual understanding on any subject in

which we were interested.

Sunday arrived, and with it a concert at the Conservatoire. As I had

hitherto been present only at rehearsals, and had never got so far as

the performances, my friends succeeded in procuring a seat for me in

the box of Mme. Herold, the widow of the composer, a woman of

sympathetic disposition, who at once declared herself warmly in favour

of my music. It is true her knowledge of it was slight, but she had

been won over to it by the enthusiasm of her daughter and son-in-law,

who, as I have previously mentioned, had heard Tannhauser during their

honeymoon in Vienna and Berlin. This was really a pleasant surprise.

Added to this, I now heard for the first time in my life a performance

of Haydn's Seasons, which the audience enjoyed immensely, as they

thought the steady florid vocal cadences, which are so rare in modern

music, but which so frequently occur at the conclusion of the musical

phrases in Haydn's music, very original and charming. The rest of the

day was spent very pleasantly in the bosom of the Herold family.

Towards the end of the evening a man came in whose appearance was

hailed with marked attention. This was Herr Scudo, who, I found out

afterwards, was the famous musical editor of the Revue des deux Mondes.

His influence with other journals was considerable, but so far it had

certainly not been in my favour. The kind hostess wished me to make his

acquaintance, so that he might have a good impression of me, but I told

her such an object could not be attained through the medium of a

drawing-room conversation, and later on I was confirmed in my opinion

that the reasons why a gentleman of this type, who possesses no

knowledge of the subject, declares himself hostile to an artist, having

nothing whatever to do with his convictions or even with his approval

or disapproval. On a subsequent occasion these good people had to

suffer for having interested themselves in me, as, in a report of my

concerts by Herr Scudo, they were held up to ridicule as a family of

strong democratic tendencies.

I now looked up my friend Berlioz, whose acquaintance I had recently

renewed in London, and on the whole I found him kindly disposed.

I informed him that I had only just come to Paris on a short pleasure

trip. He was at that time busy composing a grand opera, Die Trojaner.

In order to get an impression of the work, I was particularly anxious

to hear the libretto Berlioz had written himself, and he spent an

evening reading it out to me. I was disappointed in it, not only as far

as it was concerned, but also by his singularly dry and theatrical

delivery. I fancied that in the latter I could see the character of the

music to which he had set his words, and I sank into utter despair

about it, as I could see that he regarded this as his masterpiece, and

was looking forward to its production as the great object of his life.

I also received an invitation with the Olliviers from the Erard family,

at whose house I again met my old friend the widow of Spontini. We

spent a rather charming evening there, during which, strange to say, I

had to be responsible for the musical entertainment at the piano. They

declared they had thoroughly entered into the spirit of the various

selections I had played from my operas in my now characteristic

fashion, and that they had enjoyed them immensely. At any rate, such

intimate heartfelt playing had never before been heard in that gorgeous

drawing-room. Apart from this, I made one great acquisition, through

the friendly courtesy of Mme. Erard and her brother-in-law Schaffer,

who since the death of her husband had carried on the business, in the

shape of a promise of one of the celebrated grand-pianos of their

manufacture. With this the gloom of my excursion to Paris seemed to be

turned into light, for I was so rejoiced at it, that I looked upon

every other result as chimerical, and upon this as the only reality.

After that I left Paris on the 2nd of February in a more cheerful frame

of mind, and on my homeward journey went to look up my old friend Kietz

in Epernay, where M. Paul Chandon, who had known Kietz since boyhood,

had interested himself in the ruined painter by taking him into his

house, and giving him a number of commissions for portraits. As soon as

I arrived I was irresistibly drawn into Chandon's hospitable house, and

could not refuse to remain there for a couple of days. I found in

Chandon a passionate admirer of my operas, particularly of Rienzi, the

first performance of which he had witnessed during his Dresden days. I

also visited the marvellous wine vaults at Champagne, which extended

for miles into the heart of the rocky ground. Kietz was painting a

portrait in oils, and the opinion entertained by every one that it

would very soon be finished rather amused me.

After much superfluous entertainment I at last freed myself from this

unexpected hospitality and returned to Zurich on the 5th of February,

where I had arranged by letter for an evening party immediately after

my arrival, as I thought I had much to relate which I could tell them

all collectively instead of by means of long and wearisome

communications to individual friends. Semper, who was one of the

company, was annoyed that he had stayed in Zurich whilst I had been in

Paris, and he became quite furious over my cheerful adventures and

declared I was an impudent child of fortune, while he looked upon it as

the greatest calamity that he should be chained to that wretched hole

Zurich. How I smiled inwardly at his envy of my fortune!

My affairs were making but little progress, as my operas had been sold

to almost every theatre and I had very little left out of the proceeds.

I now heard nothing about all these performances except that they were

yielding very little money. I resigned myself to the fact of bringing

out Rienzi, as it was just suited to our inferior class of theatre.

Before offering it for sale, it was desirable to have it performed

again in Dresden; but this, it was said, was impossible on account of

the impression created by the Orsini outrage. So I worked on at the

instrumentation of the first act of Tristan, and during that time I

could not help feeling that most probably other objections, besides

those of political captiousness, would be raised against the spread of

this work. I therefore continued my work vaguely and somewhat

hopelessly.

In the month of March Frau Wesendonck informed me that she thought of

having a kind of musical entertainment in her house to celebrate her

husband's birthday. She had a predilection for a little serenade music,

which, with the help of eight instrumentalists from Zurich, I had

arranged during the winter for the occasion of her own birthday. The

pride of the Wesendonck villa was a spacious hall which had been very

elegantly decorated by Parisian stucco-workers, and I had once remarked

that music would not sound at all badly there. We had tested it on a

small scale, but now it was to be tried on a larger one. I offered to

bring together a respectable orchestra to perform fragments of the

Beethoven symphonies, consisting mainly of the brighter parts, for the

entertainment of the company. The necessary preparations required a

good deal of time, and the date of the birthday had to be overstepped.

As it was, we had nearly reached Easter, and our concert took place

almost at the end of March. The musical At Home was most successful. A

full orchestra for the Beethoven pieces played with the greatest eclat

under my conductorship, to the assembly of guests scattered about in

the surrounding rooms, selections from the symphonies. Such an

unprecedented home concert seemed to throw every one into a great state

of excitement.

The young daughter of the house presented me at the beginning of the

performance with an ivory baton, carved from a design by Semper, the

first and only complimentary one I ever received. There was no lack of

flowers and ornamental trees, under which I stood when conducting, and

when to suit my taste for musical effect we concluded, not with a loud,

but with a deeply soothing piece, like the Adagio from the Ninth

Symphony, we felt that Zurich society had indeed witnessed something

quite unique, and my friends on whom I had bestowed this mark of

distinction were deeply touched by it.

This festival left on me the most melancholy impressions; I felt as

though I had reached the meridian of my life, that I had in fact passed

it, and that the string of the bow was over-stretched. Mme. Wille told

me afterwards that she had been overcome by similar feelings on that

evening. On the 3rd of April I sent the manuscript of the score of the

first act of Tristan und Isolde to Leipzig to be engraved; I had

already promised to give Frau Wesendonck the pencil-sketch for the

instrumentation of the prelude, and I sent this to her accompanied by a

note in which I explained to her seriously and calmly the feelings that

animated me at the time. My wife had for some time been anxious as to

her relations with our neighbour; she complained with increasing

bitterness that she was not treated by her with the attention due to

the wife of a man whom Frau Wesendonck was so pleased to welcome in her

house, and that when we did meet, it was rather by reason of that

lady's visits to me than to her. So far she had not really expressed

any jealousy. As she happened to be in the garden that morning, she met

the servant carrying the packet for Frau Wesendonck, took it from him

and opened the letter. As she was quite incapable of understanding the

state of mind I had described in the letter, she readily gave a vulgar

interpretation to my words, and accordingly felt herself justified in

bursting into my room and attacking me with the most extraordinary

reproaches about the terrible discovery she had made. She afterwards

admitted that nothing had vexed her so much as the extreme calmness and

apparent indifference with which I treated her foolish conduct. As a

matter of fact I never said a word; I hardly moved, but simply allowed

her to depart. I could not help realising that this was henceforth to

be the intolerable character of the conjugal relations I had resumed

eight years before. I told her peremptorily to keep quiet and not be

guilty of any blunder either in judgment or in act, and tried to make

her realise to what a serious state of affairs this foolish occurrence

had brought us. She really seemed to understand what I meant, and

promised to keep quiet and not to give way to her absurd jealousy.

Unfortunately the poor creature was already suffering from a serious

development of heart disease, which affected her temper; she could not

throw off the peculiar depression and terrible restlessness which

enlargement of the heart causes, and only a few days after she felt

that she must relieve her feelings, and the only possible way in which

she could think of doing so was by warning our neighbour, Frau

Wesendonck, with an emphasis she thought was well meant, against the

consequences of any imprudent intimacy with me.

As I was returning from a walk I met Herr Wesendonck and his wife in

their carriage just starting for a drive. I noticed her troubled

demeanour in contrast to the peculiarly smiling and contented

expression of her husband. I realised the position clearly when I

afterwards met my wife looking wonderfully cheerful. She held out her

hand to me with great generosity, assuring me of her renewed affection.

In answer to my question, whether she had by any chance broken her

promise, she said confidently that like a wise woman she had been

obliged to put things into proper order. I told her she would very

probably experience some very unpleasant consequences through breaking

her word. In the first place, I thought it essential she should take

steps to improve her health as we had previously arranged, and told her

she had better go as soon as possible to the health resort she had been

recommended at Brestenberg on the Hallwyler Lake. We had heard

wonderful accounts of the cures of heart disease which the doctor there

had effected, and Minna was quite prepared to submit to his treatment.

A few days later, therefore, I took her and her parrot to the

pleasantly situated and well-appointed watering-place which was about

three hours distant. Meantime, I avoided asking any questions as to

what had taken place in regard to our neighbours. When I left her at

Brestenberg and took my leave she quite seemed to realise the painful

seriousness of our position. I could say very little to comfort her,

except that I would try, in the interests of our future life together,

to mitigate the dreaded consequences of her having broken her word.

On my return home I experienced the unpleasant effects of my wife's

conduct towards our neighbour. In Minna's utter misconstruction of my

purely friendly relations with the young wife, whose only interest in

me consisted in her solicitude for my peace of mind and well-being, she

had gone so far as to threaten to inform the lady's husband. Frau

Wesendonck felt so deeply insulted at this, as she was perfectly

unconscious of having done any wrong, that she was absolutely astounded

at me, and said she could not conceive how I could have led my wife

into such a misunderstanding. The outcome of this disturbance was that,

thanks to the discreet mediation of our mutual friend Mme. Wille, I was

absolved from any responsibility for my wife's conduct; still, I was

given to understand that henceforth it would be impossible for the

injured lady to enter my house again, or indeed to continue to have any

intercourse with my wife. They did not seem to realise, and would not

admit, that this would entail the giving up of my home and my removal

from Zurich. I hoped that although my relations with these good friends

had been disturbed, they were not really destroyed, and that time would

smooth things over. I felt that I must look forward to an improvement

in my wife's health, when she would admit her folly, and thus be able

to resume her intercourse with our neighbours in a reasonable manner.

Some time elapsed, during which the Wesendonck family took a pleasure

trip of several weeks to Northern Italy.

The arrival of the promised Erard grand-piano made me painfully

conscious of what a tin kettle my old grand-piano from Breitkopf und

Hartel had been, and I forthwith banished it to the lower regions,

where my wife begged she might keep it as a souvenir 'of old times.'

She afterwards took it with her to Saxony, where she sold it for three

hundred marks. The new piano appealed to my musical sense immensely,

and whilst I was improvising I seemed to drift quite naturally into the

soft nocturnal sounds of the second act of Tristan, the composition of

which I now began to sketch out. This was at the beginning of May. My

work was unexpectedly interrupted by the command of the Grand Duke of

Weimar to meet him on a certain day in Lucerne, where he was staying

after his return from Italy. I availed myself of this opportunity to

have a lengthy interview at the hotel in Chamberlain von Beaulieu's

room, with my former nominal patron whose acquaintance I had made at

the time of my flight.

From this interview with Karl Alexander I gathered that my attitude

towards the Grand Duke of Baden, in regard to the performance of

Tristan, in Karlsruhe, had made an impression on the Weimar court, for

while he made particular mention of that matter, I gathered from what

he said that he was also anxious about my Nibelungen work, in which he

declared he had always taken the liveliest interest, and wanted my

assurance that this composition would be produced at Weimar. I had no

serious objection to that. Moreover, I was vastly entertained by the

personality of this free-and-easy good-natured Prince, who, though he

sat chatting next to me on a narrow sofa, was evidently anxious by his

singularly choice language to impress me as a man of culture. I was

much struck to find that his dignified bearing was not in the least

disturbed when Herr von Beaulieu, with the object of amusing us, made

some rather clumsy remarks which were meant to be witty. After the

Grand Duke had asked me in the most guarded way my opinion of Liszt's

compositions, I was surprised to notice by his general bearing that he

was not at all uncomfortable when the chamberlain expressed the most

contemptuous opinions about the Grand Duke's famous friend, saying that

Liszt's composing was a mere mania on his part. This gave me a strange

insight into this royal friendship, and I had some difficulty in

keeping serious during the interview. I had to pay the Grand Duke

another visit on the following morning, but on that occasion I saw him

without his chamberlain, whose absence certainly had a favourable

effect on the Prince's remarks about his friend.

Liszt, whose inspiring conversation and advice he loudly asserted that

he could not praise enough. I was surprised to see the Grand Duchess

walk in upon us, and was received by her with a most condescending bow,

the formality of which I have never forgotten. I looked upon my meeting

with these exalted personages as an exceedingly amusing adventure in my

travels. I have never heard from them since. [Footnote: This was

dictated in 1869] Later on, when I called on Liszt at Weimar, just

before he left there, he could not even induce the Grand Duke to

receive me!

A short time after my return from that expedition Karl Tausig called

with a letter of introduction from Liszt; he was then sixteen years of

age, and astonished everybody by his dainty appearance and his unusual

precocity of understanding and demeanour. He had already been greeted

in Vienna, on his public appearance as a pianist, as a future Liszt. He

gave himself all the airs of a Liszt, and already smoked the strongest

cigars to such an extent that I felt a perfect horror of them.

Otherwise I was very glad he had made up his mind to spend some time in

the neighbourhood, all the more so as I could appreciate to the utmost

his amusing, half-childish, though very intelligent and knowing

personality, and, above all, his exceptionally finished piano-playing

and quick musical faculty. He played the most complicated pieces at

sight, and knew how to use his astonishing facility in the most

extravagant tricks for my entertainment. He afterwards came to live

quite near us; he was my daily guest at all meals, and accompanied me

on my usual walks to the Sihlthal. He soon tried to wriggle out of

these, however. He also went with me on a visit to Minna at

Brestenberg. As I had to repeat these expeditions regularly every week,

being anxious to watch the result of the treatment, Tausig endeavoured

to escape from these also, as neither Brestenberg nor Minna's

conversation seemed to appeal to him. However, he could not avoid

meeting her when, feeling obliged to interrupt her cure for a few days

to look after her household affairs, she returned at the end of May. I

noticed by her manner that she no longer attached any importance to the

recent domestic upheaval; the view she took of the matter was that

there had been a little 'love affair' which she had put straight. As

she referred to this with a certain amount of unpleasant levity, I was

obliged, though I would willingly have spared her on account of the

state of her health, to explain clearly and firmly, that in consequence

of her disobedience and her foolish conduct towards our neighbour, the

possibility of our remaining on the estate, where we had only just

settled with so much difficulty, was a matter of the most serious

doubt, and I felt bound to warn her that we must be prepared for the

necessity of a separation, as I was fully determined that if this

dreaded event took place, I would not agree to live under similar

domestic conditions elsewhere. The earnestness with which I dwelt on

the character of our past life together, on that occasion, so impressed

and shocked her that, fully realising it was through her fault that the

home it had cost us so much pain to build up had been destroyed, she

broke into a low wail of lamentation for the first time in our lives.

This was the first and only occasion on which she gave me any token of

loving humility, when late at night she kissed my hand as I withdrew. I

was deeply touched at this, and the idea flashed across my mind that

possibly a great and decided change might take place in the character

of the poor woman, and this determined me to renew my hope of the

possibility of continuing the life we had resumed.

Everything contributed to the maintenance of this hope: my wife

returned to Brestenberg to complete the second part of her cure; the

most glorious summer weather favoured my disposition to work at the

second act of Tristan; the evenings with Tausig cheered me up, and my

relations with my neighbours, who had never borne me any ill-will,

seemed to me to favour the possibility of a dignified and desirable

understanding in the future. It was quite probable that if my wife went

on a visit to her friends in Saxony after her cure, time would

eventually cover the past with oblivion, and her own future conduct as

well as the changed attitude of our deeply offended neighbour, would

make it possible to renew our mutual intercourse in a dignified way.

I was still further cheered by the prospect of the arrival of an

agreeable visitor, as well as by some satisfactory negotiations with

two of the most important German theatres.

In June the Berlin manager approached me about Lohengrin, and we soon

came to an agreement. In Vienna, too, the forced intrusion of

Tannhauser had produced its effect on the attitude of the management of

the court theatre. Just recently the well-known conductor, Karl Eckert,

had been entrusted with the technical management of the Opera. He

seized the happy opportunity afforded by the possession of a very good

company of singers, and by the closing of the theatre for much needed

restoration, to give the company time to study Lohengrin, with the

object of securing the acceptance of this new and difficult work by the

court authorities. He thereupon made me his offers. I wanted to insist

on the author's rights on the same terms as those granted in Berlin,

but he would not agree to this, because the takings of the house were

very small, owing to the lack of space in the old theatre. On the other

hand, Conductor Esser called on me one day; he had come from Vienna to

make all arrangements, and in the name of the management he offered me

about two thousand marks, cash down, for the first twenty performances

of Lohengrin, and promised me a further sum of two thousand marks on

their completion. The frank and genial manner of the worthy musician

won me over, and I closed with him at once. The result was that Esser

went through the score of Lohengrin with me there and then, with great

conscientiousness and zeal, and paid special attention to all my

wishes. With every confidence in a favourable result I bid him

farewell, and he hurried back to Vienna to set to work at once.

I then completed the composition sketches for the second act of Tristan

in excellent spirits, and began the more detailed execution of it, but

I did not get quite through the first scene, as I was exposed to

continual interruptions. Tichatschek came to pay me another visit, and

took up his abode in my little spare room, to recover, as he said, from

the effects of his recent exertions. He boasted that he had again

introduced my operas, which had been repeatedly forbidden, into the

repertoire of the Dresden theatre, and had also taken part in them

himself with great success.

Lohengrin was also to be produced there. Although this was very

gratifying, I did not in the least know what to do with the good man at

such close quarters. Fortunately I was able to hand him over to Tausig,

who understood my embarrassment, and kept Tichatschek to himself pretty

well the whole day, by playing cards with him. The young tenor Niemann,

of whose great talent I had heard so much, soon arrived with his bride,

the famous actress Seebach, and owing to his almost gigantic frame, he

struck me as being just the man for Siegfried. The fact of having two

famous tenors with me at the same time gave rise to the annoyance that

neither of them would sing anything to me, as they were ill at ease in

each other's presence. I quite believed, however, that Niemann's voice

must be on a par with his imposing personality. About that time (15th

July) I fetched my wife from Brestenberg. During my absence my servant,

who was a cunning Saxon, had thought fit to erect a kind of triumphal

arch to celebrate the return of the mistress of the house. This led to

great complications, as, much to her delight, Minna was convinced that

this flower-bedecked triumphal arch would greatly attract the attention

of our neighbours, and thought this would be sufficient to prevent them

from regarding her return home as a humiliating one. She insisted with

triumphant joy upon the decorations remaining up for several days.

About the same time the Bulows, true to their promise, paid another

visit. The unfortunate Tichatschek again put off his departure, and

consequently continued to occupy our one small spare room, so I was

obliged to let my friends stay at the hotel several days longer.

However, the visits they paid to the Wesendoncks as well as to me soon

afforded me an opportunity of hearing, much to my surprise, of the

effect the triumphal arch had produced on our neighbour's young wife,

who was still nursing her injured feelings. When I heard of her

passionate protests I realised to what a pass things had come, and

immediately gave up all hope of putting a peaceful end to the

discordant situation. Those were days of terrible anxiety. I wished

myself in the most distant desert, and yet was in the awkward position

of having to keep my house open to a succession of visitors. At last

Tichatschek took his departure, and I could at least devote the

remainder of my stay to the pleasant duty of entertaining favourite

guests. The Bulows really seemed to me to have been providentially sent

for the purpose of quelling the horrible excitement that prevailed in

the house. Hans made the best of things when, on the day of his

arrival, he caught me in the midst of a terrific scene with Minna, as I

had just told her plainly that from what I could see of the present

position of affairs, our stay here was no longer possible, and that I

was only deferring my departure until after the visit of our young

friends. This time, however, I had to admit that she was not altogether

to blame.

We spent another whole month together in the cottage, which, by the

way, I had unconsciously christened Asyl. It was an extremely trying

period, and the experiences I went through every day only confirmed me

in my decision to give up the house. Under the circumstances my young

guests also had to suffer, as my worry communicated itself to all who

were in sympathy with me. Klindworth, who was coming on a visit from

London, to add to the gloom of this extraordinary menage, soon joined

us. So the house was suddenly filled, and the table surrounded by sad,

mysteriously depressed guests, whose wants were ministered to by one

who was shortly to leave her home for ever.

It seemed to me that there must be one human being in existence

specially qualified to bring light and reconciliation, or at least

tolerable order, into the gloom and trouble by which we were all

surrounded. Liszt had promised me a visit, but he was so happily

situated beyond the reach of these harassing conditions, he had had

such experience of the world, and possessed that innate aplomb to such

an extraordinary degree, that he did not seem to me to be very likely

to approach these misunderstandings in a rational spirit. I almost felt

inclined to make my final decision dependent on the effect of his

expected visit. It was in vain that we begged of him to hasten his

journey; he offered to meet me at the Lake of Geneva a month later!

Then my courage failed. Intercourse with my friends now afforded me no

satisfaction, for although they could not understand why I should be

turned out of a home that suited me so well, yet it was apparent to

every one that I could not remain under these conditions. We still had

music every now and then, but it was in a half-hearted and

absent-minded fashion. To make matters worse, we had a national vocal

festival inflicted upon us, during which I was obliged to face all

kinds of demands; matters did not always pass off without

unpleasantness, as amongst others I had to decline to see Franz

Lachner, who had been specially engaged for the festival, and did not

return his call. Tausig certainly delighted us by carolling Lachner's

'Old German Battle Song' in the upper octave, which, thanks to his

boyish falsetto, was within his reach; however, even his pranks were no

longer able to cheer us. Everything, which under other circumstances

would have made this summer month one of the most stimulating in my

life, now contributed to my discomfort, as did also the stay of the

Countess d'Agoult, who, having come on a visit to her daughter and

son-in-law, attached herself to our party for the time being. By way of

filling up the house, Karl Ritter also came after much grumbling and

sulking, and once again proved himself to be very interesting and

original.

As the time for the general leave-taking at last drew near, I had

arranged all the details connected with the breaking up of my home. I

settled the necessary business part by a personal visit to Herr

Wesendonck, and in the presence of Bulow I took leave of Frau

Wesendonck, who, in spite of her ever-recurring misconceptions on the

matter, eventually reproached herself bitterly when she saw that these

misunderstandings had ended by breaking up my home. My friends were

much distressed at parting from me, whilst I could only meet their

expressions of sorrow with apathy. On the 16th August the Bulows also

left; Hans was bathed in tears and his wife Cosima was gloomy and

silent. I had arranged with Minna that she should remain there for

about a week to clear up and dispose of our little belongings as she

thought best. I had advised her to entrust these unpleasant duties to

some one else, as I hardly thought it possible that she would be fitted

for such a wretched task, which, under the circumstances, would be very

trying to her. She replied reproachfully that 'it would be a fine thing

if, with all our misfortunes, we neglected our property. Order there

must be.' I afterwards learned to my disgust that she carried out the

removal and her own departure with such formality, by advertising in

the daily papers that the effects would be sold cheaply owing to sudden

departure, and thereby exciting much curiosity, that perplexed rumours

were spread about giving the whole affair a scandalous signification,

which afterwards caused much unpleasantness both to me and the

Wesendonck family.