1850-1854.
[Sidenote: “_TERRIBLY IN EARNEST._”]
Pursued by a police warrant, Wagner first sought refuge and a home in
Paris. The French capital possessed alluring attractions for him, but
his reception, in 1849, was no brighter or more promising than it had
been ten years earlier. He therefore left Paris, after a few weeks, and
went to Zurich. Here he found a true home and hearty friends, and felt,
as far as was possible, so contented that in the autumn following he
became a naturalized subject. And yet Wagner used to say his forced
exile pressed sore upon him, and there is no doubt he did chafe under
it, and strove hard to free himself from its galling chains. He could
not settle to work. He endeavoured to open communications with August
Roeckel, through influential friends in Dresden, but was unsuccessful.
When in Paris, and whilst still under the influence of the
multitudinous, unsettling thoughts that had pressed him into the ranks
of liberty, making him one of its most energetic champions, he
endeavoured to negotiate with the editor of a newspaper of standing, for
a series of letters, on the interesting and timely topic of “The
Revolution, and its Relation to Art.” But the proposal came to nothing.
He was told the time was inopportune. “Strange and silly people,” was
his comment, and he left the Parisians for the more homely, though
heavier folk, of Zurich.
And still he could not tear himself away from Paris. The city and people
fascinated him then and at all times, and he returned, in the early part
of 1850, to make another effort in the cause of art. Though his
invectives were frequent and bitter, yet I have seen enough, and know
enough, of the inner Wagner, to state positively that he highly esteemed
the French intellect and judgment in matters of art. This is one of
those curious paradoxes in Richard Wagner’s character. He could never
refer to the French without some sarcastic allusion to their frivolity.
At all times Wagner was “terribly in earnest,” and he almost took it as
a personal insult to see the French full of sensuous enjoyment, and
regarding art as a pleasant, agreeable relaxation, at the end of the
day’s labour. And yet he strove to succeed there for all that; even in
1860, when he was again in Paris, his feelings were precisely the same.
Writing on this point, some sixteen years later, he says: “I thought
that it was there (_i.e._ Paris) only that I could find the atmosphere
so necessary to the success of my art,[6] that element of which I so
much stood in need.”
His success in 1849-50, however, was no more than it had been hitherto.
His vanity was piqued at his reception. He visited old acquaintances,
and was received with a patronizing friendship, as one who had come to
Paris, an aspirant for fame. They would not see in him the “Tannhäuser”
composer, the prophet who had come to baptize them with the pure, holy
water of the true in art. His pride was wounded.
He was envious, too, of that smooth, highly polished gracefulness which
the French possess in the small matters of every-day life, and which he
was conscious he lacked. Though refined in intellect, courteous in
bearing, carrying himself with majestic dignity when occasion demanded,
yet Richard Wagner’s natural characteristic was a plainness and
directness of speech, which often took the form of abruptness.
“Amiability usually runs into insincerity,” says Mr. Froude, when
describing Carlyle’s character in the “Reminiscences,” and Wagner was at
all times sincere. Sensitive, too, as artists commonly are, he saw the
Parisians resolving life and art into a pastime, and doing it with an
elegant, natural gracefulness that was absent in his own serious
utterances of the heart. Impatient of incapacity, blunt in speech, and
vehement in declamation, even with bursts of occasional rudeness, he was
angered and jealous, that a people--his intellectual inferior--should
take life so easily.
[Sidenote: _NOT FOND OF EXILE._]
Sick in heart, he soon became sick in body; seriously ill indeed. On his
recovery, feeling naught congenial to him in Paris, he left again for
Zurich, via Bordeaux and Geneva. At Bordeaux an episode occurred similar
to one which happened later at Zurich, about which the press of the day
made a good deal of unnecessary commotion and ungenerous comment. I
mention the incident to show the man as he was. The Opposition have not
spared his failings, and over the Zurich incident were hypercritically
censorious. The Bordeaux story I am alluding to, is, that the wife of a
friend, Mrs. H----, having followed Wagner to the south, called on him
at his hotel, and throwing herself at his feet, passionately told of
her affection. Wagner’s action in the matter was to telegraph to the
husband to come and take his wife home. On telling me the story, Wagner
jocosely remarked that poor Beethoven, so full of love, never had his
affection returned, and lived and died, so it is said, a hermit.
Another adventure of this description took place at Berlin, which to my
mind is a verification of the homeopathic doctrine, _similia similibus
curantur_, for I often taunted him with possessing, though in
homeopathic doses, just those very failings he denounced in others, viz.
amorousness, Hebraic shrewdness, and the Gallic love of enjoyment. When
he was in a jocular mood he would laugh heartily at my endeavour to
prove the truth of my opinions by the citation of instances, and
occasionally he would admit the impeachment, whereas, at other times, he
would become irritated, and put an end to any such conversation by
charging me with having lost all my German feeling under the pernicious
influence of a London fog.
Back in Zurich, he could not force himself to compose. He could not, and
never did, take kindly to his compulsory exile, even appealing himself
to the authorities more than ten years later for permission to re-enter
his fatherland. And yet I have no hesitation in asserting that the world
should regard it as a boon for art that he was thus driven into exile.
Away from the theatre and the busy activity connected with his office of
conductor, he had time to reflect over the many schemes for the
elevation of art that constantly held communion with his inner self.
Freed from the contact of that vortex of petty agitation which
constitutes the active life of the stage, and of which every
individual, no matter how inferior his grade, thinks himself the chief
attraction, he gained that repose which enabled him to see art matters
in their just proportion. His state, he described to me, as that spoken
of by both Aristotle and Plato: “One of the highest happinesses attained
through the pleasures of the intellect by the contemplative life.”
Indeed, it can be maintained, that all the great works of his after-life
were either completed or sketched during those years of exile.
[Sidenote: _THE VILLA AT ZURICH._]
To begin with his literary work. In this branch of thought he was
remarkably active. For five whole years, the first five of his Zurich
life, I remember he said he did not compose a bar; all was literary
outpouring, and so much was he given to reflection on the strange
position in which he found himself in the art world, and the manner in
which his operas had been received, that he even seriously considered
the question whether music was his province, whether he should not
reject tonal composition entirely in favour of the spoken drama. In a
letter of that period he says, “I spend my time in walking, reading, and
literary work.” And when one considers what Wagner did during those
years of banishment, it will be seen how hard a worker he was. His exile
lasted for something like twelve years, and during that time he wrote
those masterly expositions: “Art and Revolution,” “The Art Work of the
Future,” “Art and Climate,” “Judaism in Music,” and “Opera and Drama,”
whilst, as regards the music-drama, he wrote the whole of the words and
music of the “Nibelung’s Ring,” “Tristan and Isolde,” the
“Mastersingers” (1861-62), and a fragment of music subsequently
embodied and amplified in “Parsifal.”
Wagner met with many reverses in the early portion of his career, but he
also, on occasions, enjoyed exceptionally good fortune. Though caged, as
he said, like an angry, irritable lion in Zurich, longing to burst his
prison door, yet he met everywhere with troops of friends. The personnel
of the opera house united to do him honour, and individually he was
treated with hearty good will. One of his ardent admirers and intimate
friends was Madame Wesendonck, the wife of a wealthy retired merchant
who had come, with her husband, to take up her abode in Zurich.
Wesendonck was a musical amateur, but not so gifted as his wife, who was
enthusiastic for Wagner. Wesendonck had purchased some land overlooking
the beautiful lake, and was building himself a house there. For that
purpose he had brought architects and upholsterers from Paris. While the
building was in course of erection, a very pretty chalêt adjoining the
property became untenanted, which it was stated was about to be used as
an asylum. Such information was not pleasant to Wesendonck, and at the
suggestion and wish of his wife he purchased it and rented it to Wagner
for a nominal sum. This really charming villa was an immense delight to
Wagner. Hitherto, living in the town, he had grown fractious under the
infliction of noises and cries inseparable from the bustle of civic
life, and the “Retreat,” as he called the chalêt, afforded him a
pleasure, and procured that quiet comfort invaluable to him at that
period of thought.
At the house of his friends there were frequent gatherings of musicians
from Zurich and neighbouring towns, at which, it seems, he often
delivered himself of lengthy harangues on his view of art, to find that
one only of those who applauded him comprehended the heart of the thing
he spoke of. He said it was with him, just as it had been with the
unfortunate Hegel, the philosopher, who with facetious cynicism
remarked, that “nobody understands me, except one disciple, and he
misunderstands me.” Perhaps the fault was partly his own. His fervid
perorations were ambitious, and he spoke above the heads of his hearers.
They saw in him only the composer of “Tannhäuser” and “Lohengrin,”
whereas he felt within himself the embryo of the colossal tetralogy; and
how could they comprehend, then, a man who addressed his inward
clamourings rather than his auditors. When I say the embryo of the
tetralogy, I include the musical sketch of certain of the leading ideas,
for the whole of the Nibelung poem was completed, and a few copies
printed in 1853 for his intimate friends, of one copy of which I am the
fortunate possessor.
[Sidenote: _CONDUCTING THE OPERA._]
On recalling the occasion, when in 1855 Wagner gave me a bound copy of
his “Nibelung lied,” one incident stands out prominently. On studying
the poem I had been struck with the keen dramatic insight displayed by
Wagner throughout his treatment of the old Norse sagas: the laying out
of the ground plan, the sequence of the story, the exclusion of
extraneous and subsidiary matter, the many powerful and striking
tableaux presented, the crisp dialogue and scholarly retention of the
alliterative verse, the merit of these features being increased by the
high literary standard attained throughout the work. Now when I
congratulated Wagner on the literary skill he had shown, he grew
peevish; and indeed he resented at all times praise of his poetic
ability, seeming to think that in some measure it was a denial of his
musical power.
Some portion of the Nibelung poem Wagner read to his small circle of
intimates in London. At that time Richard Wagner was forty-two years of
age, and his histrionic powers, at all times great, were perhaps then at
their best. With his head well thrown back, he declaimed his poem with a
majestic earnestness that cast a spell over all. But of his histrionic
and mimetic powers I shall have something to say later on.
At Zurich he interested himself largely in the opera house. He sought to
control the local taste, but the directors were governed with one
thought and that, that only such works as bore the hall-mark of Paris
success could succeed in Zurich. Accepting the state of things, he
conducted performances of “Robert le Diable,” “Les Huguenots,”
“Guillaume Tell,” Halévy’s “La Juive,” Donizetti’s “La Fille du
Regiment,” and other works of similar type. He even conducted the
rehearsals, attending and exerting himself at these for the benefit,
however, of Hans von Bülow, who had become his pupil. I know he was
deeply attached to Bülow; he spoke of him with enthusiasm, praised his
wonderful reading at sight, and was much impressed by his general
culture. There is no doubt that Bülow merited the high opinion Wagner
held of him, as subsequent events have proved.
On Richard Wagner’s fortieth birthday, 22 May, 1853, a grand Wagner
festival was held at Zurich, musicians from neighbouring towns being
invited. All the principal theatres responded with the exception of
Munich, which through its conductor, Lachner, refused to permit
orchestral members of the theatre to attend, giving as the flimsy
pretext that journeymen, _i.e._ orchestral performers, could not be
granted passports. Lachner as a composer has found his level, and there
it is wise to leave him. I will only note the curious fate which later
made Wagner supreme at Munich and, further, how odd it was that when
Wagner was conducting the Philharmonic concerts in London, Mr. Anderson
informed him that it was the wish of the directors he should produce a
prize symphony of Lachner. The proposition startled Wagner and perhaps,
somewhat contemptuously, he exclaimed, “What! have I come all this way
to conduct a prize symphony by Lachner? No! no!” and he would not
either, not because the composition was superscribed “Lachner,” but
because of the really wretched Kapellmeister music it was.
The Wagner festival at Zurich was very gratifying to him. For a whole
week he was fêted, and at the close received an ovation that took all
his self-control. He addressed the audience in faltering accents, and on
bidding his friends farewell he broke down entirely--that they should
return to the fatherland and he an exile. Such a wail of anguish went
out from his heart as only those who have known the sensitive character
of the man can understand.
[Sidenote: _LOVE FOR HIS DOG._]
From the time Wagner went into exile his health generally gave way.
Constant brooding over his enforced isolation from his countrymen
induced melancholia, and in its train a malignant attack of his old
enemy, dyspepsia. His wife, fortunately, was of a homely nature with a
buoyancy of spirits, the value of which cannot be over-estimated, nor,
must I add, was Wagner insensible to her worth. But with these terrible
fits of dyspepsia which prostrated him for days, there also came, as one
ill upon another, attacks of erysipelas. When he had the strength, he
fought against them, but more often he succumbed. He sought relief at
hydropathic establishments, for which form of prevention and cure he
retained a fancy for many years. The bracing air of the mountains, too,
he sought as a means of removing the ills under which he suffered. He
was fond, too, of taking “Peps” with him in these rambles. “Peps,” it
will be remembered, was the dog who, he used to assert, helped him to
compose “Tannhäuser.” He was passionately fond of his dog, referred to
him in his letters with affection, and ascribed to him feelings and a
perceptiveness only possible from a man loving the animal kingdom as he
did. All who remember the last sad incidents connected with the
interment at Wahnfried will think of the faithful canine creature (a
successor of “Peps”), who came to lie on the grave, and could not be
induced to quit the spot where his master was buried. As it was there,
so it was at Zurich. He loved “Peps” with a human love. Taking his
constitutional on the Zurich mountains, “Peps” his companion, reflecting
upon his treatment by his fatherland, he would declaim against imaginary
enemies, gesticulate, and vent his irascible excitement in loud
speeches, when “Peps,” “the human Peps,” as he called him, with the
sympathy of the intelligent dumb creation, would rush forward, bark and
snap loudly as if aiding Wagner in destroying his enemies, and then
return, plainly asking for friendly recognition for the demolition. Such
an expression of sympathy delighted Wagner, and he was very pleased to
rehearse it all to his friends, calling in “Peps” to go through the
performance, and I must say the dog seemed to understand and appreciate
it all. Numerous anecdotes of this kind he could tell, and he generally
capped them with such a remark as, “‘Peps’ has more sense than your
wooden contrapuntists,” pointing his speech by naming the authors of
some concocted Kappelmeister music who were specially objectionable to
him.