IV
So, less than eight years after, Ludwig Geyer followed his friend Carl Friedrich Wagner to the grave, like him to a premature grave. He left only one child of his own, Augusta Cäcilie (born February 26, 1815); but he made Friedrich's widow his wife and her children were as his children; and he toiled hard for their comfort and planned unceasingly for their welfare; and when on an October morning he was left in his last peaceful home to rest, it must have seemed to his widow as though happiness was to be denied her until she joined him. The winter of 1813 had been black enough, but at once she had Geyer; in 1821 there was no second Geyer. Adolph Wagner may have seen in the tragedy a marked instance of the folly of having anything to do with the stage or actors. Possibly he did not realize that precisely through Geyer's connection with the theatre, and only to a comparatively small extent by means of his reputation as an artist, his sister-in-law and nephews and nieces suffered less than might have been anticipated. For on the morning following Geyer's death Rosalie swore to take his place as provider for the family, and that promise she kept.
When Richard was six months old, fate, as we have seen, struck her first blow, placed the first obstacle in the path of a successful infantile career, and swiftly sent Geyer to his aid. Now, when he was just turned eight, she snatched away Geyer, and had already Rosalie in readiness to help him. And, in fact, throughout Wagner's life fate seemed never to tire of delivering staggering blows with one hand, and with the other hand, at the same moment or a moment later, giving him compensation, often ample, sometimes on a scale of lordly generosity. From the beginning to the end of his seventy years no man ever had worse or better luck than Wagner. It is perfectly clear that fate meant him to write the Mastersingers and Tristan, and at times she was cruel to him only to be kind to humanity. It is true she seems to have made a mistake when she allowed him to complete Parsifal—but that matter lies as yet many chapters ahead.
It would appear that Frau Geyer had a pension of some sort; since May 1 Rosalie had been engaged with the Royal Court players of Dresden; Albert and Louise both had engagements at Breslau—one of Geyer's last acts had been to see Albert safely fixed there; it is probable, if not certain, that Adolph Wagner—who, after all, was fairly well off—lent a helpful hand: and the family, if not in the modest affluent circumstances they enjoyed while Geyer lived, at any rate tasted none of the bitterness of poverty. Glasenapp states that Geyer's "stock of pictures" had gone up in value after his death; but as he just previously tells us of Geyer's lack of time and of "would-be sitters" waiting their turn, we cannot see how the stock can have been very large. Let us hope, however, that it was, and that Geyer in his grave went on helping those he loved. Julius was safely bestowed at Eisleben; and the widow had Clara, Ottilie, Richard and Cäcilie to look after—quite enough, it is true, and calling for all the resources of her housewifery to make ends meet; but, still, nothing like the burden Geyer had taken up so courageously a few years before. How much Rosalie and Albert could spare out of the small salaries paid in those—and still paid in these—days by German theatres is a matter entirely for conjecture: it cannot have amounted to a mighty sum, the main point is that it served. I deal with these details, because at the first glance one is puzzled to know however the family managed to pull through at all and avoid the workhouse.
At first Richard was sent to his step-uncle Geyer at Eisleben, where, he himself says, he did little in the way of learning. Geyer tried to persuade him to work at his books and sent him to a school kept by one Alt, promising him he should go to the Kreuzschule at Dresden; but he had grown too fond of doing his reading on out-of-the-way lines; he was fond also of roaming the countryside. There was endless trouble in discovering what to do with him and what to make of him. At last a time came when Uncle Geyer could no longer keep him; and in response to inquiries Uncle Adolph answered virtually that he could and would do nothing. So towards the end of 1822 Richard was sent home to Dresden, and there on December 2 he was entered at the Kreuzschule as Richard Geyer. This, let me remark in passing, was and is common enough when a widowed mother has married a second time. Several such cases are within my own experience; and malicious snarls at Wagner's double name, as though at some period he had gone under an alias, are purely futile and worthy only of an advocate with a desperate case.
With this Wagner's period of infancy ends and he enters on that of boyhood—his life begins. Henceforth we shall hear less of other members of his family—though they will by no means drop out of the story completely, or all but completely, as they did when he came to his marrying days.
CHAPTER II
EARLY BOYHOOD
I
So far all we can learn about Wagner that is worth knowing amounts to this: he was born into and passed his first years in the precincts of Bohemia, where the Bohemian atmosphere was tempered with officialism, court-etiquette, and the influence of a methodical and resolutely conscientious stepfather. When Richard became a man and wrote on the theatre and theatrical life he showed an intimate knowledge of all details hardly possible to one who had not gone through this early experience: scores of things that an ordinary educated Englishman learns with considerable surprise were to him the merest matters of course. When an English composer resolves to write an opera, in the spirit in which a sculptor may decide to paint a picture or a flute-player to play the fiddle, he has to learn all, or as much as he can, about the requirements of the stage, and even then if his work comes to rehearsal he has to accept corrections and make alterations at the instance of those who have been through the proper early training. No one had anything to teach Richard in these respects: he knew by what seems an infallible instinct, but which was mainly the result of all he had seen since his babyhood, precisely what was effective and what ineffective on the stage, what was possible and what impossible. He made no mistakes; even the "impossibilities" of the Ring proved feasibilities and are now accomplished nightly without trouble in every opera-house of Europe.
This training—for it was a training, perhaps the very best for the career before him—now went on as in Geyer's time. He still dwelt in Bohemia, but as the influence of his stepfather had been salutary, so now to an extent came in the influence of school. Hitherto we have had rather to consider his family than him; but now the little individuality begins to emerge, more and more clearly and distinctly, from that circle. He begins an independent existence, controlled in an overwhelming degree by the life of the theatre and home-life, but also leading a life of his own at school and very wilfully taking a line or lines of his own there. We can now begin to trace the growth of the mental, and especially the artistic, nature of one of the most stupendous geniuses the earth has produced. It is altogether unnecessary to try to piece together anything approaching an elaborate sketch of the activities and escapades of these days: this would involve laying violent and liberal hands on the fruits of the labours of Glasenapp and a dozen other pickers-up of unconsidered trifles, would yield us nothing essential and might drive the reader to an untimely end. Out of the strangely tangled skein of truth and obvious fiction which is called his "life" for this period I shall endeavour only to pick out such threads of fact as seem to me helpful.
Richard remained five years at the Kreuzschule and took to the classics with avidity. The best part of his education was classical. True, he learned enough arithmetic to know how many marks made twenty and how many francs a louis; but the classics provided him with the pabulum his growing mind hungered for. His Greek professor took a special interest in him, which is not surprising when we remember that at the age of thirteen he translated twelve books of the Odyssey as a holiday task. Besides this he worked at philology and the ordinary school curriculum. It is just possible—just, I say—that had the family remained longer in Dresden he might never have turned to the Scandinavian sagas at all, but have become an eminent scholar and the composer of mediocre symphonic music. That, luckily, is one of the might-have-beens, and we need not mourn over it. Music he was very far from dropping. He had played a Weber scene while his stepfather was dying; and he continued to bang away at overtures with such a fingering, as Mr. Bernard Shaw has said, as of necessity would be employed by the average worker at a circular-saw. But the great awakening was not yet. He had first to give the world the mightiest drama ever conceived by the mind of an energetic, bright, self-confident boy.
I do not think there is on record a single instance of a great engineer having manifested artistic preferences in his youth, or of a great painter having misspent his boyhood in making toy machines. Always, from the very beginning, the boy unconsciously, without reflection, instinctively, helplessly, starts away in the direction he is destined to follow as a man; and though some potential great poets may be thwarted and ultimately discouraged and lost to the world, by far the more common phenomenon is that of young geniuses overcoming or brushing aside or dodging all obstacles at all costs (to themselves and every one else) and finding their true road, the path nature shaped them to tread. At the first glance Wagner might seem a startling exception to the nearly universal rule; but he is no exception. The theatre was his first love, and to the theatre he ever remained faithful: only through the theatre did his genius manifest itself; apart from the theatre it may be doubted whether he could have developed into the consummate technical musician of Tristan and the Mastersingers. Music was his second love, music associated with drama; and throughout his long career we find him engaged, first, in getting his drama true, poignant and effective, and then in allying it with music. Third in his affections came philosophy; and at this time of day it need scarcely be remarked that he always considered himself a bit of a philosopher, and toyed to the last with philosophy and pseudo-philosophy. Reams of good paper and gallons of good ink have been used in writing about the musician, the composer of the most magnificent operas in the world; weeks, months, years have gone to the writing. But all the paper, all the ink, all the labour, all the mental effort and sympathy and love seem a bagatelle when we look through the bibliographies and realize how much paper, ink, effort—not always to be called mental—sympathy and love have been used up in expounding Wagner's philosophy. The cases of Whitman and Browning make a poor show compared with this case. I believe there are still some human beings who turn for guidance to Wagner the philosopher. Later I shall be compelled to say something about the subject. What Wagner's docile apostles say does not greatly matter—in fact, does not matter at all; what Wagner said does demand a little consideration; and we must bear in mind that philosophy and pseudo-philosophy supplied him with the stuff out of which he wove the word-tissue of his dramas.