From Königsberg he paid a flying visit to Dresden, the city of his school-boy days. With his accustomed omnivorous reading, scanning every book within reach, he fell upon Bulwer Lytton’s “Rienzi.” Here was a subject inviting treatment on a large scale. Here was a hero of the style of William Tell and Masaniello. The spirit was revolution and moral regeneration of the people. It was a happy chance which led him to this story, the sentiment of which harmonized so perfectly with his own aspirations. Visions of Paris and its grand opera house had never left him. “Rienzi” offered the very situations calculated to impress an audience accustomed to the gorgeous splendour of the grand opera. Although his eyes were turned towards the French capital, and his immediate hope the conquest of the Parisians, it was not his sole nor ultimate desire. Paris was a means only. He saw that Paris governed German art, and he felt that only through Paris lay his hope of success in his fatherland. It was while under such influences that he began to formulate “Rienzi.”
His stay in Königsberg was cut short owing to the company becoming bankrupt. This was the second experience of the kind he had met with in the provinces, and it helped to intensify his contempt for stage life. He was again in money troubles. Fortunately, his old friend Dorn was well placed at Riga and able to secure for him the post of conductor of the opera there. The company was a good one, and its director, Hotter, an intelligent and well-known playwright, who understood Wagner’s artistic ambition. The young conductor was very exacting in his demands at rehearsals. To appeal to him was useless. He was earnest and inflexible. And yet, notwithstanding his earnestness and the trouble he took in producing uncongenial operas, he became weary of their flimsy material. Within him the sap of the future music-drama was beginning to rise. His own genius and artistic tendencies were in conflict with what was enacted before him. It was the difference between simulated and real feeling. What he was forced to conduct was stage sentiment, what he yearned for was life-blood. And this latter he strove to infuse into his “Rienzi,” which was now assuming definite shape, words and part of the music being written.
STARTS FOR PARIS.
When two acts were finished to his satisfaction, there was no longer any peace for him. Paris was the only fitting place where it could be adequately represented. But how to get to Paris? At Riga, as elsewhere, he lived beyond his means. I have before remarked on his incapability of controlling his expenses and living within a fixed income. Minna was thrifty and anxious, but her will was not strong enough to restrain her self-willed husband. She was in a constant state of nervous worry, but her devotion to Wagner prevented her making serious resistance. Now funds were wanting for the projected Paris trip, he had none. However, such a trivial item was not likely to thwart his ambition and to stand in his way. He borrowed again. He was without any letters of recommendation to Paris, spoke but very little French, and yet was full of buoyancy and hope of the success that awaited him when there. It was a bold, not to say reckless, venture. But it is characteristic of Wagner. At all great junctures of his life he risked the whole of his stakes on one card. His determination to leave Riga, and to turn his back on the irritating miseries of a provincial theatre, led him to embark with his wife and an enormous dog, in a small merchant vessel Pillau for London. Totally unprovided with any convenience for passengers, badly provisioned and undermanned, the frail trading-craft took the surprisingly long period of three weeks and a half to reach London. It encountered severe weather and on two occasions narrowly escaped foundering. The three passengers, Richard Wagner, his wife, and dog, were miserably ill. On one occasion the bark was driven into a Norwegian fiord; the crew and its passengers—there were no others on board beside the Wagner trio—landed at a point where an old mill stood. The poor wretches, snatched from the jaws of death, were hospitably received by the owner, a poor man. He produced his only bottle of rum and struck joy into all their hearts by brewing a bowl of punch. It was evidently appreciated by the hapless ship’s company, as Wagner was hilarious when he spoke of what he humorously called his “Adventures at the Champagne Mill.” When the weather had cleared sufficiently the ship set sail for London and arrived without any further mishap.
CHAPTER VII.
EIGHT DAYS IN LONDON.
1839.
LONDON IS TOO LARGE.
His first impression of London was not a pleasant one. The day was wretched, raining heavily, and the streets were thick with mud. At the Custom House Wagner was helped through the vexatious passport annoyance by a German Jew—one of those odd men always to be found about the stations and docks ready to perform any service for a trifling consideration. He recommended Wagner to a small, uninviting hotel in Old Compton Street, Soho, much resorted to by needy travellers from the continent. The hotel, considerably improved, still exists. It is situated a dozen doors or so from Wardour Street, and is opposite to a public house known then, as now, as the “King’s Arms.” Wagner would have gone straight away to a first-class hotel, but this time, feeling how very uncertain the immediate future was, he asked to be recommended to a cheap inn. He hired a cab, one of those curious old two-wheeled vehicles, where the driver was perilously perched at the side, and with his big dog, carefully sheltered from the weather under the large apron which protected the forepart of the vehicle, they started for Old Compton Street. Arrived there without incident, such of their luggage as they had been able to bring with them at once was carried upstairs, and Wagner and his wife sat down gloomily regarding each other. The room was dingy and poorly furnished, and not of a kind to brighten weary, seasick travellers. Wagner called his dog. No response. He opened the door, rushed down the narrow, dark staircase to the street. Alas! Neither dog nor cab were to be seen. He inquired of every one in broken English, but could learn nothing hopeful or certain about his dumb friend, the companion of his journey, and silent receiver of much of his exuberant talk. Returning to Minna, they came to the conclusion that the dog had leaped down from underneath the covering while the luggage was being transported upstairs. But where was he now? They had not the faintest clue, and knew not in which direction to seek for him. That evening, their first in London, was one of sorrow and discomfort. The next morning Wagner went back to the docks and gleaned tidings sufficient only to dishearten him the more. The dog had been seen the previous evening. Back to Old Compton Street, disconsolate; he had scarcely ascended the first flight of stairs when, his step recognised, loud barks of welcome greeted him from above. The dog was there. It had found its way into the room where his wife had remained during his absence. The poor beast was bespattered with mud, but this did not prevent Wagner affectionately fondling him. To Wagner the return of the dog was wonderful. How a dumb brute, that had seen absolutely nothing during the journey from the docks to Old Compton Street, could find its way back to the old starting-place, and then retrace its steps was a marvellous instance of canine instinct, and one which endeared the race to him deeper than ever, a love that endured to the last.
Wagner remained in London about eight days, time to look round and to arrange for passage to Boulogne, where Meyerbeer was staying, and from whom he hoped to receive introductions to Paris. Although Wagner could read English he was not sufficient master of it to understand it when spoken. This in some degree accounts for the slight interest he felt in his London visit. But he made the best use of his time. He was living within a quarter of an hour’s walk of the house in Great Portland Street where his “adored idol,” Weber, had died. To that shrine he made his first pilgrimage, to reverently gaze upon the hallowed house. He traversed all London, determining to see everything. The vastness of the metropolis with its boundless sea of houses oppressed him. He had strong, decided opinions as to what the dimensions of a town should be, attributing much of the poverty and misery of large towns to their overgrowth, and felt that when a township exceeded certain limits it was beyond the control of a governing body, and that neglect in some form or another would soon make itself felt. No city, he used to argue, should be larger than Dresden then was.
FASCINATED BY SHIPS.
He was amazed and most disagreeably surprised with the bustle of the city. It bewildered him, and, as he expressed it, “fretted his artistic soul out of him.” The great extremes of poverty and riches, dwelling in close proximity to each other, were a sad, unsolvable enigma. His lodgings were perhaps in one of the worst neighbourhoods of London. Old Compton Street abutted on the Seven Dials. There he saw misery under some of its saddest aspects, and then, but a few minutes’ walk and he found himself amidst the luxury of Oxford Street and Regent Street. The feelings engendered by this glaring inequality in his radical spirit were never effaced. He thought that the English in their character, their institutions, and habits were strangely contradictory, and the impressions of 1839 were confirmed on his subsequent visits to this country. The grand, extensive parks, open to all, delighted him. In Germany he had seen no parks, and where public walks or gardens had been laid out, walking on the grass was prohibited, whilst here no officious guardian attempted to interfere with the free perambulation of the visitor. The bearing of the police, too, equally surprised him. Here they were ready with information, acting as protectors of the public, whereas in Germany at that period they were aggressive and bureaucratic. It is curious, but at no time do I remember Wagner speaking of having visited any of the London theatres in 1839, whilst in 1855, when he was here for the second time, he went to almost every place of amusement then open, even those of third-rate order. But if in London he fell upon “sunny places,” compared with his German home, he also was sorely tried. As I have remarked, his rooms were in a very unaristocratic quarter. The bane of all studious Englishmen, especially musicians—the imported organ-grinder, unknown in Germany—worried the excitable composer out of all patience. The Seven Dials was a favourite haunt of the wandering minstrel, and the man who retired at night, full of wild imaginings as to his “Rienzi,” was worked into a state of frenzy by two rival organ men grinding away, one at each end of the street.