Farewell, my darling mother,
Your son,
Richard.
Dresden, 19th September, 1846.
It was well for Wagner that his mind was occupied with the composition of “Lohengrin” during 1846-47, for by the summer of the latter year the pressure of circumstances had become so acute that notwithstanding his exceptional elasticity of spirits the mental worry must have resulted in a more distressing depression than that which we know did take hold of him. This exuberance of youthful frolic is an important characteristic of Wagner. It was his sheet anchor, a refuge from annoyances that would have incisively irritated or crushed another. True, he would burst into a passion at first,—there is no denying his passionate nature,—but it was of short duration and once over the boisterous merriment of a high-spirited school-boy succeeded. Though deeply wounded, as only finely strung sensitive natures can be, he was quick to recover, and whilst animadverting upon the denseness of those who slighted his art, he distorted the incident and treated it as worthy of affording fun only. Wagner identified himself with his art body and soul, his breath of life was art, his pulse throbbed for art, and to wound him was insulting art. His success was the triumph of art, and the sacrifices his friends made of mental energy, wealth, and time were regarded by him but as votive offerings to the altar of the divine art, honouring the donor. Then when his scores of “Rienzi,” the “Dutchman,” and “Tannhäuser” were returned unopened by managers, he turned with undiminished ardour upon “Lohengrin,” doubting his capacity to realize in tones his feelings, but with dauntless fortitude to write his “love-music” for the glory of art, conscious that its scenic interpretation was, for the present at least, a very improbable circumstance.
PUBLISHING THREE OPERAS.
What, in Wagner’s character at all times, inspires our admiration is his courage. “He never knew when he was beaten.” Weighed down with monetary difficulties,—though his poor means were made rich by the wealth of love and ready invention of Minna, whose patience and self-denial he was always ready to extol,—with a cloudy art horizon, he sought to approach the great public in a more direct manner than by stage representations, by publishing the three operas already composed. It was not a difficult matter; he was a local celebrity, and on the strength of his reputation he entered into an engagement with a Dresden firm, Messrs. Meser and Co. The large initial cost was borne by the firm, but the liability was Wagner’s. Messrs. Meser and Co. predicted a success, and risking nothing, or comparatively nothing, urged the issue of “Rienzi,” “Dutchman,” and “Tannhäuser.” The contract was signed, the works were produced, but alas, the forecast was pleasant to the ear but breaking in the hope. There was absolutely no sale, and claims were soon preferred on the luckless composer for the cost of production. Of course they could not be met. Wagner had no available funds, his income was insufficient for his daily needs, and so he borrowed, borrowed where he could, sufficient to temporarily appease the publishers. This debt, paid by instalments, hung over him as a black cloud for years, always breaking when he was least equal to meet it. How he has stormed at his folly, and regretted his heedlessness of the future, but the demand met, his tribulation was immediately forgotten. A brother of mine, passing through Dresden in 1847, wrote to me of his surprise at the state of Wagner’s finances, and of the sum that was necessary to keep him afloat, which under my direction was immediately supplied.
It was then that Wagner wrote to me: “Try and negotiate for the sale of my opera ‘Tannhäuser’ in London. If there be no possibility of concluding a bargain, and gaining a tangible remuneration for me, arrange that some firm shall take it so as to secure the English copyright.” I went off at once to my friend Frederick Beale, the head of the house Cramer, Beale and Co., now Cramer and Co. Though Frederick Beale was an enthusiast in art, with a sense beyond that of the ordinary speculator in other men’s talent, yet “he could not see his way to publishing ‘Tannhäuser.’” I knew Beale would have done much for me, our relations being of so intimate a character, but the times “were out of joint,” his geniality had just then led him to accept much that proved a financial loss to the firm, and so the work which, as time now shows, would have produced a future, was rejected, yes, rejected, though on behalf of Wagner I offered it for nothing. It is the old, old story; Carlyle offering his “Sartor Resartus” for nothing, Schubert his songs, etc., etc., and rejected as valueless by the purblind publisher. The publisher invariably is the man of his period; he is incapable of seeing beyond his age, and thrusts aside the genius who writes for futurity. “Wouldst thou plant for eternity?” asks Carlyle, “then plant into the deep, infinite faculties of man, his fantasy and heart; wouldst thou plant for a year and a day? then plant into his shallow, superficial faculties, his self-love and arithmetical understanding.”
CHAPTER XIV.
1848.
I NOW come to perhaps the most important period in Richard Wagner’s life, full of deep interest in itself, and pregnant with future good to our art. Additional interest is further attached to it because of the incomplete or inaccurate accounts given by the many Wagner biographers. For this shortcoming, this unsatisfactory treatment, Wagner is himself to blame. He has left behind him rich materials for an almost exhaustive biography; he was a man of great literary power, a clear and full writer, and yet, with reference to the part he played in the revolution in Saxony, of 1848-49, he is singularly, I could almost say significantly, silent, or, when he does allude to it, his references are either incomplete or misleading.
Wagner was an active participator in the so-called Revolution of 1849, notwithstanding his late-day statements to the contrary. During the first few of his eleven years of exile his talk was incessantly about the outbreak, and the active aid he rendered at the time, and of his services to the cause by speech, and by pen, prior to the 1849 May days; and yet in after-life, in his talk with me, I, who held documentary evidence, under his own hand, of his participation, he in petulant tones sought either to minimize the part he played, or to explain it away altogether. This change of front I first noticed about 1864, at Munich. But before stating what I know, on the incontestable evidence of his own handwriting, his explicit utterances to me, the evidence of eyewitnesses, and the present criminal official records in the procès-verbal Richard Wagner, of his relations with the reform movement (misnamed the Revolution); I will at once cite one instance of his—to me—apparent desire to forget the part he enacted during a trying and excited period.