The next letter from Wagner is dated Zurich, 12th February. In it he speaks of “wishing for some quiet room, free from annoying visitors, where no one but yourself, knowing of my existence, will come to pester me while scoring part of my tetralogy. Your house I will gladly make as my own, but as a number of strangers are likely to call, I hope to escape them in solitude of unknown regions. You must not think this strange, as I isolate myself at home the whole morning, and do not permit a soul to come near me when at work, unless it be ‘Peps.’ You will remember, too, when I did something similar to this at Dresden, and left the world to go into retirement with August Roeckel.”
A few days after he left Zurich for London, his next letter being dated—
Paris, 2d March, 1855.
I am on the road to you. I expect to leave here Sunday morning early, and shall accordingly arrive in London in the evening, probably somewhat late. If, therefore, without further notice, I must be so unceremonious with you, the friend, whom, alas, I am not yet personally acquainted with, as to tumble right into the house, then must I beg of you to expect me on Sunday night. Trusting that I shall not ill-use your friendly hospitality, if only for this night, for I suppose we shall succeed in trying to find on Monday morning an agreeable lodging, in which I might at once install myself, for from the many exertions, I fear I shall come very fatigued to you. I do not doubt that you will have the kindness to inform Hogarth that, dating from Monday morning early, I shall be at the disposition of the directors of the Philharmonic. In so doing I keep my promise to be in London a week before the first concert. With the entreaty to best excuse me to your wife, and in hearty joy of your personal acquaintanceship,
I am yours very faithful,
Richard Wagner.
Wagner arrived at midnight precisely on Sunday, the fifth of March.
HIS HAT WOULD NOT DO.
If I had not already acquired through the graphic letters of August Roeckel an insight into the peculiarities of Richard Wagner’s habits of thought, power of grasping profound questions of mental speculation, whilst relieving the severity of serious discourse by the intermingling of jocular ebulitions of fancy, I was soon to have a fair specimen of these wondrous qualities. One of the many points in which we found ourselves at home, was the habit of citing phrases from Schiller or Goethe, as applicable to our subjects of discussion, as often ironically as seriously. To these we added an almost interminable dictionary of quotations from the plays and operas of the early part of the century. These mental links were, in the course of a long and intimate friendship, augmented by references to striking qualities, defects, or oddities, our circle of acquaintances forming a means of communication between us which might not inaptly be likened to mental shorthand. Nothing could have exceeded the hilarity, when, upon showing him, at an advanced hour, to his bedroom, he enthusiastically said, “August was right; we shall understand each other thoroughly!” I felt in an exalted position, and dreamed that, like Spontini, I had received a new decoration from some potentate which delighted me, but the pleasant dream soon turned to nightmare, when I could find no room on my coat to place the newly acquired bauble. The next morning I found the signification of the dream. Exalted positions have their duties as well as their pleasures, and it became my duty to acquaint Wagner that a so-called “Necker” hat (i.e. a slouched one) was not becoming for the conductor of so conservative a society as the Philharmonic, and that it was necessary that he should provide himself with a tall hat, indeed, such headgear as would efface all remembrance of the social class to which his soft felt hat was judicially assigned, for, be it known, in some parts of Germany the soft slouched felt hat had been interdicted by police order as being the emblem of revolutionary principles. I think it was on the strength of the accuracy of this last statement that Wagner gave way, and I at once followed up the success by taking the composer of “Tannhäuser” to the best West End hatter, where, after an onslaught on the sons of Britannia and their manias, we succeeded in fitting a hat on that wondrous head of the great thinker. I could not help sarcastically joking Wagner on his compulsory leave-taking with the “revolutionary” hat for four months,—the time he was to sojourn amongst us,—by citing from Schiller’s “Fiesco” the passage about the fall of the hero’s cloak into the water, upon which Verina pushes him after it with the sinister words, “When the purple falls, the duke must follow.” As to Richard Wagner’s democratic principles, I observed that the solitude of exile had considerably modified them. This I noticed to my surprise and no less pain, for, when I anxiously inquired after our poor friend, August Roeckel, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Perhaps he tries to revolutionize the prison warders, for the ‘Wuhlers’” (uprooters, a name of the period) “are never at rest in their self-elected role of reformers!” I, who knew the unambitious, self-sacrificing nature of the poor prisoner, felt a pang of disappointment at Wagner’s remark, and had often to suffer the same when the year 1849 was mentioned.
A DIFFICULT INTERVIEW.
We drove from the hatmaker straight to the city to inquire after a box containing the compositions Wagner had been requested to bring over with him. The box had arrived, and then we continued our peregrination back to the West, alighting at Nottingham Place, the residence of Mr. Anderson. The old gentleman possessed all the suave, gentle manner of the courtier, and all went well during the preliminary conversation about the projected programme, until Mr. Anderson mentioned a prize symphony of Lachner as one of the intended works to be performed. Wagner sprang from his seat, as if shot from a gun, exclaiming loudly and angrily, “Have I therefore left my quiet seclusion in Switzerland to cross the sea to conduct a prize symphony by Lachner? no; never! If that be a condition of the bargain I at once reject it, and will return. What brought me away was the eagerness to head a far-famed orchestra and to perform worthily the works of the great masters, but no Kapellmeister music; and that of a ‘Lachner,’ bah!” Mr. Anderson sat aghast in his chair, looking with bewildered surprise on this unexpected outbreak of passion, delivered with extraordinary volubility and heat by Wagner, partly in French and partly in German. I interposed a more tranquillizing report of the harangue and succeeded in assuring Mr. Anderson that the matter might be arranged by striking out the “prize” composition, to which he directly most urbanely acceded. Wagner, who did not fail to perceive the startling effect his derisive attack on the proposed work had produced on poor Mr. Anderson, whose knowledge of the French language was fairly efficient in an Andante movement, but quite incapable of following such a presto agitato as the Wagner speech had assumed, begged me to explain the dubious position of prize compositions in all cases, and certainly no less in the case of the Lachner composition, and Wagner himself laughingly turned the conversation into a more general and quiet channel. After thus having tranquillized the storm, the interview ended more agreeably than the startling episode had promised. I, however, then clearly foresaw the many difficulties likely to occur during the conductorship of a man of Wagner’s Vesuvius-like temper, and the sequel amply proved that I had not been unduly prejudiced in this respect. Yet in all his bursts of excitability, a sudden veering round was always to be expected, should it chance that the angry poet-musician perceived any ludicrous feature in the controversy, when he would turn to that as a means of subduing his ebullition of temper, and falling into a jocular vein, would plainly show he was conscious of having exceeded the bounds of moderation. I was glad that we had passed the Rubicon of our difficulties for the present, for I was fully aware that whatever difficulties might arise with regard to Wagner’s relation to the other directors, they would be easily overcome by Mr. Anderson’s support, for it was he who unquestionably ruled the “Camarilla,” or secret Spanish council, as Wagner styled the “seven,” when any work proposed by them for performance met with disapproval. I never could well understand how the Lachner episode became known, but it is certain that it did, for the German opposition journals, and there were many, made great capital out of the refusal of Wagner to conduct a prize symphony.