Nor should the reader think that the worth of Wagner’s first wife is here over-estimated through partiality. There is another witness to her good qualities, who certainly will not be suspected of friendly feeling, viz. Count von Beust, the Saxon minister, who vigorously and unrelentingly persecuted the so-called revolutionist in 1849. Beust knew Minna in Dresden, and what he then learnt of the chapel master’s wife was not obliterated by forty years active participation in the diplomatic subtleties of European politics. In his autobiography,[22] published the latter end of 1886, he speaks of Minna’s amiable character, and describes her as an excellent woman.
Minna may be spoken of as a comely woman. Gentle and active in her movements, unobtrusive in speech and bearing, possessing a forethought akin to divination, she administered to her husband’s wants before he knew them himself. It was this lovable foresight of the woman which caused such a horrible vacancy in Wagner’s life when, later, Minna left him, a break which he so bitterly bemoaned, and which all the adoration and wealth of Louis of Bavaria could not atone for. As a housewife she was most efficient. In their days of distress she cheerfully performed what are vulgarly termed menial services. In this she is as fitting a parallel of Mrs. Carlyle, as Wagner is of Carlyle. Both the men were thinkers, aye, and “original” thinkers (which in Carlyle’s estimation was “the event of all others,” a fact of superlative importance). They both elected hard fare, nay, actual deprivation, to submission to the unrealities, and both are educators of our teachers: and Minna’s efforts in the house and sustaining Wagner in the dark days is the pendant of Mrs. Carlyle’s scrubbing the floors of the little house at Scotsbrig in the wilds of Scottish moors. But though Minna was not the intellectual equal of this cultured Scottish lady, she is not to be confounded with the German housewife, so often erroneously spoken of as a sort of head cook. She was eminently practical, and full of remedies for sickness.
NOT A TRUE PESSIMIST.
In art, however, Minna could not comprehend the gifts of her husband. He was an idealist; she, a woman alive to our mundane existence and its necessities. She worshipped afar off, receiving all he said without inquiry. In their early years their common youth glossed over difficulties. Moreover, Wagner was not in the full possession of his wings. He knew not his own power. For him exile was the turning-point of his greatness, the crucible wherein was destroyed the dross of his art, the fire from which he emerged, the teacher of a purified art. Exile was the period of his literary achievements. There was the test of his greatness. “A man thinks he has something to say. He indulges in an abundance of spoken language, but when in the quiet of his study he seeks to transfix on paper the fleeting theories of his brain, then is he face to face with himself, with actualities. And in exile Wagner first sought to set down in writing the theories which hitherto, in a limited manner only, had governed his work.”[23] From this self-examination Wagner rose up nobler and stronger. And here it was that Minna failed to keep pace with him. She had been a singer and an actress, and could, in a manner, interpret his work, but the meaning of it lay deep, hidden from her. It was not her fault, yet she was to suffer for it. Still I must point out that all Wagner’s works were created during the period of his first marriage. His union with Cosima von Bülow is dated 25th August, 1870, since which time “Götterdämmerung” (a poem written in 1848) and “Parsifal” only, have been given to the world.
While I was with Wagner it was his invariable habit to rise at the good hour of half-past six in the morning. If Minna was not about, he would go to the piano, and soon would be heard, at first softly, then with odd harmonies, full orchestral effects, as it were, “Get up, get up, thou merry Swiss-boy.” That was his fun. Early breakfast would be served in the garden, after which Wagner would hand me “Schopenhauer,” with my allotted task for the morning study. This plan, though Wagner’s, was one which coincided happily with my own inclinations. I was, as it were, ordered up to my room, there to ponder over the arguments of the pessimistic philosopher, and so be well prepared for discussion at the dinner-table, or later, during our regular daily stroll.
Now to me Schopenhauer was not the original great thinker that Wagner considered him. Some of his most prominent points I had found enunciated already by Burke, that eloquent and vigorous writer, in his “Enquiring into the Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful.” The personally well attested statement that “the ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the part of pleasure,” was so well reasoned by Burke, that Wagner induced me to read the whole of that author’s work to him.
Wagner a pessimist! So he would have had every one believe then, and for some time later too. But my impression then and now is that, as with a good many people, pessimism is only pre-eminent when fortune fails to favour. This feeling is confirmed by an extract recently published from certain manuscripts found after Wagner’s death: “He who does not strive to find joy in life is unworthy to live.” Certainly this was not the utterance of Wagner in the dark days of his work. While on this subject I may recall one incident which has remained prominently with me because of the locality where it occurred. We were on the top of one of the heights overlooking the Zurich Lake, discussing the much debated Schopenhauer, when I observed that pessimism, in a well-balanced mind, could only lead to optimism, on the ground that, “what cannot be cured must be endured,” and jocularly cited from Brant’s “Narrenschiff,” written in the quaint language of the fifteenth century:—
Wer sorget ob die genss gaut blos,
Und fegen will all goss und stross,
Und eben machen berg und tal
Der hat keyn freyd, raw überal.
He who shall fret that the geese have no dress,
The sweeper will be of street, road and mess.
He who would level both valley and hill
Shall have of life’s gifts no joy, but the ill.
Wagner stopped, shouted with exultation, and then commenced probing my knowledge of one of our earliest German poets. He assumed the part, as it were, of a schoolmaster, and so when we arrived home, in a boyish manner, he, delighted, called aloud to Minna before the garden gate was opened, “Ach, Ferdinand knows all about my pet poets.”