Wagner as I Knew Him

by Ferdinand Praeger

Yours,
Richard Wagner.

Ah! Dear Ferdinand: I am faring tolerably well; have made some good friends, influential ones too, but that is not what I crave. “Tristan”! that’s it! I am ready to go back to Vienna at any moment, am expecting information from there, but again have feelings that the performance will not take place. Here, as you have doubtless seen through the press notices, my music has been received with an enthusiasm beyond what it ever before achieved in Germany. Tell Lüders that I called on his friends and they behaved in the kindest manner to me. Give the dear fellow my heartiest greetings. I would Minna were here with me; we might, in the excitement that now moves fast around me, grow again the quiescent pair as of yore. The whole thing is annoying. I am not in good spirits. I move about freely, and see a number of people, but my misery is bitter. Can you not arrange to come and be with me in the summer, wherever I may be? Write to me a long letter of how all is with you.

Yours ever,
Richard Wagner.

St. Petersburgh, February, 1863.

I did not see him that year; matters could not be arranged. But since that time the storm was gathering in intensity which was to soon break. Minna had been in correspondence with me. Of her letters I publish nothing. But the next from Wagner tells its own sad story in plain language. It is dated—

Mariafeld, April, 1864.

And so she has written to you? Whose fault was it? How could she have expected I was to be shackled and fettered as any ordinary cold common mortal. My inspirations carried me into a sphere she could not follow, and then the exuberance of my heated enthusiasm was met by a cold douche. But still there was no reason for the extreme step; everything might have been arranged between us, and it would have been better had it been so. Now there is a dark void, and my misery is deep. It has struck into my health, though I carefully attend to what you ever insist is the root of my ills—diet. Yet I do not sleep, and am altogether in a feverish state. It is now that I feel I have sounded my lowest note of dark despair. What is before me? I know not! Unless I can shortly and quickly rescue myself from this quicksand of gloom, it will engulf me and all will then be over. Change of scene I must have. If I do not I fear I shall sink from inanition. I like comfort, luxury—she fettered me there—How will it end?

Write to me soon.

Richard Wagner.

LUDWIG’S PRINCELY HELP.