Richard Wagner, Composer of Operas

by John F. Runciman

Wagner's Birthplace

And so presently life began to move on as before, while the dead man slept in his grave. But immediately fresh troubles came. Albert fell dangerously ill and was threatened with a total breakdown of his health; Richard was an ailing infant; and a change in the arrangements of the theatrical company which provided Geyer with a portion of his income compelled him to remain in Dresden continuously. This proved really a stroke of good fortune. Glasenapp, basing his calculations on I know not what authorities or documents, computes that his earnings as an actor at this time came to £156 a year, and there seems every reason to think he was at least fairly well paid for his portraits. It was not enough to be shared between two families, or, we had better say, to be devoted to the up-keep of two homes. He determined rapidly on a bold stroke. That he was in love with Frau Wagner is more than any one can declare with confidence; but she was an amiable, bright woman, a good mother and thrifty housekeeper; and it is likely enough that she had inspired a deep affection in a singularly loving man. After the recovery of Albert the widow had gone for a change to Dresden; and there Geyer resolved to marry her—and resolved quickly; for Carl Friedrich died in November 1813, and early in 1814 the marriage took place. Soon after, the new Frau Geyer returned to Leipzig; then the whole family migrated to Dresden, where Richard was to pass from babyhood into boyhood and spend the first fourteen years of his life.

II

The Geyer-Wagner family set up their tent in the Moritz-strasse in Dresden, which belonged to the seventeenth or eighteenth century—was in fact almost mediæval. Life must have been atrociously narrow and trammelled to any free spirit. But Germany did not produce many of that sort at the time, and those she did produce were quickly silenced in gaol. Whether Geyer had yearnings for outward liberty cannot be said; but if he had he gave no expression to them, being himself a court player and a semi-court painter. Undoubtedly the main thing to him was that in the drowsy court air he could at least earn the means of bringing up adequately the large family he had taken on his shoulders. He played constantly in all sorts of parts, and in his off hours painted; he also wrote a number of theatre pieces of varying type and importance—none of which concern us here. His wife enjoyed a period of peace in which to attend to her husband, children and house, as a faithful hausfrau should. If Geyer was industrious and much occupied, he nevertheless found time to cultivate friendships, and some of them in later days were continued by Richard.

The whole life of the circle went on around the theatre or in it; it must have been their whole world, for of culture other than of the theatre there is no indication—save one or two half-hearted remarks of Geyer's at a slightly later period. They admired Goethe and Schiller, of course, and knew their theatre works; they knew of the Romantics in so far as they affected the theatre; it seems to have been only through the theatre they saw anything or could see anything. Breathing the theatrical atmosphere constantly, one after another of Geyer's step-children caught the theatre malady (for it will be admitted that men or women must have something the matter with them if they deliberately choose a theatrical life); and within a few years three of them were appearing on the stage. Albert left school and went to the university to study medicine; after a very brief struggle he gave this up, studied singing, and in 1819 or 1820 made his debut as a light-opera tenor. Before this Geyer had warned him against taking such a course; but apparently he was obdurate. On May 2 of the former year Rosalie had first appeared as an actress in a piece by Geyer; still earlier Louise had also begun acting child-parts. There must have been a good deal of family discussion and commotion about these things. It had been the wish of Friedrich Wagner that Rosalie should, or perhaps might, take to the stage as a profession, but in no case until she had attained the age of sixteen. Friedrich's brother Adolph, as I have said, set himself in deadly opposition to anything of the sort happening. Letters and counter-letters ensued; but the instinct of the youngsters turned out to be sufficiently strong, and perhaps the opposition of Geyer too feeble to carry the day; and one after another the Wagners took to the boards as ducklings to water. Geyer kept his word to his dead friend, however; and Rosalie, though she had been long preparing, made no public appearance until she reached sixteen. A little longer and Clara took up the family occupation. How all this affected the family generally, and especially Richard, we shall see before long. In the meantime it may be mentioned that Julius, the second son, nine years Richard's senior, was apprenticed at Eisleben to Geyer's younger brother, a goldsmith: he alone was not pulled stagewards.

III

Naturally enough there is nothing but idle and frequently fatuous hearsay to repeat of these early years, save this only, that Richard did not show the slightest musical precocity. Nor need this surprise us. Mozart, Bach, Beethoven were brought up in households where music was as the daily bread; their ears must have been filled with it while they were in their cradles. It is true that Handel's father dreaded music as a disease and a musician as a vagabond; but in this case the precocity is quite unattested, and the stories of the six-year boy practising on a dumb-spinet at midnight originated when the boy had become the most celebrated musician in Europe. I wish here to make a few not wholly irrelevant remarks. The tales of Handel's wondrous babyhood were repeated, and repeated many times, by writers who did not know what a dumb-spinet was and certainly made no inquiries regarding the source of the tales. Both legend and dumb-spinet are swallowed cheerfully to this day because so many authors accept them; and I would point out that the first author, No. I, was simply copied recklessly by author No. II, that author No. III, maybe a little less recklessly, copied No. II because he was supported by No. I; and thus the game went on until the simple minds of a generation think that what fifty writers have said must be true. Ten thousand times more has been written about Wagner than all that Handel provoked, and even less honest investigation has been made—result, a gigantic series of tales, genuine or mythical, based on what amounts to no authority whatever. Unless these are verifiable I leave them to the care of others, and pass on. So with regard to Wagner's childhood we know he showed himself no wonderful genius. We do know that he lived amidst folk whose whole conversation must have been of the theatre and drama, actors and actresses; that he was petted and taken about by his stepfather, and as soon as he was old enough, or sooner, went to the theatre while rehearsals were going on. "The Cossack," as Geyer called him, grew up a lively, quick-witted child, active and full of mischief, "leaving a trousers-seat per day on the hedge" and sliding down banisters—much indeed like many other children who afterwards for want of leisure neglected to compose a Ring or a Tristan. The theatrical life, I feel sure, did not differ greatly from the same life to-day. It is for the most part a sordid, petty existence, one in which one's days, weeks, months and years are frittered away; they pass and there is nothing tangible to show for them. When performances are not over until late, no one rises early; then come the rehearsals; then the evening performance again—and so home and to bed. Long intervals of waiting between spells of monotonous work can hardly be used for anything but gossiping at the stage-door or idling in cafés. Save for those who have risen high in popular favour—or, during Wagner's boyhood, the favour of kings or their mistresses—it is an uncertain life, with engagements terminable, and very often terminated, after a few years; and thus a hand-to-mouth way of grubbing along is generated, and a vagrant spirit developed: and in the majority, the huge majority, of cases lives spent in squalor, mean squabblings, spells of mechanical work alternating with enforced idleness, end in destitution and utter misery. Uncle Adolph was quite right: he knew how close the ordinary actor and opera-singer was to the cabotin. But Geyer, we must remember, was very far away indeed from the cabotin. Good-natured and sociable as he seemed, he must have held to his purpose with iron determination and stuck to his work; and whatever Richard and his brothers and sisters may have seen going on around them, we may be sure they saw none of it in their own home.

When in 1817 Weber arrived at Dresden to set up a real German opera, it seemed he must have landed in exactly the wrong place to carry out his plans. Only by a series of miracles did they get partially carried out; and here, as we know, he composed two works, Der Freischütz and Euryanthe, destined in after years to exert greater power over Richard's genius than any other music save Beethoven's—a power not inferior to that of Beethoven's music in some respects. Weber inevitably became a friend of the Geyers, and before Richard was much older he knew the great person to speak to and set him up in his heart as a demi-god. But as yet Richard was only picking up a little knowledge and trying, very faintly trying, to play the piano.

Meanwhile, Geyer's health was failing, though no one then foresaw what was to come. He acted, he painted, he wrote plays, he saw to the debuts of Albert and Rosalie; he tried a cure here and a cure there. In 1821 he moved to a larger house at the corner of the Jüdenhof and the Frauengasse, and rejoiced to have a larger studio for his picture-work. In July he went to Breslau and returned ill, tried Pillnitz and came back appearing a little better, and promptly got worse. On the evening of September 29 he heard Richard strumming the "Jungfernkranz," and asked his wife whether it was possible the boy had any gift for music; the following evening he died. The next morning Richard was told by his mother that his father would fain have made something of him; and, like young Teufelsdröckh, Wagner for long fancied something would be made of him.