At last the great composer's wanderings were coming to an end, but, as we have said, he died in Venice, and not at his own home. He was, however, buried there, in the garden of the villa.
It is at "Wahnfried" that the artist has drawn Wagner discussing some musical question with Liszt, Frau Wagner seated near by.
Wagner at Home. From painting by W. Beckmann.
Wagner's first wife was a beautiful and talented actress and singer, by name Wilhelmina Planer, whom he married at Riga in 1834. She was a faithful helpmate for years, sacrificing to him her own career, but did not comprehend his genius, and as years went by they drifted apart. The composer's professional intercourse with Hans von Bülow led to an intimacy with the latter's wife, Cosima von Bülow, who was an illegitimate daughter of Liszt by the Countess d'Agoult. In 1861 Richard and Wilhelmina Wagner separated, and in 1866 she died. Four years later, Cosima, then divorced from Von Bülow, was married to Wagner, whom she both worshipped and well understood. Their union was a very happy one, blest with one son named Siegfried, and Madame Wagner long survived her illustrious husband, and laboured indefatigably to carry on his work and increase his fame.
Wagner owed much to Cosima, born Liszt, and still more to her father, who was a never-failing friend. In a work published in 1851, Wagner says: "I was thoroughly disheartened from undertaking any artistic scheme. Only recently I had proofs of the impossibility of making my art intelligible to the public, and all this deterred me from beginning new dramatic works. Indeed, I thought that everything was at an end with artistic creativeness. From this state of mental dejection I was raised by a friend. By most evident and undeniable proofs, he made me feel that I was not deserted, but, on the contrary, understood deeply by those even who were otherwise most distant from me; in this way he gave me back my full artistic confidence.
"This wonderful friend, Franz Liszt has been to me. I must enter a little more deeply into the character of this friendship, which to many has seemed paradoxical; indeed, I have been compelled to appear repellent and hostile on so many sides, that I almost feel the want of disclosing all that relates to this sympathetic intercourse.
"I met Liszt for the first time in Paris, and at a period when I had renounced the hope, nay, even the wish, of a Parisian reputation; and, indeed, was in a state of internal revolt against the artistic life I found there. At our meeting Liszt appeared the most perfect contrast to my own being and situation. In the Parisian society, to which it had been my desire to fly from my narrow circumstances, Liszt had grown up from his earliest age, so as to be the object of general love and admiration, at a time when I was repulsed by general coldness and want of sympathy. In consequence, I looked upon him with suspicion. I had no opportunity of disclosing my being and work to him, and therefore the reception I met with on his part was altogether of a superficial kind, as indeed was quite natural in a man to whom every day the most divergent impressions claimed access. But I was not in a mood to look with unprejudiced eyes for the natural cause of his behaviour, which, friendly and obliging in itself, could not but hurt me in that state of my mind. I never repeated my first call on Liszt, and, without knowing or even wishing to know him, I was prone to look upon him as strange and adverse to my nature.
"My repeated expression of this feeling was afterward reported to Liszt, just at the time when the performance of my 'Rienzi,' at Dresden, attracted general attention. He was surprised to find himself misunderstood with such violence by a man whom he had scarcely known, and whose acquaintance now seemed not without value to him. I am still touched at recollecting the repeated and eager attempts he made to change my opinion of him, even before he knew any of my works. He acted not from any artistic sympathy, but led by the purely human wish of discontinuing a casual disharmony between himself and a fellow creature; perhaps he also felt an infinitely tender misgiving of having hurt me unconsciously. He who knows the terrible selfishness and insensibility in our social life, and especially in the relations of modern artists to each other, cannot but be struck with wonder, nay, delight, by the treatment I experienced from this extraordinary man.