My Life Volume II Part 7

A Venetian piano-teacher, Tessarin by name, was more successful than Winterberger in winning favour with me. He was a typical handsome Venetian, with a curious impediment in his speech; he had a pa.s.sion for German music, and was well acquainted with Liszt's new compositions, and also with my own operas. He admitted that having regard to his surroundings he was a 'white raven' in matters musical. He also succeeded in approaching me through Ritter, who seemed to be devoting himself in Venice to the study of human nature rather than to work. He had taken a small and extremely modest dwelling on the Riva dei Schiavoni, which, being in a sunny position, required no artificial heating. This was in reality less for himself than for his scanty luggage, as he was hardly ever at home, but was running about in the daytime after pictures and collections; in the evening, however, he studied human nature in the cafes on the Piazza San Marco. He was the only person I saw regularly every day; otherwise I rigorously avoided any other society or acquaintance. I was repeatedly asked by the Princess Galitzin's private physician to call upon that lady, who came to Venice very shortly and appeared to be living in grand style. Once, when I wanted the piano scores of Tannhauser and Lohengrin, and had heard that the Princess was the only person in Venice who possessed them, I was bold enough to ask her for them, but I did not feel it inc.u.mbent on me to call on her for that purpose. On only one occasion did any stranger succeed in interrupting my seclusion, and then it was because his appearance had pleased me when I had met him in the Albergo San Marco; this was Rahl the painter, from Vienna. I once went so far as to arrange a sort of soiree for him, Prince Dolgoroukow, and Tessarin the pianoforte teacher, at which a few of my pieces were played. It was then that Winterberger made his debut.

All my social experiences during the seven months I spent in Venice were limited to these few attempts at friendly intercourse, and apart from these my days were planned out with the utmost regularity during the whole time. I worked till two o'clock, then I got into the gondola that was always in waiting, and was taken along the solemn Grand Ca.n.a.l to the bright Piazzetta, the peculiar charm of which always had a cheerful effect on me. After this I made for my restaurant in the Piazza San Marco, and when I had finished my meal I walked alone or with Karl along the Riva to the Giardino Pubblico, the only pleasure-ground in Venice where there are any trees, and at nightfall I came back in the gondola down the ca.n.a.l, then more sombre and silent, till I reached the spot where I could see my solitary lamp s.h.i.+ning from the night-shrouded facade of the old Palazzo Giustiniani. After I had worked a little longer Karl, heralded by the swish of the gondola, would come in regularly at eight o'clock for a few hours' chat over our tea. Very rarely did I vary this routine by a visit to one of the theatres. When I did, I preferred the performances at the Camploi Theatre, where Goldoni's pieces were very well played; but I seldom went to the opera, and when I did go it was merely out of curiosity.

More frequently, when bad weather deprived us of our walk, we patronised the popular drama at the Malibran Theatre, where the performances were given in the daytime. The admission cost us six kreuzers. The audiences were excellent, the majority being in their s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, and the pieces given were generally of the ultra-melodramatic type. However, one day to my great astonishment and intense delight I saw there Le Baruffe Chioggiote, the grotesque comedy that had appealed so strongly to Goethe in his day, at this very theatre. So true to nature was this performance that it surpa.s.sed anything of the kind I have ever witnessed.

There was little else that attracted my attention in the oppressed and degenerate life of the Venetian people, and the only impression I derived from the exquisite ruin of this wonderful city as far as human interest is concerned was that of a watering-place kept up for the benefit of visitors. Strangely enough, it was the thoroughly German element of good military music, to which so much attention is paid in the Austrian army, that brought me into touch with public life in Venice. The conductors in the two Austrian regiments quartered there began playing overtures of mine, Rienzi and Tannhauser for instance, and invited me to attend their practices in their barracks. There I also met the whole staff of officers, and was treated by them with great respect. These bands played on alternate evenings amid brilliant illuminations in the middle of the Piazza San Marco, whose acoustic properties for this cla.s.s of production were really excellent. I was often suddenly startled towards the end of my meal by the sound of my own overtures; then, as I sat at the restaurant window giving myself up to impressions of the music, I did not know which dazzled me most, the incomparable piazza magnificently illuminated and filled with countless numbers of moving people, or the music that seemed to be borne away in rustling glory to the winds. Only one thing was wanting that might certainly have been expected from an Italian audience: the people were gathered round the band in thousands listening most intently, but no two hands ever forgot themselves so far as to applaud, as the least sign of approbation of Austrian military music would have been looked upon as treason to the Italian Fatherland. All public life in Venice also suffered by this extraordinary rift between the general public and the authorities; this was peculiarly apparent in the relations of the population to the Austrian officers, who floated about publicly in Venice like oil on water. The populace, too, behaved with no less reserve, or one might even say hostility, to the clergy, who were for the most part of Italian origin. I saw a procession of clerics in their vestments pa.s.sing along the Piazza San Marco accompanied by the people with unconcealed derision.

It was very difficult for Ritter to induce me to interrupt my daily arrangements even to visit a gallery or a church, though, whenever we had to pa.s.s through the town, the exceedingly varied architectonic peculiarities and beauties always delighted me afresh. But the frequent gondola trips towards the Lido const.i.tuted my chief enjoyment during practically the whole of my stay in Venice. It was more especially on our homeward journeys at sunset that I was always over-powered by unique impressions. During the first part of our stay in the September of that year we saw on one of these occasions the marvellous apparition of the great comet, which at that time was at its highest brilliancy, and was generally said to portend an imminent catastrophe. The singing of a popular choral society, trained by an official of the Venetian a.r.s.enal, seemed like a real lagoon idyll. They generally sang only three-part naturally harmonised folk-songs. It was new to me not to hear the higher voice rise above the compa.s.s of the alto, that is to say, without touching the soprano, thereby imparting to the sound of the chorus a manly youthfulness. .h.i.therto unknown to me. On fine evenings they glided down the Grand Ca.n.a.l in a large illuminated gondola, stopping before a few palaces as if to serenade (when requested and paid for so doing, be it understood), and generally attracted a number of other gondolas in their wake. During one sleepless night, when I felt impelled to go out on to my balcony in the small hours, I heard for the first time the famous old folk-song of the gondolieri. I seemed to hear the first call, in the stillness of the night, proceeding from the Rialo to about a mile away like a rough lament, and answered in the same tone from a yet further distance in another direction. This melancholy dialogue, which was repeated at longer intervals, affected me so much that I could not fix the very simple musical component parts in my memory. However, on a subsequent occasion I was told that this folk-song was of great poetic interest.

As I was returning home late one night on the gloomy ca.n.a.l, the moon appeared suddenly and illuminated the marvellous palaces and the tall figure of my gondolier towering above the stern of the gondola, slowly moving his huge sweep. Suddenly he uttered a deep wail, not unlike the cry of an animal; the cry gradually gained in strength, and formed itself, after a long-drawn 'Oh!' into the simple musical exclamation 'Venezia!' This was followed by other sounds of which I have no distinct recollection, as I was so much moved at the time. Such were the impressions that to me appeared the most characteristic of Venice during my stay there, and they remained with me until the completion of the second act of Tristan, and possibly even suggested to me the long-drawn wail of the shepherd's horn at the beginning of the third act.

These sensations, however, did not manifest themselves very easily or consecutively. Bodily sufferings and my usual cares, that never quite left me, often considerably hindered and disturbed my work. I had scarcely settled down comfortably in my rooms, the northerly aspect of which exposed them to frequent gusts of wind (from which I had practically no protection in the form of heating appliances), and had barely got over the demoralising effect of dysentery, when I fell a victim to a specific Venetian complaint, namely a carbuncle on my leg, as the result of the extreme change of climate and of air. This happened just when I was intending to resume the second act, that had been so cruelly interrupted. The malady, which I had first regarded as slight, soon increased and became exceedingly painful, and I was obliged to call in a doctor, who had to treat me carefully for nearly four weeks. It was in the late autumn, towards the end of November, that Ritter left me to pay a visit to his relations and friends in Dresden and Berlin; I therefore remained quite alone during this long illness, with no other society than that of the servants of the house.

Incapable of work, I amused myself by reading the History of Venice by Count Daru, in which I became much interested, as I was on the spot.

Through it I lost some of my popular prejudices against the tyrannical mode of government in ancient Venice. The ill-famed Council of Ten and the State Inquisition appeared to me in a peculiar, although certainly horrible, light; the open admission that in the secrecy of its methods lay the guarantee of the power of the state, seemed to me so decidedly in the interests of each and every member of the marvellous republic, that the suppression of all knowledge was very wisely considered a republican duty. Actual hypocrisy was entirely foreign to this state const.i.tution; moreover the clerical element, however respectfully treated by the government, never exercised an unworthy influence on the development of the character of the citizens as in other parts of Italy. The terrible selfish calculations of state reasons were turned into maxims of quite an ancient heathen character, not really evil in themselves, but reminiscent of similar maxims among the Athenians, which, as we read in Thucydides, were adopted by them in all simplicity, as the foundations of human morality. In addition to this I once more took up, by way of a restorative, as I had often done before, a volume of Schopenhauer, with whom I became on intimate terms, and I experienced a sensation of relief when I found that I was now able to explain the tormenting gaps in his system by the aids which he himself provided.

My few a.s.sociations with the outer world now became calmer, but one day I was distressed by a letter from Wesendonck in which he informed me of the death of his son Guido, who was about four years old; it depressed me to think that I had refused to stand G.o.dfather to him, on the pretext that I might bring him bad luck. This event touched me deeply, and as I was longing for a thorough rest, I mapped out for myself a short journey across the Alps, with the idea that I might spend Christmas with my old friends, and offer them my condolences. I informed Mme. Wille of this idea, and in reply received, strange to say, from her husband instead of from herself, some quite unexpected particulars regarding the extremely unpleasant curiosity which my sudden departure from Zurich had caused, especially in reference to the part my wife had played in it, and at which the Wesendonck family had been so much annoyed. As I also heard how skilfully Wesendonck had treated the matter, some agreeable communications followed couched in conciliatory terms. It was much to Minna's credit that in her relations towards me she had by her letters proved herself wise and considerate, and while staying in Dresden, where she met her old friends, she lived quietly, and I always provided for her amicably. By so doing she strengthened the impression she had made on me at the time of that touching nocturnal scene, and I willingly put before her the possibility of a domestic reunion, provided that we could establish a home that promised to be a permanent one, which at that time I could only picture to myself as feasible in Germany, and if possible in Dresden. To obtain some idea as to whether it was possible to carry out such an arrangement, I lost no time in applying to Luttichau, as I had received favourable reports from Minna about his kindly feeling and warm attachment to me. I really went so far as to write to him cordially and in detail. It was another lesson for me when in return I received occasionally a few dry lines in a businesslike tone, in which he pointed out that at that moment nothing could be done with respect to my desired return to Saxony. On the other hand, I learned through the police authorities in Venice, that the Saxon amba.s.sador in Vienna ardently wished to drive me even out of Venice. This proved unsuccessful, however, as I was sufficiently protected by a Swiss pa.s.sport, which to my great delight the Austrian authorities duly respected. The only hope I had with regard to my longed-for return to Germany was based on the friendly efforts of the Grand Duke of Baden.

Eduard Devrient, to whom I also applied for more definite information respecting our project of a first performance of Tristan, informed me that the Grand Duke looked upon my presence at the performance as an understood thing; whether he was taking any steps on his own account against the League, in case his direct efforts to obtain the King of Saxony's permission should be fruitless, or whether he intended to accomplish it in some other way, he did not know. Consequently I realised that I could not count on the possibility of an early settlement in Germany.

A great deal of my time was taken up in correspondence with the object of procuring the necessary means of subsistence, which at that time, owing to the divided household, made no small calls upon my purse.

Fortunately a few of the larger theatres had not yet come to terms about my operas, so I might still expect some fees from them, whereas those from the more active theatres had already been spent. The Stuttgart Court Theatre was the last to apply for Tannhauser. At that time I had a particular affection for Stuttgart, owing to the reasons I have already mentioned; this was also true of Vienna, which had been the first place to produce Lohengrin, and, in consequence of its success, thought it necessary to secure Tannhauser. My negotiations with Eckert, who was director at that time, quickly led to satisfactory results.

All this happened during the course of the winter and early spring of 1859. Otherwise I lived very quietly and with great regularity, as I have described. After recovering the use of my leg, I was able in December to begin my regular gondola trips to the Piazzetta again and the return journeys in the evening, and also to give myself up for some time uninterruptedly to my musical work. I spent Christmas and New Year's Eve quite alone, but in my dreams at night I often found myself in society, which had a very disturbing effect on my rest.

At the beginning of 1859 Karl Ritter suddenly turned up again at my rooms for his usual evening visits. His anxiety about the performance of a dramatic piece he had written had taken him to the sh.o.r.es of the Baltic. This was a work he had completed a short time before ARMIDA, much of which again showed his great talent. The tendency of the whole play is to show terrible glimpses of the poet's soul, and these prevent one from pa.s.sing a favourable judgment on some parts of the piece, but other parts, notably the meeting of Rinaldo with Armida, and the violent birth of their love, are depicted by the author with real poetic fire. As is the case with all such works, which are in reality always hampered by the superficiality of the dilettante, much should have been altered and rewritten for stage effect. Karl would not hear of this; on the contrary, he thought he had discovered, in an intelligent theatrical manager in Stettin, the very man who would lay aside any such considerations as were peculiar to me. He had, however, been disappointed in this hope, and had come back to Venice intending to carry out his fond desire of living aimlessly. To wander through Rome clad in the garb of a capuchin, studying the treasures of art from hour to hour, was the kind of existence he would have preferred to any other.

He would not hear of a remodelled version of ARMIDA, but declared his intention to set to work on some new dramatic material which he had taken from Machiavelli's FLORENTINE HISTORIES. He would not specify what this material was more definitely, lest I should dissuade him from using it, inasmuch as it contained only situations, and absolutely no indication of any purpose. He seemed no longer to have any desire to give himself up to musical work, although even in this respect the young man showed himself to me in a thoroughly interesting light by a fantasy for the piano which he had written soon after his arrival in Venice. Nevertheless he displayed a more highly intelligent appreciation than before of the development of the second act of Tristan, in which I had at last made regular progress. In the evening I frequently played to him, Winterberger and Tessarin, the portions I had completed during the day, and they were always deeply moved. During the previous interruption in my work, which had lasted rather a long time, Hartel had engraved the first act of the score, and Bulow had arranged it for the piano. Thus a portion of the opera lay before me in monumental completeness, while I was still in a fruitful state of excitement with regard to the execution of the whole. And now in the early months of the year the orchestration of this act, which I continued to send in groups of sheets to the publisher to be engraved, also neared completion. By the middle of March I was able to send off the last sheets to Leipzig.

It was now necessary to make new decisions for my plan of life. The question presented itself as to where I was going to compose the third act; for I wished to begin it only in a place where I had a prospect of finis.h.i.+ng it undisturbed. It seemed as if this was not destined to be the case in Venice. My work would have occupied me until late into the summer, and on account of my health I did not think I dared spend the hot weather in Venice. Its climate about this time of the year did not commend itself to me. Already I had found great disadvantages and anything but favourable results from the fact that it was not possible to enjoy the invigorating recreation of rambling about in this place.

Once in the winter, when I wanted a good walk, I had gone by train to Viterbo to take my fill of exercise by tramping inland for several miles towards the mountains. Inhospitable weather had opposed my progress, and this, added to other unfavourable circ.u.mstances, resulted in my bringing away from my excursion nothing more valuable than a favourable opinion of the city of lagoons, to which I fled as to a place of refuge against the dust of the streets and the spectacle of horses being cruelly used. Moreover, it now turned out that my further stay in Venice no longer depended wholly on my own will. I had been recently cited (very politely) before a commissioner of police, who informed me, without mincing the matter, that there had been an incessant agitation on the part of the Saxon emba.s.sy in Vienna against my remaining in what was a part of the Austrian Empire. When I explained that I only wished to extend my stay to the beginning of spring, I was advised to obtain permission to do so from the Archduke Maximilian, who as viceroy resided in Milan, preferring my request on the ground of ill-health as alleged by a doctor's certificate. I did this, and the Archduke issued immediate instructions by telegram to the Administrative Government of Venice, to leave me in peace.

But soon it became clear to me that the political situation, which was putting Austrian Italy into a state of ferment, might develop into an occasion for renewing active precautionary measures against strangers.

The outbreak of war with Piedmont and France became more and more imminent, and the evidence of deep agitation in the Italian population grew more unmistakable every moment. One day, when I was sauntering up and down the Riva with Tessarin, we came upon a fairly large crowd of strangers, who, with a mixture of respect and curiosity, were watching the Archduke Maximilian and his wife as they were taking the air during a short visit to Venice. The situation was rapidly conveyed to me by my Venetian pianist, who nudged me violently and sought to drag me away from the spot by my arm: in order that, as he explained, I might be spared the necessity of raising my hat to the Archduke. Seeing the stately and very attractive figure of the young Prince pa.s.sing along, I slipped by my friend with a laugh, and took honest pleasure in being able by my greeting to thank him for his protection, although, of course, he did not know who I was.

Soon, however, everything began to a.s.sume a more serious aspect, and to look gloomy and depressing. Day by day the Riva was so crowded with troops newly disembarked, that it became quite unavailable for a promenade. The officers of these troops, on the whole, made a very favourable impression on me, and their homely German tongue, as they chatted harmlessly with one another, reminded me pleasantly of home. In the rank and file, on the other hand, I could not possibly feel any confidence, for in them I saw chiefly the dull servile features of certain leading Slav races in the Austrian monarchy. One could not fail to recognise in them a certain brute force, but it was no less clear that they were entirely devoid of that naive intelligence which is such an attractive characteristic of the Italian people. I could not but grudge the former race their victory over the latter. The facial expression of these troops recurred forcibly to my memory in the autumn of this year in Paris, when I could not avoid comparing the picked French troops, the Cha.s.seurs de Vincennes and the Zouaves, with these Austrian soldiers; and without any scientific knowledge of strategy, I understood in a flash the battles of Magenta and Solferino. For the present I learned that Milan was already in a state of seige and was almost completely barred to foreigners. As I had determined to seek my summer refuge in Switzerland on the Lake of Lucerne, this news accelerated my departure; for I did not want to have my retreat cut off by the exigencies of war. So I packed up my things, sent the Erard once more over the Gotthard, and prepared to take leave of my few, acquaintances. Ritter had resolved to remain in Italy; he intended to go to Florence and Rome, whither Winterberger, with whom he had struck up a friends.h.i.+p, had hurried in advance. Winterberger declared that he was provided by a brother with money enough to enjoy Italy--an experience which he declared necessary for his recreation and recovery, from what disease I do not know. Ritter therefore counted upon leaving Venice within a very short time. My leave-taking with the worthy Dolgoroukow, whom I left in great suffering, was very sincere, and I embraced Karl at the station, probably for the last time, for from that moment I was left without any direct news of him, and have not seen him to this day.

On the 24th of March, after some adventures caused by the military control of strangers, I reached Milan, where I allowed myself to stay three days to see the sights. Without any official guide to help me, I contented myself with following up the simplest directions I could obtain to the Brera, the Ambrosian Library, the 'Last Supper' of Leonardo da Vinci, and the cathedral. I climbed the various roofs and towers of this cathedral at all points. Finding, as I always did, that my first impressions were the liveliest, I confined my attention in the Brera chiefly to two pictures which confronted me as soon as I entered; they were Van Dyck's 'Saint Anthony before the Infant Jesus' and Crespi's 'Martyrdom of Saint Stephen.' I realised on this occasion that I was not a good judge of pictures, because when once the subject has made a clear and sympathetic appeal to me, it settles my view, and nothing else counts. A strange light, however, was shed on the effect made by the purely artistic significance of a masterpiece, when I stood before Leonardo da Vinci's 'Last Supper' and had the same experience as every one else. This work of art, although it is almost entirely destroyed as a picture, produces such an extraordinary effect on the mind of the spectator, that even after a close examination of the copies hanging beside it representing it in a restored state, when he turns to the ruined picture the fact is suddenly revealed to the eye of his soul that the contents of the original are absolutely inimitable.

In the evening I made all haste to get to the Italian comedy again. I grew very fond of it, and found it had installed itself here in the tiny Teatro Re for the benefit of a small audience of the lower orders.

The Italians of to-day unfortunately despise it heartily. Here, too, the comedies of Goldoni were played with, as it seemed to me, considerable and ingenious skill. On the other hand, it was my fate to be present at a performance in the Scala Theatre, where, in a setting of an external magnificence that was extraordinary, it was proved true that Italian taste was degenerating sadly. Before the most brilliant and enthusiastic audience one could wish for, gathered together in that immense theatre, an incredibly worthless fake of an opera by a modern composer, whose name I have forgotten, was performed. The same evening I learned, however, that although the Italian public was pa.s.sionately fond of song, it was the ballet which they regarded as the main item; for, obviously, the dreary opera, at the beginning was only intended to prepare the way for a groat ch.o.r.eographic performance on a subject no less pretentious than that of Antony and Cleopatra. In this ballet I saw even the cold politician Octavia.n.u.s, who until now had not so far lost his dignity as to appear as a character in any Italian opera, acting in pantomime and contriving fairly successfully to maintain an att.i.tude of diplomatic reserve. The climax, however, was reached in the scene of Cleopatra's funeral. This afforded the immense staff of the ballet an opportunity for displaying the most varied picturesque effects in highly characteristic costumes.

After receiving these impressions all by myself, I travelled to Lucerne one brilliant spring day by way of Como, where everything was in full blossom, through Lugano, which I knew already, and the Gotthard, which I had to cross in small open sledges along towering walls of snow. When I reached Lucerne the weather was bitterly cold, in contrast with the genial spring I had enjoyed in Italy. The allowance of money I had made for my stay in Lucerne was based on the a.s.sumption that the big Hotel Schweizerhof was quite empty from about this time until the summer season began, and that without further preliminaries I should be able to find a lodging there both s.p.a.cious and free from noise. This hope had not been entertained in vain. The courteous manager of the hotel, Colonel Segesser, allotted to me a whole floor in the annexe on the left, to occupy at my pleasure. I could make myself quite comfortable here in the larger rooms at a moderate price. As the hotel at this time of the year had only a very small staff of servants, it was left to me to make arrangements for some one to wait upon me. For this purpose I found a careful woman well suited to look after my comfort. Many years afterwards, remembering the good services she had rendered me, especially later on when the number of guests had increased, I engaged her as my housekeeper.

Soon my things arrived from Venice. The Erard had been obliged to cross the Alps again when the snow was on the ground. When it was set up in my s.p.a.cious drawing-room, I said to myself that all this trouble and expense had been incurred to enable me at last to complete the third act of Tristan und Isolde. There were times when this seemed to me to be an extravagant ambition; for the difficulties in the way of finis.h.i.+ng my work seemed to make it impossible. I compared myself to Leto who, in order to find a place in which to give birth to Apollo and Artemis, was hunted about the world and could find no resting-place until Poseidon, taking compa.s.sion on her, caused the island of Delos to rise from the sea.

I wished to regard Lucerne as this Delos. But the terrible influence of the weather, which was intensely cold and continuously wet, weighed upon my spirits in a most unfriendly fas.h.i.+on until the end of May. As such great sacrifice had been made to find this new place of refuge, I thought every day had been uselessly frittered away which had not contributed something to my work of composing. For the greater part of my third act I was occupied with a subject sad beyond words; it came to such a pa.s.s that it is only with a shudder that I can recall the first few months of this emigration to Lucerne.

A few days after my arrival I had already visited the Wesendoncks in Zurich. Our meeting was melancholy, but in no way embarra.s.sed. I spent some days in my friends' house, where I saw my old Zurich acquaintances again, and felt as though I were pa.s.sing from one dream to another. In fact, everything a.s.sumed an air of unsubstantiality for me. Several times in the course of my stay in Lucerne I repeated this visit, which was twice returned to me, once on the occasion of my birthday.

Besides the work on which I was now somewhat gloriously engaged, I was also heavy with cares about keeping myself and my wife alive. Of my own accord and out of necessary respect for the circ.u.mstances in which my friends the Ritters were placed, I had already in Venice felt myself for the future obliged to decline their voluntary support. I was beginning to exhaust the little that I could contrive to extract with difficulty from those of my operas which up to this period it had been possible to produce. It was settled that I should take up the Nibelungen work when Tristan was finished, and I thought it my duty to find out some way of making my future existence easier. This Nibelungen work spurred me to the attempt. The Grand Duke of Weimar still kept up his interest in it, to judge from the communications I had received from him during the previous year. I therefore wrote to Liszt and repeated my request that he would make a serious proposal to the Grand Duke to buy the copyright of the work and arrange for its publication, with the right of disposing of it to a publisher on his own terms. I enclosed my former negotiations with Hartel, which had been broken off, and which were now intended to serve as a fair basis for what may be called the business arrangement that Liszt was to enter into with the Grand Duke. Liszt soon gave me an embarra.s.sed hint that his Royal Highness was not really keen on it. This was quite enough for me.

On the other hand, I was driven by circ.u.mstances to come to an agreement with Meser in Dresden about the unfortunate copyright of my three earlier operas. The actor Kriete, one of my princ.i.p.al creditors, was making piteous demands for the return of his capital. Schmidt, a Dresden lawyer, offered to put the matter right, and after a long and heated correspondence it was arranged that a certain H. Muller, successor to Meser, who had died a short time before, should enter into possession of the copyright of these publications. On this occasion I heard of nothing but of the costs and expenditure to which my former agent had been put; but it was impossible to get any clear account of the receipts he had taken from my works beyond the fact that the lawyer admitted to me that the late Meser must have put aside some thousands of thalers, which, however, it would not be possible to lay hands on, as he had not left his heirs any funds at all.

In order to pacify the woeful Kriete, I was eventually obliged to agree to sell my rights in the works Meser had published for nine thousand marks, which represented the exact sum I owed to Kriete and another creditor who held a smaller share. With regard to the arrears of interest still owing on the money at compound rate, I remained Kriete's personal debtor; the joint sum amounted in the year 1864 to five thousand four hundred marks, which were duly claimed of me about this time with all the pressure of the law. In the interests of Pusinelli, my chief creditor, who could only be provided under this arrangement with inadequate payment, I reserved to myself the French copyright of these three operas, in the event of this music being produced in France through my efforts at finding a publisher to purchase it in that country.

According to the contents of a letter from the lawyer Schmidt, this reservation of mine had been accepted by the present publisher in Dresden. Pusinelli in a friendly spirit forbore to take advantage of the benefits accruing to him from this arrangement, in regard to the capital he had formerly lent me. He a.s.sured me he would never claim it.

Thus one possibility remained open to me for the future: that if my operas could make their way into France, although there would be no question of any profit coming to me through those works of mine, I should be reimbursed for the capital I had spent on them and for that which I had been obliged to guarantee. When, later on, my Paris publisher Flaxland and I came to make out an agreement, Meser's successor in Dresden announced himself as absolute proprietor of my operas, and actually succeeded in putting so many obstacles in Flaxland's way in the conduct of his French business, that the latter was compelled to purchase peace at the price of six thousand francs.

The natural result of this was that Flaxland was placed in the position of being able to deny that it was I who owned the French copyright of my work. Upon this I made repeated appeals to Adolph Schmidt, the lawyer, to give evidence in my favour, asking nothing more of him than that he should forward to me a copy of the correspondence referring to the rights I had reserved, which had become valid in the Lucerne transaction. To all the letters addressed to him on this subject, however, he obstinately refused an answer, and I learned later on from a Viennese lawyer that I must give up hoping to get this kind of evidence, as I had no legal means in my possession to force the advocate to give it, if he were not so inclined.

While, owing to this, I had little opportunity of improving my prospects for the future, I had at least the satisfaction of seeing the score of Tannhauser engraved at last. As the stock of my earlier autograph copies had come to an end, chiefly through the wasteful management of Meser, I had already persuaded Hartel when I was in Venice to have the score engraved. Meser's successor had acquired the complete rights of this work, and therefore regarded it as a point of honour not to give up the score to another publisher; consequently he took over the task of producing it at his own cost. Unluckily fate demanded that just a year later I had to revise and reconstruct the first two scenes completely. To this day it is a subject of regret to me not to have been able to introduce this fresh piece of work into the engraved score.

The Hartels, never faltering in their a.s.sumption that Tristan might provide good food for the theatre, set their men busily to work upon engraving the score of the second act, while I was at work on the third. The process of registering corrections, while I was in the throes of composing the third act--one long ecstasy--wielded over me a strange, almost uncanny influence; for in the first scenes of this act it was made clear to me that in this opera (which had been most unwarrantably a.s.sumed to be an easy one to produce), I had embodied the most daring and most exotic conception in all my writings. While I was at work on the great scene of Tristan, found myself often asking whether I was not mad to want to give such work to a publisher to print for the theatre. And yet I could not have parted with a single accent in that tale of pain, although the whole thing tortured me to the last degree.

I tried to overcome my gastric troubles by using (among other things) Kissingen water in moderate doses. As I was fatigued and made incapable of work by the early walks I had to take during this treatment, it occurred to me to take a short ride instead. For this purpose the hotel manager lent me a horse, aged twenty-five, named Lise. On this animal I rode every morning as long as it would carry me. It never conveyed me very far, but turned back regularly at certain spots without taking the slightest notice of my directions.

Thus pa.s.sed the months of April, May, and the greater part of June, without my completing even half of my composition for the third act, and all the while I was contending with a mood of the deepest melancholy. At last came the season for the visitors to arrive; the hotel with its annexes began to fill, and it was no longer possible to think of maintaining my exceptional privilege with regard to the use of such choice quarters. It was proposed to move me to the second storey of the main building, where only travellers who spent the night on their way to other places in Switzerland were put up, whereas in the annexes people were lodged who came to make a long stay, and who used their rooms day and night. As a matter of fact, this arrangement answered admirably. From this time forward I was completely undisturbed during the hours of my work in my little sitting-room with its adjoining bedchamber, as the rooms engaged for the night by strangers in this storey were perfectly empty in the daytime.

Really splendid summer weather set in eventually, lasting a good two months with a continuously cloudless sky. I enjoyed the curious charm of protecting myself against the extremes of the sun's heat by carefully keeping my room cool and dark, and going out on to my balcony only in the evening to surrender myself to the influence of the summer air. Two good horn-players gave me great pleasure by providing a performance of simple folk-songs almost regularly in a skiff on the lake. In my work, too, I had now luckily pa.s.sed the critical point, and in spite of its sorrowful character, the more subdued mood of that part of my poem which I had still to master, threw me into a sincere spiritual ecstasy, during which I completed the composition of the whole work by the beginning of August, fragments only remaining to be orchestrated.

Lonely as was my life, the exciting events of the Italian war provided me plenty of interest. I followed this struggle, as unexpected as it was significant, through the thrilling course of its successes and reverses. Still I did not remain entirely without company. In July, Felix Drasecke, whom I had not known before, came to Lucerne for a lengthy visit. After hearing a performance of the prelude to Tristan und Isolde conducted by Liszt, he had almost immediately determined to make himself personally acquainted with me. I was completely terrified by his arrival, and was at a loss to know what to do with him.

Moreover, as his talk was in a certain facetious vein, overflowing with stories of persons and circ.u.mstances for which I was gradually losing all appreciation, he soon began to bore me, a fact which astonished him, and which he recognised so clearly that he thought he had better leave after a few days. This made me in my turn embarra.s.sed, and I now took special care to deprive him of the bad opinion he had formed of me. I soon learned to like him, and for a considerable time, until shortly before his departure from Lucerne, he was my daily companion, from whose intercourse I derived much pleasure, as he was a highly gifted musician and by no means a prig. But Drasecke was not my only visitor.

Wilhelm Baumgartner, my old Zurich acquaintance, came to spend a few weeks in Lucerne out of kindness to me. And lastly Alexander Seroff from St. Petersburg came to stay some time in the neighbourhood. He was a remarkable man, of great intelligence, and openly prepossessed in favour of Liszt and myself. He had heard my Lohengrin in Dresden and wanted to know more of me--an ambition I was obliged to satisfy by playing Tristan to him in the rough-and-ready fas.h.i.+on which was peculiar to me. I went up Mount Pilatus with Drasecke, and again had to look after a companion who suffered from giddiness. To celebrate his departure I invited him to take an excursion to Brunnen and the Grutli.

After this we took leave of each other for the time being, as his moderate resources did not permit him to remain any longer, and I too was seriously thinking of taking my departure.

The question now arose as to where I was to go. I had addressed letters, first through Eduard Devrient, and finally direct to the Grand Duke of Baden, asking the latter for a guarantee that I might settle, if not in Karlsruhe itself, at least in some small place in the neighbourhood. This would suffice to set at rest a craving, which could no longer be suppressed, for intercourse now and then with an orchestra and a company of singers, if only to hear them play. I learned later that the Grand Duke had really bestirred himself in the matter by writing to the King of Saxony. But the view still prevailed in that quarter that I could not be granted an amnesty, but could only hope to receive an act of grace; it being a.s.sumed, of course, that I would first have to report myself to a magistrate for examination. Thus the fulfilment of my wish remained impossible, and I shrank in dismay before the problem of how to secure a performance of my Tristan which I could superintend in person, as I had determined to do. I was a.s.sured that the Grand Duke would know what measures to resort to in order to meet the situation. But the question was, where was I to turn for a place in which to settle with some prospect of being able to remain there. I longed for a permanent home again. After due consideration I decided that Paris was the only place where I could make sure of now and then hearing a good orchestra and a first-cla.s.s quartette. Without these stimulating influences Zurich at last became unbearable, and in no other city but Paris, where I could stay undisturbed, could I safely reckon on being able to obtain artistic recreation of a sufficiently high standard.

At last I had to bestir myself to come to a decision about my wife. We had now been apart from each other for a whole year. After the hard lessons she had received from me, and which, according to her letters, had left a deep impression upon her, I was justified in a.s.suming that the renewal of our life in common might be made tolerable; especially as it would remove the grave difficulty of her maintenance. I therefore agreed with her that she should join me late in the autumn in Paris. In the meantime I was willing to look for a possible abode there, and undertook to arrange for the removal of our furniture and household goods to the French capital. In order to carry out this plan financial a.s.sistance was imperative, as the means at my disposal were quite inadequate. I then made to Wesendonck the same offer in regard to my Nibelungen that I had made to the Grand Duke of Weimar, that is to say, I proposed that he should buy the copyright for publis.h.i.+ng the work.

Wesendonck acceded to my wishes without demur, and was ready to buy out each of the completed portions of my work in turn for about the same sum as it was reasonable to suppose a publisher would pay for it later on. I was not able to fix my departure, which took place on the 7th of September, when I went for a three days' visit to my friends in Zurich.

I spent these days at the Wesendonck's, where I was well looked after and saw my former acquaintances, Herwegh, Semper, and Gottfried Keller.

One of the evenings I spent with them was marked by an animated dispute with Semper over the political events of the time. Semper professed to recognise, in the recent defeat of Austria, the defeat of the German nationality; in the Romance element represented by Louis Napoleon, he recognised a sort of a.s.syrian despotism which he hated both in art and politics. He expressed himself with such emphasis that Keller, who was generally so silent, was provoked into a lively debate. Semper in his turn was so aggravated at this, that at last in a fit of desperation he blamed me for luring him into the enemy's camp, by being the cause of his invitation to the Wesendonck's. We made it up before we parted that night, and met again on several occasions after this, when we took care never again to let our discussions become so pa.s.sionate. From Zurich I went to Winterthur to visit Sulzer. I did not see my friend himself, but only his wife and the boy she had borne to him since my last visit; the mother and child made a very touching and friendly impression on me, particularly when I realised that I must now regard my old friend in the light of a happy father.

On the 15th of September I reached Paris. I had intended to fix my abode somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Champs Elysees, and with this object in view at once looked out for temporary lodgings in that district, which I found eventually in the Avenue de Matignon. My main object was to discover my desired peaceful place of refuge in some small house remote from the thoroughfares. I at once bestirred myself to find this, and thought it my duty to make use of every acquaintance I could call to mind. The Olliviers were not in Paris at the time; Countess d'Agoult was ill, and was also busy arranging her departure for Italy, and unable to receive me. She referred me to her daughter the Countess Charnace, upon whom I called, but without being able to explain to her the purpose I had in view. I also looked up the Herold family, who had received me in such a friendly way on my last visit to Paris; but I found Mme. Herold in a strange and morbidly excitable state of mind, the result of ill-health, so that instead of discussing my views with her, my only thought was to keep her calm and avoid upsetting her by even the slightest appeal for help. In my pa.s.sionate longing to find a home I decided to get no further information, but set about the matter myself. At last I discovered in the Rue Newton near the Barriere de l'Etoile, a side street off the Champs Elysees, not yet completed in accordance with a former plan of Paris, a nice little villa with a small garden. I took this on a three-years' agreement at a rent of four thousand francs a year. Here, at all events, I might look for complete quiet and total isolation from the noise of the streets.

This fact alone prepossessed me very much in taking the little house, the late occupier of which had been the well-known author Octave Feuillet, who was at that time under the patronage of the imperial court. But I was puzzled that the building, in spite of my being unable to detect anything old in its structure, had been so neglected inside.

The proprietor could in no way be induced to do anything to restore the place and make it habitable, even if I had consented to pay a higher rent. The reason of this I discovered some time afterwards: the estate itself was doomed in consequence of the plans for the rebuilding of Paris; but the time had not yet come to make the official announcement of the government's intentions to the proprietors, because, had this been done, their claims to compensation would have become valid at once. I consequently laboured under the pleasant delusion that whatever I was obliged to spend on interior decoration and on restoring the property would, in the course of years, prove to be money well invested. I therefore proceeded to give the necessary instructions for the work without hesitating, and ordered my furniture to be sent from Zurich, thinking that as fate had driven me to my choice, I could regard myself as a resident of Paris for the rest of my life.

While the house was being prepared, I tried to get my bearings as to what could be extracted for my future existence out of the popularity of my artistic works. The first thing I did was to look up M. de Charnal and to get information from him about the translation of the libretto of my Rienzi with which he had been entrusted. It turned out that M. Carvalho, the director of the Theatre Lyrique, would hear of absolutely nothing but Tannhauser. I prevailed upon Carvalho to visit me to talk the matter over. He declared that he was most certainly inclined to produce one of my operas, only it must be Tannhauser, because, as he explained, this opera was identified with me among the Parisians, who would think it ridiculous to produce any other work under the name of 'Wagner.' As to my choice of a translator for the poem of this opera he seemed to entertain grave doubts: he asked whether I had not made a mistake, whereupon I tried to get more definite information about the capabilities of M. de Charnal, and discovered to my horror that this charming young man, who boasted that he had collaborated in a melodrama called Schinderhannes, which he thought was a German romantic subject, had not had the slightest conception of the character of the work he was handling.

As his enthusiasm moved me, I tried to shape some verses with him and make them practicable for musical purposes; but I failed utterly, and all my trouble was in vain. Bulow had once drawn my attention to Auguste de Gasperini, a young doctor who had ceased to practise, and whose acquaintance he had made in Baden-Baden, where he discovered that he was extraordinarily fond of my music. I called upon him without loss of time, and as he was not in Paris, I wrote to him. This man sent his friend Leroy to me with a letter of recommendation. He was a well-educated Parisian music-master, who won my esteem by his attractive personality. My confidence in him was aroused, because he at once dissuaded me from a.s.sociating myself with an obscure journalist on a theatrical newspaper (in which character M. de Charnal finally disclosed himself), and advised me to go to Roger, a highly gifted and experienced operatic singer, who had been a favourite with the Parisian public and was master of the German language. This lifted a load from my heart: I accepted the invitation which Leroy arranged for me through another friend, who took me down to Roger's country place one day to meet him. I have forgotten the name of this large estate which was occupied by the Paris tenor, whose fame had been so celebrated up to that time; the chateau had once belonged to a marquis, and was built in a very sumptuous style and surrounded by extensive hunting-grounds. It was the desire to handle a gun and make use of these grounds (which he loved) that, only a short time before, had landed this charming singer in a terrible disaster which had shattered his right arm.

I found Roger, some months after the accident, completely recovered; but the forearm had had to be amputated. The question now was whether a famous mechanician, who had promised to make him a perfect subst.i.tute for the lost limb even in the matter of free gesticulation, would be able to carry out his task. He succeeded fairly well, as I saw with my own eyes some time later, when I witnessed Roger act in a benefit performance which the Grand Opera had given him, and use his arm so ingeniously that he received great applause for this reason alone. In spite of this he had to accept the fact that he was regarded as 'disabled,' and that his career at the Grand Opera in Paris had come to a close. For the time being he seemed to be glad to secure for himself some sort of literary occupation, and accepted with much pleasure my proposal that he should make a translation of Tannhauser for practical use. He sang to me the French text of some of the main themes which he had already translated, and they seemed to me good. After I had spent a day and a night with the singer, who had once been such a popular favourite, and was now condemned to look forward to a sad decline, I felt in very good spirits and full of hope, more especially as his intelligent way of approaching my opera gave me a pleasing idea of the extent to which it was possible to cultivate the French mind. In spite of this I had soon to give up the notion of Roger's working for me, as for a long time he was entirely absorbed in trying to make secure the position into which he had fallen through his terrible accident. He was so busy with his own affairs that he could hardly give me an answer to my inquiries, and for the time being I lost sight of him altogether.

I had come to this arrangement with Roger more by chance than out of necessity, as I continued to adhere firmly to my plan simply to seek a suitable pied-a-terre in Paris. My serious artistic enterprises, on the other hand, were still directed to Germany, from which, from another point of view, I was an enforced exile. Soon, however, the whole aspect of affairs changed: the proposed performance of Tristan in Karlsruhe, on which I had continued to keep an eye, was finally announced as abandoned. I had to remain uncertain as to the precise reason why this undertaking had been given up, which at an earlier stage had apparently been pursued with so much zeal. Devrient pointed out to me that all his attempts to secure an appropriate representation of the rule of Isolde had been shattered by my deciding against the singer Garrigues (who had already married young Schnorr), and that he felt his incapacity to offer advice on the rest of the business all the more keenly because Schnorr, the tenor, whose devotion to me was so great, had himself despaired of being able to execute the last portion of the task a.s.signed to him. I realised at once that this was an obstacle which I should have been able to overcome, together with all its disastrous consequences, if I had been permitted, even for a brief s.p.a.ce of time, to visit Karlsruhe. But the mere expression of this wish seemed, as soon as it was reiterated, to arouse the bitterest feelings against me.

Devrient expressed his opinion on the matter with so much violence and brutality that I could not help seeing that what kept me from Karlsruhe was mainly his personal disinclination to have me there, or to be interfered with in the conduct of his theatre.

A less potent factor in the situation I found in the painful feeling now aroused in the Grand Duke at the prospect of not being able to fulfil the promise he had once held out to me, that I should visit him in Karlsruhe, where he was in residence; if the main object for the visit were to subside under pressure of other considerations, he could only regard this circ.u.mstance in the light of an almost desirable event. At the same time I received from Bulow, who had gone several times to Karlsruhe, fairly broad hints as to what Devrient was aiming at. Full light was shed on the affair at a later stage; for the present it was a matter of the utmost importance for me to face the fact that I was entirely cut off from Germany, and must think of a fresh field for the production of Tristan, which lay so near my heart. I rapidly sketched a plan for starting a German theatre in Paris itself, such as had existed in bygone years with the co-operation of Schroder-Devrient.

I thought I could safely rely on the possibility of doing so, as the most eminent singers of the German theatre were known to me, and would gladly follow me if I were to summon them to Paris on such a mission. I received messages of ready acceptance, in the event of my succeeding in founding a German opera season in Paris on a solid basis, from Tichatschek, Mitterwurzer, Niemann the tenor, and also Luise Meyer in Vienna. My immediate and besetting care was then to discover in Paris a suitable man for the task, who would undertake the execution of my plan at his own risk. My object was to secure the Salle Ventadour for a spring season of two months after the close of the Italian opera. There would then be performances of my operas, Tannhauser, Lohengrin, and finally Tristan, by a chosen company and chorus of German singers, for the benefit of the Parisian public in general and myself in particular.

With this purpose in mind, my anxieties and endeavours now took a totally different direction from that towards which they had tended when I first settled again in Paris; to cultivate acquaintances, especially among those who had influence, was now of the utmost importance to me. For this reason I was glad to hear that Gasperini had arrived in Paris for good. Although I had only known him very slightly before, I now immediately communicated my plans to him, and was introduced in the friendliest way to a rich man who was well disposed towards him, a M. Lucy, who, so I was told, was not without influence, and was at that time Receiver-General in Ma.r.s.eilles. Our deliberations convinced us that the most necessary, and indeed indispensable, thing was to find some one to come forward and finance our enterprise. My friend Gasperini could not but agree that, on the strength of the opinions he had himself advanced, it was natural I should look upon M.

Lucy as the very man we wanted; but he thought it advisable to put our wishes before his friend with some caution, for though Lucy had much chaleur de coeur, he was princ.i.p.ally a man of business and understood but little of music. Above all, it was necessary that my compositions should become well known in Paris, so that further enterprises might be founded on the results thus obtained. With this object in view I decided to arrange a few important concerts. To effect this I had to welcome my old friend Belloni, Liszt's former secretary, into the circle of my closer acquaintances. He immediately enlisted a companion of his in our cause, a highly intelligent man called Giacomelli, whom I never knew to be anything but good-natured. He was the editor of a theatrical journal and was cordially recommended to me by Belloni, as much for his excellent French as for his exceptional capabilities in other respects. My new protector's strange editorial office became from this time one of my most important places of rendezvous, which I frequented almost daily, and where I met all the curious creatures with whom, for the purpose of theatrical and similar matters, one is obliged to mix in Paris. The next thing to be considered was how to obtain the most suitable hall for my intended concerts. It was evident that I should appear to greatest advantage before the Parisian public if I could secure the theatre and orchestra of the Grand Opera.

For this I had to address myself to the Emperor Napoleon, which I did in a concise letter composed for me by Gasperini. The hostility of Fould, who was at that time the Minister of the Household to Napoleon, would probably have to be reckoned with, on account of his friendly relations to Meyerbeer. The injurious and dreaded influence of this personage we hoped to counteract by that of M. Mocquard, Napoleon's secretary, who, as Ollivier declared, composed all the imperial speeches. In an elan of fiery generosity Lucy decided to appeal to the friend of his youth, for as such he regarded Mocquard, in a letter of recommendation to him on my behalf. As even this communication received no answer from the Tuileries, I and my more practical friends, Belloni and Giacomelli, with whom I held consultations, grew more doubtful every day of our own power as opposed to that of the Minister of the Household, and we therefore entered into negotiations with Calzado, the director of the Italian Opera, instead. We met with a direct refusal in this quarter, whereupon I finally decided to seek a personal interview with the man. By a power of persuasion which astonished even myself, and, above all, by holding out the prospect of my Tristan at the Italian Opera possibly proving a huge success, I actually succeeded in at last obtaining his consent to let the Salle Ventadour for three evenings with a week's interval between each. But even my pa.s.sionate eloquence, which Giacomelli extolled on our way home, could not persuade him to lower the rent, which he fixed at four thousand francs an evening, merely for the hire and lighting of the hall.