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My Life, Volume II

R >> Richard Wagner >> My Life, Volume II




I was sincerely delighted by the close intercourse I now had with
the gentle young Dresden chamber musician, whose manly strength
of character and extraordinary mental endowments greatly endeared
him to me. My wife said that his curly golden hair and bright
blue eyes made her think an angel had come to stay with us. For
me his features had a peculiar and, considering his fate,
pathetic interest, on account of his striking resemblance to King
Friedrich August of Saxony, my former patron, who was still alive
at that time, and seemed to confirm a rumour which had reached me
that Uhlig was his natural son. It was entertaining to hear his
news of Dresden, and all about the theatre, and the condition of
musical affairs in that city. My operas, which had once been its
glory, had now quite vanished from the repertoire. He gave me a
choice example of my late colleagues' opinion of me by relating
the following incident. When Kunst und Revolution and Kunstwerk
der Zukunft appeared, and were being discussed among them, one of
them remarked: 'Ha! he may worry a long time before he will be
able to write conductor before his name again.' By way of
illustrating the advance made in music, he related the manner in
which Reissiger, having on one occasion to conduct Beethoven's
Symphony in A major, which had been previously executed by me,
had helped himself out of a sudden dilemma. Beethoven, as is well
known, marks the great finale of the last movement with a
prolonged forte, which he merely heightens by a sempre piu forte.
At this point Reissiger, who had conducted the Symphony before
me, thinking the opportunity a favourable one, had introduced a
piano, in order at least to secure an effective crescendo. This I
had naturally ignored, and had instructed the orchestra to play
with their full strength throughout. Now, therefore, that the
conducting of this work had once more fallen into my
predecessor's hands, he found it difficult to restore his unlucky
piano; but, feeling that he must save his authority, which had
been compromised, he made a rule that mezzo forte should be
played instead of forte.

But the most painful news he gave me was about the state of utter
neglect into which my unhappy operatic publications had fallen in
the hands of the court music-dealer Meser, who, seeing that money
had to be continually paid out, while nothing came in, regarded
himself as a sacrificial lamb whom I had lured to the slaughter.
Yet he steadily refused all inspection of his books, maintaining
that he thereby protected my property, as all I possessed having
been confiscated, it would otherwise be seized at once. A
pleasanter topic than this was Lohengrin. My friend had completed
the pianoforte arrangement, and was already busy correcting the
engraver's proofs.

By his enthusiastic advocacy of the water cure, Uhlig gained an
influence over me in another direction, and one which was of long
duration. He brought me a book on the subject by a certain
Rausse, which pleased me greatly, especially by its radical
principles, which had something of Feuerbach about them. Its bold
repudiation of the entire science of medicine, with all its
quackeries, combined with its advocacy of the simplest natural
processes by means of a methodical use of strengthening and
refreshing water, quickly won my fervent adherence. He
maintained, for instance, that every genuine medicine can only
act upon our organism in so far as it is a poison, and is
therefore not assimilated by our system; and proved, moreover,
that men who had become weak owing to a continuous absorption of
medicine, had been cured by the famous Priesnitz, who had
effectually driven out the poison contained in their bodies by
expelling it through the skin. I naturally thought of the
disagreeable sulphur baths I had taken during the spring, and to
which I attributed my chronic and severe state of irritability.
In so doing I was probably not far wrong. For a long while after
this I did my best to expel this and all other poisons which I
might have absorbed in the course of time, and by an exclusive
water regimen restore my original healthy condition. Uhlig
asserted that by persevering conscientiously in a water cure, he
was perfectly confident of being able to renew his own bodily
health entirely, and my own faith in it also grew daily.

At the end of July we started on an excursion through the centre
of Switzerland. From Brunnen, on the Lake of Lucerne, we
proceeded via Beckenried to Engelberg, from which place we
crossed the wild Surenen-Eck, and on this occasion learned how to
glide over the snow fairly easily. But in crossing a swollen
mountain torrent Uhlig had the misfortune to fall into the water.
By way of quieting my uneasiness about him, he at once exclaimed
that this was a very good way of carrying out the water cure. He
made no fuss about the drying of his clothes, but simply spread
them out in the sun, and in the meanwhile calmly promenaded about
in a state of nature in the open air, protesting that this novel
form of exercise would do him good. We occupied the interval in
discussing the important problem of Beethoven's theme
construction, until, by way of a joke, I told him that I could
see Councillor Carns of Dresden coming up behind him with a
party, which for a moment quite frightened him. Thus with light
hearts we reached the Reuss valley near Attinghausen, and in the
evening wandered on as far as Amsteg, and the next morning, in
spite of our great fatigue, at once visited the Madran valley.
There we climbed the Hufi glacier, whence we enjoyed a splendid
view over an impressive panorama of mountains, bounded at this
point by the Tody range. We returned the same day to Amsteg, and
as we were both thoroughly tired out, I dissuaded my companion
from attempting the ascent of the Klausen Pass to the Schachen
valley, which we had planned for the following day, and induced
him to take the easier way home via Fluelen. When, early in
August, my young friend, who was always calm and very deliberate
in his manner, set out on his return journey to Dresden, I could
detect no signs of exhaustion about him. He was hoping on his
arrival to lighten the heavy burden of life a little by
undertaking the conductorship of the entr'acte music at the
theatre, which he proposed to organise artistically, and thus set
himself free from the oppressive and demoralising service of the
opera. It was with sincere grief that I accompanied him to the
mail-coach, and he too seemed to be seized with sudden
foreboding. As a matter of fact, this was the last time we ever
met.

But for the present we carried on an active correspondence, and
as his communications were always pleasant and entertaining, and
for a long time constituted almost my sole link with the outside
world, I begged him to write me long letters as often as
possible. As postage was expensive at that time, and voluminous
letters touched our pockets severely, Uhlig conceived the
ingenious idea of using the parcel post for our correspondence.
As only packets of a certain weight might be sent in this way, a
German translation of Beaumarchais' Figaro, of which Uhlig
possessed an ancient copy, enjoyed the singular destiny of acting
as ballast for our letters to and fro. Every time, therefore,
that our epistles had swelled, to the requisite length, we
announced them with the words: 'Figaro brings tidings to-day.'

Uhlig meanwhile found much pleasure in the Mittheilung an meine
Freunde ('A Communication to my Friends'), which, immediately
after our separation, I wrote as a preface to an edition of my
three operas, the Fliegender Hollander, Tannhauser, and
Lohengrin. He was also amused to hear that Hartel, who had
accepted the book for publication on payment of ten louis d'or,
protested so vigorously against certain passages in this preface,
which wounded his orthodoxy and political feelings, that I
thought seriously of giving the book to another firm. However, he
finally persuaded me to give way, and I pacified his tender
conscience by a few trifling alterations.

With this comprehensive preface, which had occupied me during the
whole of the month of August, I hoped that my excursion into the
realms of literature would be ended once and for all. However, as
soon as I began to think seriously about taking up the
composition of Junger Siegfried, which I had promised for Weimar,
I was seized with depressing doubts which almost amounted to a
positive reluctance to attempt this work. As I could not clearly
discern the reason of this dejection, I concluded that its source
lay in the state of my health, so I determined one day to carry
out my theories about the advantages of a water cure, which I had
always propounded with great enthusiasm. I made due inquiries
about a neighbouring hydropathic establishment, and informed my
wife that I was going off to Albisbrunnen, which was situated
about three miles from our abode. It was then about the middle of
September, and I had made up my mind not to come back until I was
completely restored to health.

Minna was quite frightened when I announced my intention, and
looked upon it as another attempt on my part to abandon my home.
I begged of her, however, to devote herself during my absence to
the task of furnishing and arranging our new flat as comfortably
as possible. This, although small, was conveniently situated on
the ground floor of the Vordern Escher Hauser im Zeltweg. We had
determined to move back to the town, on account of the great
inconvenience of the situation of our present quarters,
especially during winter time. Everybody, of course, was
astonished at the idea of my undertaking a water cure so late in
the season. Nevertheless, I soon succeeded in securing a fellow-
patient. I was not fortunate enough to get Herwegh, but Fate was
kind in sending me Hermann Muller, an ex-lieutenant in the Saxon
Guards, and a former lover of Schroder-Devrient, who proved a
most cheerful and pleasant companion. It had become impossible
for him to maintain his position in the Saxon army, and although
he was not exactly a political refugee, every career was closed
to him in Germany, and yet he met with all the consideration of
an exiled patriot when he came to Switzerland to try and make a
fresh start in life. We had seen a good deal of each other in my
early Dresden days, and he soon felt at home in my house, where
my wife always gave him a warm welcome. I easily persuaded him to
follow me shortly to Albisbrunnen to undergo a thorough treatment
for an infirmity from which he was suffering. I established
myself there as comfortably as I could, and I looked forward to
excellent results. The cure itself was superintended in the usual
superficial way by a Dr. Brunner, whom my wife, on one of her
visits to this place, promptly christened the 'Water Jew,' and
whom she heartily detested. Early at five o'clock in the morning
I was wrapped up and kept in a state of perspiration for several
hours; after that I was plunged into an icy cold bath at a
temperature of only four degrees; then I was made to take a brisk
walk to restore my circulation in the chilly air of late autumn.
In addition I was kept on a water diet; no wine, coffee, or tea
was allowed; and this regime, in the dismal company of nothing
but incurables, with dull evenings only enlivened by desperate
attempts at games of whist, and the prohibition of all
intellectual occupation, resulted in irritability and overwrought
nerves. I led this life for nine weeks, but I was determined not
to give in until I felt that every kind of drug or poison I had
ever absorbed into my system had been brought to the surface. As
I considered that wine was most dangerous, I presumed that my
system still contained many unassimilated substances which I had
absorbed at various dinner-parties at Sulzer's, and which must
evaporate in profuse perspiration. This life, so full of
privations, which I led in rooms miserably furnished with common
deal and the usual rustic appointments of a Swiss pension, awoke
in me by way of contrast an insuperable longing for a cosy and
comfortable home; indeed, as the year went on, this longing
became a passionate desire. My imagination was for ever picturing
to itself the manner and style in which a house or a dwelling
ought to be appointed and arranged, in order to keep my mind
pleasantly free for artistic creation.

At this time symptoms of a possible improvement in my position
appeared. Karl Ritter, unfortunately for himself, wrote to me
from Stuttgart while I was at the hydro, describing his own
private attempts to secure the benefits of a water cure--not by
means of baths, but by drinking quantities of water. I had found
out that it was most dangerous to drink large quantities of water
without undergoing the rest of the treatment, so I implored Karl
to submit to the regular course, and not to have an effeminate
fear of privations, and to come at once to Albisbrunnen. He took
me at my word, and to my great delight arrived in a few days'
time at Albisbrunnen. Theoretically he was filled with enthusiasm
for hydropathy, but he soon objected to it in practice; and he
denounced the use of cold milk as indigestible and against the
dictates of Nature, as mother's milk was always warm. He found
the cold packs and the cold baths too exciting, and preferred
treating himself in a comfortable and pleasant way behind the
doctor's back. He soon discovered a wretched confectioner's shop
in the neighbouring village, and when he was caught buying cheap
pastry on the sly, he was very angry. He soon grew perfectly
miserable, and would fain have escaped, had not a certain feeling
of honour prevented him from doing so. The news reached him here
of the sudden death of a rich uncle, who had left a considerable
fortune to every member of Karl's family. His mother, in telling
him and me of the improvement in her position, declared that she
was now able to assure me the income which the two families of
Laussot and Ritter had offered me some time ago. Thus I stepped
into an annual income of two thousand four hundred marks for as
long as I required it, and into partnership with the Ritter
family.

This happy and encouraging turn of events made me decide to
complete my original sketch of the Nibelungen, and to bring it
out in our theatres without paying any regard to the
practicability of its various parts. In order to do this I felt
that I must free myself from all obligations to the management of
the Weimar theatre. I had already drawn six hundred marks salary
from this source, but Karl was enchanted to place this sum at my
disposal in order that I might return it. I sent the money back
to Weimar with a letter expressing my most grateful
acknowledgments to the management for their conduct towards me,
and at the same time I wrote to Liszt, giving him the fullest
particulars of my great plan, and explaining how I felt
absolutely compelled to carry it out.

Liszt, in his reply, told me how delighted he was to know that I
was now in a position to undertake such a remarkable work, which
he considered in every respect worthy of me if only on account of
its surprising originality. I began to breathe freely at last,
because I had always felt that it was merely self-deception on my
part to maintain that it would be possible to produce Junger
Siegfried with the limited means at the disposal of even the best
German theatre.

My water cure and the hydropathic establishment became more and
more distasteful to me; I longed for my work, and the desire to
get back to it made me quite ill. I tried obstinately to conceal
from myself that the object of my cure had entirely failed;
indeed, it had really done me more harm than good, for although
the evil secretions had not returned, my whole body seemed
terribly emaciated. I considered that I had had quite enough of
the cure, and comforted myself with the hope that I should derive
benefit from it in the future. I accordingly left the hydropathic
establishment at the end of November. Muller was to follow me in
a few days, but Karl, wishing to be consistent, was determined to
remain until he perceived a similar result in himself to the one
I had experienced or pretended I had experienced. I was much
pleased with the way in which Minna had arranged our new little
flat in Zurich. She had bought a large and luxurious divan,
several carpets for the floor and various dainty little luxuries,
and in the back room my writing-table of common deal was covered
with a green tablecloth and draped with soft green silk curtains,
all of which my friends admired immensely. This table, at which I
worked continually, travelled with me to Paris, and when I left
that city I presented it to Blandine Ollivier, Liszt's elder
daughter, who had it conveyed to the little country house at St.
Tropez, belonging to her husband, where, I believe, it stands to
this day. I was very glad to receive my Zurich friends in my new
home, which was so much more conveniently situated than my former
one; only I quite spoilt all my hospitality for a long time by my
fanatical agitation for a water diet and my polemics against the
evils of wine and other intoxicating drinks. I adopted what
seemed almost a new kind of religion: when I was driven into a
corner by Sulzer and Herwegh, the latter of whom prided himself
on his knowledge of chemistry and physiology, about the absurdity
of Rausse's theory of the poisonous qualities contained in wine,
I found refuge in the moral and aesthetic motive which made me
regard the enjoyment of wine as an evil and barbarous substitute
for the ecstatic state of mind which love alone should produce. I
maintained that wine, even if not taken in excess, contained
qualities producing a state of intoxication which a man sought in
order to raise his spirits, but that only he who experienced the
intoxication of love could raise his spirits in the noblest sense
of the word. This led to a discussion on the modern relations of
the sexes, whereupon I commented on the almost brutal manner in
which men kept aloof from women in Switzerland. Sulzer said he
would not at all object to the intoxication resulting from
intercourse with women, but in his opinion the difficulty lay in
procuring this by fair means. Herwegh was inclined to agree with
my paradox, but remarked that wine had nothing whatever to do
with it, that it was simply an excellent and strengthening food,
which, according to Anacreon, agreed very well with the ecstasy
of love. As my friends studied me and my condition more closely,
they felt they had reason to be very anxious about my foolish and
obstinate extravagances. I looked terribly pale and thin; I
hardly slept at all, and in everything I did I betrayed a strange
excitement. Although eventually sleep almost entirely forsook me,
I still pretended that I had never been so well or so cheerful in
my life, and I continued on the coldest winter mornings to take
my cold baths, and plagued my wife to death by making her show me
my way out with a lantern for the prescribed early morning walk.

I was in this state when the printed copies of Oper und Drama
reached me, and I devoured rather than read them with an
eccentric joy. I think that the delightful consciousness of now
being able to say to myself, and prove to the satisfaction of
everybody, and even of Minna, that I had at last completely freed
myself from my hateful career as conductor and opera composer,
brought about this immoderate excitement. Nobody had a right to
make the demands upon me which two years ago had made me so
miserable. The income which the Ritters had assured me for life,
and the object of which was to give me an absolutely free hand,
also contributed to my present state of mind, and made me feel
confidence in everything I undertook. Although my plans for the
present seemed to exclude all possibility of being realised,
thanks to the indifference of an inartistic public, still I could
not help inwardly cherishing the idea that I should not be for
ever addressing only the paper on which I wrote. I anticipated
that before long a great reaction would set in with regard to the
public and everything connected with our social life, and I
believed that in my boldly planned work there lay just the right
material to supply the changed conditions and real needs of the
new public whose relation to art would be completely altered with
what was required. As these bold expectations had arisen in my
mind in consequence of my observations of the state of society in
general, I naturally could not say much about them to my friends.
I had not mistaken the significance of the general collapse of
the political movements, but felt that their real weakness lay in
the inadequate though sincere expression of their cause, and that
the social movement, so far from losing ground by its political
defeat, had, on the contrary, gained in energy and expansion. I
based my opinion upon the experience I had had during my last
visit to Paris, when I had attended, among other things, a
political meeting of the so-called social democratic party. Their
general behaviour made a great impression upon me; the meeting
took place in a temporary hall called Salle de la Fraternite in
the Faubourg St. Denis; six thousand men were present, and their
conduct, far from being noisy and tumultuous, filled me with a
sense of the concentrated energy and hope of this new party. The
speeches of the principal orators of the extreme left of the
Assemblee Nationale astonished me by their oratorical flights as
well as by their evident confidence in the future. As this
extreme party was gradually strengthening itself against
everything that was being done by the reactionary party then in
power, and all the old liberals had joined these social democrats
publicly and had adopted their electioneering programme, it was
easy to see that in Paris, at all events, they would have a
decided majority at the impending elections for the year 1852,
and especially in the nomination of the President of the
Republic. My own opinions about this were shared by the whole of
France, and it seemed that the year 1852 was destined to witness
a very important reaction which was naturally dreaded by the
other party, who looked forward with great apprehension to the
approaching catastrophe. The condition of the other European
states, who suppressed every laudable impulse with brutal
stupidity, convinced me that elsewhere too this state of affairs
would not continue long, and every one seemed to look forward
with great expectations to the decision of the following year.

I had discussed the general situation with my friend Uhlig, as
well as the efficacy of the water-cure system; he had just come
home fresh from orchestral rehearsals at the Dresden theatre, and
found it very difficult to agree to a drastic change in human
affairs or to have any faith in it. He assured me that I could
not conceive how miserable and mean people were in general, but I
managed to delude him into the belief that the year 1852 would be
pregnant with great and important events. Our opinions on this
subject were expressed in the correspondence which was once more
diligently forwarded by Figaro.

Whenever we had to complain of any meanness or untoward
circumstance, I always reminded him of this year, so great with
fate and hope, and at the same time I hinted that we had better
look forward quite calmly to the time when the great 'upheaval'
should take place, as only then, when no one else knew what to
do, could we step in and make a start.

I can hardly express how deeply and firmly this hope had taken
possession of me, and I can only attribute all my confident
opinions and declarations to the increased excitement of my
nerves. The news of the coup d'etat of the 2nd of December in
Paris seemed to me absolutely incredible, and I thought the world
was surely coming to an end. When the news was confirmed, and
events which no one believed could ever happen had apparently
occurred and seemed likely to be permanent, I gave the whole
thing up like a riddle which it was beneath me to unravel, and
turned away in disgust from the contemplation of this puzzling
world. As a playful reminiscence of our hopes of the year 1852, I
suggested to Uhlig that in our correspondence during that year we
should ignore its existence and should date our letters December
'51, in consequence of which this said month of December seemed
of eternal duration.

Soon afterwards I was overpowered by an extraordinary depression
in which, somehow, the disappointment about the turn of political
events and the reaction created by my exaggerated water cure,
almost ruined my health. I perceived the triumphant return of all
the disappointing signs of reaction which excluded every high
ideal from intellectual life, and from which I had hoped the
shocks and fermentations of the past few years had freed us for
ever. I prophesied that the time was approaching when
intellectually we should be such paupers that the appearance of a
new book from the pen of Heinrich Heine would create quite a
sensation. When, a short time afterwards, the Romancero appeared
from the pen of this poet who had fallen into almost complete
neglect, and was very well reviewed by the newspaper critics, I
laughed aloud; as a matter of fact, I suppose I am among the very
few Germans who have never even looked at this book, which, by
the way, is said to possess great merit.

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