The Love Affairs of Great Musicians Volume II Part 4

"She dwelt only on the confidential expressions and lost the sense. In a rage she came to me and compelled me therefore to declare quietly and decisively how matters stood; namely, that she had brought trouble on herself by opening such a letter, and that if she could not restrain herself, we must part. On this point we agreed; I calm, she pa.s.sionate.

Another day I was sorry for her. I went to her and said: 'Minna, you are very sick. Compose yourself and let us once more talk about the matter.' We concluded with the idea of a Cure for her; she seemed to quiet herself, and the day of her departure for the Cure was approaching; previously, however, she would speak to Frau Wesendonck I firmly forbade her to do so. All my efforts were to make Minna gradually acquainted with the character of my relations to Frau Wesendonck, in order to convince her that she had no need to fear about the continuance of our marriage, and that, therefore, she should behave herself sensibly, thoughtfully, and generously; reject any foolish revenge and every kind of spying. Ultimately she promised this. Yet she could not be quiet. She went behind my back and--without comprehending it herself--insulted the gentle lady most grossly. She said to her: 'Were I like ordinary women, I would go with this letter to your husband!' And thus _Frau Wesendonck, who was conscious of never having any secrets from her husband_--a thing which a woman like Minna could not understand--had nothing to do but at once to inform her husband of this scene and its cause.

"Here, then, was an attack, in a rough and vulgar manner, an attack on _the delicacy and purity of our relations_, and in many ways a change was necessary. I succeeded only after some time in making it clear to Frau Wesendonck that, for a nature like that of my wife, relations of such elevation and unselfishness as those existing between us could never be made intelligible, for I was struck by _her serious, deep reproach that I had omitted this, while she had always made her husband her confidant_. Whoever can comprehend what I have suffered since (it was then the middle of April) must also comprehend in what state of mind I am at last, since I must acknowledge that the uninterrupted endeavours to continue our disturbed relations were absolutely fruitless. I tended Minna at the Cure for three months with the utmost care, and in order to quiet her, I, during this period, broke off all intercourse with our neighbours; in my anxiety for her health I tried everything in my power to bring her to reason and to hold views befitting herself and her age. All in vain! She persisted in the most trivial remarks, she said she was an injured woman, and she had scarcely been quieted, before the old rage broke out again. Since Minna returned a month ago, some conclusion had finally to be reached. The close proximity of the two women was for the future impossible, for Frau Wesendonck could not forget that her highest sacrifices and tenderest consideration for me had been met on my side, through my wife, so rudely and insultingly. _People, too, had begun to talk_.

Enough; the most unheard-of scenes and tormentings of me never ceased, and out of regard for the one and the other, I was forced finally to decide to give up the charming asylum which such tender love had prepared for me.

"Now I needed quiet and perfect composure, for what I have to surmount is great. Minna is unable to understand what an unhappy married life we have led; she imagines the past to have been quite different from what it was, and if I found consolation, distraction, and forgetfulness in my art, she verily believes I had no need of them. Enough. I have come to this resolution with myself: I can no longer bear this everlasting squabbling and distrustful temper if I have to fulfil my life's task courageously. Whoever has observed me sufficiently must wonder at my patience, kindness, even weakness, and if I am condemned by superficial judges I am quite indifferent to them. But never had Minna such an opportunity to show herself more worthy of _the dignity (wurde) of being my wife_, than now, when it is necessary for me to keep what is highest and dearest. It lay in her hands to show whether she really loved me. But what such genuine love is, she never once conceived, and her temper carried her away beyond everything.

"Yet I excused her on account of her sickness, although this sickness would have taken another and milder character if she herself were other and milder. The many disagreeable blows of fortune which she experienced with me--which my inner genius (which unfortunately I could not impart) easily raised me above, rendered me full of regard for her; I wished to give her as little pain as possible, for I am very sorry for her. Only I feel myself constantly incapable of enduring it by her side; moreover, I can do her no good thereby. I shall become always unintelligible to her and an object of her suspicion. So--separation!

But in all kindness and love, I do not desire _her disgrace_. I only wished that she herself in time would see that it is better if we do not see so much of each other. For the present I hold out to her the prospect of returning to Germany as soon as the amnesty is proclaimed; for this reason she will take with her all the furniture and things. I purpose to make no slips of the tongue and to let everything depend on my future resolutions. Do you therefore stick to it that _it is only a temporary separation_. What ever you can do to make her quiet and reasonable I beg you not to omit. For--as said above--she is unfortunate; _with a smaller man she would have been happier_. Join with me in pitying her. I will thank you from my heart for so doing, dear sister!

"I shall wait here a bit in Geneva till I can go to Italy, where I think of pa.s.sing the winter, presumably in Venice. Already I feel quickened by being alone and removed from all tormenting surroundings.

It was no use talking of work. As soon as I feel myself in a temper to go on composing 'Tristan,' I shall regard myself as saved. In fact, I must do the best for myself; I ask nothing from the world but that it leave me in quiet for the works which one day will belong to it. So let it judge me gently! The contents of this letter, dear Clara, you can confidently use to give any explanations where they may be necessary.

On the whole, however, naturally I would not like to have much said of the matter. Only very few people will understand what this is about, so one must know well the persons introduced here.

"Now, farewell, dear sister. I thank you again from my heart for the secret question which, as you can see, I answer confidentially. Treat Minna with forbearance, but make her gradually understand how she now stands with me.

"Your brother,

"RICHARD WAGNER."

This is Wagner's side of the affair, only recently made public. The translation is from the _Musical Courier._ Whatever is discarded, there remains enough to disprove Belart's statement that Otto Wesendonck only learned of the affair from informants outside, and, finding Wagner and Mathilde together, compelled Wagner to leave Zurich immediately.

Besides, even Belart admits that Wesendonck and his wife continued to live together for the sake of the children, and that years after, when he had learned to understand, he renewed his acquaintance with Wagner.

Amazing as this story is, both with regard to the strange things it asks us to believe of the man and the woman and the husband, it is certain that there was a pretty how-d'ye-do in Zurich. Minna became so jealous that she drove Wagner, usually so tender in his allusions to her, to use the expression of the ungallant Haydn, saying that, "she was making a h.e.l.l out of the home." Her outbursts of temper were so violent, and her addiction to opium had become so great, that he began to fear for her death by heart disease, and finally for her sanity. He wrote of her to his friend Frau Ritter:

"Her condition of mind became such a torment to herself and her surroundings, that a radical change of the situation had to be made, unless we were all willing to wear ourselves out unreasonably.... The state of her education, and her intellectual capacities, make it impossible for her to find in me and my endowments the consolation which she needed so much by way of compensation for the disagreeableness of our material situation. If this is the source of great anguish to me, it nevertheless makes me pity her with all my heart, and it is my most cordial wish that I may some day be able to afford her lasting consolation in her own way."

In 1856 she had left him for a time, ostensibly to take a cure. In 1859 there had been a short reunion, of which Wagner wrote again to Frau Ritter:

"This period I have also chosen for a reunion with my poor wife. May Heaven grant that I shall always feel able to carry out patiently my firm and cordial determination of treating her in the most considerate manner. I confess that my relation to this poor woman, who had so many trials, and is now suffering so much, has always spurred me on to preserve and develop my moral powers. In all my relations to her I am guided only by the deepest pity with her condition, and I hope confidently that it will always arm me with the persistent patience with which I feel called upon not only to endure the consequences of her illness, but personally to allay them."

Then he had gone to Venice to continue work on "Tristan," dreaming there in loneliness of his Isolde, the Wesendonck, whose husband has been well likened to King Mark. But Venice being within the sphere of Saxon influence, he was afraid to remain long, for fear of arrest. In 1860 he was granted a partial amnesty, and went to Frankfort to meet his wife, who had been taking treatment near Wiesbaden. Minna went with him to Paris, and was there at the time of the violent riots, which put an end to "Tannhauser," and doubtless to Minna's hopes of settling in the Paris she was so fond of. She began again to vent her indignation that he would not write for the gallery, and the storm grew fiercer and fiercer. Wagner had written Liszt in 1861 with renewed hope and renewed tenderness:

"For the present I spend all the good humour I can command on my wife.

I flatter her and take care of her as if she were a bride in her honeymoon. My reward is that I see her thrive; her bad illness is visibly getting better. She is recovering and will, I hope, become a little rational in her old age. Just after I had received your 'Dante,'

I wrote to her that we had now got out of h.e.l.l; I hope Purgatory will agree with her; in which case, we shall perhaps, after all, enjoy a little Paradise."

But the hope was vain, and a friend of the family who wrote under the name of the "Idealistin" describes the--

"almost daily trouble in the intercourse, increased by the fact that the absence of children deprived them of the last element of reconciliation. Nevertheless, Frau Wagner was a good woman, and in the eyes of the world decidedly the better half and the chief sufferer. I judged otherwise, and felt the deepest pity for Wagner, for whom love should have built the bridge by which he might have reached others, whereas now it was only making the bitter cup of his life bitterer. I was on good terms with Frau Wagner, who often poured her complaints into my ears, and I tried to console her, but of course in vain."

And now Minna, whose housewifely meekness had endured the Wesendonck tempest and all the other mult.i.tudes of trials Wagner went through, found herself unable to endure his fidelity to his artistic ideals. The quarrels grew fiercer and fiercer, until finally she left Wagner for ever, and went back to her people in Dresden, where she spent the rest of her life.

Wagner's immortal hope was not even yet dead; as late as 1863 he wrote to Praeger from St. Petersburg:

"I would Minna were here with me; we might, in the excitement that now moves fast around me, grow again the quiescent pair of yore. The whole thing is annoying. I am not in good spirits: I move about freely, and see a number of people, but my misery is bitter."

Minna herself seems to have toyed with the idea of reconciliation, for she wrote to Praeger, who told Wagner, and received the following bitter complaint:

"And so she has written to you? Whose fault was it? How could she have expected I was to be shackled and fettered as any ordinary cold common mortal? My inspirations carried me into a sphere where she could not follow, and then the exuberance of my heated enthusiasm was met by a cold douche. But still there was no reason for the extreme step; everything might have been arranged between us, and it would have been better had it been so. Now there is a dark void, and my misery is deep."

A year later, Wagner's regret is not yet dead, and he writes to Frau Wille:

"Between me and my wife all might have turned out well! I had simply spoiled her dreadfully, and yielded to her in everything. She did not feel that I am a man who cannot live with wings tied down. What did she know of the divine right of pa.s.sion, which I announce in the flame-death of the Walkure who has fallen from the grace of the G.o.ds?

With the death-sacrifice of love the Dusk of the G.o.ds (Gtterdammerung) sets in."

And again he bewails his loneliness to Praeger:

"The commonest domestic details must now be done by me; the purchasing of kitchen utensils and such kindred matters am I driven to. Ah! poor Beethoven! now is it forcibly brought home to me what his discomforts were with his was.h.i.+ng-book and engaging of housekeepers, etc., etc. I who have praised woman more than Frauenlob, have not one for my companion. The truth is, I have spoiled Minna; too much did I indulge her, too much did I yield to her; but it were better not to talk upon a subject which never ceases to vex me."

Yet he was destined to know wedded happiness some years later. And he showed that he could make happy a woman who could understand him. As Mr. Finck comments:

"The world is apt to side with the woman in a case like this, especially if her partner is of the _irritabile genus_, a man of genius. No doubt, Minna had much to endure, and deserves all our pity; but that her husband is not to blame in this matter, is shown by the extremely happy and contented life he led with his second wife, Cosima, the daughter of Liszt, who _did love_ and understand him."

It is a proverb that the woman who marries a genius marries misery, but I think there are instances enough in this book to show that genius has nothing to do with the case. Wedded happiness is a result of the lucky meeting of two natures, one or both of which may be accidentally so const.i.tuted as to be happy in the other's society without undue restlessness. It would be just as easy to prove, by a mult.i.tude of instances, that plumbers or bookkeepers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, or thieves make poor husbands as to prove the same of musicians, artists, poets, architects, or geniuses of any kind.

The truth of the matter is always overlooked: the geniuses are revealed to the public in an intimacy non-historical characters are not subjected to. But if you will turn from reading the pages of history, biography, or memoirs, and take up any newspaper of the day, you will doubtless be astounded to find how small a percentage of the divorces, the murders, and other domestic scandals are to be blamed to the possession of genius, unless, as one might well, you recognise a special and separate genius for trouble.

Patience conquers all things, if one lives long enough, and at length even Wagner's innumerable woes were solved by the appearance of a veritable _deus ex machina_ let down from heaven. But Wagner was over fifty when the tardy G.o.d arrived. It was in 1864 that he became the idol and the pet of the young king, Ludwig II. of Bavaria, who sent a courier ransacking Europe almost in vain for the fugitive, and, at last finding him, dumbfounded him with fairy promises, presented him with a villa, and treated him to a splendour few musicians have ever known, except perhaps Lully, and Farinelli, who became the vocal prime minister of the truly good king Ferdinand VI. of Spain. Wagner's relations with Ludwig were of a sort which Mr. Finck euphemises as "Grecian." This was seemingly not the only instance in his career; but it brought him furious enmity as soon as he had found friends.h.i.+p.

Poor Minna never shared with Wagner his period of luxury. But it was of such magnificence that his envious foes accused him of aiming to dethrone religion from its throne, and subst.i.tute art as the Pope!

Among the attacks made on Wagner at this time was the charge that, while he was lolling on a silken couch which had cost him $12,000, his neglected wife was starving to death in Dresden. Minna was honourable enough to answer this attack with an open letter to those German newspapers which, in 1866, outjaundiced that yellow journalism for the invention of which New America has been blamed.

Minna wrote as follows:

"The malicious rumours concerning my husband, which have been for some time published by Vienna and Munich newspapers, oblige me to declare that I have received from him up to this day an income amply sufficient for my maintenance. I take this opportunity with the more pleasure as it enables me to put an end to at least one of the numerous calumnies launched against my husband."

A few weeks later, on January 25, 1866, she died at Dresden of heart disease. She had suffered all the miseries that earn success, without ever tasting their sweets. To say whether or not she deserved to taste the sweets would demand a more ruthless and unforgiving verdict upon one of the two unfortunates than I have the heart to render. The marriage had been the wedding of a near-sighted woman and a man who could see hardly anything nearer than the Pleiades. Neither was more to blame than the other for the fault of eyesight. It was simply a case of connubial astigmatism.

While Wagner was living on terms of strange intimacy with the young king, he was accused of Oriental luxury. The selection of the rainbow furnis.h.i.+ngs of his house and of his own dressing-gowns, which made Joseph's coat mere negligee, was not altogether his own, but showed the unmistakable guiding hand of a woman. Frau Cosima von Bulow acted as a sort of secretary to Wagner. She was the daughter of Liszt; her mother was the Comtesse d'Agoult, who wrote under the name of "Daniel Stern,"

and with whom Liszt had lived for a few years. Cosima had married Hans von Bulow in 1857.

Von Bulow had in his earlier years been greatly befriended by Liszt and by Wagner. In 1850, when Von Bulow was about twenty years old, Wagner and Liszt both had written to his mother, who was then divorced, begging her to let her son take up music. Like Schumann's mother, she opposed music as a career, but Von Bulow persisted, and became Liszt's pupil. Wagner was to Von Bulow a G.o.d. It was a pitiful practical joke that Fate should have directed the G.o.d's favour toward the wors.h.i.+pper's wife. But those ugly old maids, the Fates, have never had a sense of good form.

As early as 1864 Wagner had written to Frau Wille, complaining of Von Bulow's misfortunes, and saying: "Add to this a tragic marriage; a young woman of extraordinary, quite unprecedented endowment, Liszt's wonderful image, but of superior intellect." Wagner persuaded the king to make Von Bulow court pianist, and later court conductor. There are very pretty accounts of the musical at-homes of the Von Bulows and Wagner.

Then Wagner's popularity with the king eventually raised such hostility that, at the king's request, he left the country to save his life. He was again an exile. Cosima, with her two children, went with him, and later Von Bulow came, but he soon had to go to Basle to earn his living as a piano teacher, and left his family at Lucerne. There exists a letter from Wagner's cook, telling a friend of how the king came incognito to visit Wagner, and how the house was upset by the descent of Cosima and her children. They had come to stay. At Triebschen, near Lucerne, Wagner lived with the Von Bulow family, and began to know contentment.

The relations of Wagner and Cosima rapidly grew intimate enough to torment even the idolatrous Von Bulow. Riemann says: "Domestic misunderstandings led, in 1869, to a separation, and Von Bulow left the city." One of the "domestic misunderstandings" was doubtless the birth of Siegfried Wagner, June 6, 1869. A speedy divorce and marriage were imperative. The chief difficulty in the securing of the much desired divorce was that Cosima must change her religion, or her "religious profession," to use the more accurate phrase of Mr. Finck, who says that Wagner in his life with her, had "followed the example of Liszt and Goethe and other European men of genius, an example the ethics of which this is not the place to discuss."

Von Bulow secured his divorce in the fall of 1869. He remarried, in 1882, the actress, Marie Schanzer. Wagner and Cosima were married August 25, 1870. This was the twenty-fifth birthday of King Ludwig, and Glasenapp comments glowingly upon the meaning of the marriage:

"To the artist, who in the first great rumblings of the war of 1870-71, greeted the dawn of a new era for his people, the same hour proved to be the beginning of a new chapter. On Thursday, the 25th of August, 1870, in the Protestant Church of Lucerne, in the presence of two witnesses, one, the lifelong friend of the Wagner family, Hans Richter, the other, Miss M.v.M., the wedding of Richard Wagner to Cosima, the divorced wife of Hans von Bulow, was celebrated.

"There is no other union which Germans ought to deem more holy. None have ever been entered into with less selfishness, with higher impersonal sentiments. It united the great homeless one, who had suffered so much and so long under the heartlessness and unappreciative neglect of his contemporaries, to a wife, who stood beside the friend of her father, the ideal of her husband, with cheerful encouragement _(mit theilnahmvollster Sorge_), until she as well as her husband realised that she was the one chosen to heal the wounds which the artist had suffered in his restless wanderings and through numberless disappointments. The time had arrived when the hand of love prepared the last and never-to-be-lost home.

"This knowledge gave the n.o.ble-minded woman the courage to sever the ties, which in early youth had tied her to one of our most eminent artists, and the best of men; to give up herself to her task, to consecrate her life to him, to be the helpmeet of the man to whom through friends.h.i.+p and the inner voice of her heart, and the knowledge of n.o.ble duty, she had already belonged. The world did not hesitate to malign this holiest act of fidelity. Only the small and the low are overlooked, the high and the great are ever the victims."